Pokémon Emerald Version

Well paced, great levels, the most replayable postgame out of the series, lots of secrets. There's something magical about this game. Might just be the nostalgia talking. But even considering that the mechanics of the games have been greatly improved since 2005, I find this the easiest game to come back to.

Emerald contains an intriguing story, and was another successful blend between its two previous sister titles Ruby and Sapphire. This game, along with other merger titles such as Platinum, are a true example of what can happen when profit driven publishing is set aside and uninhibited/non-paywalled user experiences are prioritised.

The game itself is rich in story, contains interesting new pokemon, and great areas of exploration. It is one of the few pokemon games that survives outside of the nostalgia factor, continuing to be repayable almost two decades after it's release.

With a compelling post-game, and plenty of exploration areas, the game expands on the 8 badges, bad team, and elite 4 format to provide a holistic, true rpg experience.

One of the all time greats.

After thinking the Pokémon fad would crash shortly after the release of Gold and Silver, only to discover the franchise legs, Game Freak and Nintendo decided to keep the series going, promoting series composer Junichi Masuda to the role of director. The result is a game that shines with polish. Taking advantage of the new hardware, the game looks very vibrant and sprite work in battle in nearly indistinguishable from the DS sprites. The game does a good job of teasing the player and making them want to explore the region. The battle mechanics have been updated with the introduction of the double battle and Pokémon abilities, in addition to the updated movepool with even more complex moves than were in the previous games. These updates add greater nuance to the battle system without radically changing it and give more Pokémon a greater opportunity to contribute to the team. The story here has also seen a major change, but not so much in quality as in structure. Game Freak must have been unable to find a way to make the gym challenge more intriguing, so instead the made the evil team plot the center of the story. The big difference though is that in the previous games you faced off against the evil team in a couple of lengthy engagements, and then that was it. Now, you face off against the evil team in nearly every town, although these engagements are briefer. The game quickly settles into a steady rhythm where you go to a new town, fight the bad guys, explore the surrounding routes, and then fight the gym leader. Despite this, I can’t say my experience was substantially better than the previous games, this is because this game is basically the same as what came before. Contrast this with the Final Fantasy series, where the games became increasingly ambitious and story and characters were matched with a particular aesthetic to create a unique experience. This game is still pleasant experience and it set the mold for all of the later entries into the series.

To me, this is about as perfect of a Pokemon game as you can get. Generation 1 had an interesting open-world flavor to it and a solid, memorable campaign, but the lack of any post-game and very few side features means replaying it again and again gets old after a number of years. Generation 2 offered a bevy of side features and a proper post-game, but the post-game itself is quite brief and uninteresting, and sadly ends up crowding out the main game. So Ruby and Sapphire dialed it back, returning to an almost Gen 1-esque postgame with only a handful of legendaries to capture and areas to explore. On top of that, the main campaign wasn't too terribly challenging and could be easily beaten in under 10 hours. With Emerald, however, Director Shigeki Morimoto achieved the perfect balance - by adding more challenge to the campaign (you now have to take on both Team Aqua AND Team Magma, and Gym Leaders have newer, more challenging teams) as well as adding a meaty post-game, mainly centered around the very challenging Battle Frontier which would normally take the player hours to complete, Game Freak created the perfect Pokemon game to lose yourself in. Kanto and Johto were both intoxicating regions, but your journey through them was over so quickly. Hoenn, however, feels far more vast and explorable, and you can hardly call yourself "done" without having made the region your own. Although modern emulation technology would allow to save a lot of time and hassle by hacking in Pokemon, it's infinitely more rewarding to raise a team fit for the Battle Frontier yourself and gives you a good sense of what playing these games might have been like in a point in time where you couldn't just pick up something else if you wanted your Pokemon fix. All in all, Emerald is briskly paced and just lengthy enough to be as immersive as these games ought to be.

Definitely the first great Pokemon game from my perspective, but there are still enough issues with this one for me to pretty comfortably say that this is not even close to where the series hits its peak. Nonetheless, generation 3 is still where the games become playable from my perspective and Emerald is the game that takes advantage of the capabilities of the hardware to the highest degree of it for sure, taking a lot of the weaker elements of past titles and refining them to make what can very easily be considered the definitive Pokemon game of the GBA. The scope of the game feels greatly increased, the world as a whole feels far more cohesive, expansive and exciting to explore, and even the battling side of things feels far more thoughtfully crafted than past entries, making for an overall very strong game that doesn't fall especially flat in one particular area over another.

The region itself is one of the strongest elements of the game to me, as I feel like the Pokemon series' design philosophies of creating a vibrant world that feels truly lived in and full of detail starts paying off big time here. Each town feels unique and offers its own interesting landmarks and place in the region, having their own distinct identities and atmospheres, further elevated by the wonderful artstyle and music being able to further set the scene nicely. The routes between the towns also feel way more fleshed out this time, rather than feeling closer to a small formality and obstacle between each key location, and I believe that this is one of the most vital elements in this game feeling far more complete than previous entries. Almost each location has so much life breathed into it, a feeling only strengthened by the amount of hidden and sometimes insanely cryptic stuff to be found within. While in a lot of games, I might have found something like the methods of locating the Regi trio in this as a glaring flaw, it works so well here in giving the region a more mysterious feel without sacrificing anything major, as you're not missing out on a lot if you don't get it, but it nonetheless feels like a wonderful reward, and this sort of stuff can be seen throughout the game to make it a much richer experience.

That said, I feel like some of these choices are a bit questionable and ended up leading to bits of the game being a total pain or just a far less consistently engaging experience than it could have been. The biggest example of a bit too much detail in certain areas would definitely be the fact that there were 2 different bike options that would allow you to get through different types of terrain, but you had to switch them out at the bike shop. This would often lead to a scenario where you'd go through a route or other area and be unable to get somewhere because you didn't have the correct type of bike, making you have to go back to the bike shop, swap the bike, and then return to that spot to see what was over there, which felt rather similar to the biggest issue of Donkey Kong 64, albeit in a far less egregious manner. Another element of overcomplicating certain aspects would be the fact that the HM number always feels like it's increasing to the point where it feels like half of your team will be burdened by its moveset being inconsistent in power due to having to take up valuable slots with often garbage attacks. This is especially problematic with the fact that there are 3 aquatic HMs, meaning that you'll either need to run a 2nd water type, compromising team diversity, or completely ruin a water type by making it have 3 of these HMs at once. While I don't outright hate stuff like this getting in the way occasionally, I feel like it just happens too often in this region for traversing the world to ever feel fully streamlined and engaging, even if far greater lengths were taken to make each place feel like a full-fledged experience rather than somewhere that you'll go to once and never again.

This increased ambition feels like it was also carried over into the writing as well, with a world that feels less isolated and one that instead actually feels aware of its surroundings constantly. It never feels as if somewhere is just entirely unaware of any other locations, which yet again helps contribute to the Hoenn region feel like a diverse, expansive landscape rather than a set of disconnected places strung together for the sake of making a game. A lot of the individual interactions with random NPCs also have a ton of personality and end up feeling way quirkier than I remembered them being, my favourite being the one where you're asked what town you're from but your only possible answers are yes and no. The frequent reappearances of certain characters also helps a lot in this regard. Not only do you have your rivals here, but you've got a much more present set of villain teams that truly feel threatening without losing the Pokemon charm, you've got characters like Scott and Steven Stone that feel like a way to reinforce your increasing strength as the game goes on, and then you've even got a character like the trickmaster who presents some rather unique little obstacles to get through, keeping the game feeling that bit more fresh.

I also appreciate the way that this game is able to make full use of the battle system through a couple of different means. There are very few important fights in the game that feel like complete washes without the need to strategise or consider team composition at all, and I appreciate that a lot, since it gives more incentive to actually engage with the countless options at your disposal. I especially appreciate the way that the gym leaders feel as if they have some semblance of intelligent design in here rather than just utilising teams that get completely walled by being at a type disadvantage and have generic movesets. This is especially true for the Tate and Lisa battle I find, where it uses the move Sunny Day in battle to negate the fairly universal water type weakness their team had, while also crippling one of the best double battle moves, surf, in the process. The instant tactic of spamming water type moves and winning with that is suddenly made far less useable and as such, you can easily find your team to get completely demolished if you haven't cleverly thought through a strategy of your own. This unfortunately comes with the issue that diversifying team composition feels discouraged since there's no quick and easy way to grind, which will either lead to sticking with a team pretty early on, or having moments of tedium sprinkled throughout the adventure if you want to play even semi-optimally. The inclusion of the Battle Frontier is also obviously an amazing thing for the way it pushes the idea of building a perfect team to the absolute limit with the player having to battle against incredibly strong trainers that will often have powerful, and sometimes outright competitively viable teams to provide a challenge even this late into the game. I didn't really spend much time with this since that's not really where my interests in this franchise lie, but I cannot deny that it is insanely cool regardless and is rightfully considered the best version of this type of challenge in the series.

Overall, I feel like Pokemon Emerald takes the Pokemon franchise to a whole other degree of greatness, but it's also not the one that I'd most readily replay because I just feel like there are others in the series that are able to accomplish almost everything this game does to a higher standard. This will probably always be the game in the series with the coolest elements of mystery and intrigue surrounding it, but other than that, it's not quite the masterpiece that it is sometimes described as. Still a wonderful, comfy game that has all the classic hallmarks of feeling so perfectly designed to be the sort of game to create many stories between kids who get into it, along with being able to craft such a homely vibe that it's basically impossible to not get nostalgic while playing. I enjoyed my time with this one again and love the obvious ambition that was put into making this feel like such an expansive landscape, definitely a valid place to introduce someone to the series with (if they're one of the two people on earth to know nothing about Pokemon), even if that would still go to generation 4 in my eyes.

After completing Pokemon Crystal, I decided to jump into Emerald since I wanted to give the series a fair chance considering I didn't really enjoy Crystal as much as I expected. I played a little of Emerald a few months back with my friends but only got as far as the first town and the graphics and style really stood out. Well I decided to go into Emerald since it would make many improvements and additions to the previous generation and I thought maybe it would have aged better than Crystal.

The game overall, does make many huge improvements. The biggest ones are the double Pokemon team battles, the ability to send your Pokemon to a training center so they can level up on their own, the game has improved visuals and animations, not to mention a greater variety of Pokemon. Emerald feels smoother to play due to having a more vibrant colors and animations and the game just looks beautiful. I found the layout of the map to be a bit better than Crystal and there wasn't as much backtracking or tedium. The villains in this were a slight step up from Team Rocket in Crystal and the game didn't feel dragged out in its post game.

Now there are some big criticisms too. Emerald is far too easy for its own good still, I was able to get by 90% of the game using just my starter Pokemon and I had way less trouble with the battles and gyms than I did in Crystal. The game still does have an issue of having your other Pokemon not leveling when not using them, sure you can take them to a trainer and do the double battles to help level them, and it isn't as tedious as Crystal, but I did find it easier to just level my starter since he was doing a fine job on his own. The other thing is the game did have some annoying and dragged out moments. The final 1/4 of this game is just so tedious and dragged out since you are constantly going between the magma and aqua bases and fighting the usual grunts, and this part of the game was just boring. The other thing is the game doesn't really have an interesting story, team aqua and magma are just generic and have very odd motives, and the game is pretty much just basic you need to be a Pokemon master type business. The elite 4 in this game weren't challenging really and the final battle was a cakewalk. Plus I will admit, the new Pokemon in this game were a mixed bag, yeah they brought back our favorites from the other 2 gens, but the new ones were somewhat unmemorable outside of a few really cool looking ones. The post game in this is also quite bland, where the only real thing to do is the battle frontier which is basically just arena style battling with really tough trainers.

I mean, overall Pokemon Emerald is a bit better than Crystal, it has a better atmosphere and a better look, it has less tedium and is more straight to the point, it doesn't meander around as much, and the game does make it easier to level up multiple Pokemon and the addition of the double team battles. However, it doesn't make huge improvements either, it does have some tedium, especially near the end of the game where you go between the two bases constantly, the game is even easier than the previous game, and it really has no interesting story or characters. So its mostly a mixed bag but I'd say it does more good then bad, I really liked the graphic style and it has aged a lot better visually than the previous Pokemon games. It is probably the best Pokemon game on Gameboy Advance and it is the definitive version of the 3rd generation games. I just feel it could have been a bit more.