I think one thing i miss from old games are routes, open world is cool and all but everything feels a bit of the same with a enviroment skin, routes used to be so iconic, chances are you still remember how them and what went down on each route
I'm playing through Shield right now. They totally fumbled the bag with swsh's routes. They're too short, and there's no exploration to be done. Now that I think about it, there's only surf that let's you explore more of the old routes, and it's clear this was an afterthought. What a shame.
I prefer routes as well, i didn't like the fact trainers were completely optional but it was the very first open world pokemon game and switch have his limitations, let's hope the next game is switch 2 it's a more enjoyable open world experience
Ngl, SwSh killed my interest in modern pokemon games. The only 3D open world pokemon game that made it for me was Legends Arceus, and that game is a glorified Safari zone.
What I like about Emerald compared to Ruby/Sapphire is that there are way more double battles. Many trainers are placed that two of them see the player and want to battle at the same time which results in a double battle. And for those who don't like double battles as much, they can speak to each of the NPC trainers individually and have single battles instead.
@@Br0oham Personally, I like that the gym leader rematches are double battles. The rematch feature made its debut in Emerald, and they used it to flesh out the double battle mechanic introduced earlier in this very generation. Just feels really efficient and natural to me.
@@pacifierjunkee6016 indeed especially because it felt like in the first ruby an sapphire games they weren’t enough doubles.. especially not serious ones they rectified that problem in emerald. Who can say they weren’t pleasant surprised when they discovered not only were gym leaders rematches possible but they were different in a whole new way.
Route 119 is my favourite. Very tall grass, waterfalls, hidden areas you could only traverse with a special bike, these big bridges and the only river where you could find Feebas, this mysterious pokemon with that obscure evolution technique. And then there is this mysterious weather institute in a place where it almost always rains. I felt so excited, exploring this route in my childhood and I always had my secret base there (the one under the bridge by the waterfall). I also love Absol, Tropius and Masquerain, which you can catch there. Route 119 is great. Edit: And the music! I almost forgot to mention the music!
I felt really smart as a kid figuring out the broken bridge across the waterfall in front of the weather station you had to do sideways tap-hops to traverse, wish the games had more interesting environmental exploration like that
I consider Route 119 (and 120) being the best illustration of what it is to be in a Pokémon adventure. It is so immersive, you really feel like you are in a huge adventure, with no limits to explore
Yup the inventive ingenuity for that whole route was just creatively satisfying.. everytime you explored an found something it felt like a new discovery everytime. Very VERY few routes are as well designed honesty. An that’s so sad could you imagine something like that in sun an moon… but nope what we got was the beginning of the end.. super simple route an the demise of in-depth optional exploration.
I don't think any other game made me feel like Ruby (and later Emerald) ever. The sense of discovery and immersion as a kid in Hoenn was just amazing. Playing it on summer, when you could go to the beach in real life and then playing 3rd gen back on home felt like an extension of your beach days. I remember playing this game with the scent of the sea water, wich matches the ambience of this gen. It brings so many memories of joy and peace :)
I still cry because i know the battle frontier will never be back. Eff the player for getting a diverse challenge for after the league. I kinda liked the fighting ring, because it made you play completely different than other fights, since yoou had to ask yourself if you want the points for effective attacks, most damage dealt and whatever the last one was. It also punished you for trying to play the long game or set up. But the mansion is definitely not missed.
SmithPlays: "Pokemon Emerald is not as good as you remember it." Lyra: "This game is ABSOLUTE PEAK Pokemon!" I love this duality of approach to Emerald that is taking place simultaneously.
It's a very pure shift, which makes me personally feel better about loving the region so much. Like, it isn't just nostalgia and that fact that I have the entire region memorized.
I remember discovering/walking through the desert for the first time. A complete shift from not just the routes around it but from the previous two gens as well. Along with the more tropical feel of Dewford and the alpine feel of Fortree. Gen 3 really was a game changer.
While Platinum remains my favorite Pokémon game of all time, Emerald sits VERY close to it due to how vast and mysterious it is. Everything in Hoenn screams what Pokémon was and should be to me: a world full of interesting places, routes and mysteries that just WAIT to be discovered, not NEED to. It was game that challenged trainers, but also adventurers.
Hoenn just has so many little secrets on every route, its genuinely worth grabbing some max repels and following the entire rock wall around the oceans checking for breaks in them. It lets you find "Jigglypuff Island", regice's cave, sky tower, the various colored shard islands, numerous sandbars with trainers & items, and shoal cave. But there are also just a lot of spots like the top of the waterfall west of fallarbor town that are tiny with 1 minor reward. To my recollection Hoenn just has the most of these little secrets hanging off the routes. Sinnoh is good and mysterious in its own way, but i don't remember as many secrets. (Maybe its because i only had Pearl)
One thing i'll always remember about Hoenn and Johto is the fact that i'm often confused between Mauville City and Violet City. People who can understand why most likely speak french.
I love gen 3 simply for the world, I love the dessert in one part, volcano with soot fallen on route 113, forest area fortree, island theme with the ocean, loved pacifidlog city completely out on the water. The amount of details that went into this region is incredible
It's so refreshing to see a video praising something (especially something that deserves praise!), since so many videos today are negative just to drum up attention. I love the positivity!
I totally agree with you. Also one addition compared to previous games which mustn't be forgotten are the running shoes. Without them the experience would be significantly less great.
Hoenn was the first reguon I ever played that wasnt a hand me down from my older siblings, and I will never forget how excited I was just to see color graphics and a brand new region. Still probably the most exciting Christmas gift I ever got.
As a kid emerald really felt like a huge world with so many mysteries man… mirage tower, mirage island, underwater quest to catch the Regis, Steven hidden in a cave ready to battle, rebattling gym leaders multiple times, battle frontier with the pyramid, and giant seviper facility.. it really felt never ending and it blew my mind as a kid man.. best Pokemon game oat
@@chrispember172 how is pokemon in any way immersive? It's entirely fictional world of elemental typed monster you battle with. Genuinely dumb comment lol
Gen 3, with Gen 4 and 5, represent for me the golden age of pokémon. You make justice of what make Hoenn great to explore. It's not just "too much water", is bigger than that. Just one think that make emerald one of, if not, my fav it is his engine... It's SO FAAAAST. The travell, animation, battle, everything is so smooth, it's so good 😁😁😁.
There's such a palpable sense of adventure that pervades the region. I feel it most strongly upon receiving surf and setting foot on the eastern half of the region for the first time. The grandeur evoked by the themes on routes 119 & 120 is genuinely magical. This feeling is something I value the most in a pokemon game.
As a summer/sea lover hoen will be forever my fave region. It managed to encapsulate the feeling of exploring the seaside during a vacation but on a region level
Bruh, thank you for making the website. I ran through the Gen 6 games over the past several weeks after being out of Pokemon since Sapphire. I'm going back through to get all of the OG 151 and it's going to make keeping track of it, not to mention organizing into boxes, so much easier!!!
The “evil” teams in this gen are such an improvement from team rocket. Beside the main inspiration which stems from an actual environmental controversy of one of Japan’s islands at that time, the fact that both Archie and Maxie are just misled guys, confused by greater ideals and ambitions that even them can’t fully grasp make the ending so satisfying. You can see the remorse, the guilt and realization when both see what they have caused. They really tried and succeeded with the plot and the characters. Meanwhile Team Rocket was just evil and bad because yes. I love Hoenn, gen 3 and emerald and it’s my favorite Pokémon game ever❤
I gotta disagree on the claim that Kanto has no sense of mystery. Maybe it's because I was playing Red/Blue/Yellow when they were new, but I always found the world strangely captivating and intriguing.
Also hard disagree that Kanto somehow cheapens the experience of Gold/Silver/Crystal. I agree that the post-game content is lacking, but I don't think it diminishes Johto in any way.
As much as I love Gen 1 and 2, especially with the Stadium games basically expanding the postgame for them, Gen 3 was truly a breath of fresh air for the franchise. I absolutely loved FireRed/LeafGreen and Emerald due to how much they added to the series! Gen 3 being able to truly have no region restrictions in terms of trading and actually having event islands was a huge plus. Also, you should probably mention that Southern Island is still legitimately possible to reach, and will be until the end of time. Would have been great if it was the same for the other islands. I think in order to really appreciate Scarlet/Violet, you had to complete the Pokedex there. I still have fond memories of basically every area in that game. There's also the fact that they keep on adding so many QoL features every game.
Pokemon Emerald is the only Pokemon Game I always keep on my phone emulator and still reply every now and again. So many locations are just beautiful, definitely more creativity than the recent Pokemon games with their endless flats.
Gen 3 was my first one so I'm very biased in that sense, but yeah Emerald is fantastic. I love how colorful and varied Hoenn is, there are so many memorable areas. Weirdly enough the remakes just don't do it for me, I think it's because they lack a lot of the upgrades Emerald brought, such as extra trainers in routes, better gym leader teams, a more complete plot involving both teams magma and aqua, and of course the battle frontier. Still, I'm happy that Oras helped making Hoenn even more popular haha
This is exactly how I feel about Emerald vs ORAS. Emerald feels like the definitive Hoenn experience because of how much of an improvement it was over Ruby/Sapphire. They fleshed out basically everything introduced in those games and made the region feel more complete. ORAS has its own additions that are welcome, but for some reason, it falls back to the Ruby/Sapphire design for overworld battles & gym battles. ORAS falls short because it doesn't quite flesh out its generation's mechanics the way Emerald did.
2 more pieces of exploration i love about Hoenn. All those random small areas only accessible by one of the bikes, like the sandy slopes north of the desert, or the fact you can bunny hop up the jagged pass. And the shard hunter house quest, an NPC will trade you evo stones for 1 colored shard, and mentions he dives for shards. All around the main ocean are little dive spots that take you beyond the stone wall to little areas that have colored shards you can bring back and trade for evo stones. (You can also theif/covet redshards from wild corsola, yellow from chinchou, blue from clampearl, and green from relicanth all with a 5% chance to hold.)
I still have a working cartridge of Emerald from when I was a kid that has had the battery replaced. Also, getting a Feebas and Ralts with an optimal nature is a lot less painful in Pokémon Emerald. Gardevoir has always been my ace in Pokémon Emerald. It alone made a joke of the Champion's Pokémon. Gardevoir is my favorite Pokémon because of this and the lore reason that I liked as a kid that Ralts only reveals itself to kind-hearted people. Yes, I am aware how the internet views Gardevoir. Yes, it ruined my youthful ignorance and innocence.
Even when story is not the best, I think the changes they did in this version are awesome. Facing both teams makes more sense and you get to see how both are equally evil. Also, some say their goals are dumb and they are and the game KNOWS they are, so it's not like everything ends when you defeat the team's bosses like Team Rockets'. Here Maxie and Archie see the consequences of their dumb acts and the fact they learn from that aswell as us the player is kind of cool! (Like, my younger self knew they could do damage to people and pokemon with their goals but seeing that world-ending weather crisis was shoking and creepy with the music in that part!) I agree something else was needed for the end, that scene of Rayquaza arriving was epic but then maybe doing a battle where we use Rayquaza temporarily to stop Groudon and Kyogre, no option to catch them there and at the end Rayquaza leaves so we catch them in the post game in their caves. But that's almost the only and the biggest change I'd do to the game so it is in fact peak and my favorite aswell!
Started in gen 1 (even won a legit competiton Mew) when I was like 13 but gen 3 ended up being my favourite , enviroment and sprite work really sold the adventure with the more potent hardware.
One of the things that you didn't mention about Hoenn in gen 3, is how easy it is to explore! It is designed almost like a metroidvania, with routes that loop into themselves, which makes getting from point a to be both interesting and a lot faster then it would otherwise. It also helps a ton that most of the world is completely without loading zones, you can visit almost every single town in gen 3 without it ever fading to black.
With the remake. The region just gets better with easy to obtain fairy types and megas that give new life to older pokemon I really should replay Oras someday
ORAS did a lot right but took away so much of what made Gen 3 so good. If you never played Emerald, it feels like a faithful adaptation of the original games. If you did play Emerald, so much content that improved upon RS feels missing. It's unfortunate, but ORAS sorely lacks post-game content, merely teasing the Battle Frontier we never got while copy-pasting the Battle Maison from XY, which feels so out of place in comparison to its place in Kalos.
@@Goldenblade14 well yeah Oras isn't delta emerald as pokemon doesn't want to do third games anymore A delta emerald would have even more hype with the better mons. Story. Battle frontier and more overall battles. So I'd rank ruby Sapphire Oras then emerald in how good they were
@@DeathofHeavensthat's basically every game without it after gen 3 Honestly it should be included so players can basically train to be competitive players without battling other people. That'd be fun.
@@Goldenblade14 people these days just be saying stuff when they have no idea what they're talking about... 1. pokemon oras literally improved upon the hoenn region in a way which pokemon emerald wishes it did. did you play/see the delta episode, or read professor's cosmo extremely dark letters to his dad, or see ANY oras' exclusive content (even stuff that doesn't have anything to do with the whole mega evolution plot)? you claim pokemon emerald improved upon RS so much that the lack of its exclusive content is detrimental for oras, but did you actually see the full list of changes, because a lot of what emerald added is either marginal or not as impactful as you’re suggesting. pokemon emerald didnt even expand on rayquaza's lore (it just made it available before the league and gave it 1 good 25 seconds long cutscene) and oras did wallace so much better than emerald which litearlly just made him the champion so steven can be the postgame superboss for some reason. 2. you're not even right about emerald having the best version of hoenn to explore because emerald shoehorned every contest rank hall into lilycove city and replaced them with completely useless battle tents... 3. postgame in emerald (battle froniter) sucked because gen 3 was so unbelievable unbalanced that to stand a chance in the later rounds of the battle frontier you were practically forced to use pseudo-legendaries and sub-legendaries. there is a reason why every other battle froniter team has a lati@s and a metagross... battle maison might not thematically fit into hoenn but it provides a more balanced and varied challenge, instead of just using the most sweaty teams trying to fool you into thinking that the game doesnt read inputs and wont make you go against hard counter team sooner or later... also, i will always believe that battle maison was put in hoenn because its an on-going joke in the series which was first done in the anime with hoenn battle frontier being in kanto, and then in hg/ss with sinnoh battle froniter being in johto. ORAS is so much better than emerald, it's not even funny. There is litearlly no reason to play gen 3 games in 2024 unless you're legitimately addicted to battle frontier even tho there's nothing fun about it after like 2 rounds.
Amen to that. I loved exploring Hoenn from north to south, from land to sea. It felt unique, interesting and adventurous. It's one of the reasons why Emerald is still my favorite, even if games like Shield are, arguably, better and more modern games.
Even as a staunch advocate of Hoenn and Emerald, I'll be the first to admit that it has it's flaws (looking at you learnsets and physical/special split), but it still remains my favourite alongside gen 5. Much like you experienced, Hoenn encapsulates what a Pokemon adventure is and should be. In my humble opinion, Hoenn is the most fully realised region thematically and from a world building perspective (shoutout to Alola too). It has such a rich, varied and interesting set of biomes and there's so much to explore even despite the amount of water, which I personally don't mind. Everything is connected both in the literal sense and in relation to one of the game's main themes of nature, yet there's still more to find on repeat visits to areas. Route 119 in particular is really a macrocosm of the region itself and the best route design in the entire franchise if you ask me. I think an underrated aspect that helps with the sense of exploration is how smoothly and quickly the gameplay moves. In comparison to gens 1, 2 and even 4, simply moving about and battling was sluggish which could make exploration feel like a slog. But with gen 3 the speed of battles and movement, and thus the transition between the overworld and battling, is remarkably seemless and dynamic for a game of its age. You're thrust staright back into things which makes exploration feel much more exhilarating. No region before or after has managed to capture Hoenn's level of charm for me. Plus it has the Battle Frontier. Need I repeat what's already been said about how much fans of the series appreciate that place?
Only Southern Island is Hoenn iirc. Birth and Navel Rock are part of the Sevii Islands in FRLG (implied in game by mentioning they aren't named for being 7 of 'em) and Faraway is well... Far. But to me that was even better as both brilliant region and cross-game world building while letting both Kanto and Hoenn have access and relevance.
I miss when Pokemon had an endgame. They used to sell you games with the expectation that you'd keep playing over and over again, for several years. Now they get insulted if you care enough to want to keep your Pokemon for more than one game.
@@el_dank_sinatra I didn't, Pokemon Home *is* the issue. Because each game restricts which Pokemon it can transfer from Home, any Pokemon you bring into Home risk being stuck there for an indefinite amount of time. And it's a subscription service, so that means your Pokemon are held hostage for ransom.
Exactly the replay value has gone to crap! I’m sorry but I don’t want to play anything after 5 gen maybe 6 cuz omega ruby is solid..X an Y we’re cool enuff I guess but felt unfinished.
And the “Fans” are defending Nintendo for not trying to make high budget leap for Pokemon Games despite its status as one of the biggest video game franchise. Thats how we end up with BDSP, one of the arguably best Pokemon Gen that sells the DS. Outsourced to a third party devs that had never made proper game before rather than making the leap like ORAS.
Emerald has and always will be my fave Pokemon game, but there is also a lot of nostalgia attached to that with it being one of my first along with yellow. My first console was a gba sp and I'd lusted after one for so long just for ruby or sapphire.
Side content is meaningful, because you can miss it. When you find something that you know you could have easily missed, it gives the sense of authorship of your own experience.
Hot Take: I actually LOVE the amount of water in Hoenn. Yes, I’ll agree surfing can be as obnoxious as a cave (although to me it is worth trying to surf for a lower-level already evolved Wailord), but… Fishing is a blast in those areas. As one who has done ocean fishing before, I got mad respect for the idea that I can fish in the Hoenn sea and possibly reel in a Sharpedo or Wailmer, maybe even a Horsea. I also do like the diving mechanic, I just wish they included more than 3 underwater Pokémon in RSE.
Great video! I still fondly remember first deciphering the puzzle to open the Regi caves with a friend late one weekend. We were so hyped to even work out the text, never mind that it lead to a bunch more of secret Pokemon! Might be an overstatement, but it totally changed my view on games and how they can interact with a player. I still get excited to this day when I play a game deciphering languages, such as in Fez! I hope at some point Pokemon pivots back to obscure puzzles!
Great video man! I remember playing the crap out of Emerald growing up. Like you said: Even after my 4th playthrough I was still finding new areas and secrets! Also: it's great to see Pokemon content that isn't just pokemon fan boys. I love Pokemon, but the new games are deeply flawed
Having played both platinium and emerald, apart from maybe black & white 2, these are my favourites games. Platinium felt like this to me, every reagion just screamed that it wanted to be explored.
Speaking of optional areas, everyone knows that you don't have to visit Pacifidlog Town to beat the Elite Four, but I think that there's another optional town. Technically, you don't need anything from Verdanturf to be able to beat the game. To get the strength HM, you can just get to Rusturf Tunnel from the Rustboro side. I've not tried it yet, but maybe I should!
ah yes, afte getting rock smash HM in mauville let me just go back to rustboro city with the help of briney for no reason and then go back to rusturf tunnel for no reason and then obtain strength HM and retreat and go back to mauville city again instead of checking whats on the other side, cuz this must be what the game intended. i cant tell if you're joking rn or if you're a 🤡
@@TheRealMycanthrope Bro's insulting my reading comprehension after OP suggested probably the most inefficient route possible just to glaze the middest Pokemon region. So I’m supposed to backtrack to Route 108 for no reason (or because I'm "exploring"), go to Rusturf Tunnel just to pick up Strength HM and then ignore checking the exit on the other sife of the cave (which is contradictory because I might be "exploring"), all just to avoid visiting Verdanturf Town...? Yeah, I bet players actually waste their time like that. 🤡
I think also the battle frontier is such a great addition! With all the different ways of looking at battles and getting everything gold feels rewarding.
I played Platinum way more, but Emerald will always hold a special place to me. First one I ever played, at a friends house, and still the best looking imo. They really worked hard to make it look and sound great in spite of the severe hardware limitations.
Bro your content was extremely informative and I enjoyed every bit of it. Keep up the great work . I am also a Pokemon fan and I loved playing Emerald version too. 👍👍
By design, Houen balanced the land and sea, and you will have fun trying out any Pokémon's Ability effecting the overworld to encounter different wild Pokémon.
I really do agree with you when comparing the game's "openess" to Scarlet. After I finished my Paldean Pokédex, I found there wasn't really much to do. So many towns and places don't even have interiors or NPCs to interact with. There's a real lack of interesting things to find and do, even with the DLC improvements taken into account. I think that's why I replay games like Emerald and Leafgreen so much more. Aside from being a Gen 3 fan, there's a real feel and pull to the world and the journey that is just so engaging.
I feel like Sinnoh also manages to cleverly utilize it's map in an extremely interesting way because it uses Mt Coronet like 3 or 4 different times with completely different results and purposes, the player threads a weave around one location and it rules.
Cool, a new video! Missed you, mate. Hope to see you tackle a Gen 4 living dex. I probably mentioned it on previous videos, but your series inspired me to do living dexes for Gens 1 through 4 and I would love to see you tackle DPPt and HGSS.
I'm currently replaying emerald and might go for the national dex. It really is a great world and one of the best pokemon games ever made. I really appreciate your website and hope you get to gen 4 by the time I start replaying those. I'm interested to know which pokemon absolutely have to be transferred up from gen 3.
I think you missed the point of Kanto in gen 2. Trainers there are lower level and gyms are more freely accessible as a means to help you train up the low-level "rare" pokemon you find in Johto's endgame, like Larvitar, Dratini, Houndoor, etc. It also wouldn't make sense for everyone in Kanto to be walking around with level 50~60 pokemon, rivaling the Elite Four and towering so far above everyone else in Johto.
Gen 3 was the generation I got to play as a kid. Emerald (also my favorite color, so extra yeah!) felt massive and full of content: massive world, tons of side quests, TWO gangs to fight, no less than 10 legendary pokemon to find, several new post-game regions to explore, and inter-exchange with FireRed & LeafGreen for more content. Watching multiple reviews, I have ended up agreeing with both sides, it was the best pokemon game ever made, fixing many of gen 1 & 2 issues, yet it also made new problems that future games carry to this day. It was the nexus to permanently altering how future pokemon games were made and experienced (both better and worse). It added the first truly new region to the pokemon world, almost doubled the number of pokemon to catch (roughly 400), and tried to add both mystery and post-game content. It also carved up its gameplay into multiple other games (on other consoles no less) demanded region locked content, and sealed hours of gameplay behind one-time real-world events. Love it or hate it generation 3 was the most important generation of pokemon, creating much of what people love about pokemon today and expanded its base, preventing them from going stale. Imagine if instead of all of this, the only change between Ruby & Sapphire and Gold & Sliver was a graphics upgrade to the gameboy advance. Would pokemon have remain relevant or interesting if nothing had changed over 3 generations?
Your discussion of a huge vs interesting world finally put into words what I've been feeling about Scarlet/Violet. When playing through Violet, the entite world felt very samey, despite the areas technically being varied with their different biomes. You're right, there isn't anything really interesting in Paldea. There aren't any dungeons, or cool landmarks, or hidden areas, or special hidden items, or anything like that. It may be big, but that's it. It's *only* big. There's nothing more to it. Hoenn, which is my favorite region, on the other hand, is small and very interesting. There are all sort of side areas to discover and explore, with their own side quests and secrets. You can find rare items and Pokemon in those unique little areas. Exploration is actually rewarded. And this, in turn, makes Hoenn feel bigger than it actually is.
I'm fortunate to have grown up in real life Hoenn; Nova Scotia. We have high tides & caves in the Bay of Fundy. (Shells of the Bay of Fundy) So many shipwrecks above & below sea level. (South Shore) The fossils of Joggins (Desert of Fundy bay) An abandoned tidal power plant (new mauville) An island full of wild horses called "Sable Island" (mirage island) Worlds biggest natural explosion in Halifax city. Blizzard came after (Desert) Even the same land mass size as Kyushu/Hoenn
I first played Gen 3 as a kid when it first released. Ive played Pokemon Ruby the past weeks and i can honestly say its not as good as i remember. Its such a grind to level up Pokemon. You come across the same Pokemon on every route. Poochyenas/Zigzagoon/wingull/tentacool etc. The soundtrack is phenomenal and its still one of my favourites but this is definitely the last time i will pick up to play it.
My first ever video game was Pokémon Ruby on the GBA. I, much later, managed to get Leaf Green, Emerald, Yellow, and Soul Silver afterwards. I've played nearly every Pokémon game since Gen 5. And I completely agree with you when it comes to how much there is to explore in Hoenn. There was always something else to do, something else to find, caves and nooks scattered all over the region-to the point where there is an optional system of secret bases scattered EVERYWHERE (a system I wish was played with more, like finding some NPC secret bases to show how it works and to give a few more optional end-game battles). Shoutout to Pacifidlog Town which, though not mentioned in this video, is an amazing addition to a region that is all about how people have grown to work with nature to create their civilizations-a city floating on the water is an awesome addition alongside the city of treehouses (Fortree), a city in a crater (Sootopolis), a town near the volcano (Lavaridge), and an attempt at a city in a cave (New Mauville). I love how Hoenn takes the interconnectivity and crossroads design of Kanto and Johto while making the world feel so lived in. Kanto has a similar feeling to Paldea to me, where the map shows the region as open and full of places to explore, but the experience is barren except for what is necessary for the main plot; you mentioned this in your video here. Unova has the opposite issue, where the experience is full of side paths and places to stumble into, but the map makes the whole region feel overly linear and simple. Places like Mauville (central points where you can arrive from different directions) are important for making a region feel cohesive. For as cool as Unova is as a game, its region completely missed this aspect. And though I lumped Paldea in with Kanto, its sheer barren openness keeps the region from feeling like it has an identity. The Kalos map very well could have done it well with how prominent Lumiose City was (were the rest of the game more interesting). Hoenn is incredible with this aspect… for 2/3rds of the game. The Water Routes-that is, the routes traveled between Lilycove and Ever Grande-are not issues because they are full of water. I think Routes 105, 106, and 108 work well with their linearity and the fact that you are quite literally showcased the points of interest well before you gain the ability to travel there by yourself; The crashed ship in the middle of Route 108 was immaculately placed, and the player gains a goal just from that. They HAVE to know what that ship is about! I know that's what I felt when I got to that section. And I found the (not-so) Abandoned Ship to be one of the more interesting dungeons in the game; to this day, I consider it one of the more interesting in the franchise. But the rest of them? There's not enough separating them from each other. The lack of discernible landmarks make these routes easy to get lost in, and finding your bearings is excruciatingly difficult when your mental mapping is interrupted every few steps by either a wild encounter or a prompt that your Repel wore off. I like the idea that Route 126 is mostly deep water while Routes 132-134 are almost entirely fast currents, but there needs to be something more than that to stick out in a player's mind. These Routes need stronger identities between each other, just like how Routes 119 and 120 are similar in size and biome, but 119 feels like a sprawling field of tall grass with small mountains close to the top (featuring the Mimic Circle and the Weather Institute), while 120 feels more like a sprawling rainforest with that maze of tall grass and multiple bridges over water. If the water routes had something like the Mimic Circle and different distributions of water and island locations, then they would be much more memorable. Regardless of my criticisms of the water routes, I think Hoenn is the best balance between an open map and a rich exploration experience, and you hit the nail on the head with this video. I wish Game Freak could take what worked in Hoenn and continued to refine it into the newer regions. Kitakami (Scarlet/Violet DLC) actually does have me looking forward to the future of Pokémon regions; it's smaller than Paldea, but there are so many places to stumble across, caves to explore, and optional areas that the DLC's story doesn't even bother to touch. I hope this is the mark of a step in the more interesting direction.
An aside: your criticism with the evil team rings strangely to me. Though I agree that Emerald's worst aspect is its story, I DON'T believe that it is in any way marred by "not settling on a single antagonist". In fact, ORAS went back to the Ruby/Sapphire way of only having one team be antagonists while the other team was just… there. Not only did this make some plot points not make sense (like why is Team Magma stealing a submarine; why is Team Aqua stealing a meteorite and going to a volcano?), this also made it so that the non-antagonist team is just "there". Why are they fighting each other on My. Chimney? At least in Emerald, you see BOTH teams as misguided antagonists, and the war between each other goes from "extremely inconvenient" to "GLOBAL ENDANGERMENT". Though I agree that it's weird how the plot ends with the cutscene when there could have been a more hands-on conclusion, I don't think going against Team Magma and Team Aqua at the same time was an issue like you stated here. I think there just should have been a bit better pacing, maybe with more things happening between plot points. The biggest issues, by far, is how the Magma encounter on Mt. Chimney (where you battle mostly fire types) is followed immediately by Flannery (the fire gym leader), while Team Aqua has the Lilycove Base into Seafloor Cavern, which is immediately followed by Juan (the water type leader), the Elite Four (Glacia is basically a water trainer, while both Sidney and Drake have prominent water types), into Champion Wallace (yet another water trainer)-all while dealing with seven REQUIRED water routes to get to Mossdeep, Sootopolis, the Seafloor Cavern, Sky Pillar, and Ever Grande, all of which are filled to the brim with swimmers, tubers, swimming triathletes, and otherwise water-leaning trainers. This pacing is horrible, and it makes what should be climactic scenes feel more hollow than they should. I do kind of wish Maxie and Archie actively helped with the retrieval of Groudon and Kyogre as repentance for THEIR screw-ups, but that's more of a nitpick on the grand scheme of things. It's fine that their plans were flawed; I just wish the pacing was a bit better, that the finale was more interactive, and that they didn't immediately vanish after the legendary showdown in Sootopolis.
Southern Island doesn't require cheating in Emerald to reach, and I'm not talking about paying mad cash for one of those physical Eon Tickets. The scanned content of an e-Reader is written to its GBA save file, which can be backed up and "restored" through the same methods as any other GBA game cart can. I personally used a DS Lite and a flashcart to inject the Eon Ticket save file onto my e-Reader, but there are other devices like the GB Operator that can do the same thing. *Edit:* Apparently people have figured out how to reprint the Eon Ticket card and sell them for like $20-30. e-Readers seem to have gotten expensive enough that it's probably cheapest now to just get a GBA flashcart loaded with the e-Reader rom and the Eon Ticket save file. I guess going that route would also allow you to use the Deoxys/Ho-Oh event distribution rom (Yes, they've been preserved and can be downloaded) through the flashcart if you have two wireless adapters.
Your comparison of Hoenn being a smaller living world compared to Paldea being a large but empty world reminded me of something someone said about open world games in general. He said he preferred the smaller hub worlds in Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided because even though they were smaller, they were dense; there was a lot to do, every place felt like it had purpose, and each hub felt alive.
@notthisyourlightKlefki isn't even from Unova lol. Regardless, you can say this about tons of Pokemon from every generation, there's always some misses.
@@thawkade i know, first generation had basicaly just birds as flying pokemon and some other designs like fukano where just dogs haha Ich cream and keys arent from unova? Where are they from then haha I get the newer mons mixed up all the time
@notthisyourlight Oh no, the Ice Cream one was from Unova, the Keys were from Kalos a generation over. They're only like 2/3 years apart so i understand mixing them up lol
@notthisyourlight I do in fact like the ice cream. And the garbage. And the snowflake (that learns Attract despite it not being able to ACTUALLY use Attract) And the elemonkies.
I wish Gamefreak would still do 2D Pokemon games :( Hoenn felt the most mysterious region to me, I liked it when not everything was explained or answered/left ambiguous. The golems for example, they simply were just there, but only accessable after doing some braille puzzle in a hidden unterwater cave you can easily miss. I love it
Emerald truly is peak, at least for myself i keep coming back to it, originally had saphire then traded for ruby during recess and eventually sold and got emerald from game crazy The battle frontier was amazing, plus you could catch smeargle
I really liked the inclusion of Kanto in silver when I played it as a kid! To me it really felt like "wow, this is game is literally twice as big" (even if it maybe wasn't), and while the exploration wasn't the most exciting it still added tons of content post elite four. I think it would have been a much much worse game without it. It really blew my mind that they could have 2 entire regions in one game. Also cool to explore kanto with the graphical update like that. While flawed, I think gen2 kanto is maybe dunked on a little bit too much.
As someone who grew up with heartgold and soulsilver to x&y Emerald is the pokemon game I may love what gen 4 introduced to the games via evolution, and a decent story, black and white stand amazingly on their own but pacing wise and mechanically I think emerald has them beat
I'm surprised the Battle Frontier wasn't mentioned because it was a post-game that honestly was an amazing idea, a concept that would be carried over to Platinum (not Diamond and Pearl tho for some odd reason) and even HGSS (which replaced the Battle Tower that was introduced in Crystal with the Battle Frontier). Emerald's addition of the Battle Frontier compared to what Ruby and Sapphire had which was just the Battle Tower. The Battle Frontier also included a cave called the Artisan Cave that contains the Pokemon Smeargle. My point is that the Battle Frontier in Emerald was pretty dope (even tho I much prefer the Platinum & HGSS one).
I loved Pokémon yellow red and blue, then I loved silver and gold when they came out. Same with emerald, ruby and Safire. They all seemed really ahead and progressive in gaming at their rightful times. Now the games have evolved so much that we can have these options about it. But the ppl who grew up with the og will still love it. I legit just downloaded blue yesterday 😂 good points doh
Thank you for going against the rage bait algorithm and showing some love to a phenomenal game, even after your trauma from the national dex for gen 3!
Theres a new romhack called pokemon emerald sea glass and it is amazing, its emerald but with gen 2 graphics, a couple of added quality of life improvements, etc. i think it is pretty amazing ngl
I think one thing i miss from old games are routes, open world is cool and all but everything feels a bit of the same with a enviroment skin, routes used to be so iconic, chances are you still remember how them and what went down on each route
I'm playing through Shield right now.
They totally fumbled the bag with swsh's routes.
They're too short, and there's no exploration to be done. Now that I think about it, there's only surf that let's you explore more of the old routes, and it's clear this was an afterthought.
What a shame.
@@PapaRoboto Galar Cave 2 my beloved (it's a literal curved line)
I prefer routes as well, i didn't like the fact trainers were completely optional but it was the very first open world pokemon game and switch have his limitations, let's hope the next game is switch 2 it's a more enjoyable open world experience
Ngl, SwSh killed my interest in modern pokemon games. The only 3D open world pokemon game that made it for me was Legends Arceus, and that game is a glorified Safari zone.
The open world aspect of the two most recent gens is far and away the worst part of them. Routes will always win.
What I like about Emerald compared to Ruby/Sapphire is that there are way more double battles. Many trainers are placed that two of them see the player and want to battle at the same time which results in a double battle. And for those who don't like double battles as much, they can speak to each of the NPC trainers individually and have single battles instead.
@@SSBRocker I disliked that all Gym Leader rematches were doubles, though. I always wanted the option to do single rematches
@@Br0oham Personally, I like that the gym leader rematches are double battles. The rematch feature made its debut in Emerald, and they used it to flesh out the double battle mechanic introduced earlier in this very generation. Just feels really efficient and natural to me.
@@pacifierjunkee6016 indeed especially because it felt like in the first ruby an sapphire games they weren’t enough doubles.. especially not serious ones they rectified that problem in emerald. Who can say they weren’t pleasant surprised when they discovered not only were gym leaders rematches possible but they were different in a whole new way.
Route 119 is my favourite.
Very tall grass, waterfalls, hidden areas you could only traverse with a special bike, these big bridges and the only river where you could find Feebas, this mysterious pokemon with that obscure evolution technique. And then there is this mysterious weather institute in a place where it almost always rains. I felt so excited, exploring this route in my childhood and I always had my secret base there (the one under the bridge by the waterfall). I also love Absol, Tropius and Masquerain, which you can catch there. Route 119 is great.
Edit: And the music! I almost forgot to mention the music!
I felt really smart as a kid figuring out the broken bridge across the waterfall in front of the weather station you had to do sideways tap-hops to traverse, wish the games had more interesting environmental exploration like that
I consider Route 119 (and 120) being the best illustration of what it is to be in a Pokémon adventure. It is so immersive, you really feel like you are in a huge adventure, with no limits to explore
Don't forget the outstanding musical score for Route 119, and also 120.
I've only found feebass once. That was ridiculous. Six random tiles you can catch it if I recall.
Yup the inventive ingenuity for that whole route was just creatively satisfying.. everytime you explored an found something it felt like a new discovery everytime. Very VERY few routes are as well designed honesty. An that’s so sad could you imagine something like that in sun an moon… but nope what we got was the beginning of the end.. super simple route an the demise of in-depth optional exploration.
I don't think any other game made me feel like Ruby (and later Emerald) ever. The sense of discovery and immersion as a kid in Hoenn was just amazing. Playing it on summer, when you could go to the beach in real life and then playing 3rd gen back on home felt like an extension of your beach days. I remember playing this game with the scent of the sea water, wich matches the ambience of this gen. It brings so many memories of joy and peace :)
Not to mention the Battle Frontier as a postgame content designed for competitive battles, but which also required a bit of exploration too!
and even the battle frontier had these "hidden" areas that reward you for exploring them like the artisan cave
I still cry because i know the battle frontier will never be back. Eff the player for getting a diverse challenge for after the league. I kinda liked the fighting ring, because it made you play completely different than other fights, since yoou had to ask yourself if you want the points for effective attacks, most damage dealt and whatever the last one was. It also punished you for trying to play the long game or set up. But the mansion is definitely not missed.
SmithPlays: "Pokemon Emerald is not as good as you remember it."
Lyra: "This game is ABSOLUTE PEAK Pokemon!"
I love this duality of approach to Emerald that is taking place simultaneously.
Besides level up learnsets often being bad, Emerald is indeed peak
It's peak, but not as good, it CAN be improved
@@Nick-yl4qpit is a huge detractor though, that and a ton of single use TM with no way to reobtain 💀
But gen 3 does go hard as fck still 🙂↔️
I mean one video is about mechanics balancing and the other world building
7.8/10
I think I love the fact that Lyra went from "I've never played this game, I had a bad feeling..." to "This game is PEAK."
It's a very pure shift, which makes me personally feel better about loving the region so much. Like, it isn't just nostalgia and that fact that I have the entire region memorized.
I remember discovering/walking through the desert for the first time. A complete shift from not just the routes around it but from the previous two gens as well. Along with the more tropical feel of Dewford and the alpine feel of Fortree. Gen 3 really was a game changer.
While Platinum remains my favorite Pokémon game of all time, Emerald sits VERY close to it due to how vast and mysterious it is.
Everything in Hoenn screams what Pokémon was and should be to me: a world full of interesting places, routes and mysteries that just WAIT to be discovered, not NEED to.
It was game that challenged trainers, but also adventurers.
Hoenn just has so many little secrets on every route, its genuinely worth grabbing some max repels and following the entire rock wall around the oceans checking for breaks in them. It lets you find "Jigglypuff Island", regice's cave, sky tower, the various colored shard islands, numerous sandbars with trainers & items, and shoal cave.
But there are also just a lot of spots like the top of the waterfall west of fallarbor town that are tiny with 1 minor reward.
To my recollection Hoenn just has the most of these little secrets hanging off the routes. Sinnoh is good and mysterious in its own way, but i don't remember as many secrets. (Maybe its because i only had Pearl)
if plat is your favorite id guess you were born after 1996
@@chrispember172 Wrong. I was born in 1564, silly.
I remember I played for hundreds of hours as a kid before I randomly stumbled across Sky Tower.
@@alexrennison8070 brother you beat the game in 30 hours, i took another hundred+ before you found rayquaza? lol
I just had to read the Thumbnail and immediately went "agreed"... It's something I miss in the new Pokémon games
One thing i'll always remember about Hoenn and Johto is the fact that i'm often confused between Mauville City and Violet City. People who can understand why most likely speak french.
Don't forget Lavandia (French) and Lavandia (German) - also known as Lavanville in French!
@@Skelatox they actually just straight up have the same name in german! XD
Learn English
I love gen 3 simply for the world, I love the dessert in one part, volcano with soot fallen on route 113, forest area fortree, island theme with the ocean, loved pacifidlog city completely out on the water. The amount of details that went into this region is incredible
It's so refreshing to see a video praising something (especially something that deserves praise!), since so many videos today are negative just to drum up attention. I love the positivity!
I totally agree with you. Also one addition compared to previous games which mustn't be forgotten are the running shoes. Without them the experience would be significantly less great.
Hoenn was the first reguon I ever played that wasnt a hand me down from my older siblings, and I will never forget how excited I was just to see color graphics and a brand new region. Still probably the most exciting Christmas gift I ever got.
Please don't stop making content like this, I absolutely love it. Nobody can compare to the ideas and exhaustivity.
As a kid emerald really felt like a huge world with so many mysteries man… mirage tower, mirage island, underwater quest to catch the Regis, Steven hidden in a cave ready to battle, rebattling gym leaders multiple times, battle frontier with the pyramid, and giant seviper facility.. it really felt never ending and it blew my mind as a kid man.. best Pokemon game oat
Peak artistic design, immersion and exploration, that's gen 3 for you
how is a 2d pokemon game immersive lol
@@chrispember172 how is pokemon in any way immersive? It's entirely fictional world of elemental typed monster you battle with. Genuinely dumb comment lol
@@chrispember172 Top 10 dumbest comments I've ever read lol.
Best looking and sounding games in the series by far
Gen 3, with Gen 4 and 5, represent for me the golden age of pokémon.
You make justice of what make Hoenn great to explore. It's not just "too much water", is bigger than that.
Just one think that make emerald one of, if not, my fav it is his engine... It's SO FAAAAST. The travell, animation, battle, everything is so smooth, it's so good 😁😁😁.
I think that can’t be understated. I know Gen 4 gets a bad rep for being slow but a lot of the modern games are slow as hell too.
@@_GuestFive wdym slow? The modern games starting from gen 6 are way way faster to finish thanks to exp share
@Gigi-zr6hp they meant the speed of the battles
There's such a palpable sense of adventure that pervades the region. I feel it most strongly upon receiving surf and setting foot on the eastern half of the region for the first time. The grandeur evoked by the themes on routes 119 & 120 is genuinely magical. This feeling is something I value the most in a pokemon game.
The reason Hoenn is so good, since there are a lot of side quests
Routes are all diverse and different(land ones)
The cities are all cool, and amazing
As a summer/sea lover hoen will be forever my fave region. It managed to encapsulate the feeling of exploring the seaside during a vacation but on a region level
Bruh, thank you for making the website. I ran through the Gen 6 games over the past several weeks after being out of Pokemon since Sapphire. I'm going back through to get all of the OG 151 and it's going to make keeping track of it, not to mention organizing into boxes, so much easier!!!
She finally understood that grief was her love with no place for it to go.
The “evil” teams in this gen are such an improvement from team rocket. Beside the main inspiration which stems from an actual environmental controversy of one of Japan’s islands at that time, the fact that both Archie and Maxie are just misled guys, confused by greater ideals and ambitions that even them can’t fully grasp make the ending so satisfying. You can see the remorse, the guilt and realization when both see what they have caused. They really tried and succeeded with the plot and the characters.
Meanwhile Team Rocket was just evil and bad because yes.
I love Hoenn, gen 3 and emerald and it’s my favorite Pokémon game ever❤
I gotta disagree on the claim that Kanto has no sense of mystery. Maybe it's because I was playing Red/Blue/Yellow when they were new, but I always found the world strangely captivating and intriguing.
Also hard disagree that Kanto somehow cheapens the experience of Gold/Silver/Crystal. I agree that the post-game content is lacking, but I don't think it diminishes Johto in any way.
As much as I love Gen 1 and 2, especially with the Stadium games basically expanding the postgame for them, Gen 3 was truly a breath of fresh air for the franchise. I absolutely loved FireRed/LeafGreen and Emerald due to how much they added to the series! Gen 3 being able to truly have no region restrictions in terms of trading and actually having event islands was a huge plus.
Also, you should probably mention that Southern Island is still legitimately possible to reach, and will be until the end of time. Would have been great if it was the same for the other islands.
I think in order to really appreciate Scarlet/Violet, you had to complete the Pokedex there. I still have fond memories of basically every area in that game. There's also the fact that they keep on adding so many QoL features every game.
Pokemon Emerald is the only Pokemon Game I always keep on my phone emulator and still reply every now and again. So many locations are just beautiful, definitely more creativity than the recent Pokemon games with their endless flats.
Gen 3 was my first one so I'm very biased in that sense, but yeah Emerald is fantastic. I love how colorful and varied Hoenn is, there are so many memorable areas. Weirdly enough the remakes just don't do it for me, I think it's because they lack a lot of the upgrades Emerald brought, such as extra trainers in routes, better gym leader teams, a more complete plot involving both teams magma and aqua, and of course the battle frontier. Still, I'm happy that Oras helped making Hoenn even more popular haha
This is exactly how I feel about Emerald vs ORAS. Emerald feels like the definitive Hoenn experience because of how much of an improvement it was over Ruby/Sapphire. They fleshed out basically everything introduced in those games and made the region feel more complete. ORAS has its own additions that are welcome, but for some reason, it falls back to the Ruby/Sapphire design for overworld battles & gym battles. ORAS falls short because it doesn't quite flesh out its generation's mechanics the way Emerald did.
Everytime i forget about lyra, you pop back up with a brand new banger. Absolutely love every single video youve done, keep it up.
2 more pieces of exploration i love about Hoenn.
All those random small areas only accessible by one of the bikes, like the sandy slopes north of the desert, or the fact you can bunny hop up the jagged pass.
And the shard hunter house quest, an NPC will trade you evo stones for 1 colored shard, and mentions he dives for shards. All around the main ocean are little dive spots that take you beyond the stone wall to little areas that have colored shards you can bring back and trade for evo stones. (You can also theif/covet redshards from wild corsola, yellow from chinchou, blue from clampearl, and green from relicanth all with a 5% chance to hold.)
I still have a working cartridge of Emerald from when I was a kid that has had the battery replaced.
Also, getting a Feebas and Ralts with an optimal nature is a lot less painful in Pokémon Emerald. Gardevoir has always been my ace in Pokémon Emerald. It alone made a joke of the Champion's Pokémon. Gardevoir is my favorite Pokémon because of this and the lore reason that I liked as a kid that Ralts only reveals itself to kind-hearted people. Yes, I am aware how the internet views Gardevoir. Yes, it ruined my youthful ignorance and innocence.
The only thing I am really missing from Gen 3 when I play it is the Day and Night cycle. That was why I loved Johto, but hey, it's fine I feel
Even when story is not the best, I think the changes they did in this version are awesome. Facing both teams makes more sense and you get to see how both are equally evil. Also, some say their goals are dumb and they are and the game KNOWS they are, so it's not like everything ends when you defeat the team's bosses like Team Rockets'. Here Maxie and Archie see the consequences of their dumb acts and the fact they learn from that aswell as us the player is kind of cool! (Like, my younger self knew they could do damage to people and pokemon with their goals but seeing that world-ending weather crisis was shoking and creepy with the music in that part!)
I agree something else was needed for the end, that scene of Rayquaza arriving was epic but then maybe doing a battle where we use Rayquaza temporarily to stop Groudon and Kyogre, no option to catch them there and at the end Rayquaza leaves so we catch them in the post game in their caves. But that's almost the only and the biggest change I'd do to the game so it is in fact peak and my favorite aswell!
Started in gen 1 (even won a legit competiton Mew) when I was like 13 but gen 3 ended up being my favourite , enviroment and sprite work really sold the adventure with the more potent hardware.
One of the things that you didn't mention about Hoenn in gen 3, is how easy it is to explore! It is designed almost like a metroidvania, with routes that loop into themselves, which makes getting from point a to be both interesting and a lot faster then it would otherwise. It also helps a ton that most of the world is completely without loading zones, you can visit almost every single town in gen 3 without it ever fading to black.
I don't want open world, I just want Pokémon back 🥲
With the remake. The region just gets better with easy to obtain fairy types and megas that give new life to older pokemon
I really should replay Oras someday
ORAS did a lot right but took away so much of what made Gen 3 so good. If you never played Emerald, it feels like a faithful adaptation of the original games. If you did play Emerald, so much content that improved upon RS feels missing. It's unfortunate, but ORAS sorely lacks post-game content, merely teasing the Battle Frontier we never got while copy-pasting the Battle Maison from XY, which feels so out of place in comparison to its place in Kalos.
@@Goldenblade14 well yeah Oras isn't delta emerald as pokemon doesn't want to do third games anymore
A delta emerald would have even more hype with the better mons. Story. Battle frontier and more overall battles. So I'd rank ruby Sapphire Oras then emerald in how good they were
oras will forever tainted for removing the battle frontier
@@DeathofHeavensthat's basically every game without it after gen 3
Honestly it should be included so players can basically train to be competitive players without battling other people. That'd be fun.
@@Goldenblade14 people these days just be saying stuff when they have no idea what they're talking about...
1. pokemon oras literally improved upon the hoenn region in a way which pokemon emerald wishes it did. did you play/see the delta episode, or read professor's cosmo extremely dark letters to his dad, or see ANY oras' exclusive content (even stuff that doesn't have anything to do with the whole mega evolution plot)? you claim pokemon emerald improved upon RS so much that the lack of its exclusive content is detrimental for oras, but did you actually see the full list of changes, because a lot of what emerald added is either marginal or not as impactful as you’re suggesting. pokemon emerald didnt even expand on rayquaza's lore (it just made it available before the league and gave it 1 good 25 seconds long cutscene) and oras did wallace so much better than emerald which litearlly just made him the champion so steven can be the postgame superboss for some reason.
2. you're not even right about emerald having the best version of hoenn to explore because emerald shoehorned every contest rank hall into lilycove city and replaced them with completely useless battle tents...
3. postgame in emerald (battle froniter) sucked because gen 3 was so unbelievable unbalanced that to stand a chance in the later rounds of the battle frontier you were practically forced to use pseudo-legendaries and sub-legendaries. there is a reason why every other battle froniter team has a lati@s and a metagross... battle maison might not thematically fit into hoenn but it provides a more balanced and varied challenge, instead of just using the most sweaty teams trying to fool you into thinking that the game doesnt read inputs and wont make you go against hard counter team sooner or later... also, i will always believe that battle maison was put in hoenn because its an on-going joke in the series which was first done in the anime with hoenn battle frontier being in kanto, and then in hg/ss with sinnoh battle froniter being in johto.
ORAS is so much better than emerald, it's not even funny. There is litearlly no reason to play gen 3 games in 2024 unless you're legitimately addicted to battle frontier even tho there's nothing fun about it after like 2 rounds.
Amen to that. I loved exploring Hoenn from north to south, from land to sea. It felt unique, interesting and adventurous. It's one of the reasons why Emerald is still my favorite, even if games like Shield are, arguably, better and more modern games.
Even as a staunch advocate of Hoenn and Emerald, I'll be the first to admit that it has it's flaws (looking at you learnsets and physical/special split), but it still remains my favourite alongside gen 5. Much like you experienced, Hoenn encapsulates what a Pokemon adventure is and should be.
In my humble opinion, Hoenn is the most fully realised region thematically and from a world building perspective (shoutout to Alola too). It has such a rich, varied and interesting set of biomes and there's so much to explore even despite the amount of water, which I personally don't mind. Everything is connected both in the literal sense and in relation to one of the game's main themes of nature, yet there's still more to find on repeat visits to areas. Route 119 in particular is really a macrocosm of the region itself and the best route design in the entire franchise if you ask me.
I think an underrated aspect that helps with the sense of exploration is how smoothly and quickly the gameplay moves. In comparison to gens 1, 2 and even 4, simply moving about and battling was sluggish which could make exploration feel like a slog. But with gen 3 the speed of battles and movement, and thus the transition between the overworld and battling, is remarkably seemless and dynamic for a game of its age. You're thrust staright back into things which makes exploration feel much more exhilarating.
No region before or after has managed to capture Hoenn's level of charm for me. Plus it has the Battle Frontier. Need I repeat what's already been said about how much fans of the series appreciate that place?
Only Southern Island is Hoenn iirc. Birth and Navel Rock are part of the Sevii Islands in FRLG (implied in game by mentioning they aren't named for being 7 of 'em) and Faraway is well... Far.
But to me that was even better as both brilliant region and cross-game world building while letting both Kanto and Hoenn have access and relevance.
I miss when Pokemon had an endgame. They used to sell you games with the expectation that you'd keep playing over and over again, for several years. Now they get insulted if you care enough to want to keep your Pokemon for more than one game.
I guess you forgot Pokémon home existed lol. I still agree with your sentiment though
@@el_dank_sinatra I didn't, Pokemon Home *is* the issue. Because each game restricts which Pokemon it can transfer from Home, any Pokemon you bring into Home risk being stuck there for an indefinite amount of time. And it's a subscription service, so that means your Pokemon are held hostage for ransom.
Exactly the replay value has gone to crap! I’m sorry but I don’t want to play anything after 5 gen maybe 6 cuz omega ruby is solid..X an Y we’re cool enuff I guess but felt unfinished.
@@el_dank_sinatradon't you have to pay money for that lol 😂
And the “Fans” are defending Nintendo for not trying to make high budget leap for Pokemon Games despite its status as one of the biggest video game franchise. Thats how we end up with BDSP, one of the arguably best Pokemon Gen that sells the DS. Outsourced to a third party devs that had never made proper game before rather than making the leap like ORAS.
Emerald has and always will be my fave Pokemon game, but there is also a lot of nostalgia attached to that with it being one of my first along with yellow. My first console was a gba sp and I'd lusted after one for so long just for ruby or sapphire.
Side content is meaningful, because you can miss it. When you find something that you know you could have easily missed, it gives the sense of authorship of your own experience.
Added abilities. Battle frontier. Better balanced gyms and even rematches
Hoenne was really when pokemon got good
Peakemon
Hot Take: I actually LOVE the amount of water in Hoenn. Yes, I’ll agree surfing can be as obnoxious as a cave (although to me it is worth trying to surf for a lower-level already evolved Wailord), but…
Fishing is a blast in those areas. As one who has done ocean fishing before, I got mad respect for the idea that I can fish in the Hoenn sea and possibly reel in a Sharpedo or Wailmer, maybe even a Horsea. I also do like the diving mechanic, I just wish they included more than 3 underwater Pokémon in RSE.
Great video! I still fondly remember first deciphering the puzzle to open the Regi caves with a friend late one weekend. We were so hyped to even work out the text, never mind that it lead to a bunch more of secret Pokemon! Might be an overstatement, but it totally changed my view on games and how they can interact with a player. I still get excited to this day when I play a game deciphering languages, such as in Fez! I hope at some point Pokemon pivots back to obscure puzzles!
Great video man! I remember playing the crap out of Emerald growing up. Like you said: Even after my 4th playthrough I was still finding new areas and secrets!
Also: it's great to see Pokemon content that isn't just pokemon fan boys. I love Pokemon, but the new games are deeply flawed
Having played both platinium and emerald, apart from maybe black & white 2, these are my favourites games. Platinium felt like this to me, every reagion just screamed that it wanted to be explored.
Speaking of optional areas, everyone knows that you don't have to visit Pacifidlog Town to beat the Elite Four, but I think that there's another optional town. Technically, you don't need anything from Verdanturf to be able to beat the game. To get the strength HM, you can just get to Rusturf Tunnel from the Rustboro side. I've not tried it yet, but maybe I should!
You visit Wally's family after breaking the rocks, no? Doesn't the girl invite you over?
ah yes, afte getting rock smash HM in mauville let me just go back to rustboro city with the help of briney for no reason and then go back to rusturf tunnel for no reason and then obtain strength HM and retreat and go back to mauville city again instead of checking whats on the other side, cuz this must be what the game intended. i cant tell if you're joking rn or if you're a 🤡
@@jakisrandom1optional, not unintended.
Your reading comprehension grade is an F
@@TheRealMycanthrope Bro's insulting my reading comprehension after OP suggested probably the most inefficient route possible just to glaze the middest Pokemon region. So I’m supposed to backtrack to Route 108 for no reason (or because I'm "exploring"), go to Rusturf Tunnel just to pick up Strength HM and then ignore checking the exit on the other sife of the cave (which is contradictory because I might be "exploring"), all just to avoid visiting Verdanturf Town...? Yeah, I bet players actually waste their time like that. 🤡
@@Nick-yl4qpyou can, but you don't have to. You can advance the story without going
I think also the battle frontier is such a great addition! With all the different ways of looking at battles and getting everything gold feels rewarding.
I played Platinum way more, but Emerald will always hold a special place to me. First one I ever played, at a friends house, and still the best looking imo. They really worked hard to make it look and sound great in spite of the severe hardware limitations.
Bro your content was extremely informative and I enjoyed every bit of it. Keep up the great work . I am also a Pokemon fan and I loved playing Emerald version too. 👍👍
Easily my favourite Pokémon game, one I still go back and play every couple of years
By design, Houen balanced the land and sea, and you will have fun trying out any Pokémon's Ability effecting the overworld to encounter different wild Pokémon.
Groudon should have won, there's too much water.
"Nope! Nothing here but trash."
If that doesn't embody the Vermilion gym, I don't know what does.
I really do agree with you when comparing the game's "openess" to Scarlet. After I finished my Paldean Pokédex, I found there wasn't really much to do. So many towns and places don't even have interiors or NPCs to interact with. There's a real lack of interesting things to find and do, even with the DLC improvements taken into account.
I think that's why I replay games like Emerald and Leafgreen so much more. Aside from being a Gen 3 fan, there's a real feel and pull to the world and the journey that is just so engaging.
I feel like Sinnoh also manages to cleverly utilize it's map in an extremely interesting way because it uses Mt Coronet like 3 or 4 different times with completely different results and purposes, the player threads a weave around one location and it rules.
Babe wake up, Lyra uploaded a new video
you know you aint got no babe
Lyra, where have I heard that name before... you mean that person who made a website? Cool!
Cool, a new video! Missed you, mate. Hope to see you tackle a Gen 4 living dex. I probably mentioned it on previous videos, but your series inspired me to do living dexes for Gens 1 through 4 and I would love to see you tackle DPPt and HGSS.
Im gonna have to disagree about Kanto. It was stripped down due to memory; but i was so amazed that it was there as a kid.
every time lyra posts a video i wait for the perfect moment where i can just chill n enjoy, brasil loves u❤
I'm currently replaying emerald and might go for the national dex. It really is a great world and one of the best pokemon games ever made. I really appreciate your website and hope you get to gen 4 by the time I start replaying those. I'm interested to know which pokemon absolutely have to be transferred up from gen 3.
One of my favorite regions. It would be great if you did videos about other regions, what they did great and bad.
I think you missed the point of Kanto in gen 2. Trainers there are lower level and gyms are more freely accessible as a means to help you train up the low-level "rare" pokemon you find in Johto's endgame, like Larvitar, Dratini, Houndoor, etc.
It also wouldn't make sense for everyone in Kanto to be walking around with level 50~60 pokemon, rivaling the Elite Four and towering so far above everyone else in Johto.
You had my 👍 after the first 4 seconds, BRAVO!!!
Now THAT is an opening sentence!
Hoenn was my first Contact with Pokémon games and from time to time i Go back to Emerald e Replay it. Its just good game nostalgia.
Gen 3 was the generation I got to play as a kid. Emerald (also my favorite color, so extra yeah!) felt massive and full of content: massive world, tons of side quests, TWO gangs to fight, no less than 10 legendary pokemon to find, several new post-game regions to explore, and inter-exchange with FireRed & LeafGreen for more content.
Watching multiple reviews, I have ended up agreeing with both sides, it was the best pokemon game ever made, fixing many of gen 1 & 2 issues, yet it also made new problems that future games carry to this day. It was the nexus to permanently altering how future pokemon games were made and experienced (both better and worse).
It added the first truly new region to the pokemon world, almost doubled the number of pokemon to catch (roughly 400), and tried to add both mystery and post-game content. It also carved up its gameplay into multiple other games (on other consoles no less) demanded region locked content, and sealed hours of gameplay behind one-time real-world events.
Love it or hate it generation 3 was the most important generation of pokemon, creating much of what people love about pokemon today and expanded its base, preventing them from going stale. Imagine if instead of all of this, the only change between Ruby & Sapphire and Gold & Sliver was a graphics upgrade to the gameboy advance. Would pokemon have remain relevant or interesting if nothing had changed over 3 generations?
Funny how this linear GBA game from twenty years ago felt more like a fully open world than the actual fully open world game from just two years ago.
Your discussion of a huge vs interesting world finally put into words what I've been feeling about Scarlet/Violet. When playing through Violet, the entite world felt very samey, despite the areas technically being varied with their different biomes. You're right, there isn't anything really interesting in Paldea. There aren't any dungeons, or cool landmarks, or hidden areas, or special hidden items, or anything like that. It may be big, but that's it. It's *only* big. There's nothing more to it.
Hoenn, which is my favorite region, on the other hand, is small and very interesting. There are all sort of side areas to discover and explore, with their own side quests and secrets. You can find rare items and Pokemon in those unique little areas. Exploration is actually rewarded. And this, in turn, makes Hoenn feel bigger than it actually is.
I was waiting for that...btw i never get bored of it...100% agree with u...
i love your videos, I have been watching for over a year, keep up the great work ^
I'm fortunate to have grown up in real life Hoenn; Nova Scotia.
We have high tides & caves in the Bay of Fundy. (Shells of the Bay of Fundy)
So many shipwrecks above & below sea level. (South Shore)
The fossils of Joggins (Desert of Fundy bay)
An abandoned tidal power plant (new mauville)
An island full of wild horses called "Sable Island" (mirage island)
Worlds biggest natural explosion in Halifax city. Blizzard came after (Desert)
Even the same land mass size as Kyushu/Hoenn
I first played Gen 3 as a kid when it first released. Ive played Pokemon Ruby the past weeks and i can honestly say its not as good as i remember. Its such a grind to level up Pokemon. You come across the same Pokemon on every route. Poochyenas/Zigzagoon/wingull/tentacool etc. The soundtrack is phenomenal and its still one of my favourites but this is definitely the last time i will pick up to play it.
My first ever video game was Pokémon Ruby on the GBA. I, much later, managed to get Leaf Green, Emerald, Yellow, and Soul Silver afterwards. I've played nearly every Pokémon game since Gen 5. And I completely agree with you when it comes to how much there is to explore in Hoenn. There was always something else to do, something else to find, caves and nooks scattered all over the region-to the point where there is an optional system of secret bases scattered EVERYWHERE (a system I wish was played with more, like finding some NPC secret bases to show how it works and to give a few more optional end-game battles). Shoutout to Pacifidlog Town which, though not mentioned in this video, is an amazing addition to a region that is all about how people have grown to work with nature to create their civilizations-a city floating on the water is an awesome addition alongside the city of treehouses (Fortree), a city in a crater (Sootopolis), a town near the volcano (Lavaridge), and an attempt at a city in a cave (New Mauville).
I love how Hoenn takes the interconnectivity and crossroads design of Kanto and Johto while making the world feel so lived in. Kanto has a similar feeling to Paldea to me, where the map shows the region as open and full of places to explore, but the experience is barren except for what is necessary for the main plot; you mentioned this in your video here. Unova has the opposite issue, where the experience is full of side paths and places to stumble into, but the map makes the whole region feel overly linear and simple. Places like Mauville (central points where you can arrive from different directions) are important for making a region feel cohesive. For as cool as Unova is as a game, its region completely missed this aspect. And though I lumped Paldea in with Kanto, its sheer barren openness keeps the region from feeling like it has an identity. The Kalos map very well could have done it well with how prominent Lumiose City was (were the rest of the game more interesting). Hoenn is incredible with this aspect… for 2/3rds of the game.
The Water Routes-that is, the routes traveled between Lilycove and Ever Grande-are not issues because they are full of water. I think Routes 105, 106, and 108 work well with their linearity and the fact that you are quite literally showcased the points of interest well before you gain the ability to travel there by yourself; The crashed ship in the middle of Route 108 was immaculately placed, and the player gains a goal just from that. They HAVE to know what that ship is about! I know that's what I felt when I got to that section. And I found the (not-so) Abandoned Ship to be one of the more interesting dungeons in the game; to this day, I consider it one of the more interesting in the franchise. But the rest of them? There's not enough separating them from each other. The lack of discernible landmarks make these routes easy to get lost in, and finding your bearings is excruciatingly difficult when your mental mapping is interrupted every few steps by either a wild encounter or a prompt that your Repel wore off. I like the idea that Route 126 is mostly deep water while Routes 132-134 are almost entirely fast currents, but there needs to be something more than that to stick out in a player's mind. These Routes need stronger identities between each other, just like how Routes 119 and 120 are similar in size and biome, but 119 feels like a sprawling field of tall grass with small mountains close to the top (featuring the Mimic Circle and the Weather Institute), while 120 feels more like a sprawling rainforest with that maze of tall grass and multiple bridges over water. If the water routes had something like the Mimic Circle and different distributions of water and island locations, then they would be much more memorable.
Regardless of my criticisms of the water routes, I think Hoenn is the best balance between an open map and a rich exploration experience, and you hit the nail on the head with this video. I wish Game Freak could take what worked in Hoenn and continued to refine it into the newer regions. Kitakami (Scarlet/Violet DLC) actually does have me looking forward to the future of Pokémon regions; it's smaller than Paldea, but there are so many places to stumble across, caves to explore, and optional areas that the DLC's story doesn't even bother to touch. I hope this is the mark of a step in the more interesting direction.
An aside: your criticism with the evil team rings strangely to me. Though I agree that Emerald's worst aspect is its story, I DON'T believe that it is in any way marred by "not settling on a single antagonist". In fact, ORAS went back to the Ruby/Sapphire way of only having one team be antagonists while the other team was just… there. Not only did this make some plot points not make sense (like why is Team Magma stealing a submarine; why is Team Aqua stealing a meteorite and going to a volcano?), this also made it so that the non-antagonist team is just "there". Why are they fighting each other on My. Chimney? At least in Emerald, you see BOTH teams as misguided antagonists, and the war between each other goes from "extremely inconvenient" to "GLOBAL ENDANGERMENT".
Though I agree that it's weird how the plot ends with the cutscene when there could have been a more hands-on conclusion, I don't think going against Team Magma and Team Aqua at the same time was an issue like you stated here. I think there just should have been a bit better pacing, maybe with more things happening between plot points. The biggest issues, by far, is how the Magma encounter on Mt. Chimney (where you battle mostly fire types) is followed immediately by Flannery (the fire gym leader), while Team Aqua has the Lilycove Base into Seafloor Cavern, which is immediately followed by Juan (the water type leader), the Elite Four (Glacia is basically a water trainer, while both Sidney and Drake have prominent water types), into Champion Wallace (yet another water trainer)-all while dealing with seven REQUIRED water routes to get to Mossdeep, Sootopolis, the Seafloor Cavern, Sky Pillar, and Ever Grande, all of which are filled to the brim with swimmers, tubers, swimming triathletes, and otherwise water-leaning trainers. This pacing is horrible, and it makes what should be climactic scenes feel more hollow than they should.
I do kind of wish Maxie and Archie actively helped with the retrieval of Groudon and Kyogre as repentance for THEIR screw-ups, but that's more of a nitpick on the grand scheme of things. It's fine that their plans were flawed; I just wish the pacing was a bit better, that the finale was more interactive, and that they didn't immediately vanish after the legendary showdown in Sootopolis.
Southern Island doesn't require cheating in Emerald to reach, and I'm not talking about paying mad cash for one of those physical Eon Tickets. The scanned content of an e-Reader is written to its GBA save file, which can be backed up and "restored" through the same methods as any other GBA game cart can. I personally used a DS Lite and a flashcart to inject the Eon Ticket save file onto my e-Reader, but there are other devices like the GB Operator that can do the same thing.
*Edit:* Apparently people have figured out how to reprint the Eon Ticket card and sell them for like $20-30. e-Readers seem to have gotten expensive enough that it's probably cheapest now to just get a GBA flashcart loaded with the e-Reader rom and the Eon Ticket save file. I guess going that route would also allow you to use the Deoxys/Ho-Oh event distribution rom (Yes, they've been preserved and can be downloaded) through the flashcart if you have two wireless adapters.
Your comparison of Hoenn being a smaller living world compared to Paldea being a large but empty world reminded me of something someone said about open world games in general. He said he preferred the smaller hub worlds in Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided because even though they were smaller, they were dense; there was a lot to do, every place felt like it had purpose, and each hub felt alive.
Black & White 1 are what are Pokèmon to me.
Unova Forever.
Go catch yourself House keys and icecream
@notthisyourlightKlefki isn't even from Unova lol.
Regardless, you can say this about tons of Pokemon from every generation, there's always some misses.
@@thawkade i know, first generation had basicaly just birds as flying pokemon and some other designs like fukano where just dogs haha
Ich cream and keys arent from unova?
Where are they from then haha
I get the newer mons mixed up all the time
@notthisyourlight Oh no, the Ice Cream one was from Unova, the Keys were from Kalos a generation over.
They're only like 2/3 years apart so i understand mixing them up lol
@notthisyourlight I do in fact like the ice cream.
And the garbage.
And the snowflake (that learns Attract despite it not being able to ACTUALLY use Attract)
And the elemonkies.
Yooo New Lyra video HELL YEAH
I wish Gamefreak would still do 2D Pokemon games :(
Hoenn felt the most mysterious region to me, I liked it when not everything was explained or answered/left ambiguous.
The golems for example, they simply were just there, but only accessable after doing some braille puzzle in a hidden unterwater cave you can easily miss. I love it
Agreed, great video!
top tier video!
Emerald truly is peak, at least for myself i keep coming back to it, originally had saphire then traded for ruby during recess and eventually sold and got emerald from game crazy
The battle frontier was amazing, plus you could catch smeargle
1:08 why did it become more and more square every time it was remade lmao
Bruh started the video with “to completion” and I can’t get it out of my head😂
I really liked the inclusion of Kanto in silver when I played it as a kid! To me it really felt like "wow, this is game is literally twice as big" (even if it maybe wasn't), and while the exploration wasn't the most exciting it still added tons of content post elite four. I think it would have been a much much worse game without it. It really blew my mind that they could have 2 entire regions in one game. Also cool to explore kanto with the graphical update like that. While flawed, I think gen2 kanto is maybe dunked on a little bit too much.
As someone who grew up with heartgold and soulsilver to x&y
Emerald is the pokemon game
I may love what gen 4 introduced to the games via evolution, and a decent story, black and white stand amazingly on their own but pacing wise and mechanically I think emerald has them beat
You forgot the most significant thing to discover in Hoenn:
…
It's a white rock.
A emerald remaster with black/whites 2d/3d style would be all time peak for pokemon.
Hoenn is my favourite region: I had so much fun to play both in Sapphire and Alpha Sapphire, and I can't wait to play Emerald (matter of days)
I'm surprised the Battle Frontier wasn't mentioned because it was a post-game that honestly was an amazing idea, a concept that would be carried over to Platinum (not Diamond and Pearl tho for some odd reason) and even HGSS (which replaced the Battle Tower that was introduced in Crystal with the Battle Frontier). Emerald's addition of the Battle Frontier compared to what Ruby and Sapphire had which was just the Battle Tower. The Battle Frontier also included a cave called the Artisan Cave that contains the Pokemon Smeargle.
My point is that the Battle Frontier in Emerald was pretty dope (even tho I much prefer the Platinum & HGSS one).
Gen 3 is my favouorite too Lyra. I played the originals and gen 2 but my first game I owned was Sapphire. Never looked back, still play to this day.
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
I loved Pokémon yellow red and blue, then I loved silver and gold when they came out. Same with emerald, ruby and Safire. They all seemed really ahead and progressive in gaming at their rightful times. Now the games have evolved so much that we can have these options about it. But the ppl who grew up with the og will still love it. I legit just downloaded blue yesterday 😂 good points doh
Thank you for going against the rage bait algorithm and showing some love to a phenomenal game, even after your trauma from the national dex for gen 3!
Pokemon emerald is peak simple that, came out in the time of psps, flip phones, emo girls, metal core, etc. the good ol days.
Is Gen 4 next? 🤞
Theres a new romhack called pokemon emerald sea glass and it is amazing, its emerald but with gen 2 graphics, a couple of added quality of life improvements, etc. i think it is pretty amazing ngl
Hoenn is by far my most favourite region ❤