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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Playing all Pokemon games for the first time - Just finished Crystal starting Emerald

shikamaru317 said:

I plan to eventually, though I might wait on the eventual remakes of Gen 4 and 5 just for the 3D graphics xD

Don't own a DS or 3DS, so the only way I could play 4 and 5 now would be to download a DS emulator and their ROM's, and that's illegal so I won't be doing that.


I don't know if I'd advise that. The first two remakes were better than their originals, but ORAS was, in many ways, just not as good. You might be doing yourself a disservice by not playing the originals first. Especially when Pokemon Platinum, for example, it arguably one of the best looking main games yet. Even better looking than the 3D ones.

The 3D ones kind of suffer from the "getting used to 3D effect" where, in the overworld, nothing really looks as clean because of the lack of polygons. It's the same reason why ALttP holds up graphically better than OoT.



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Emerald's probably the best game in the entire series.



Ka-pi96 said:

Really? I was planning on getting them soon as well


I mean, it's definitely better than XY, but yeah, if you enjoyed the originals, they change and take away a lot of things, in a bad way.



MohammadBadir said:
Emerald's probably the best game in the entire series.


I'd say Platinum and HGSS are both better, but yeah; Emerald is among the best. Definitly the second best completely original one.



Enjoy Emerald! I spent many hours on that game as a young chap. Played even more on my PC emulator last year. Might have to do another run through soon!



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spemanig said:
MohammadBadir said:
Emerald's probably the best game in the entire series.


I'd say Platinum and HGSS are both better, but yeah; Emerald is among the best. Definitly the second best completely original one.

IMO the only games to come close to Emerald are BW.



Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald...you're in for a treat my friend. These, to me, are the best games in the entire series. I don't know if that's nostalgia or my brain speaking but they are excellent games. The running shoes helped a bit too XD



Ka-pi96 said:
MohammadBadir said:
spemanig said:


I'd say Platinum and HGSS are both better, but yeah; Emerald is among the best. Definitly the second best completely original one.

IMO the only games to come close to Emerald are BW.

You think BW are better than HGSS? :O

Yeah, HGSS were amazing but I prefer BW.



MohammadBadir said:

IMO the only games to come close to Emerald are BW.


Eh, to me, those are some of the worst and the first time the series declined in quality. Only the story got deeper on a surface level. The lore wasn't as interesting and never really got fully explained, the region design was a step down from both Sinnoh and Hoenn, and most of the Pokemon designs were pretty blatantly based off of Gen 1 Pokemon concepts, which must be the laziest the series has ever been, design wise.

People complain that Garbordor is a "bad design" because its "ugly." I don't think that has any merit. The design is fine. The issue is that it's just Gen 5 Muk. Zebstrika is just Gen 5 Rapidash. Conkelder is just Gen 5 Machamp. Seismetoad is just Gen 5 Poliwrath. I could go on and on. It was an extremely underwhelming generation, with an above average story for a Pokemon game. And honestly, that's just because N was a deep and interesting character.

Everything else was pretty typical for a Pokemon game. Ghetsis wasn't as interesting as Cyrus. There were no admins with memorable personalities. The Shadow Triad weren't given any significant plot role until B2W2, where the only possible mysteries to their characters was deconfirmed. All the gym leaders had gyms that reflected their secondary jobs, but it's not like gym leaders never had lives before BW.

I dunno. I don't think they're that great at all. Not bad. Even good, but I think there's a noticable gap in quality between Emerald and BW, with Platinum and HGSS surpassing both.



shikamaru317 said:

It seems to me like they made alot of improvements with AS/OR. You get a Latias/Latios for free now, whereas it was originally very hard to catch one, and you can fly around on it which is pretty cool. You can catch a Deoxys in-game, whereas he was previously event only in the originals. They added some new characters and the Delta Episode to the story. They removed the safari game from the Safari Zone, allowing you to catch Pokemon normally. Really the only thing I see that I don't like that much is that they completely redesigned Mauville.


I wouldn't say gifting legendary Pokemon is an improvement. It was hard to catch them because they're legendary mythical deities. I thought the flying around would be cool, but it's really just the "airship" sections of typical JRPGs that has been done away with decades ago. It doesn't in reality feel fun because you're just in this obvious pocket map of Hoenn. You're not flying across a region, you're selecting icons from a hub world. The only positive is that you don't need a Pokemon with Fly anymore, even though Fly is a more convenient move since it's instant.

The whole Delta Episode is cool, and a highlight, but it doesn't come close to what it fills in, which is the Battle Frontier. Removing the Safari Zone was extremely bad, not good. It added variety, and was a fun change of pace. Using the old Pokemon contests when there was already an improved Super Contest isn't good either. Also, they turned Team Aqua and Team Magma into cartoon villians that didn't seem to take themselves seriously. The grunts are always supposed to be silly, but the Admins and leaders aren't. If the whole game was written like the Delta Episode, there wouldn't be a problem, but they didn't. They left any intelligent writing for the post game, which was the same problem in XY with the vastly superior Looker Quest. Both are likely because the post game content was so abysmal in both.

Also, the original had the Game Corner. I don't even mind the redesign of Mauville. It's not like the original was interesting.