ORAS vs Emerald is more a matter of taste at this point, as both have their ups and downs. Arguing over which has more soul seems to miss the point of game design, as I poured my heart and soul into my Painting 101 class yet my dahlias still look more like bleeding giraffes. Both games have effort and style, it's just whichever is to your taste.
Emerald Pro:
1. Honestly I like the green bandanas on your characters, they give a color splash the old palates really needed.
2. Having both Magma and Aqua fighting each other was intriguing.
3. The Battle Frontier, all of it.
4. Contests might not be as flashy but still have more strategy than their replacements.
Emerald Con:
1. Your rival is the lamest in the series, never even fully evolving their starter.
2. Magma/Aqua trying to be serious just highlights how stupid their plans are. ORAS redesigns may look silly but they are fitting for this group of Captain Planet villains.
3. While I like Wallace and Juan, Steven Stone is the more interesting Champion and he's really under utilized in Emerald.
4. I can honestly barely remember that Aqua/Magma even had admins much less what they looked like.
5. Features tied to that dumb e-reader or Wondercard. Like, half the Sevii Islands were in the game but sure as heck nobody outside of Japan can reach them.
6. If you tried to play the game right now, odds are the internal battery has died and Hoenn has experienced a time crash. Food shortages are abundant as berries will refuse to grow, days refuse to progress forward, the citizens have become apathetic as their lives stretch onwards to infinity with nothing ever changing. It is the heat death of the R/S/E universe.
7. The most humane thing would be to use the link cable to redirect the delta meteor to the R/S/E Hoenn to annihilate the planet so the endless banality of existence may cease. That is, if Zinnia wasn't being such a stuck-up brat about it.
For things specific to ORAS (that aren't just re-stating the above)
ORAS pro:
1. Dexnav is amazing, love the dexnav, live the dexnav.
2. The change from the Abandoned Ship to Sea Mauville were more interesting, as despite the easy high concept of an abandoned ship it was rather tame. So a half-sunk oil platform with a really creepy history was for the best.
3. You can fly on a Lati@s. And the whole map is rendered for it!
ORAS con:
1. The Delta episode had some nice moments with your rival and going to space, but the whole Zinnia plot was just dumb. So dumb. I'm not a big fan of throwing this word around, but Zinnia was a complete
Mary Sue.
I'm sorry derpy shocked pikachu but she is, Zinnia drops exposition left and right like a scientist despite being a college drop-out hobo, tried to destroy the world twice if we count her sabotaging the first meteor destroying plan, and we all are supposed to be sorry for her because her girl-buddy died (of completely unrelated causes to the plot at large).
2. The reason the Game Corner is gone felt kinda mean spirited. They could have left the message out or given us voltorb flip or something.
3. Mr. Bonding, the origin story. I still have nightmares.