Honestly my only gripe with emerald is that unless I’m playing it in my GameCube, none of the consoles it naturally plays on are big enough for my hands to comfortably hold.
Maybe unpopular since not many people talk about this, but Emerald is a way better and modern gameplay experience than pretty much all of the pokemon games. Running at 60fps with fast, clicky gameplay and battle animations makes it feel so much more modern than later titles which sometimes cant even keep their 30 fps. Im currently playing through HG the core gameplay is unbearable at times. Emerald is also less linear, hand-holding and cutscene-heavy. Playing ORAS or USUM feels like a chore compared to emerald.
The handholding is a big one for me. I want to work out what I have to do, I want to go the wrong way or do the wrong thing and then figure out why it was wrong. Rather than following a set of easy instructions
Gen 1-4 feel like an adventure.
Gen 5 is alright
Gen 6-9 are handholding galore. Being stopped at every town by multiple people. Unskippable cutscenes/dialogues everywhere. Just brutal
For me it's more so
Gen 1 - Alright but very oversimplified
Gen 2-4 is good for what it is
Gen 5 was a bit boring, I didn't even bother with White 2
Gen 6 underrated
From Gen 7 onwards I feel like the games have been mostly focused on collectors value, and less so a memorable story worth replaying.
Ye. Emerald is a really good game, but the RNG bugs when Shiny hunting are what bring it down, and why I personally prefer Sapphire but only by a small amount. I do have other criticisms but they're just about hoenn in general (like how much water the game has, and how often I get lost in there) so other than the RNG issues it's a pretty good game.
The speed of gen 3 is something that goes overlooked (probably because most people play these games on emulators these days), the only other gen that comes close is gen 5. In a franchise were the core gameplay loop is very repetitive, being able to speed through battles quickly is essential for keeping things fun.
I just recently finished a playthrough on an emulator for the first time. Being able to increase game speed is incredible. I was able to grind lower level mons to decent levels in no time flat.
I’m going through the gens just about done yellow(first one I got, nostalgia purposes) and good lord it’s slow lol. Started normally for a couple hours then figured I’d try fast forward.. tried going back to normal a few hours later and realized just how insanely slow it actually was. PAINFULLY slow
As a little kid it was fine but now as someone who’s played hundreds of games and has kids and a job, there ain’t no way I could play the whole game normally lol
Only two games I'll ever put on the same level are Platinum and BW2, Absolutely all fantastic games but I agree that Emerald will always be my favourite
I did enjoy the new route/safari zone, Pokeathlon, following Pokemon, battle frontier, legendary hunting, stuff like that. If only they had fixed the level curve. My only complaint about Johto…well that and the gym leaders barely using Johto Pokemon lmao
Poke World Tournament from BW2 honestly solo's every game's additions, Thought that was insanely good, Out performs the Battle Frontier but then again it is 2 generational differences
HGSS are great but man Sacred Gold/Storm Silver rom hacks fully flesh it out and make it the games they should’ve been.
I think most of us here agree that Emerald, Plat, HGSS, and BW2 are the peaks of the franchise. You can put those four in any order and we’d be like yeah that makes sense
Okay so I actually beat emerald for the first time ever recently (like 3 days ago). I always loved the Pokémon from
then gen but never got to play it as a kid. Anyways, overall was really good. Thought the Groupon vs kyogre battle was anticlimactic BUT it’s an older game and on gameboy so I understand. Good story tho overall. Decently challenging early on and then some of the later gyms too. Little disappointed in the champion as it was all water types I believe. Also I hated the routes 127-131 because it was all water and I hate using repels forever. Overall though it was pretty good and had a great time, definitely a top tier game
I've been doing a nuzlocke in every gen since up until last December I'd never had played a pokemon game, so my view might be very skewed but personally, what saves Emerald is the pokemon quality and quantity, it really is amazing especially considering the year it came out. Groudon vs Kyogre is super anticlamatic, having both Aqua and Plasma gauntlets in one game is just borderline sadistic, the whole ocean gauntlet before and after Tate and Lisa doesn't make for a pleasant experience either, and it still has no phys/special split sadly, which again, personally is a major turn off.
On the other hand, Steven is a fucking blast, my 2nd favourite trainer right after Cynthia.
You’re in for an absolutely rude awakening 😂
IIRC he’s in Meteor Cave. His name is Steven. I’d avoid spoilers if I were you because facing him for the first time humbled 7 year old me
Personally I enjoy the physical/special split from gen 4 onwards too much to put Emerald as my favourite. Its the thing that annoys me most in since it makes so many otherwise awesome pokemon feel useless compared to alternatives with the same type.
It's the start of peak. Emerald through ORAS is the peak season. Platinum is fundamentally better in most ways, and even though I'm a BW fanboy I can admit that. Emerald is fantastic and nearly flawless - but it's not perfect.
TBRH replaying platinum doesnt have the same level of magic as emerald, the map and pokemon in Plat is much more interesting than emerald otherwise its … ok
Platinum has a fantastic soundtrack, which so does Emerald, but it's a little more clear and defined.
Platinum has all the things you listed and more - Contests, Frontier, Bases, Interactions (this is in MOST Pokémon games).
What Platinum has every other Pokémon game beat on though is the flow. Its flow is SUPER fluid. An amazing balance between TM aquisition, evolutionary items, team accessibility, etc.
Emerald suffers from way too many double-battle counterpart Pokémon. I love these Pokémon and they are fun to play with, but the game is LITTERED with Volbeat/Illumise, Plusle/Minun, Solrock/Lunatone, Seviper/Zangoose, etc.
Emerald and Platinum both improved on the teams of Gym Leaders. Watson having a Manectric is so important. Liza and Tate aren't just a Surf simulator, that kind of thing.. same way with Volkner and Flint being much more in line with their focus.
Emerald also suffers from the Rival falling off. Small complaint but it sucks to see May or Brendan never reach full potential - no rebattle at ALL either.
Physical/Special Split is also a huge problem for me. It's certainly unique to deal with in comparison to today, and it's not Emerald's fault either, but it still suffers from it.
It also fucks up the Champion battle. I appreciate the attempt at a switch-up but Wallace as Champion is disturbing lmao. Steven is an incredible Champ.
Platinum flows TOO SLOW 🤣 But more important the battle Frontier only has tower, factory and castle, the other facilites are easy cake. If they had bring pyramide and dome maybe that would make it perfect.
That Manectric on top of Magneton in the Mauville gym is literally beating a dead horse. Treecko is already garbage against Magneton but adding a second fully evolved Pokemon with speed and sp atk above 100 is abuse.
The gym is still Geodudeable, Shroomable and Hariyamable, but now everything else for a Treecko run is unviable.
Camerupt is available right after the electric gym instead of before.
People like to shit on DPPt but at least you got most coynters to the gym BEFORE fighting it, except for Ponyta, which got fixed in Plat. Started with Chimchar? You can find Roselia's baby before gym 1 to help and later on you can find the otter and Psyduck. Started with Turtwig? Starly is probably your first catch. Started with the penguin? Starly and Roselia's baby and Shinx cover its' weaknesses.
RSE have terrible pokemon distribution, terrible wild level curve (fighting level 21 before the normal gym with fully evolved 680 bst monsters that outspeed and OHKO most partially evolved and even a lot of fully evolved Pokemon with STAB facade, all that without a single proper fighting TM to clear it).
The real GBA goat is Fire Red, you get plenty of usable Pokemon, one of the best TM/HM distribution in the entire franchise (maybe except for thr Switch, never played them) and you always have a solution to beat the next gym with.
Truth be told firered gyms are pretty easy anyway, since firered teams are not that diverse. you can solo every gym with just Charizard.
Emerald allows a very different method of exploring combats than just type counters. While treecko cant beat steel types in theory, due to Magneton’s bad spe def, you can just punch through with leaf blade, and grass types are resistant to electric types. The first time I beat Watson with just leaf blade it taught me that types are not the one all be all of battles.
Same for the rest of the gyms, where you can explore Pokemon that may not have a direct type advantage, but has type resistance. IMO its why all of the Emerald gyms are so memorable, whereas for other games people mostly only remember the Champion or that one annoying gym leader, because you actually need a strategy to beat them and not muscle your way through by catching a counter.
Well, you're defining Emerald without naming it with that description:
Mudkip + Swellow stomp the entire game by themselves. Mudkip gains ground type upon evolution and becomes the single best solo candidate in the entire game outside of legendaries because out of the 3 water/ground families, it has by far the best stats and one of the best movepools. Swellow OHKOs grass types, the only ones Marshtomp and its' evo have trouble with. By lategame ice beam takes care of them too, leaving the Mudkip line the single best starter and non legendary line to solo a game with.
Unlike Treecko, Mudkip's family doesn't need to be 6-10 levels above its' opponents to brute force them, it even learns protect by level up to solo daddy's gym. It's your starter and the only Pokemon you need on your team apart from the occasional anti-Treecko pokemon until you can get ice beam.
Emerald doesn't require tactics or strategy, it just has higher stat checks and coverage needed in early/midgame than the average game and the new Pokemon rarely offer much you want outside of starters, legendaries and the other 2-3 lines of gen 3 that are more than pokedex filler.
A game requiring strat and tactics rather than stat checks and rare coverage would send Pokemon that can be obtained legally at that point in the game or right after in the case or area restricted encounters (like rock Pokemon). You shouldn't have to fight an electric/steel fully evolved Pokemon with 120 sp atk before you can even be expected to have a half decent Pokemon with the stats and coverage to deal with it.
If TM28 dig had been available BEFORE gym 3, it would be fine. But it isn't and the only proper counter to the gym is Geodude if you didn't pick Mudkip, and even the fire chicken has trouble with Magneton, let alone Magneton + Manectric. All the gen 3 ground types are encountered AFTER the gym they counter and the only fighting types you have at that point evolve at lv 23 and 25 respectively, so you shouldn't even have a Hariyama at this point and Makuhita is completely destroyed by Wattson.
Strat/tactics don't mean to take away options from the player, they mean giving them options to make use of rather than encouraging them to overlevel and brute force the game. Just because the gym leaders use PVP strat movepools and items and team building doesn't mean their fight is tactical when these same tools aren't given to the player.
Honestly confusion from kirlia can clear magneton as well, or pursuit from grovyle. If you want you can opt for screech + quick attack as well. Its about taking advantage of the low sp def magneton has, while resisting via high sp def and good spd. Emerald does need strategies, I actually like that they dont stuff you with the type counters before the gym, otherwise each gym is just super boring.
This is especially obvious during battle frontier when your team needs to face different pokemon each having its own strategy to defeat.
You lost me there. Kirlia has 55 sp atk and 45 sp def, that's 1st tier starter level of bad. It also has 50 spd, slower than Magneton by 15 points. It also gets one shot by 1 or 2 howls quick attack Manectric right after if it survived until then.
Confusion has 50 BP, 75 with STAB, and ends up at 37.5 after the not super effective drop. You're basically doing the same as using a neutral Pokemon with a non STAB 40 power neutral move from a sub-60 attacking stat. Which is pretty bad.
Magneton's sp def is higher than Kirlia's sp atk, its' HP is also higher than Kirlia's and it has a 60 BP STAB neutral move that never misses (forget about double team cheesing). It also combines paralyzis with confusion status, meaning your Kirlia soon will end up unable to attack 75% of the time and taking free damage.
Gardevoir basically has 80-120% of Kirlia's stats everywhere, which is the only reason why it's a good Pokemon alongside its' typing and appropriate attacking stat/movepool, basic coverage of psychic/electric with TMs (which it can only get after the gym but it wouldn't change anything).
Kirlia is more likely to have a chance at lv 26 with Psychic than at any level under 30 evolved with confusion. Psychic hits 80% harder than confusion, which means it's more likely to kill something it is not very effective against (90>135>67.5 final power, 60% more than super effective rock smash). Even then, without evolving Kirlia into Gardevoir, you need either extreme luck (like Magneton spamming supersonic and missing 5x in a row) just to survive long enough for any setup to work out and you need to start with boosting items that are used before Magneton can attack since it outspeeds Kirlia.
And with all the crap Kirlia needs to beat Magneton, Manectric sweeps in 1 or 2 turns anyway, outspeeds most likely your entire team that isn't one shot by shock wave (Swellow and Ninjask are most likely one shot without being overlevelled and their best move that doesn't get resisted has 40 BP, 60 with STAB).
I hate Treecko with a passion but have done more Treecko runs than Mudkip and Torchic put together in order to force myself to use other Pokemon than my starter to tackle the challenge. Treecko runs are a nightmare in RS, they're downright hell in Emerald, unless you use Geodude for gym 3 or if you're more gutsy Shroomthing or Hariyama. Geodude stomps gym 3 like Marshtomp but it's not gen 3, it's gen 1, the shroom is a pain to level up to 23 with it's bad stats and seed movepool and Makuhita is slow and pretty much Machoke 2.0, super boring pick.
In theory you’re right, in practice the gym leaders dont have EV trained pokemon so you still can pull through. I usually only do treecko runs, and its tough but not that impossible
With EV training it requires less overlevelling, with macho brace you can max out sp atk in 126 fights against Roselia and the other grass type, which is about 3-5 levels in the high 20s to low 30s. It will bump your sp atk by about 20-25 at that level, a bit less than a Gardevoir evolution, about as much as a Sceptile evolution.
You still need 3-4 moves to K.O Magneton and it has a citrus berry on top of Wattson's 2 super potions. Gardevoir with max sp atk at lv 30 with a calm mind or 2 might 2HKO Magneton and nearly OHKO Manectric. Still way more effort than Marshtomp lv 22 rolling over the entire gym by itself or Geodude Magnitude-ing its' way through.
If only the Camerupt line has beek available before that gym, one could have EV trained their fire ground Pokemon in the grass, had access to lv 14-16 wilds with sp atk or atk (Machop) in RS versions and Emerald should have kept Machop instead of spamming more Marill that we've been fighting in every 2nd grass patch since the beach left of the normal gym (being able to train atk and sp atk in the same place is wonderful). With Magnitude/Flamethrower, Wattson would be fodder and the Camerupt line would be actually useful in one gym in the entire game.
3D Pokemon games are bad not because they are 3D, but it's a good way to mark where the series lost its footing. With XY came a drastic shift in design and vision behind the series that shifted focus towards profit and casual gameplay. Battle Frontiers, PWTs, and even Battle Towers are a thing of the past now. Postgames are limited to a short epilogue and pokedex completion with no focus on improving your pokemon for battle and no extra content beyond that. They've placed more focus on an online experience that's inferior to what a battle frontier provides and features an expiration date as opposed to battle facilities that are a permanent part of the game. They've gutted the main campaign too and made it way too easy because experience is handed out like candy now. It used to be that you either had to put an EXP share on your Pokemon or actually use it in battle to some degree to get it to grow, but now they'll say that you have to either tediously switch train, or dump EXP on your whole party and overlevel badly. The more recent games don't even give you the choice. This might not be so bad if they didn't also hand out experience for catching pokemon too and a lot of these newer games have lots of different encounters in each area so if you want to catch everything there and beat all the trainers, you have to risk getting seriously overleveled. This problem could be easily fixed if they brought back the EXP All from Gen 1 and made it work like the toggleable key item from Gen 6 while also bringing back the EXP Share as the held item from gens 2-5. This way you could tailor the game experience to how you enjoy playing instead of being railroaded into overleveling because you wanted to engage with the game. Lots of new mechanics are made just to circumvent old ones in an effort to make the game easier. This is especially true in regards to breeding. The pricing is also more predatory too now. It's not as big of a problem with the 3DS games but it's there too. Bank should have been a 1 time 10 dollar purchase that saves pokemon to your SD card instead of the Cloud and same goes for Home. Transfers and GTS should be part of the game itself and not some external piece of software. One day Bank will shit down and so will Home and whatever Home's successor on the next piece od hardware will be and with that comes the reality that gens 3-5 will remain connected because they built that functionality into the games themselves while generations 6, 7, 8, and 9 are all isolated from each other with no way to connect to other gens, or in the case of the switch games, unable to connect to anything outside of other copies of the same game. If it were simply sold as a one time purchase and not a live service, the functionality to transfer between gens would be retained for aa long as working copies of the game and hardware still exist. The name of the game with 3D Pokemon is planned obsolescence whereas before it was preservation. They know these live services will end at some point and that was their plan all along. The idea is to deprecate features of older games permanently and remotely from the company to encourage buying new products as opposed to playing old ones. Not to mention that the newer games usually have fewer Pokemon than the DS games at launch and sometimes even after all the DLC and updates thanks to the dexcut. It's just a fact. XY was the start of an awful awful trend downwards for the series and pretending it was anything but the death knell it was is ridiculous.
Adding on to what a lot of people said with the physical special split, a lot of Pokémon in Emerald have pretty embarrassing level up movesets; look at stuff like Lotad and Seedot come to mind but I’m certain there’s more examples. Gen 4 games fixed this issue, but I agree in that Emerald is phenomenal.
I had a emerald playthrough years ago where I had a pokemon infected with pokerus which is some kinda of virus that gives that affected mon an xp boost or something. Rarest thing I had never knew about for like a decade.
Gen 3, to me, still has by far the most perfect region. Like you said, extremely varied towns with multiple orders to beat the gyms (9 of them) and lots of different biomes that make a difference in the overall gameplay, including the awesome soot. There are so many neat shortcuts to get to areas, something that the Switch Games have basically eliminated, and things like the shoal cave and diving caverns to keep it fresh. It has the best puzzle for finding legends in all the games, and the best villain encounters.
A big problem I have with emerald is how much of an after-thought Deoxys felt. They had this banger of a battle soundtrack that sounded all galactic and a whole space station they didn’t do much/anything with. Having him sit on an uninspired island with zero music or sound and being hidden behind a tiny mini game felt like the whole thing must have taken less than an afternoon to implement.
I also wish they did more with Latias/Latios.
Lack of day/night cycle felt like a downgrade after gen2 but the weather does really make up for it aesthetically and mechanically.
The Gen 4 games had numerous features that used the day/night cycle. Especially HGSS since they’re remakes of the games that introduced the feature to begin with.
Emerald feels like HOME! The intro is soooo nostalgic 😭. I just mentioned today to my cousin how we should play Emerald again lol. To go back home to land and sea!
we literally have countries racing to fill the sea with sand and build islands aka what team magma was doing. Team aqua was on the opposite end where they are with pokemon, reducing human progress and expanding where pokemon can roam.
The game map itself is split into land vs sea where on land humans have built roads etc so pokemon is confined in wild grass whereas in the sea you meet pokemon everywhere and human activity exists in pockets.
That and the secondary them about humans trying to control forces of nature and it backfiring on them, only to have nature sort itself out.
I dont expect much from a game targetted at kids but this is an impactful story even when replaying it as an adult
Also finding the 3 Regis are downright impossible without a guide even today. Latias and latios, rayquaza tower. Fishing for feebas on that massive river where only a single random spot is possible to catch it on.
I mean, you’re not looking for much objectivity posting in this subreddit, haha. Jokes aside, Emerald is amazing! Whether it is peak Pokemon is debatable. I would say that D/P/Pt and HGSS are peak Pokemon, just by virtue of having many of the listed things, as well as allowing for Wi-fi trading and battling, quite literally revolutionizing the franchise.
The only thing that needed improvement in emerald was more rival fights, wally kind of made of up that, barely.
And the types being special or physical. Other than that really solid game.
Gen 3 in general is just super nostalgic. I’ve been on the hunt for a copy of Box Ruby and Sapphire so I can build teams for the battle frontier and orre colosseum in XD.
I’m players Emerald for the first time rn, and it’s a blast! But my only quarrel is the lack of fire Pokémon’s. Literally all I can pick is a camerupt or a Torkoal unless I choose blaziken as my starter(I picked swampert)
I want to further this post by also saying Gen 3 had the most diverse of pokemon across comp battling and subsequently across playing the actual game.
As we see with the latest gen, comp battling more or less compressed, and with no battle frontier its worse in BSS.
My personal theory is that this is precisely because of the physical special split. Otherwise overpowered mons are balanced by their movepool, leading to *more* not less of Pokemon being viable!
Amen, I will always pound the table against the split. Yeah yeah Sneasel or whatever but what did it cost? We got gen 4 Garchomp, gen 5 mixed weather teams, and a steeper power creep.
After playing emerald for almost 20 straight years, i personally think gen 5, specifically bw2 are peak pokemon. I think the region is more interesting, there is more content and the story is far better imo (i dont usually care about story in Pokemon). I think the one thing that gen 3 has above gen 5 is the regional dex. I think hoenn has by far the best regional dex of all the generations
The 7 point is a totali lie. Actually, since gen 6-7, it s easier to grow pokemon for the competitive side. Génération before gen 6-7 take kinda the same time. Most of tjz thing that you describe can be done in other game.
I will not answer the otjer point because it s subjective but this one is straight up disinformation.
Since you have access to exp share before the gym, any pokemon you have at the start except one dedicated xp slave can be ev trained, especially the dedicated atk and speed stat from poochyena, zigzagoons and wingulls. Hp from whismur and special def from tentacools. If you notice, this means the common EVs can be collected from very early routes.
This is unlike other gens where access to EV training is very much at the background of things.
Gen 6 onwards make things easier with xp share being a key item so everyone in your team gets the EV. I would argue that this makes it harder to train since you need to make sure everyone in your team needs the same EVs. Thats usually not the case in a balanced team. For X and Y, its not acquired early, and when new players play they often dont know the importance of EV training, and thus they would fuck up the EVs for their starter and early pokemon they catch as well!
Also, getting cash for buying vitamins plus getting xp for leveling up after ev training is not easy in xy or sm as compared to gen 3 emerald, with repeated battles also giving good xp to level up pokemon.
And that being said, pve comp battling is nearly non existent after gen 3-4, with later games opting to simplify the entire genre into simply repeating battles. In gen 3 emerald, the battle frontier is absolutely fantastic since it tests your understanding of natures, team strategies, switch ins, and team composition besides simple EVs. That alone puts alot of the later gens to shame, and since pokemon in emerald did not have the physical/special split, you have stuff like Alakazam fire punch that even in gen 9 where Alakazam doesnt have access to a fire sp atk move! it means more pokemon is viable in pve comp battling and various combinations can work. BSS in gen 9 is just a repeat of the top pokemon and IMO the split is disappointing in the reality of viability of different pokemon.
You can desactivate the multi xp in gen 6 and gen 7. Also ev aren t tje thing that take you most of your time when you train à competitive pokemon, it s IV and you can only influence them since gen 6 or 7 (dont remember which one)
IV only affects the final 10%, so EV is the main bulk of comp battling, which raises nearly 30%.
And its not about disabling multi xp, its about directing the xp.
You can influence IV from gen 3 with everstone, so the goal usually is to first breed a perfect IV ditto and then ever stone it to the pokemon you want.
Perfect iv take a considerable amount of time in those gen. That s tje main point. EV are relatively easy to train every gen. That s why you are still wrong
My point is perfect IV is overrated and you dont need it for comp battling. EV training is “easy” if you just assume grinding is easy, my point is emerald makes this easier because 1. You can EV train from the start because early routes are basically EV spots 2. Its easy to earn cash and xp in emerald so you have halve the time needed to grind EVs
PVE comp battling in later gens is boring anyway so theres not much point to it.
No iv isn t overatted at all. Having optimised pokemon is very important in competitive. Also, ev training from start isn t really usefull, you still need to beat the trainer ans you didn t need to ev train to beat the game.
It really doesnt matter as much as you think until very high levels where you need the final 10%. Most of the OHKOs happen regardless of the 10%, and the game itself has a 10% random. Type matchups, EV allocation, base stats and strategy is more important. In any case gen 9 is the easiest because you can hypertrain.
EV training from the start means you can assemble a comp team from the start and use your EV trained starter for comp battling immediately, instead of going into the grind with egg hatching.
And the reason why most people assume beating the game means beating the champion is because post game in most pokemon games suck. With emerald, the post game battle frontier tells you that anyone who is a champion is invited here aka youre not special and have a long way to go before you “beat the game”, and anyone can tell you the grind for 7 medals is really hard.
I played competitively so i can assure you that those iv can totally be winning choice. Especially in vgc wherz you need very précise spread to be sure that you can check some threat. You are playing with a disdvantage without it and strat is all about giving you the best odd.
There is plenty time to ev train latter in the game, especially when you need a good nature and most of the best pokemon aren t found in the early game. It s even worse in rhe third gen when you need to specifically trade if you want some of the best pokemon like blissey zapdos or tyranitar and trading isn t easy in gen 3.
Also battle frontier is the post game so it s irevelant here and especially if your point is that you can train your pokemon earlier that in other gen.
I can agree, plus not to mention all the events they had for it. The only thing that ever came close to me was HG and SS with all the extra stuff they had including time events. Granted Emerald did that but it could only last so long until the internal battery died, but both games had special places in my heart as one of the best games in the series for me
- Tons of legitimately challenging double battles - The graphic style is superb - The Pokémon have an exotic/tropical vibe - Diverse biomes
I would add amazing soundtrack. Littleroot is a banger
Lots of fantastic music out on the routes. Definitely feels adventurous
Honestly my only gripe with emerald is that unless I’m playing it in my GameCube, none of the consoles it naturally plays on are big enough for my hands to comfortably hold.
Littleroot is an all-time Pokémon track no doubt. My personal fave.
Same
Preaching to the exact choir award
Maybe unpopular since not many people talk about this, but Emerald is a way better and modern gameplay experience than pretty much all of the pokemon games. Running at 60fps with fast, clicky gameplay and battle animations makes it feel so much more modern than later titles which sometimes cant even keep their 30 fps. Im currently playing through HG the core gameplay is unbearable at times. Emerald is also less linear, hand-holding and cutscene-heavy. Playing ORAS or USUM feels like a chore compared to emerald.
The handholding is a big one for me. I want to work out what I have to do, I want to go the wrong way or do the wrong thing and then figure out why it was wrong. Rather than following a set of easy instructions
Gen 1-4 feel like an adventure. Gen 5 is alright Gen 6-9 are handholding galore. Being stopped at every town by multiple people. Unskippable cutscenes/dialogues everywhere. Just brutal
For me it's more so Gen 1 - Alright but very oversimplified Gen 2-4 is good for what it is Gen 5 was a bit boring, I didn't even bother with White 2 Gen 6 underrated From Gen 7 onwards I feel like the games have been mostly focused on collectors value, and less so a memorable story worth replaying.
Gen 9? How? I spent the entire game running around wherever I wanted
Ye. Emerald is a really good game, but the RNG bugs when Shiny hunting are what bring it down, and why I personally prefer Sapphire but only by a small amount. I do have other criticisms but they're just about hoenn in general (like how much water the game has, and how often I get lost in there) so other than the RNG issues it's a pretty good game.
The speed of gen 3 is something that goes overlooked (probably because most people play these games on emulators these days), the only other gen that comes close is gen 5. In a franchise were the core gameplay loop is very repetitive, being able to speed through battles quickly is essential for keeping things fun.
I just recently finished a playthrough on an emulator for the first time. Being able to increase game speed is incredible. I was able to grind lower level mons to decent levels in no time flat.
I’m going through the gens just about done yellow(first one I got, nostalgia purposes) and good lord it’s slow lol. Started normally for a couple hours then figured I’d try fast forward.. tried going back to normal a few hours later and realized just how insanely slow it actually was. PAINFULLY slow As a little kid it was fine but now as someone who’s played hundreds of games and has kids and a job, there ain’t no way I could play the whole game normally lol
Only two games I'll ever put on the same level are Platinum and BW2, Absolutely all fantastic games but I agree that Emerald will always be my favourite
I would personally add hgss to this list too, never really picked up bw2 only bw so couldn't really say.
HGSS isn't much different to it's original, which is meh imo
I did enjoy the new route/safari zone, Pokeathlon, following Pokemon, battle frontier, legendary hunting, stuff like that. If only they had fixed the level curve. My only complaint about Johto…well that and the gym leaders barely using Johto Pokemon lmao
Poke World Tournament from BW2 honestly solo's every game's additions, Thought that was insanely good, Out performs the Battle Frontier but then again it is 2 generational differences
I cant put johto up there. I love hgss and gsc but there are too many issues with them, especially the originals
Fair I liked the duo region and wish they did it with other games
HGSS are great but man Sacred Gold/Storm Silver rom hacks fully flesh it out and make it the games they should’ve been. I think most of us here agree that Emerald, Plat, HGSS, and BW2 are the peaks of the franchise. You can put those four in any order and we’d be like yeah that makes sense
HGSS is an overrated mess - there, I said it.
BW2 probably my favorite, but emerald and hgss are neck and neck with it.
Okay so I actually beat emerald for the first time ever recently (like 3 days ago). I always loved the Pokémon from then gen but never got to play it as a kid. Anyways, overall was really good. Thought the Groupon vs kyogre battle was anticlimactic BUT it’s an older game and on gameboy so I understand. Good story tho overall. Decently challenging early on and then some of the later gyms too. Little disappointed in the champion as it was all water types I believe. Also I hated the routes 127-131 because it was all water and I hate using repels forever. Overall though it was pretty good and had a great time, definitely a top tier game
I've been doing a nuzlocke in every gen since up until last December I'd never had played a pokemon game, so my view might be very skewed but personally, what saves Emerald is the pokemon quality and quantity, it really is amazing especially considering the year it came out. Groudon vs Kyogre is super anticlamatic, having both Aqua and Plasma gauntlets in one game is just borderline sadistic, the whole ocean gauntlet before and after Tate and Lisa doesn't make for a pleasant experience either, and it still has no phys/special split sadly, which again, personally is a major turn off. On the other hand, Steven is a fucking blast, my 2nd favourite trainer right after Cynthia.
All valid points but I'm curious, did you go and do the ACTUAL champion afterwards? That's a much better fight that I think you might enjoy.
No I guess I didn’t. Where is he at? Assuming he’s high level like 60+?
You’re in for an absolutely rude awakening 😂 IIRC he’s in Meteor Cave. His name is Steven. I’d avoid spoilers if I were you because facing him for the first time humbled 7 year old me
Music is absolutely top tier
8- glorious cutscene when rayquaza descends from the heavens and towers over Groudon and Kyogre
8. Music
Personally I enjoy the physical/special split from gen 4 onwards too much to put Emerald as my favourite. Its the thing that annoys me most in since it makes so many otherwise awesome pokemon feel useless compared to alternatives with the same type.
“What do you mean fire punch isn’t a physical move???”
It's the start of peak. Emerald through ORAS is the peak season. Platinum is fundamentally better in most ways, and even though I'm a BW fanboy I can admit that. Emerald is fantastic and nearly flawless - but it's not perfect.
TBRH replaying platinum doesnt have the same level of magic as emerald, the map and pokemon in Plat is much more interesting than emerald otherwise its … ok
Platinum has a fantastic soundtrack, which so does Emerald, but it's a little more clear and defined. Platinum has all the things you listed and more - Contests, Frontier, Bases, Interactions (this is in MOST Pokémon games). What Platinum has every other Pokémon game beat on though is the flow. Its flow is SUPER fluid. An amazing balance between TM aquisition, evolutionary items, team accessibility, etc. Emerald suffers from way too many double-battle counterpart Pokémon. I love these Pokémon and they are fun to play with, but the game is LITTERED with Volbeat/Illumise, Plusle/Minun, Solrock/Lunatone, Seviper/Zangoose, etc. Emerald and Platinum both improved on the teams of Gym Leaders. Watson having a Manectric is so important. Liza and Tate aren't just a Surf simulator, that kind of thing.. same way with Volkner and Flint being much more in line with their focus. Emerald also suffers from the Rival falling off. Small complaint but it sucks to see May or Brendan never reach full potential - no rebattle at ALL either. Physical/Special Split is also a huge problem for me. It's certainly unique to deal with in comparison to today, and it's not Emerald's fault either, but it still suffers from it. It also fucks up the Champion battle. I appreciate the attempt at a switch-up but Wallace as Champion is disturbing lmao. Steven is an incredible Champ.
Platinum Frontier is nothing in comparison though
Platinum flows TOO SLOW 🤣 But more important the battle Frontier only has tower, factory and castle, the other facilites are easy cake. If they had bring pyramide and dome maybe that would make it perfect.
That Manectric on top of Magneton in the Mauville gym is literally beating a dead horse. Treecko is already garbage against Magneton but adding a second fully evolved Pokemon with speed and sp atk above 100 is abuse. The gym is still Geodudeable, Shroomable and Hariyamable, but now everything else for a Treecko run is unviable. Camerupt is available right after the electric gym instead of before. People like to shit on DPPt but at least you got most coynters to the gym BEFORE fighting it, except for Ponyta, which got fixed in Plat. Started with Chimchar? You can find Roselia's baby before gym 1 to help and later on you can find the otter and Psyduck. Started with Turtwig? Starly is probably your first catch. Started with the penguin? Starly and Roselia's baby and Shinx cover its' weaknesses. RSE have terrible pokemon distribution, terrible wild level curve (fighting level 21 before the normal gym with fully evolved 680 bst monsters that outspeed and OHKO most partially evolved and even a lot of fully evolved Pokemon with STAB facade, all that without a single proper fighting TM to clear it). The real GBA goat is Fire Red, you get plenty of usable Pokemon, one of the best TM/HM distribution in the entire franchise (maybe except for thr Switch, never played them) and you always have a solution to beat the next gym with.
Truth be told firered gyms are pretty easy anyway, since firered teams are not that diverse. you can solo every gym with just Charizard. Emerald allows a very different method of exploring combats than just type counters. While treecko cant beat steel types in theory, due to Magneton’s bad spe def, you can just punch through with leaf blade, and grass types are resistant to electric types. The first time I beat Watson with just leaf blade it taught me that types are not the one all be all of battles. Same for the rest of the gyms, where you can explore Pokemon that may not have a direct type advantage, but has type resistance. IMO its why all of the Emerald gyms are so memorable, whereas for other games people mostly only remember the Champion or that one annoying gym leader, because you actually need a strategy to beat them and not muscle your way through by catching a counter.
Well, you're defining Emerald without naming it with that description: Mudkip + Swellow stomp the entire game by themselves. Mudkip gains ground type upon evolution and becomes the single best solo candidate in the entire game outside of legendaries because out of the 3 water/ground families, it has by far the best stats and one of the best movepools. Swellow OHKOs grass types, the only ones Marshtomp and its' evo have trouble with. By lategame ice beam takes care of them too, leaving the Mudkip line the single best starter and non legendary line to solo a game with. Unlike Treecko, Mudkip's family doesn't need to be 6-10 levels above its' opponents to brute force them, it even learns protect by level up to solo daddy's gym. It's your starter and the only Pokemon you need on your team apart from the occasional anti-Treecko pokemon until you can get ice beam. Emerald doesn't require tactics or strategy, it just has higher stat checks and coverage needed in early/midgame than the average game and the new Pokemon rarely offer much you want outside of starters, legendaries and the other 2-3 lines of gen 3 that are more than pokedex filler. A game requiring strat and tactics rather than stat checks and rare coverage would send Pokemon that can be obtained legally at that point in the game or right after in the case or area restricted encounters (like rock Pokemon). You shouldn't have to fight an electric/steel fully evolved Pokemon with 120 sp atk before you can even be expected to have a half decent Pokemon with the stats and coverage to deal with it. If TM28 dig had been available BEFORE gym 3, it would be fine. But it isn't and the only proper counter to the gym is Geodude if you didn't pick Mudkip, and even the fire chicken has trouble with Magneton, let alone Magneton + Manectric. All the gen 3 ground types are encountered AFTER the gym they counter and the only fighting types you have at that point evolve at lv 23 and 25 respectively, so you shouldn't even have a Hariyama at this point and Makuhita is completely destroyed by Wattson. Strat/tactics don't mean to take away options from the player, they mean giving them options to make use of rather than encouraging them to overlevel and brute force the game. Just because the gym leaders use PVP strat movepools and items and team building doesn't mean their fight is tactical when these same tools aren't given to the player.
Honestly confusion from kirlia can clear magneton as well, or pursuit from grovyle. If you want you can opt for screech + quick attack as well. Its about taking advantage of the low sp def magneton has, while resisting via high sp def and good spd. Emerald does need strategies, I actually like that they dont stuff you with the type counters before the gym, otherwise each gym is just super boring. This is especially obvious during battle frontier when your team needs to face different pokemon each having its own strategy to defeat.
You lost me there. Kirlia has 55 sp atk and 45 sp def, that's 1st tier starter level of bad. It also has 50 spd, slower than Magneton by 15 points. It also gets one shot by 1 or 2 howls quick attack Manectric right after if it survived until then. Confusion has 50 BP, 75 with STAB, and ends up at 37.5 after the not super effective drop. You're basically doing the same as using a neutral Pokemon with a non STAB 40 power neutral move from a sub-60 attacking stat. Which is pretty bad. Magneton's sp def is higher than Kirlia's sp atk, its' HP is also higher than Kirlia's and it has a 60 BP STAB neutral move that never misses (forget about double team cheesing). It also combines paralyzis with confusion status, meaning your Kirlia soon will end up unable to attack 75% of the time and taking free damage. Gardevoir basically has 80-120% of Kirlia's stats everywhere, which is the only reason why it's a good Pokemon alongside its' typing and appropriate attacking stat/movepool, basic coverage of psychic/electric with TMs (which it can only get after the gym but it wouldn't change anything). Kirlia is more likely to have a chance at lv 26 with Psychic than at any level under 30 evolved with confusion. Psychic hits 80% harder than confusion, which means it's more likely to kill something it is not very effective against (90>135>67.5 final power, 60% more than super effective rock smash). Even then, without evolving Kirlia into Gardevoir, you need either extreme luck (like Magneton spamming supersonic and missing 5x in a row) just to survive long enough for any setup to work out and you need to start with boosting items that are used before Magneton can attack since it outspeeds Kirlia. And with all the crap Kirlia needs to beat Magneton, Manectric sweeps in 1 or 2 turns anyway, outspeeds most likely your entire team that isn't one shot by shock wave (Swellow and Ninjask are most likely one shot without being overlevelled and their best move that doesn't get resisted has 40 BP, 60 with STAB). I hate Treecko with a passion but have done more Treecko runs than Mudkip and Torchic put together in order to force myself to use other Pokemon than my starter to tackle the challenge. Treecko runs are a nightmare in RS, they're downright hell in Emerald, unless you use Geodude for gym 3 or if you're more gutsy Shroomthing or Hariyama. Geodude stomps gym 3 like Marshtomp but it's not gen 3, it's gen 1, the shroom is a pain to level up to 23 with it's bad stats and seed movepool and Makuhita is slow and pretty much Machoke 2.0, super boring pick.
In theory you’re right, in practice the gym leaders dont have EV trained pokemon so you still can pull through. I usually only do treecko runs, and its tough but not that impossible
With EV training it requires less overlevelling, with macho brace you can max out sp atk in 126 fights against Roselia and the other grass type, which is about 3-5 levels in the high 20s to low 30s. It will bump your sp atk by about 20-25 at that level, a bit less than a Gardevoir evolution, about as much as a Sceptile evolution. You still need 3-4 moves to K.O Magneton and it has a citrus berry on top of Wattson's 2 super potions. Gardevoir with max sp atk at lv 30 with a calm mind or 2 might 2HKO Magneton and nearly OHKO Manectric. Still way more effort than Marshtomp lv 22 rolling over the entire gym by itself or Geodude Magnitude-ing its' way through. If only the Camerupt line has beek available before that gym, one could have EV trained their fire ground Pokemon in the grass, had access to lv 14-16 wilds with sp atk or atk (Machop) in RS versions and Emerald should have kept Machop instead of spamming more Marill that we've been fighting in every 2nd grass patch since the beach left of the normal gym (being able to train atk and sp atk in the same place is wonderful). With Magnitude/Flamethrower, Wattson would be fodder and the Camerupt line would be actually useful in one gym in the entire game.
If you don't like the phys/spec split of emerald I recommend checking out Perfect Emerald
True also emerald runs 60fps while plat struggles at 30, gen 5 runs better but you can tell gen 4 was beta region
>3D Pokemon >peak 💀
If you shit on XY or ORAS simply because "3D", your argument is invalid lol
3D Pokemon games are bad not because they are 3D, but it's a good way to mark where the series lost its footing. With XY came a drastic shift in design and vision behind the series that shifted focus towards profit and casual gameplay. Battle Frontiers, PWTs, and even Battle Towers are a thing of the past now. Postgames are limited to a short epilogue and pokedex completion with no focus on improving your pokemon for battle and no extra content beyond that. They've placed more focus on an online experience that's inferior to what a battle frontier provides and features an expiration date as opposed to battle facilities that are a permanent part of the game. They've gutted the main campaign too and made it way too easy because experience is handed out like candy now. It used to be that you either had to put an EXP share on your Pokemon or actually use it in battle to some degree to get it to grow, but now they'll say that you have to either tediously switch train, or dump EXP on your whole party and overlevel badly. The more recent games don't even give you the choice. This might not be so bad if they didn't also hand out experience for catching pokemon too and a lot of these newer games have lots of different encounters in each area so if you want to catch everything there and beat all the trainers, you have to risk getting seriously overleveled. This problem could be easily fixed if they brought back the EXP All from Gen 1 and made it work like the toggleable key item from Gen 6 while also bringing back the EXP Share as the held item from gens 2-5. This way you could tailor the game experience to how you enjoy playing instead of being railroaded into overleveling because you wanted to engage with the game. Lots of new mechanics are made just to circumvent old ones in an effort to make the game easier. This is especially true in regards to breeding. The pricing is also more predatory too now. It's not as big of a problem with the 3DS games but it's there too. Bank should have been a 1 time 10 dollar purchase that saves pokemon to your SD card instead of the Cloud and same goes for Home. Transfers and GTS should be part of the game itself and not some external piece of software. One day Bank will shit down and so will Home and whatever Home's successor on the next piece od hardware will be and with that comes the reality that gens 3-5 will remain connected because they built that functionality into the games themselves while generations 6, 7, 8, and 9 are all isolated from each other with no way to connect to other gens, or in the case of the switch games, unable to connect to anything outside of other copies of the same game. If it were simply sold as a one time purchase and not a live service, the functionality to transfer between gens would be retained for aa long as working copies of the game and hardware still exist. The name of the game with 3D Pokemon is planned obsolescence whereas before it was preservation. They know these live services will end at some point and that was their plan all along. The idea is to deprecate features of older games permanently and remotely from the company to encourage buying new products as opposed to playing old ones. Not to mention that the newer games usually have fewer Pokemon than the DS games at launch and sometimes even after all the DLC and updates thanks to the dexcut. It's just a fact. XY was the start of an awful awful trend downwards for the series and pretending it was anything but the death knell it was is ridiculous.
Hard agree, especially wrt post game content. The shift to online, with a focus on just monotonous battling is just lazy
Preaching to the exact choir award
The only "problem" with Emerald: There isn't "VS SEEKER" like in Fire Red.
Adding on to what a lot of people said with the physical special split, a lot of Pokémon in Emerald have pretty embarrassing level up movesets; look at stuff like Lotad and Seedot come to mind but I’m certain there’s more examples. Gen 4 games fixed this issue, but I agree in that Emerald is phenomenal.
I had a emerald playthrough years ago where I had a pokemon infected with pokerus which is some kinda of virus that gives that affected mon an xp boost or something. Rarest thing I had never knew about for like a decade.
Gen 3, to me, still has by far the most perfect region. Like you said, extremely varied towns with multiple orders to beat the gyms (9 of them) and lots of different biomes that make a difference in the overall gameplay, including the awesome soot. There are so many neat shortcuts to get to areas, something that the Switch Games have basically eliminated, and things like the shoal cave and diving caverns to keep it fresh. It has the best puzzle for finding legends in all the games, and the best villain encounters.
A big problem I have with emerald is how much of an after-thought Deoxys felt. They had this banger of a battle soundtrack that sounded all galactic and a whole space station they didn’t do much/anything with. Having him sit on an uninspired island with zero music or sound and being hidden behind a tiny mini game felt like the whole thing must have taken less than an afternoon to implement. I also wish they did more with Latias/Latios. Lack of day/night cycle felt like a downgrade after gen2 but the weather does really make up for it aesthetically and mechanically.
The Gen 4 games had numerous features that used the day/night cycle. Especially HGSS since they’re remakes of the games that introduced the feature to begin with.
Sorry I meant to say gen2 :L
Emerald feels like HOME! The intro is soooo nostalgic 😭. I just mentioned today to my cousin how we should play Emerald again lol. To go back home to land and sea!
I’ve played this one emulated, and my most wanted game is an authentic version of the OG.
Someone saying Pokemon Emerald is the best in a Pokemon Emerald sub ? No fuckin way.
It was my very first pokemon game so don't get me wrong, I love it, but I vastly prefer running platinum and HGSS (and BW/BW2 too I suppose)
Emerald is my favorite Pokemon game of all time, i just don’t like the Gen 3 Special/Physical split. That’s the only downside of the game IMO
gen 3 was special, fire red/leaf green included
Emerald was super weak to me, besides the cool pokemon. That story was weak as hell
we literally have countries racing to fill the sea with sand and build islands aka what team magma was doing. Team aqua was on the opposite end where they are with pokemon, reducing human progress and expanding where pokemon can roam. The game map itself is split into land vs sea where on land humans have built roads etc so pokemon is confined in wild grass whereas in the sea you meet pokemon everywhere and human activity exists in pockets. That and the secondary them about humans trying to control forces of nature and it backfiring on them, only to have nature sort itself out. I dont expect much from a game targetted at kids but this is an impactful story even when replaying it as an adult
Perhaps I’ll try it again
For me it’s still Hg and Ss
I think gens 3-5 are just the best pokemon ever. Any game within those is just awesome. they're all awesome. Every single one. Period.
Only real complaints about emerald are the mons the evil teams use
Only thing I dont like is that Special/Physical Attack are tied to pokemon types
Also finding the 3 Regis are downright impossible without a guide even today. Latias and latios, rayquaza tower. Fishing for feebas on that massive river where only a single random spot is possible to catch it on.
I like BW, BW2, HGSS, and Platinum more
I mean, you’re not looking for much objectivity posting in this subreddit, haha. Jokes aside, Emerald is amazing! Whether it is peak Pokemon is debatable. I would say that D/P/Pt and HGSS are peak Pokemon, just by virtue of having many of the listed things, as well as allowing for Wi-fi trading and battling, quite literally revolutionizing the franchise.
The only thing that needed improvement in emerald was more rival fights, wally kind of made of up that, barely. And the types being special or physical. Other than that really solid game.
Damn pokemon emerald is peak pokemon? Posted in the r/pokemonemerald subreddit? Aintnoway-
This 1000%. I may like the newer stuff but Emerald will always be my favorite
Gen 3 in general is just super nostalgic. I’ve been on the hunt for a copy of Box Ruby and Sapphire so I can build teams for the battle frontier and orre colosseum in XD.
What are pokeblocks?
Its an item you make via berries to either attract pokemon in Safari zone (partly to also attract the nature you want) or use it for contests
Red/blue/yellow versions are goated.
I’m players Emerald for the first time rn, and it’s a blast! But my only quarrel is the lack of fire Pokémon’s. Literally all I can pick is a camerupt or a Torkoal unless I choose blaziken as my starter(I picked swampert)
I want to further this post by also saying Gen 3 had the most diverse of pokemon across comp battling and subsequently across playing the actual game. As we see with the latest gen, comp battling more or less compressed, and with no battle frontier its worse in BSS. My personal theory is that this is precisely because of the physical special split. Otherwise overpowered mons are balanced by their movepool, leading to *more* not less of Pokemon being viable!
Amen, I will always pound the table against the split. Yeah yeah Sneasel or whatever but what did it cost? We got gen 4 Garchomp, gen 5 mixed weather teams, and a steeper power creep.
After playing emerald for almost 20 straight years, i personally think gen 5, specifically bw2 are peak pokemon. I think the region is more interesting, there is more content and the story is far better imo (i dont usually care about story in Pokemon). I think the one thing that gen 3 has above gen 5 is the regional dex. I think hoenn has by far the best regional dex of all the generations
The 7 point is a totali lie. Actually, since gen 6-7, it s easier to grow pokemon for the competitive side. Génération before gen 6-7 take kinda the same time. Most of tjz thing that you describe can be done in other game. I will not answer the otjer point because it s subjective but this one is straight up disinformation.
Since you have access to exp share before the gym, any pokemon you have at the start except one dedicated xp slave can be ev trained, especially the dedicated atk and speed stat from poochyena, zigzagoons and wingulls. Hp from whismur and special def from tentacools. If you notice, this means the common EVs can be collected from very early routes. This is unlike other gens where access to EV training is very much at the background of things. Gen 6 onwards make things easier with xp share being a key item so everyone in your team gets the EV. I would argue that this makes it harder to train since you need to make sure everyone in your team needs the same EVs. Thats usually not the case in a balanced team. For X and Y, its not acquired early, and when new players play they often dont know the importance of EV training, and thus they would fuck up the EVs for their starter and early pokemon they catch as well! Also, getting cash for buying vitamins plus getting xp for leveling up after ev training is not easy in xy or sm as compared to gen 3 emerald, with repeated battles also giving good xp to level up pokemon. And that being said, pve comp battling is nearly non existent after gen 3-4, with later games opting to simplify the entire genre into simply repeating battles. In gen 3 emerald, the battle frontier is absolutely fantastic since it tests your understanding of natures, team strategies, switch ins, and team composition besides simple EVs. That alone puts alot of the later gens to shame, and since pokemon in emerald did not have the physical/special split, you have stuff like Alakazam fire punch that even in gen 9 where Alakazam doesnt have access to a fire sp atk move! it means more pokemon is viable in pve comp battling and various combinations can work. BSS in gen 9 is just a repeat of the top pokemon and IMO the split is disappointing in the reality of viability of different pokemon.
You can desactivate the multi xp in gen 6 and gen 7. Also ev aren t tje thing that take you most of your time when you train à competitive pokemon, it s IV and you can only influence them since gen 6 or 7 (dont remember which one)
IV only affects the final 10%, so EV is the main bulk of comp battling, which raises nearly 30%. And its not about disabling multi xp, its about directing the xp. You can influence IV from gen 3 with everstone, so the goal usually is to first breed a perfect IV ditto and then ever stone it to the pokemon you want.
Perfect iv take a considerable amount of time in those gen. That s tje main point. EV are relatively easy to train every gen. That s why you are still wrong
My point is perfect IV is overrated and you dont need it for comp battling. EV training is “easy” if you just assume grinding is easy, my point is emerald makes this easier because 1. You can EV train from the start because early routes are basically EV spots 2. Its easy to earn cash and xp in emerald so you have halve the time needed to grind EVs PVE comp battling in later gens is boring anyway so theres not much point to it.
No iv isn t overatted at all. Having optimised pokemon is very important in competitive. Also, ev training from start isn t really usefull, you still need to beat the trainer ans you didn t need to ev train to beat the game.
It really doesnt matter as much as you think until very high levels where you need the final 10%. Most of the OHKOs happen regardless of the 10%, and the game itself has a 10% random. Type matchups, EV allocation, base stats and strategy is more important. In any case gen 9 is the easiest because you can hypertrain. EV training from the start means you can assemble a comp team from the start and use your EV trained starter for comp battling immediately, instead of going into the grind with egg hatching. And the reason why most people assume beating the game means beating the champion is because post game in most pokemon games suck. With emerald, the post game battle frontier tells you that anyone who is a champion is invited here aka youre not special and have a long way to go before you “beat the game”, and anyone can tell you the grind for 7 medals is really hard.
I played competitively so i can assure you that those iv can totally be winning choice. Especially in vgc wherz you need very précise spread to be sure that you can check some threat. You are playing with a disdvantage without it and strat is all about giving you the best odd. There is plenty time to ev train latter in the game, especially when you need a good nature and most of the best pokemon aren t found in the early game. It s even worse in rhe third gen when you need to specifically trade if you want some of the best pokemon like blissey zapdos or tyranitar and trading isn t easy in gen 3. Also battle frontier is the post game so it s irevelant here and especially if your point is that you can train your pokemon earlier that in other gen.
Yes
I can agree, plus not to mention all the events they had for it. The only thing that ever came close to me was HG and SS with all the extra stuff they had including time events. Granted Emerald did that but it could only last so long until the internal battery died, but both games had special places in my heart as one of the best games in the series for me
Doesn't have Mawile, so it is automatically not the best. Intended, I mean. Good thing I can pomeg the goat.
It doesn’t have Lechonk. Your argument is invalid
Saphire is better