Hey guys John here,
I just finished the main quest in Pokemon Alpha Sapphire. I picked up this game to play it for the nostalgia, since I played both Ruby and Sapphire on the Game Boy Advance and I really liked those games. Now, 11 years later, I made a return to the Hoenn region and I can now safetly describe my thoughts for Pokemon Alpha Sapphire. So, here we go.
I'll start this review by saying that there is not much of a difference between the original versions and the re-make. The only real difference are the graphics. The graphics are pretty good and I think Nintendo did a good job redoing the graphics to the 3DS's standards. The Hoenn Pokemon look great and even though to me the Hoenn Pokemon are the ugliest Pokemon, they are very powerful. The cities and towns in the game look wonderful and some of the cities have a entirely new look to them. Mauville City is one big example. In the original versions, Mauville City was an outdoor city. In Alpha Sapphire, Mauville City is a large indoor metropolitan type of city. I actually liked this new look for Mauville City. The battle animations are well done, but they are the same as X and Y though. Enough with the graphics, now I'm going to talk about the gameplay.
The gameplay is the same as every other Pokemon game. Even though this is a re-make, the formula is the same as X and Y with the newly added Mega Evolutions. My team consisted of: Blaziken, Aggron, Gardevoir, Manectric, Flygon and Sharpedo. 5 of those 6 Pokemon have Mega Evolutions. The Mega Evolutions looked pretty cool. I like Blaziken's Mega Evolution the best out of my team. Since I never used Kyogre or any other legendary, I can;t really explain the Primal Evolutions. It doesn't surprise me that Nintendo throws in their newer concepts into the older games to try to make the gameplay more to their modern standards. When Nintendo re-made Red/Blue/Green version for the Game Boy Advance, they took the concepts of Hoenn and slapped them into the game like the abilities for the Pokemon for example. When Nintendo re-made Gold/Silver/Crystal for the DS, they took the concepts from Sinnoh and slapped them in as well. The cycle goes on and in the future when Nintendo re-makes Diamond/Pearl/Platinum for their next handheld, their going to do the same thing again. Now, I'm going to the Soundtrack.
The soundtrack has almost the same sounding tracks as the originals. Some of the tracks were re-mixed and do sound better, but to me, they don't sound any better than the original. Before any of you say that I'm a nostalgiatard, let me say that I am not a nostalgiatard. I'm always trying new things out and not staying locked in my comfort zone, unlike many gamers and fanboys that are afraid to try something new. Some of my favorite tracks were: the main battle theme, Meteor Falls, the rival's battle theme and the underwater music when you use the Dive HM (HM07). The originals produced a pretty good soundtrack. If you haven't played the originals, you'll like the soundtrack in the re-makes.
I can't comment on the online features, StreetPass etc. because I never used those features in the game. I have no interest in doing the Post Game stuff, but after you complete you main quest, you can do what is called the "Delta Episode," which consists of sidequests and item gathering that you couldn't get in the main quest. There's also the Battle Resort you can visit. It functions the same as the Battle Frontier where you earn BP (Battle Points) to buy items or TM's and other things. So to close this short review, I thought that the re-make to one of the great Game Boy Advance Pokemon regions was a decent experience. It wasn't epic to me, it was just decent. I know that people are going to berate me and say that all Pokemon experience are epic. No, they are not. They are good or great experiences, but not epic experiences.
For the score.......what score? I'm not giving this game a score. If I give it a score, the Nintendo fanboys will kill me. Oh all right, I'll give it a score. So, out of 10 points, I'll give Pokemon Alpha Sapphire a 7.6 out of 10. There, I said it!
I'm John, and I'm out of here before the riots begin.
