ORAS Experiences

Emerald was the first Pokemon game I ever played, getting that and a Gameboy for my 7th birthday. I absolutely fell in love with the original. I remember my team only consisted of a Level 86 Swampert and nothing else above Level 20 when I beat the game. I guess as a kid I was smart enough to figure out that Swampert was just killing everything, so I never needed other .
Haha, you played exactly like me at the same age ! Bring back good memories !
 

Valmanway

My jimmies remain unrustled
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That feeling when you catch a Naughty, 31 Attack IV Corphish with Aqua Jet and Adaptability after about 50 DexNav searches BEFORE getting your 6th badge. Anybody else have a story like this?
 

CTNC

Doesn't know how to attack
That feeling when you catch a Naughty, 31 Attack IV Corphish with Aqua Jet and Adaptability after about 50 DexNav searches BEFORE getting your 6th badge. Anybody else have a story like this?
I seem to have insane luck with Pokemon. When I was looking for Dexnav Pokemon on Route 1, I found a Poochyena with +10 Levels, Sucker Punch (Egg Move), 3 Stars, and Rattled (HA). That's impressive, but not too impressive until you take into account that the search level was under 20. (I think the exact number was 18. Also, the Poochyena's nickname is OMG.) I don't know the odds of that happening, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was less common than a shiny.
 
Something I'd like to comment on is the expanded use of facial expressions, body language and dynamic camera angles. XY never really used these to a great extent; they used SOME body language for the E4 but aside from that it was mostly just some panning and a little bit of movement to show speech, with next to no facial expressions -- in fact most if not all the time it was always zoomed out to such an extent that you never saw their faces in the overworld as much as you did in interactions in ORAS. The best really came from the in-battle models with Lysandre and Az; their start and end animations are really good at expressing their emotions.
But ORAS really makes full use of this for important characters. Whether it was the odd shaking from Phoebe or the shy, cowering expressions on Wally's face, the zooming in and out and having different views of Glacia, or if it's... oh my god, or if it's Zinnia. This is really where they took full advantage of 3D models; Zinnia's always energetic, always doing something, always expressive whether it's in-battle animations or overworld. That look and pose she gives just before you fight her with Rayquaza is just so brilliant and I adore what they done with it. I really hope Game Freak continues to expand upon and use this because it's one of the biggest advantages you can have with the move from sprites to models. They've already shown some pretty great character in in-battle Pokémon models (Infernape's constant moving, Porygon-Z's jerky actions, Sableye's swaying hips imitating one of the movements from the Hopkinsville Goblin which it's based on, etc.) but the fact they're moving this to characters as well is a great move. Lysandre throwing down his visor in rage and Zinnia just going absolutely crazy with energy are some of my most memorable in-battle moments with Pokémon already and they can only get better from here.
 

Adamant Zoroark

catchy catchphrase
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31/17/29/31/29/31 Reshiram caught. Took THREE FUCKING DAYS to soft reset for.

And I don't even play Ubers; I only got the Reshiram because I intend to trade it to a friend for a Pokemon I actually will use (they have a Keldeo with competitive IVs, I want it because I don't have a Keldeo with competitive IVs, they wanted a Reshiram with competitive IVs so I agreed to SR for it and blah blah blah)

So, yeah, as you can see, I've been spending more time than I'd like soft resetting. My Latias only took six hours and has better IVs than this Reshiram does, so basically, "What the fuck? Where did my luck go?" And the fact that I spent that much time on a Pokemon I won't even use just so I can get a Pokemon I will use isn't helping.

Next SR target: Heatran. Here's to hoping Heatran doesn't take so long...

Edit: It's a Timid Reshiram, so yeah don't give a fuck about the low Attack IV
 
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31/17/29/31/29/31 Reshiram caught. Took THREE FUCKING DAYS to soft reset for.
I'd say that's pretty lucky, actually. I SRed Kyogre for a week and a half and I still didn't get anywhere close to perfect, I just decided to take a break and do something else since Kyogre is a pain to SR with Aqua Ring*.

*In comparison to other legendaries. I still like SRing, but Cresselia, for example, is much easier and more fun.

Edit: Why would you SR in BW2 and earlier if you can learn to RNG, which at least gives you definite results ...
 

ScraftyIsTheBest

On to new Horizons!
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So I got Alpha Sapphire a few days ago and I actually completed this pretty quickly lol. Anyways, this was a really cool game, and many of the things I saw from the original Ruby and Sapphire were pretty much the same as they were then, which I liked about ORAS. The soundtrack from ORAS was also absolutely astounding, and I just love the soundtrack, moreso than any Pokemon game in the series. Team Aqua and Team Magma are definitely more interesting, especially Archie and Maxie, as they have some more personality to them in these games. Granite Cave was definitely quite different, however, and Mauville City was surprising-it's almost like a miniature Lumiose City!! (but at least Mauville isn't that big and it's much simpler). Wally and Brendan/May are also much more interesting in ORAS imo. Aqua Admin Matt was weird though, he was like "Archie is my bro!! I live to serve my bro Archie!!" (someone tell me what Courtney is like in OR? I'm also kinda curious about Tabitha). Primal Kyogre was a huge pain in the butt because its Origin Pulse hits hard...like really hard. Luckily I managed to weaken and paralyze it with repeated Discharges and caught it in one Ultra Ball after a few resets. The Delta Episode was also really interesting...Zinnia was a really weird character but I found her to be a bit rude in terms of breaking in and snatching Key Stones from Brendan/May, Wally, Matt/Courtney, and Archie/Maxie, as well as crushing the dimensional shifter. I had a ridiculously underleveled team against Rayquaza and Deoxys though...with my Pokemon around Level 50 lol. Mega Rayquaza is definitely really cool though (too bad it's so ridiculously broken that we had to redefine Ubers and make a metagame called Anything Goes...lol). The Delta Episode was pretty interesting in general...and perhaps with the ending that's how Wallace becomes the Champion of the League (Emerald canon)?. But yeah these games are frankly really good and are excellent remakes of two great games, I think Game Freak did an excellent job with these two games and I think these are the best Pokemon games I have played yet beyond Ruby and Sapphire themselves...lol. If only we could rematch Gym Leaders and have a Battle Frontier lol.

Yeah here's a dump of my thoughts on ORAS...after playing through it.
 
So I got Alpha Sapphire a few days ago and I actually completed this pretty quickly lol. Anyways, this was a really cool game, and many of the things I saw from the original Ruby and Sapphire were pretty much the same as they were then, which I liked about ORAS. The soundtrack from ORAS was also absolutely astounding, and I just love the soundtrack, moreso than any Pokemon game in the series. Team Aqua and Team Magma are definitely more interesting, especially Archie and Maxie, as they have some more personality to them in these games. Granite Cave was definitely quite different, however, and Mauville City was surprising-it's almost like a miniature Lumiose City!! (but at least Mauville isn't that big and it's much simpler). Wally and Brendan/May are also much more interesting in ORAS imo. Aqua Admin Matt was weird though, he was like "Archie is my bro!! I live to serve my bro Archie!!" (someone tell me what Courtney is like in OR? I'm also kinda curious about Tabitha). Primal Kyogre was a huge pain in the butt because its Origin Pulse hits hard...like really hard. Luckily I managed to weaken and paralyze it with repeated Discharges and caught it in one Ultra Ball after a few resets. The Delta Episode was also really interesting...Zinnia was a really weird character but I found her to be a bit rude in terms of breaking in and snatching Key Stones from Brendan/May, Wally, Matt/Courtney, and Archie/Maxie, as well as crushing the dimensional shifter. I had a ridiculously underleveled team against Rayquaza and Deoxys though...with my Pokemon around Level 50 lol. Mega Rayquaza is definitely really cool though (too bad it's so ridiculously broken that we had to redefine Ubers and make a metagame called Anything Goes...lol). The Delta Episode was pretty interesting in general...and perhaps with the ending that's how Wallace becomes the Champion of the League (Emerald canon)?. But yeah these games are frankly really good and are excellent remakes of two great games, I think Game Freak did an excellent job with these two games and I think these are the best Pokemon games I have played yet beyond Ruby and Sapphire themselves...lol. If only we could rematch Gym Leaders and have a Battle Frontier lol.

Yeah here's a dump of my thoughts on ORAS...after playing through it.
Courtney? Creepy as fuck in her loyalty/devotion to Maxie and interest in getting rid of the player for standing in her team's way. Tabitha is still a bit of a chuckles, but is less... crazy, I guess.
 

Mario With Lasers

Self-proclaimed NERFED king
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Oh yeah, besides no Frontier and no rematches, Courtney is my biggest disappointment with ORAS. I've seen people saying she's legitimately autistic/aspergetic (?) so I'm not sure she deserves that much hate from me, but who the fuck at Game Freak thought she would be in any way likable? She isn't. I don't even think I know a decent adjective for her in Portuguese, much less in English, but she's... bad. Tabitha manages to be fun and have some kind of objective (becoming the leader of Team Magma, something Maxie acknowledges and basically tells him to fuck off lol), while Courtney's only really relevant in Delta Episode for her majestic tantrum and Southern Island, which we all know was shoehorned in the plot only so we could get the ability to Soar.

And, worst of all...


"*slurp*"


0/10, Game Freak, never do that again.
 
Oh yeah, besides no Frontier and no rematches, Courtney is my biggest disappointment with ORAS. I've seen people saying she's legitimately autistic/aspergetic (?) so I'm not sure she deserves that much hate from me, but who the fuck at Game Freak thought she would be in any way likable? She isn't. I don't even think I know a decent adjective for her in Portuguese, much less in English, but she's... bad. Tabitha manages to be fun and have some kind of objective (becoming the leader of Team Magma, something Maxie acknowledges and basically tells him to fuck off lol), while Courtney's only really relevant in Delta Episode for her majestic tantrum and Southern Island, which we all know was shoehorned in the plot only so we could get the ability to Soar.

And, worst of all...


"*slurp*"


0/10, Game Freak, never do that again.
Gamefreak's done a genuinely good autistic character before in the form of N, so Courtney really has no excuse whatsoever.
 

Karxrida

Death to the Undying Savage
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
Gamefreak's done a genuinely good autistic character before in the form of N, so Courtney really has no excuse whatsoever.
Could N even be considered autistic? His social ineptness seems to stem more from Ghetsis-enforced lack of human interaction than a medical syndrome (or whatever they're called).
 
Could N even be considered autistic? His social ineptness seems to stem more from Ghetsis-enforced lack of human interaction than a medical syndrome (or whatever they're called).
It's not definite that he is autistic, but it is my own headcanon for the character. And for future reference, autism is classified as a neurological disorder. The more ya know!

Anyway, I recently completed the Delta Episode. The game was amazing for me, returning to Hoenn in 3D felt like coming back home. Delta felt like the weakest part of the game, and I found myself replacing my (underleveled) team that had beaten Steven with a legendary I had in my copy of X just to end it sooner. What really made the experience great for me though, was the Dexnav. I caught a Numel, Makuhita, and Carvanha with it, and let me tell ya, spending at least an hour on each building up encounter levels until I can get a 2-star mon with an egg move, the right ability, and a decent nature felt amazing. It felt like I had earned the super-awesome mon that would then occupy a space in my team, and it made me that much more attached to my mons in this runthrough than perhaps any other.
 
Not having played the original games, I'm enjoying the remakes. It does dishearten me that the Battle Frontier wasn't included, I loved going through the Battle Factory in Platinum.

Now I've got the delightful pleasure of SR for a perfect or Shiny Latios on Southern Island..
 
Emerald was not only the first Pokemon game I ever played, but the first video game (discounting early-2000s point-and-click computer math games) I played…so this one was always going to be pretty special.
In short, I loved it! Couple of disappointing things - no Xatu and Claydol in the Tate & Liza Gym battle, I missed those two last Ace Trainers before entering Lilycove and overall it seemed a lot easier than I remember Emerald being (almost definitely an age thing!!) but I guess these are remakes of Ruby and Sapphire after all. But other than that I can really say I enjoyed everything - from the incredible scenery to the enhanced characterisations and all that jazzy shit.

It seems like I'm one of the few who really, really enjoyed Zinnia's characterisation - I always thought she didn't tell Big Steve about her plan because she was overconfident in her own abilities? Or something? But yeah, she exudes this kind of manic energy which made her really fun. The pre-battle stance was probably my favourite of any Pokemon game and her implied backstory's pretty heartbreaking too.
 
It felt underwhelming for me. I enjoyed X/Y more overall.

Battle frontier wah wah blah blah blah. While that disappointed me as well, the biggest disappointment to me was not expanding the regional dex. I felt like HG/SS gave a little more freshness in the Pokemon you can get unlike G/S while Hoenn didn't really add much of anything until the 8th gym, and by then it would be completely stupid to backtrack to a route and catch something at level 10 you wanted to use.

I honestly think X/Y just spoiled me. Best regional dex in a Pokemon game, ever.

Also no trainer customization = Thund mad. I liked roleplaying with the characters and always looking the same sucks.
 

cant say

twitch.tv/jakecantsay
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It felt underwhelming for me. I enjoyed X/Y more overall.

Battle frontier wah wah blah blah blah. While that disappointed me as well, the biggest disappointment to me was not expanding the regional dex. I felt like HG/SS gave a little more freshness in the Pokemon you can get unlike G/S while Hoenn didn't really add much of anything until the 8th gym, and by then it would be completely stupid to backtrack to a route and catch something at level 10 you wanted to use.

I honestly think X/Y just spoiled me. Best regional dex in a Pokemon game, ever.

Also no trainer customization = Thund mad. I liked roleplaying with the characters and always looking the same sucks.
The regional dex was my biggest (ie: only) problem with these games too. The fact that you can get Pidgeotite and Steelixite early in the game but don't have access to Pidgeotto and Onix until after Kyogre / Groudon (they're also way too underlevelled to use) was a huge tease. I understand that these were more 'traditional' remakes, but doing it right after we've been given the biggest regional dex in the series just made it seem even worse

No customisation was a bit of a letdown too, but that also comes down to these being remakes so it doesn't bother me too much...
 
i just finished up the plot over the past 2 days and while there's a number of things that stood out and I could talk about instead i just want to focus on Wally's incredibly ridiculous final battle that did not at all match his team

i was dying laughing as this amazing guitar was wailing in this giant field of red flowers as the petals flow through the wind and the sun bursts down from above despite being night time and here i am picking off his delcatty, tiny roselia, magnets, cotton doofus and Gallade.
Ok the gallade fight was the cool part. Or it would have been if i hadn't had Mega Sableye use Foul Play and one hit ko him. Thanks for doing the work for me, bro.

This was a set up that i expected out of, like, steven or zinnia
 
I'm still pretty firm on my stance regarding the underwhelming postgame content, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not still playing the shit out of AS. Pretty basic post-E4 stuff...trying my hand at Ranked matches, taking on new breeding projects to adapt to the meta, and getting them EV trained and leveled and such. Beyond that, I've been making a Pokedex push when I get tired of battles, and I may see a clear path to completion once I finish breeding and leveling all the fully-evolved mons I lacked the base forms for. Right now I'm at 526 caught for the National Dex, with at least 70 more entries coming after finishing the breed projects. That may be laughable to a lot of you, but I've never got this close to completion since G/S/C. I'd be happy if I can eventually pull it off.

The main thing I like about ORAS is the convenience factor of breeding for 5IV Pokemon, even when compared to XY. I've been able to breed more 5IV builds on AS than I have in any other Pokemon cart, if mostly because having the Day Care and the IV Judge in the same area removes so much hassle. A minor achievement in nerdiness occurred for me earlier with the hatching of my first 6IV mon ever, da-da-da-da-dahhh -- Magikarp lol. I was even lucky enough to get a male, too, so he'll likely be a prime breeding mule down the line. Of course, it was the last egg I had to grab before taking the parents out of the Day Care and starting the next breeding job. I already hatched two from the same batch with the relevant 5IV spread, so there you go. Sometimes, the RNG gods are not cruel.
 
So now that I'm finished both games, SR'ed all the Legendaries multiple times and gotten what I needed I'm kind of...deflated.

Don't get me wrong, I loved Hoenn in 3D, I liked reliving the story and seeing how they changed it a little. Delta episode was a great conclusion to the game.

I am bummed about the no Battle Frontier thing, but not out of any sense of nostalgia but rather.... boredom. I played the Maison to death in X&Y already and was hoping for something different.

Also, Dexnav was a good idea in theory but in reality I wish they'd used the Mirage spots as a kind of passerby Friend Safari as getting a pokemon with a Hidden Ability is much more annoying in this iteration than X/Y.
 

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