Game Review V: "Pokemon Pt. 3 - Hoenn Games"

This one deals with the three games in the Hoenn region of Pokemon: Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald. Combined with anew roster of characters and monsters, and updated gaming graphics, R/S/E was the premier debut of Pokemon on the now standard Game Boy Advance systems. At this point, the total to grab was now 368, picking up a bit from the previous 251. This time, even ore unique types were added, among which a Pokemon that could change his form and attacks via weather. Pokemon Tower was brought back, followed by another debuting element: Pokemon Contests. While they are not battles, contests usually consist of flashing battle moves in the sequence of turns. This is partially due to the categorizing of attacks, among the following: Cool, Cute, Smart, Tough, and Beauty. These could be increased using the item Pokeblocks, for which they can create on their own.

As with the last installment for Johto, Hoeen is introduced as Pokemon Generation III. The protagonists change once more, with the rival being the trainer of the opposing gender. The players can choose either gender (later identified as Brendan {Male} and May {Female}, though these names never appear in the list of default names.) Professor Birch, a darker toned Professor that sports sandals, is the new Pokemon Prof. of this region. Even so, there's a rehash of trainers, Gym Leaders, and Elite Four Battlers waiting for you. This was also the first game not to feature Team Rocket as the antagonists. In fact, there were 2 groups to worry about, only to have them both as enemies in Emerald: Team Magma and Team Aqua, whose purposes were to awaken the respective legendaries. Following the remade Red and Green versions (see Pt.  1), Emerald was the last of the GBA games, adding features that wasn't there in the other two, in the similar fashion Crystal followed Ruby and Sapphire. A few of the changes were the intro sequence of the legendary Pokemon: the game mascots (Groudon {Ruby}, Kyogre {Sapphire}, and Rayquaza {Emerald}) and the Golem Trio (Regirock, Regice, Registeel), the change in champions (RS had Steven as the champ, while Emerald had as the champ the former Gym Leader, Wallace), higher levels to which the legends could be captured, and abilities having a bigger role in breeding Pokemon.

Another noticeable trait is that, much akin to the first 6 games and the PKMN Stadium Series (Pt. 5), R/S/E integrates with Gamecube as games Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, as people can trade pokemon from that game to the GBA titles, including FR/LG, with the use of a special cable linking the GBA to the Gamecube. In addition, though this should have been mentioned before hand, R/S/E introduces the double battles, as in 2 Pokemon can fight side by side, as opposed to just one. A trainer can either go it alone (resulting in using 2 Pokemon) or with a partner (each trainer uses 1 at a time). This mechanic was heavily utilized in the console game Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness.

R/S/E gets a 7.5. While it's not necessarily a fave of mine, it is worth playing to me. Get ready for part 4 when I move into Generation IV: The region of Sinnoh.