Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire

Honestly, it kinda sucks that the battle frontier sucks, but the game itself is very solid, and, until the online inevitably dies one day in the future, this probably has the best online feature set of the games.

Still the best of the 3DS games, but the most disappointing. Masuda should've been removed after this release. It wastes the true potential of a Gen III remake, that is to say, it uses R/S as a baseline instead of the vastly superior Emerald and makes the games easier and more of a handhold fest. Why?! Nobody should be struggling enough to get given a free Lati@s in the midgame, or the modern equivalent of the Exp. All before the first gym. Gym leaders are easier than ever, don't even get a rematch feature, no Battle Frontier, instead, we get the worst facility of them all; the Maison, because Game Freak couldn't be arsed developing them. It's also much more sluggish than any of the Gen III releases, which hinders my enjoyment even more.

Maybe get these as your introduction to the series, or for collectors' purposes, but honestly, if you enjoy battling at all, or a more natural, free-flowing experience, Emerald is your best option. Just go buy that from your local Facebook sale group or GameStop/EB/whatever, or hell, even a bootleg off of eBay. You'll enjoy it more, trust me.

These games are remakes of Ruby and Sapphire, so if your fondest Hoenn memories were from Emerald, you're likely to be disappointed.
Luckily for me, I'm a hopeless contrarian who always liked R/S better than Emerald.

People also complain about the experience share and the fact that you're just straight-up given Latios/Latias, but they don't seem to understand that the experience share can be turned off and that the legendary can just be thrown into the box immediately.


No, if we're going to complain, let's complain about what actually sucks about these remakes. Note that my rating is still a 4, so I still really enjoyed the game.


In Generation III, the design of the Hoenn region was insanely clever. The backtracking is handled in just such a way that your first playthrough will likely have one crucial mistake that is 100% intended.

After Meteor Falls, your first idea will be to head to the other side of the cave and see what lies beyond. You exit the cave, battle some trainers, and hop down a ledge. Then you realise - oh fuck - you're back in Rustboro City, hours earlier in the game, with no way back but the long way. But, oh wait! There was a tunnel to the east of Rustboro! You've got rock smash, so you smash the boulders and get the strength HM you'll need later. They've funnelled you back to where you need to be.
And if that wasn't enough, when you start the trek back, you'll notice that the door to the cable car is no longer blocked off, so you can see your next destination right away.
It's absolutely brilliant game design that is thrown out in favour of Brendan just handing you the strength HM, and offering to take you back to Mauville City. Except, this doesn't work. If you're taken all the way back to Mauville, you'll likely search to the east, west, or south of Mauville, considering that Brendan just took you from the north. A new player could very easily get lost here, assuming that the north leads to nothing when in fact the opposite is true.


In the originals, after Norman's gym, you were given a choice of many different routes to get to your next objective. You could take one of two shortcuts; surfing east on route 103, or heading back through Rustboro Tunnel. You could also loop around southward, participating in many more trainer battles and gaining valuable experience.
In OR/AS, Wally takes you back to Mauville. You do not get a choice in the matter. He grabs you by the hand and drags you kicking and screaming. You want to get experience by going southward? Too bad, Wally time. You always talk to your friend at the front of the gym after beating the leaders? Too bad, Wally time.


The most ridiculous thing they added in OR/AS, however, is the Delta Episode.
It's a glorified fetch quest, where you run back and forth doing what ends up amounting to nothing in the end anyway.
The main focus of this episode is a new character named Zinnia, the most annoying and poorly-written character in the series, which is an achievement after Generation V.

When you first meet Zinnia, she is standing outside your house acting extremely suspicious, asking about Brendan. Then you talk to Brendan, and his mega bracelet has been stolen. Major red flag, right? Nope. You meet Zinnia again in a cave and just let her go on her merry little way. La la la la la.
The point of the episode is to stop a meteor from destroying Hoenn. Luckily, the scientists have created a device that will make the meteor just disappear. They've got the button in their hands when good old Zinnia shows up, grabs the button, and smashes it on the ground. No one tries to stop her. Certainly not you or Steven Stone, the two strongest trainers in Hoenn.
Why did she do it? Well, there might maybe be an alternate version of Hoenn somewhere and maybe the device could possibly transport the meteor to that Hoenn that may or may not exist, destroying it, because they might not have the same technology there. Maybe. Possibly. Who knows? Everyone in the room naturally accepts her explanation and you're off to find Rayquaza who may or may not show up, and may or may not be able to stop the meteor if you feed him enough mega stones that you may or may not have, then make him listen to you, which he may or may not do.
Once you've stopped the meteor, Zinnia just goes on her merry way. She doesn't get in any trouble at all and life is just peachy.
Fuck you.

I loved ORAS when I finished it the first time, but I actually rushed through a lot of the things because I had a lot of things to do in real life. I gave it another go a half a year later to see if anything held up and to be honest, I just felt more disappointed. Not as much as X/Y, but there were so many opportunities missed to make this the best Pokemon game so far.

Delta Episode - just what the hell were they thinking? The whole damn thing is just a glorified fetch quest and a tease at the end that only serves to infuriate fans of the original Emerald. Everything is just dangled in front of the player at the end, but nothing is really gained from it.

The Mauville City redesign is a breath of fresh air and really establishes Mauville City as an actual city in terms of design and feel.

Too bad some of the other places weren’t given the same treatment. e.g. Petalburg City doesn’t even look like a city, and Evergrande City is more of a stopping point because it only has a Pokemon Center (and why on earth would you have a city on top of a waterfall? No wonder it’s pretty much empty).

There’s something unsatisfying in the story when traveling around. I don’t know if it’s something picked up from X/Y, but it feels streamlined at some places.

Also, there’s some pretty useless locations that serve no purpose at all. I might be missed something important in New Mauville, but that was an opportunity missed.

Maybe it’s the transition to 3D underwhelming? I personally found Pokemon Black 2/White 2 to be the pinnacle in terms of the world map’s locations. There were so many nooks and crannies, whereas X/Y was incredibly linear with barely any alternate routes and secret stuff. ORAS restores this to some extent, but that’s pretty much because it’s a remake of an older Pokemon game before the maps got bland.

Or maybe it’s the Exp. Share? I actually turned it off for most of the game and it still felt boring.

Soaring is a fun inclusion and it’s a nice alternative to Fly.

The HM slave problem - two Pokemon in my party are used solely for HMs. So I pretty much have four Pokemon to choose instead of the usual six.

Secret Base has improved greatly and takes advantage of the 3DS’s streetpass function perfectly. There are more options for customisation and you can make your base into a pseudo-gym.

No trainer customisation though. It’s pretty much certain that Game Freak barely follows through with well-received features by the fans.

I still find it annoying that the gym leaders and E4 members are treated like the trainers outside, because they don’t have an animation for throwing their Pokeball out or a defeat animation.

I can’t remember if you could battle the gym leaders again, but I’m sure they don’t have a Pokemon with mega evolution with would have been great for a challenge.

In the end, I guess ORAS is a good game. It could have been great, but it tremendously falls short of expectations when you consider what could have been done (e.g. more town and city redesigns, and Battle Frontier).

I still have hopes for the 7th gen of Pokemon, but I’m pretty damn sure I’m going to be disappointed.

I’m getting old.