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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
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Well I don't care in particular, but here is the Snom Twitter and Snom Subreddit. If these don't change your mind nothing will.
Ruby and Sapphire are honestly one of the best transitions to a new hardware that Game Freak has ever made, and for base games of their generation, they are damn good and solid.
When you look at other debut Pokemon Games for each platform they've done so far, there have been issues. Red and Blue are a glitchy mess, Diamond and Pearl were sloooww and had issues with not representing the new mons enough, vice versa, you get the drill.
But Ruby and Sapphire are honestly really good and solid experiences, and for such a huge hardware graphical jump from 8 bit Game Boy to the GBA, Ruby and Sapphire were a very good debut title for the GBA and they are really good games on their own. There's a lot of good to say about them:
1. Hoenn is an absolutely wonderful region. It has an incredibly great layout, the biome diversity is great and incredibly cohesive, and there's a lot to explore. You have a desert, a rainforest, and a wetland/swamp, as well as a place surrounded by volcanic ash, and it all fits together incredibly well. I know people criticize Hoenn for having "too much water", but while the water routes are a bit monotonous, they make up for it with underwater exploration, and there's even a secret dungeon to explore off the beaten path! With a new set of legendaries: and the puzzle to reach them was amazing and really made it feel like a journey of discovery.
2. The games run incredibly smoothly. For all the slowness issues that later games experience, Ruby and Sapphire have none of those problems. The running speed in the overworld is very good, the battles run very nicely, and the overall presentation is solid for a GBA game.
3. They added so many great features. This gen really tried to push the notion that there's more to Pokemon than just battling, and it shows. Contests are an awesome feature, and they are honestly a lot of fun! While a lot of Gen 3 Pokemon are not that great in battle, they make up for it by having a lot of contest appeal. Mawile, Sableye, and Castform for example suck in battle but have a lot going for them when it comes to performing in Contests. Let's not forget Secret Bases! Those are honestly a really great feature and promoted interactivity between players. Oh and Double Battles!
4. The new Pokemon are fantastic overall. The Hoenn starters are fantastic, and there's so many awesome Pokemon designs (Gardevoir, Manectric, Aggron, Absol, Flygon, you name it!).
5. Adding on to the above, the games do a fantastic job at showing off their new Pokemon. You see them all pretty regularly, but they're all available to a healthy degree, and have good distribution (better execution than BW1) while having a healthy distribution of past gen Pokemon to incorporate without the past gen mons overshadowing them.
6. The music! The music of Hoenn is absolutely fantastic and memorable and adds to the experience tremendously.
There's probably a good deal more I could say about them, but overall even for the "base" games of their generation, Ruby and Sapphire were absolutely fantastic experiences. Compared to other "third versions", the only things Emerald really needed to fix were the dex cut (RS couldn't transfer from older gens), the lack of a post-game and refining Team Magma and Aqua and their participation in the game (Emerald combines their antagonist roles). The stuff Emerald added was more icing on the cake than having to fix a flawed game like Platinum for example to. Even if you took Emerald out of the equation, RS by themselves stand on their own pretty damn well, and they're still very solid games overall.
When you look at other debut Pokemon Games for each platform they've done so far, there have been issues. Red and Blue are a glitchy mess, Diamond and Pearl were sloooww and had issues with not representing the new mons enough, vice versa, you get the drill.
But Ruby and Sapphire are honestly really good and solid experiences, and for such a huge hardware graphical jump from 8 bit Game Boy to the GBA, Ruby and Sapphire were a very good debut title for the GBA and they are really good games on their own. There's a lot of good to say about them:
1. Hoenn is an absolutely wonderful region. It has an incredibly great layout, the biome diversity is great and incredibly cohesive, and there's a lot to explore. You have a desert, a rainforest, and a wetland/swamp, as well as a place surrounded by volcanic ash, and it all fits together incredibly well. I know people criticize Hoenn for having "too much water", but while the water routes are a bit monotonous, they make up for it with underwater exploration, and there's even a secret dungeon to explore off the beaten path! With a new set of legendaries: and the puzzle to reach them was amazing and really made it feel like a journey of discovery.
2. The games run incredibly smoothly. For all the slowness issues that later games experience, Ruby and Sapphire have none of those problems. The running speed in the overworld is very good, the battles run very nicely, and the overall presentation is solid for a GBA game.
3. They added so many great features. This gen really tried to push the notion that there's more to Pokemon than just battling, and it shows. Contests are an awesome feature, and they are honestly a lot of fun! While a lot of Gen 3 Pokemon are not that great in battle, they make up for it by having a lot of contest appeal. Mawile, Sableye, and Castform for example suck in battle but have a lot going for them when it comes to performing in Contests. Let's not forget Secret Bases! Those are honestly a really great feature and promoted interactivity between players. Oh and Double Battles!
4. The new Pokemon are fantastic overall. The Hoenn starters are fantastic, and there's so many awesome Pokemon designs (Gardevoir, Manectric, Aggron, Absol, Flygon, you name it!).
5. Adding on to the above, the games do a fantastic job at showing off their new Pokemon. You see them all pretty regularly, but they're all available to a healthy degree, and have good distribution (better execution than BW1) while having a healthy distribution of past gen Pokemon to incorporate without the past gen mons overshadowing them.
6. The music! The music of Hoenn is absolutely fantastic and memorable and adds to the experience tremendously.
There's probably a good deal more I could say about them, but overall even for the "base" games of their generation, Ruby and Sapphire were absolutely fantastic experiences. Compared to other "third versions", the only things Emerald really needed to fix were the dex cut (RS couldn't transfer from older gens), the lack of a post-game and refining Team Magma and Aqua and their participation in the game (Emerald combines their antagonist roles). The stuff Emerald added was more icing on the cake than having to fix a flawed game like Platinum for example to. Even if you took Emerald out of the equation, RS by themselves stand on their own pretty damn well, and they're still very solid games overall.
Although it was the best, it sadly screwed over later gens
The "notify of every single action/prompt" that was slower than Gen 1/2 still plagues the games till this day. The palette being rigid unlike 2s ability for the day night cycle also is a downgrade. And then some people note it started the legendary spam, and having more crazy plots for villain motives (not that I find either negative, but still)
And despite it being the most solid new entry....from what I've seen, 3 is underlooked heavily among the fanbase, probably due to Pokemania being dead. 4 was a reignition cuz DS was a force admittedly, while 3 was pirated like crazy
I think that's more on Game Freak themselves than Gen 3. Game Freak was probably so satisfied with how Gen 3's model turned out that they've more or less stuck to it ever since, and the latter two are more Game Freak having been constantly been stuck in the Gen 3 model mentality since, since subsequent Gens despite the changes they've brought have repeatedly attempted to mimic or imitate the Ruby and Sapphire formula, to varying degrees of success. Gen 4 and Gen 5 worked fine with it since naturally, it was still the 2D era, but it became more of a problem with the 3D games where you already have the spinoffs (Stadium, Colosseum, XD, etc.) as a comparison point, and the 3D games onwards have a lot of unfulfilled potential in that regard.
It's funny you mention that, because Masuda said a few years ago that because of the situation of Pokemania dying at the time, Ruby and Sapphire were the most difficult/stressful games to develop. The games themselves were not that hard to develop in terms of hardware and vice versa, but the stress was compounded by the issue of Pokemon slowly "fading" away into obscurity, creating a huge pressure for Game Freak to prove the world wrong with RS by saying "No, it's not dead and Pokemon's gonna keep on living".
Why Ruby And Sapphire Were The Most Challenging Pokémon To Make - Game Informer
The above is Masuda's account of how stressful it was to develop RS, but that they were determined to try to make it succeed, and it did pretty well, much to his relief.
Another interesting tidbit is that it seems (if I'm reading it right) he had already conceived not only Gen 3, but had already planned the start of Gen 4 from the start all the way back early in Gen 3's development. Even during RS's development, he already had all of Gen 3 planned out, not only to release RS as the new debut games, but that FireRed and LeafGreen would come after Ruby and Sapphire to complement them, then Gen 4's titles on their next platform would be named Diamond and Pearl, and that they would work to ensure FRLG and RS could transfer Hoenn and Kanto Pokemon to DP.
And frankly, it would seem that long term plan out really worked well.
Ruby and Sapphire are were not seen so favourably partly because of the "soft" dexit they included.
I mean, out of a sudden, you can transfer none of the content from Gold, Silver, and Crystal. Even if they had understandable reasons for not including trading, some people got mad.
And then there was the strong association with the anime and the fact they coincided with the big changes in the ensemble main characters cast...
These games had their chance to recover after all the missing Pokémon were brought back through other games, but then came Emerald.
I mean, out of a sudden, you can transfer none of the content from Gold, Silver, and Crystal. Even if they had understandable reasons for not including trading, some people got mad.
And then there was the strong association with the anime and the fact they coincided with the big changes in the ensemble main characters cast...
These games had their chance to recover after all the missing Pokémon were brought back through other games, but then came Emerald.
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Maybe 10 years ago but idt anyone really cares about the soft dexit and especially not the anime cast anymore. The real reason for OG RS not being discussed much nowadays is just because Emerald and ORAS have taken all its spotlight
I wasn't being petty :o I agree completely with what you've said.
Agreed. Hoenn is dope. Wish they kept more of the older Pokemon, but otherwise super solid.
I will admit I as a kid wasn't crazy about Hoenn, I preferred Johto/Kanto and even Sinnoh. As an adult Hoenn is one of my favorites.
Regarding the "too much water" issue is that the water routes are pretty repetitive since you encounter pretty much the same 3 Pokemon unless you want to be picky and count Lati@s. So the only way you encounter other Pokemon that are not Wingull, Tentacool and Pelipper is to dive or to fish. And fishing is the worst thing in Gen 3 because you now have to play a stupid minigame and you may still encounter Tentacool.
There are few water places where you can encounter something else but the three Pokemon mentioned like small water places where you encounter Marill, and already common Pokemon on the land with only a 1% chance to get a Surskit (or Goldini in Emerald).
Oh, and in caves you are encountering Zubat and Golbat which you encounter already on foot.
Yeah, I dislike the water routes because it rarely feels like it would be more interesting if it where land where you can encounter a larger selection of Pokemon than on water. I wish they added more flying types not named Wingull like they added Zubat and Golbat in caves. Considering we are in Generation 3 and not 2 where there are larger selection of Pokemon that could be encountered, it would be far more beneficial.
The best thing I can say about the water routes is that you can swim relatively fast unlike in prior gens and DP. And it still baffles me that there is no speed up option in the VC games like in Stadium 1 or 2.
There are few water places where you can encounter something else but the three Pokemon mentioned like small water places where you encounter Marill, and already common Pokemon on the land with only a 1% chance to get a Surskit (or Goldini in Emerald).
Oh, and in caves you are encountering Zubat and Golbat which you encounter already on foot.
Yeah, I dislike the water routes because it rarely feels like it would be more interesting if it where land where you can encounter a larger selection of Pokemon than on water. I wish they added more flying types not named Wingull like they added Zubat and Golbat in caves. Considering we are in Generation 3 and not 2 where there are larger selection of Pokemon that could be encountered, it would be far more beneficial.
The best thing I can say about the water routes is that you can swim relatively fast unlike in prior gens and DP. And it still baffles me that there is no speed up option in the VC games like in Stadium 1 or 2.
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I'd also say the day night cycle not being included was also a recognition of the GBA's limitations, since darker pallets are difficult to see with no backlight. The overworld sprites and textures probably would be difficult to distinguish if it was shifted to a night palette. I pulled out my original GBA and threw in Ruby to see how it looked, and it's pretty murky and hard to see, even in a well lit room. The overall style still comes through, but I think R/S really shines with a backlight. I'll give it credit for looking good without a backlight, but I think shifting the pallets for a day / night cycle would have cut against the game far more than keeping it in.
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, as a GBA launch title, was noted as being dark and difficult to see, and I think a lot of developers took that criticism into consideration when developing GBA games and figured brighter colors and styles would translate better on the GBA's screen (at least until the GBA SP released).
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Agreed. When I was editing wild mon spawn, I was disgusted at the low diversity for water routes. Add >60% envounter rate, that gets old quick
Sadly even if you got all Gen 1-3 water mons, it still isn't enough. GF really didn't know how to split up distribution
Only generation that runs at 60 fps, that's an acomplishment. And Hoenn is probably my favorite region ever, I always was looking forward what else is to explore. Even in the water sections where you can find stuff like underwater corridors, Sootopolis City (polis city, redundancy much?), Sky Tower, etc.
Oh right, I heard they changed the voice cast Battle Frontier onward, and it was veeeeeery controversial (and on the 10th anniversary no less!). Here in Latin America this didn't happen, but midway in Sinnoh Ash got a new voice actor who still is to this day. This change was controversial af, I am pretty neutral towards it because Ash's previous voice was already losing his luster at that point so it didn't affect me.
FRLG always gets snubbed because "Kanto bad!! Kanto overrated!!" despite undeniably being the best iteration of Kanto and being one of the best games in the series overall. The only true flaws with FRLG are the unecessary trade and evolution restrictions, but it has probably the best postgame of any game in the series; Sevii Isles 4-7 I feel are so different from any other location in the game. It also very naturally integrates Johto Pokémon into the Sevii Isles. I also love how many call-backs there are to Gen 2: the remastered Violet City, Azalea Town and Lake of Rage music, as well as the Togepi egg and Team Rocket prelude (and I am absolutely offended that FRLG flawlessly set up HGSS's storyline and there is not a SINGLE mention in HGSS of the Sevii Isles).
I personally would consider FRLG the best remake out of the three.
I personally would consider FRLG the best remake out of the three.
Agreed.
While I like the post game of FrLg myself, I dislike that it feels more like main game content because you can't interact with RSE nor Colosseum/XD until you do the main post game missions. Not to mention, you can't get fight Mewtwo nor get other region Pokemon per trade from other FRLG cardridges.
That was a pretty dumb move.
Wish they did a little more. You can't even get Eevee to evolve into Umbreon or Espeon unlike in RSE where you don't get Eevee.
Also keep in mind that every game except Ruby and Sapphire had featured Kanto in some capacity. A big selling point of Kanto was that you can obtain the Kanto Pokémon missing from Ruby and Sapphire. Tamashii Hiroka stresses that they failed in that regard because you have complete the Post game entirely to trade with Ruby and Sapphire, so for a collector or for someone who had played Pokémon previously, it means playing through the entire Kanto region again instead of playing just for the sake of catching Pokémon. which is incredibly tedious since they tried to keep it the same as much as possible, which is really boring for a veteran player, especially since it was a risky time to be a Pokémon fan back then.
And let’s not forget my biggest complaint: 0 Dark types and 1 Steel type line in the entire game before the post Game.
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Though can you really punish FRLG for that?
- Dark-type: Even if they did allow cross-gen evolutions from the start, that would still have only resulted there being one Dark-type and it would be Umbreon which means not only having to use the only Eevee you get for that but it's also designed to be a tank so not like you'll see much offense power there. Also, while there's no Dark-types, there are Dark-type moves: A lot of Pokemon naturally learn Bite, a few good others get Feint Attack and Pursuit, and a lot of Pokemon can learn Thief whose TM you find in Mt. Moon early on (showing they probably knew of the lack of Dark-type so tossed you an early bone). Only other thing they could do was change a Pokemon-type to Dark, like maybe make the Mankey family Fighting/Dark. "They could have put in Dark-types from other gens" you know the point of the remakes is trying to recreate the experience of that generation and that includes limiting it to the Pokemon (families) that existed at the time. Granted, you technically did only find Murkrow, Sneasel, Houndour, and Misdreavus in Kanto which looking back feels utterly astounding (you'd think at least Murkrow, Houndour, and Misdreavus would be found elsewhere in Johto but nope, and of course they didn't fix that problem in HGSS unless you count their inclusion (minus Sneasel) in the Safari Zone); maybe they could have put a special event/make it a 1% encounter in/close to the location you found them in Gen II (Route 7 for Murkrow & Houndour, Route 22 for Sneasel & Misdreavus).
- Steel-type: There may have been only 1 Steel-type in Kanto but it's a pretty good one: the Magnemite family. I guess in theory they could have made Steelix available early on (though Scizor you'd still need to wait till Safari Zone for Scyther). Okay, sure, Sabrina would be easier if there was a Dark-type or a bulker Steel-type, but that just means you'd just need to defeat Sabrina the old fashion way with just overpowering her (plus you now got some Dark-type moves to help).
- Other One Offs: Also it wasn't uncommon for Kanto only having one family of a certain Type, may I remind you the Ghastly family were the only Ghost-types and Dratini the only Dragon-types?
One is better than none. Even it would have been small, anything is better than 0. Anyway, now looking at it, a lot of Alolan Forms were given the Dark type, including Muk, Persian, and Raticate. Then you have Alolan Sandslash and Dugtrio for Steel types, Alolan Marowak for Ghost type, and Alolan Exeggutor for Dragon types. All of these are relatively rare types in Gen 1, and this makes me wonder if the types for the Alolan forms were chosen as a result of wanting more types for Let’s Go, since limiting to Gen 1 only means 0 Dark types and 1 Steel type line all over again.
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eh, Let's Go was not designed as a game with postgame.
There's... basically nothing to do after you beat it. Sure you can fill the pokedex and catch mewtwo, and you have higher level rematches with gym leaders... but that's it.
The Master Trainers were a "cool idea done terribly" (albeith some of them are pretty clever), and well, it doesn't even have a GTS or battle spot, which is a pretty clear indicator that the game was mostly designed as "finish then drop" kind.
I don't mind Zubat in caves, I really like it. I actually did a "Zubat-Locke" in Ruby, where I would catch every Zubat I came across by having a team of Zigzagoons pickup items which I'd sell for Pokeballs. It was... surreal and catchartic to say the least
However, Tentacool is the far worse offender for a repeat encounter, even so long back as Gen 1, there were over 20 water types, yet it was always Tentacool. I find Gen 3 to be the worst in this regard, Tentacool every other water tile, even with the multitude of other waters, like Staryu, Whishcash, Wailmer, even Feebas (I'm leaving out the Clamperl line and the Chinchou line as they are deep sea exclusive), Tenta is omnipresent
However, Tentacool is the far worse offender for a repeat encounter, even so long back as Gen 1, there were over 20 water types, yet it was always Tentacool. I find Gen 3 to be the worst in this regard, Tentacool every other water tile, even with the multitude of other waters, like Staryu, Whishcash, Wailmer, even Feebas (I'm leaving out the Clamperl line and the Chinchou line as they are deep sea exclusive), Tenta is omnipresent
But the fact they have Gym Leader rematches (which not all main core series do, or if they do it's a roundabout thing where all we want is to just go up to the Gym Leader and rechallenge them) and the Master Trainers (including battles with Red, Blue, and Green (sadly no Oak even though the opportunity was hanging right there in front of them)) show GF had some interest in post game content. The Master Trainers notably probably took some work to do, figuring out the right configuration of Moves, Level, IVs, & EVs to assure a challenge but still beatable (and as we've seen with Metapod they clearly didn't care if some challenges were a test of patients...). So, with them doing all that, was a Battle Tower really that out of a question? The Battle Tower is even more structurally than the Master Trainers, even if they don't create set teams for all the NPCs just having a pool of all the fully evolved Pokemon (& maybe some prevos they could think of a could moveset for) with variants of each that all the NPCs randomly select 3 Pokemon from would have been something, better than nothing. Heck, if doesn't even need to be a Battle Tower, hey, I know, instead of an arcade you can't do nothing in they could have change the Game Corner into a "Battle Corner" and imply Team Rocket were running an illegal betting ring within it.
Okay, now all you need to do is teach them to work together and make a Schooling Zubat (40/150/130/130/135/50//635).
If you're wondering how I got those stats, I did the following:
- I added the Base Stat increases of Wishiwashi School form to the Pokemon: +0 HP, +120 Atk, +110 Def, +115 SpA, +110 SpD, -10 Spe, +445 BST.
Now, since Wishiwashi Solo Form has the lowest BST of all Pokemon, 175, these new stats are probably WAY too high. So let's even things out:
- I divide the new Pokemon's BST with Wishiwashi School form's BST of 620.
- Take the resulting answer & round up to the nearest tenth (we'll call this "X").
- Divide Atk, Def, SpA, & SpD by X.
- Spe there's two calculations: Normally it'll be Spe multiplied by X. BUT if that results Spe having a higher number than the Pokemon's original Spe stat, use this formula instead: Spe = (10/X) + (new Spe stat).
- Round all answers to nearest number divisible by 5.
- Add up the stats to get the new BST.
- You just made a Schooling Pokemon!
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my main issue with Kanto remakes is how they constantly refuse to consider adding any pokémon to the region. I know it was the first Pokémon game so it'd only have its own pokémon, but would there really be any harm in adding Johto pokémon? It already happened in GSC (and then later with HGSS), it wouldn't be a massive retcon, and it'd add more diversity.
Subsequently, I'm not a fan of how most romhacks try to stuff themselves will all Gen 1-7+ mons
Because most of the time this happens
-No rebalancing of mons
-Poor sense archetype/habitat locations
-poor rep for the mons cuz....it's kinda impossible to show off 700+ different mons among trainers
Because most of the time this happens
-No rebalancing of mons
-Poor sense archetype/habitat locations
-poor rep for the mons cuz....it's kinda impossible to show off 700+ different mons among trainers
I dunno. It is the best iteration of Kanto but it's still the Kanto experience, which felt outdated to me after the vibrating Hoenn or the upcoming Sinnoh. The Gen 2 callbacks were, most likely, hints for the upcoming Johto remake. Also, no wild Hoenn mons aside from the limited event Deoxys....
Let's Go feels like an even more obsolete experience with the removal of post gen 1 Pokemon and current mechanics (items, abilities, etc.). If they really wanted it to dumb down the mechanics so it can "feel more like the original", the og game is in the 3ds eshop and 6 times cheaper.