I mean, the Cradily line and nosepass were understandable, and no one likes Illumise and Volbeat for a lot of reasons, but putting Roselia in with that entire group is insane. Its "Obvious flaws" vs "Personal preference"
Im 34 and I played thru blue red and yellow silver and gold as a kid and played ruby saphire emerald a couple times but got like old so stopped playing them so never finnished them but my brother literally still has them and I messaged him yesterday to lend me emerald and his Gameboy to run it back next time he drops my niece and nephew off so now I'm looking back at how cool they was and so keen to play again like in go just isn't doing it for me hahaha
I had no idea how feature dense this game was, thanks for putting some spotlight on the less commonly talked about parts of the game. I might give it a try sometime.
I’ve probably put more hours into Emerald than any other game in my life. I’m using it as the main hub game for completing the Dex in all 5 Generation 3 games.
@@codenamelarry6518 I’m on the same grind with you first emerald in like 300 off and ima do Fire Red next also I’m doing the living dex so it’s a little longer
I'd like to add that the Land vs Sea schtick is a simplied version of the debate about the Ishaya Bay reclamation, where some people wanted to extend the bay for agricultural projects (aka more land) and others wanted to keep it as is to protect the ecosystem (aka more sea). In real life at least, team Magma won.
Pokemon Emerald will forever be my FAVORITE pokemon game. And thank you for delving deep into the Regi puzzle. It is literally my favorite legendary puzzle in the series and really made them FEEL like creatures of ancient myth.
Hoenn is my second-favorite region, right behind Johto, for all the reasons you explained. It is just a highly rich game with so much to do. I have fond memories of my buddy and I making secret bases, mixing records, and hunting them down. To answer why some Pokèmon were missing from Emerald that were obtainable in Ruby and Sapphire, it was to give you a reason to trade with the older games. After all, trading was a huge part of why Pokémon was created in the first place. Great video!
Sure, I'll leave a comment. Despite my name, I haven't felt a reason to post any comment or replies to videos on this site in the last couple years or so. With all these massive channels with their comment sections filling up within 5 minutes this feels like one of the few channels I can actually post a comment on and have it be seen, Like seriously it's a bit crazy how underrated this channel is with how passionate you are about the topics you cover. I love the variety of this channel, and it honestly represents what I wish RUclips had more of, opinion pieces/personal stories with a unique voice about things the creator genuinely care about. Like you said about in Emerald how all the small optional things in this game just add charm to the experience, that applies to this channel as well, it's great to see. Just know that the videos you make feel genuine, unique, and honest, and to keep doing what you do cause you're adding great things to this world, even if they aren't getting the viewership they deserve imo. And in terms of Pokemon, your points are pretty agreeable. I'd say that Gen 3 for sure has the overall best roster of new Pokemon in the series, especially with the legendaries, and abilities are probably the best thing ever added to the series, at least battle wise. I guess one thing you could've talked about more was how good the soundtrack in this game is, even with GBA's poor sound quality the tracks in this game compared to the previous 2 Gens just add so much more life to these games, alongside the upgrades in visuals. I wish I had more to say about these games and/or my experiences with Pokemon in general or something, but I haven't put many hours into the series of Pokemon games. I'm a huge fan of the designs, battle system, lore, and whole adventure aspect of it, but just need to set aside the time to completely play through one of them, Emerald is probably a great starting point. This is more just an appreciation piece of thoughts I've had about this channel for a while. If you read all this thanks for that, and have a wonderful end of your 2024 Hayze.
The soundtrack is awesome! I sometimes use it even in non-pokemon related videos, since it doesn't tend to trigger copyright. And thank you so much for the kind comment!
Gen3 is really the last generation that I adored. I was like 4 when Gen1 came out and I religiously played that thing, so its 100% nostalgia and not allowed to be criticized by myself lol. Gen2 was such a cool upgrade with color graphics, day/night cycle, random calls from people I swapped phone number with, tons of brand new Pokemon (some of which had been teased in the anime and the first movie), and then top it off with the massive surprise of post-game kanto. Gen3, while removing my beloved johto features of day/night and phone calls was really cool with beautiful sprite graphics, abilities, natures, an interesting story that intertwined the bad guys with the legendary pokemon, and tons of side content to burn some time like the contests and battle frontier. While the Battle Frontier felt like a disappointment compared to post-game kanto region, I still thoroughly enjoyed gen3 and bought all 3 games. Gen4 I really felt the cracks appear, with gameplay feeling super slow and clunky to me. I always felt like the game was trying to wow me with graphics and force me to use the touchscreen gimmick more than I wanted to. Gen4 slowed down that adventure and then gen5 sealed the deal for me with a lot of the same gen4 issues of "please look at how pretty I am" along with a bunch of cutscenes to an intrusive story that didnt connect with me. Gen3 was just pure, mechanical fun and the last game to use the vastly superior 2D sprite art. I think theres a reason that so many people use this generation for making fan romhacks
Gen 4 and 5 used sprite art too though. Also yeah, Emerald is the best generation for making rom hacks, but ORAS is also pretty good if you're an experienced rom hacker.
Sprites in gen 4 were peak. And the touchscreen gameplay wasn’t a “gimmick,” it was utilizing the literal hardware innovation of the DS. Minigames on the touchscreen were actually really enjoyable to me and I was 4 when gen 2 came out and started my obsession.
Even Platinum had people complaining because it was too slow. Emerald was perfect. The game was fast, visually pleasing, and the move animations were peak. Then of course, the battle frontier is amazing in itself, and being able to rebattle gym leaders, and pokemon contest, and wide variety of pokemon to choose from, AND gen 3 has the BEST pokemon designs overall, mainly because the creator said in gen 3 he wanted to let loose and make pokemon with sharper edges and cooler designs. Emerald is the peak of the mainline pokemon games. Right behind it is BW2.
Platinum was less about slowness. Compared to Diamond and Pearl it had been sped up 33%. But the whole Giratina story line ended up making it the same pace as the other games
Yeah, it's a big downgrade for a pretty lame twist (at least, I think it was supposed to be a twist). I would have much preferred they just replace Wallace with Juan and have Wallace do something else, like be an elite four member or frontier brain or something.
21:16 nah bro. Pacificlodge was my dream place to live. Here's the lore behind it, I was born and brought up in Mumbai, and i got Emerald as my very first pokemon game. And the first time i saw Pacificlodge, it reminded me of my granny's house in the Konkan, which is a rural, tropical coastal area in Western India. Takes me back to carefree days where i went to my grandma's for summer vacations. That's why that town, and Emerald, will always hold a very special place in my heart.
"Literal gem of a game" really works, considering emerald is a gem! My mind always sparks up when people use the word "literally", as they tend to use it wrong; but you hit the nail right on the head. Great video!
what a nostalgia trip.... Id always see my brother playing his pokemon emerald all my life.... Im so grateful to have many memories playing this gem with him
4:00 Surskit, I think meditite and probably more pokemon are actually legally catchable in emerald. You need to use the trade records option (or something like that) with another player in the second floor of a pokemon center and then, amongst other things, you'll get announcements on tv about rare pokemon appearing in a specific route, and one of them is surskit.
The best part about gen 3 is that the box legendaries truly feel like legends. Mewtwo is one of the coolest concepts ever. But at the end of the day, it was created in a lab, broke out, and hid in a random cave. The legendary birds just kind of exist. The legendary beasts were just regular pokemon that got revived by Ho-Oh. Besides that, Ho-Oh and Lugia have almost no lore in game. I guess they only show themselves to worthy trainers. Kyogre, Groudon and Rayquaza though? They created the Earth, rule over it, and have the power to destroy it. You all already know the plot of the games so I won't repeat it here. But one thing I want to note is how great their battle theme is. It makes it feel like the being you're fighting is less of a Pokemon and more like a god. Also, I love the fact that Rayquaza is level 70. If you choose to bring it to the elite 4, no one stands a chance against it. It just goes to show that as powerful as the trainers think they are, there are Pokemon out there that are far stronger than them.
"Platinum was the last time we had an uncontestedly good Pokemon Game" is absolutely not true. HGSS was considered peak until it became cool to shit on Johto around like 2018 - Gen 3 was megaturbohated in the same ways Gen 5 and Gen 8 were hated on release. Even Platinum had its detractors as being "More of a bandaid fix on a mediocre-to-bad region, especially compared to G1 and G2". I know because ibwas there browsing on those old forums. The only way "This Pokemon game was beloved by the fans and pretty much everyonr agrees that its decent/good" is in an "I was a kid when this game came out and everybody loved it because all my peers did" kinda way.
Gen 3 was never "mega turbo hated" as you suggest. Even the people who actually hated gen 3 never came close to the hate gen 5 got, and gen 5 never got anywhere near the hate gen 8 got (deservedly so).
@@swagbear9965 Exactly. I remember gen 3 being one of the most popular gens. The merchandise was everywhere during the gen 3 era, and the pokemon center in NYC (RIP) was incredible!
I always loved Gen 3 but there were people at the time complaining about things like it having too many new Pokemon and making the in-game clock less impactful (both great things IMO). That said, I do agree about Gen 4 being the end of an era (if he meant to include HGSS). Everything from Gen 6 onwards has huge issues in terms of poor challenge/difficulty balance, never again having majority new Pokemon in the region making them lack identity in IMO the most important respect, and being linear or simplistic in progression and mostly missing metroidvania elements (other than 9, which I think is pretty underrated and if you can overlook the pop-in and other superficial roughness is IMO the best of these games). Gen 5 has challenge and heavy focus on new Pokemon, which is great, but it is where the simplification of the world progression started, as well as a non-Japan based setting and overly edgy story that I think makes the atmosphere feel off (overly ambitious use of early polygon graphics doesn't help either, especially when HGSS handled this in a very subtle way that has aged well). I do think it's much closer in quality to Gen 1-4 than the modern games, but it's where the style of the games started to noticeably deviate.
@@globalistgamer6418 Honestly I think you're right the only thing I disagree with is the gen 6 stuff but only because in my eyes ORAS was the last GREAT pokemon game to release. Easily on par with emerald in terms of actual new content if not exceeding, and the only real downside to ORAS was getting blueballed with the battle frontier, which yes, I am still salty about. However ORAS was like if XD and Colosseum got their much needed mainline sequel game. ORAS was almost the exact same story as Ruby and Sapphire, until the post-game. Emerald is still bar none my favorite pokemon game out there, but ORAS is literally a single step behind it. Emerald for me really only beats out ORAS due to Emeralds friendliness towards modding.
I remember me and my twin brother and I playing Gen 3-5 all the time as kids. It was our favorite group of pokemon games. They were amazing games to experience with someone else. I'll always cherish the time and memories I had with him before he was taken.
Gen 3 plays like “I remember” Gen 1 and 2 with all the bells and whistles. Good animations, wide screen, full colour, abilities, held items, double battles When you go back to Gen 1&2 it’s still good but a little bit toooooo different
Every time I hear that goddamn Littleroot town theme I get so emotional. I've spent well over 300 hours on my copy of sapphire, Shiny Hunting, completing the Pokedex, and much more. To this day my Minecraft skin is still Mudkip. Gen 3 is peak Pokemon. I love Gen 3, and I always will.
Why am I playing this game in 2025ish? A 2005 version of it. What is stopping Nintendo from releasing a legacy version of each early generation game? Evern on the Nintendo switch, it would go hard. KEEP IT 2D PLEASE
One thing I'd like to add is that the game's legendary pokemon especially the three cover pokemon are still some of the most iconic and loved legendary pokemon groups to this day being impactful both causally and meta wise. And what really sells it is how integrated they are to the lore as well as gameplay. When these games first released abilities were new and groudon and kyogre were the only pokemon who could set rain and sun. As the ones who brought the potential to increase the sea or land thus was a neat tie into the lore and the fact it has translated to them fighting in competitive pokemon for who could set up the weather also really cements that little lore bit. It also helped that the weather being a core mechanic also meant the pokekon was better represented. In black and white the dragons represent truth and ideals...that cool and all but what does that mean gameplay wise...not much. Same in other games....dialga and palkia are time and space but just have pressure. Yvetal and xerneas are life and death...still no actually game play impact. Even arceus, mew and mewtwo all lack these abilities to make them really stand out compared kyogre and groudon. One thing to add is that in game there affects are also felt in emerald. When hunting for kyogre the weather is raining signaling it's nearby and you can benefit from that just by being in the area. In the climax of the story when the weather is going hay wire you experience it during battles. It really helps sell these guys as being able to warp the world around to suite there whim.
What really kept me playing Emerald was the Battle Frontier. Most Pokémon games feel empty [to me] after you beat the Elite 4 and Champion, but the Battle Frontier in Emerald has SO much extra content that I spent hundreds of hours on. I even had Pokémon Coloseum and XD Gales of Darkness to trade from those games AND my FireRed as a kid. It was insanely fun.
this is such an amazing video that puts into words what i couldn’t about why gen 3 is so special to me - despite gen 2 being my favorite forever. Yellow was my first, though u was too young to really do more than appreciate the fun characters, but Gold was the first game i really fully understood the story and fully immersed myself with. i spend every waking moment with my Typhlosion and Red Gyarados. then Ruby expanded upon that and had so many more mechanics that 9 year old me took for granted. i knew it was an objectively better game than Gold, but it couldn’t take the place of Gold as my first real experience
Most of this was achieved by Ruby and Sapphire originally…not Emerald. I really hate how Emerald is given all the credit for all the great stuff in Gen 3 when it didn’t really add that much. It was Ruby and Sapphire that established the amazing Pokémon in Gen 3, the sense of exploration in hoenn, great gym leaders, great champion in Steven, abilities and natures, the awesome advancement in graphics and color integration, running shoes, contests, IV/EV system, overhaul of the box system, revamped berries, Double Battles…all of this was R/S and not emerald. Emerald just came along and put a little nice bow tie on some things and it gets all the credit for some reason.
It's just one of those retrospect things where there is literally no reason to replay Ruby/Sapphire over Emerald, but yes at the time Ruby/Sapphire came out, they have most of the innovations.
Imagine GF decide to do the third version in the remake instead of placing the third version of in the same generation as the original game. For example, Yellow for gen 1 remake in gen 3, Crystal for gen 2 remake in gen 4 (the only time they did it right for remake). Then "Delta" Emerald could be coming out with gen 6 graphic and with all Emerald features (OMG). Further down the road We could have Legend platinum in gen 8 instead of two seperate games like BDSP and PLA. What could have been.
Oh man, this video makes me feel old. Gen 3 absolutely were dogged on when it first came out. There were genwunners complaining that Gamefreak were running out of ideas, designing pokemon that were "just planes with faces", "blob with a mouth" and "just random geometric patterns for no reason". Fans of Crystal were very critical of the fact that there were no sprite animations in Ruby and Sapphire. Even when there were sprite animations in Emerald, Crystal fans complained they were lazy and had fewer frames. There were also complaints about the removal of Day and Night cycles, which didn't come back until Gen 4. And of course, Gen 2 games had 2 regions while Gen 3 only had Hoenn. There were the people who complained about "too much water". There was a lot of talk about how Gen 3 was a downgrade from Gen 2 in terms of quality. The thing people were most pissed about was the lack of backwards compatibility. People couldn't bring their beloved pokemon over from Gen 1 and 2 to Gen 3. This was really controversial, it was like Gen 8 Dexit before Dexit. Gen 3 was around the time I got my first pokemon games. I was a fan of the anime from before but these were my first chances playing the games. I played all of the first three Gens pretty much around the same time. To me, Gen 3 was clearly superior to the previous Gens in so many ways. So the online hate for Gen 3 from fans of Gens 1 and 2 really hurt, and I still remember it. My point here being, no pokemon game was ever hailed as perfect, except maybe the very first ones, and even those people acknowledge had flaws. Saying "Gamefreak is running out of ideas" and "they are just trying to cash in while they can" are time honored traditions of the pokemon fandom, as is dogpiling on the latest generation of pokemon.
I love the general difficulty rise in Emerald over Ruby/Sapphire. The gyms all received an overall level up, and with the variety of Pokémon on each route, Emerald is the best base gameboy game to nuzlocke. Also shoutout to Tropius/Tentacruel for carrying HM duty
31:33 that's the Battle Arena, not the Battle Factory. The Battle Factory is where you rent pokemon. Shoutout LRXC the goat. Sorry to nitpick, this was a great video! As a 26 year old man who got a Gameboy for his 9th birthday, it's wild to me reading these comments of people saying stuff like "Cool I might play this game someday". How have you not played Pokemon Emerald yet, not even on a gba emulator???
Just wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this video and subscribed after, your passion for the game was heartwarming and warranted because it is great.
You should try Emrerald Legacy. Its a faithful romhack of emerald withoit going crazy. It adds back in missing ruby and saphirre pokemon, expands on the story, and other stuff.
I do believe town inmersion, overall music and NPC interactions reached a peak point on this gen, but i just can't help to feel more inmersed in gen 4 looking at everyone turn their house light off at 12am.
One thing about secret bases you missed i really liked. You could wireless share your bases with your friends, and your secret base would appear in their game with you standing inside as an npc trainer for them to fight.
I remember getting a GBA only to get Emerald for Christmas after playing ORAS (my childhood game). I haven't finished my physical copy yet but I've finished it a couple of times on Emulators. I fricking love it
This game and zelda windwaker made my childhood. This game made me love nature and the tropics. My favorite route is the one with the volcano ash. I remember thinking it was snow when i was a child. And its hard choosing your team because most of the pokemon are amazing.
2:07 I love Emerald too but I guess forgot monstrosities like Huntail, Gorebyss, Whiscash, Swalot and others. I think Hoenn has a really high rate of "weird" looking Pokemon. I think the roster ist saved by a lot of really really outstanding designs.
Woah woah woah, I didn’t know about that battle frontier and pyramid stuff. Granted, I played this game when I was like 9 years old in 2007…that’s cool af.
7.9999/10 too much 35:17 video in a 35:17 video In all seriousness I love watching your videos they're really fun and good to put in the background of whatever I'm trying to do at the moment looking forward to the next
Really great video, love it and wish your channel all the best! I had a 3 month emerald phase this year, played my original cartridge on a gba sp for 200h, got 4/7 gold emblems in the frontier, 199/200 pokemon in the hoenn dex and 3/5 contest master ribbons so far. It's been an absolute blast. The only thing I disagree on: finding the magma hideout isn't hard if you've paid attention. You could remember the magma grunt standing in front of the wall when you came down there initially or just draw the connection that team MAGMA might be hiding somewhere near the VOLCANO lmao. As team Aqua is openly camping in a marine cave in front of Lilicove. In todays' time it might be disorienting but I think we've just gotten too used to the player character telling you the solution to the riddle if you haven't figured it out after 10 seconds...
It's not horrible, and the magma grunt standing outside of it definitely helps, but it's still one location you're expected to backtrack to out of a huge region. It's not horrible like the Rocket grunt dropping the lift key is, but it's still kind of an unfair puzzle for young kids, I would say.
Ok lets start with this, I like your videos, I like this video, I appreciate all the work you put into stuff like this and this is a WONDERFUL holiday gift. I have a lot of thoughts, but they are all about a very narrow part of your video and I don't wanna come across as like, attacking you or anything, just. . . word vomiting my thoughts. (I do really like your stuff and really hope you keep creating!! Excited to see what you make next!!
can you please explain what you mean specifically by saying this? I think your idea seems interesting but I'm too dumb to get what you mean. "The last thing I wanted to mention was the lack of the physical special split for moves. It feels like a modern game, so you'd think 'bite' would be physical already but its not. I think a lot of the pokemon in this generation were designed with that in mind, which leads to a lot of interesting interactions. For example, Aggron is physical, and its 4x weakness' are both exclusively physical, so its bulk can actually weather an attack even through 4x weakness--altho I dont know why you would try this, but its a really cool concept. Blaziken has a high physical and special attack because it needs to balance fighting and fire moves--its really cool!! The generation 1 and 2 pokemon had this in mind as well so they feel well suited for the way pokemon is played. . so emerald is really the last game you can feel how a ton of these mons were 'meant' to feel in terms of bulk. Its an extremely unique time that no other game scratches the same."
@@CJGuitarClips Ok so its a little complicated and through the lenses of both competitive battling and casual at the same time. The Physical/Special split happened twice in different ways. In generation 2, they split 'special' into sp. def and sp. atk. In generation 4 they split moves into special or physical moves. A fighting move could be special or physical based on the move. Before generation 4, moves' physical or special trait was determined by the typing and the typing alone. Bite vs Dark Pulse were both special. Mega punch and Hyper beam were both physical. The pokemon of generation 1-3 were all designed with this in mind. Misdreavus is a great example of this from gen 2, a pure ghost type with high special def and attack and low physical def and attack. A pure ghost is weak to ghost and dark, ghost being physical in gen 1-3, and dark being special, leads this pokemon to be very weak both offensively and defensively to ghosts, but less weak to dark. It doesn't matter what dark or ghost pokemon its fighting, every move of those types will share those traits. Theres also the concept that Misdrevus is a poor physical attacker, making it bad with its own type offensively, keeping the idea of a prankster ghost type in mind. It fits the theme, gives it a niche, and makes its own personal rock paper scissors match a bit more nuanced. Its cool! Lets look at a pokemon from generation 3. Milotic. HUGE special def of 125, and its only weakness are both special, electric and grass. But it has a very low defensive stat of 80, so it can't just swap into an earthquake, or it'd take a ton of damage from a powerful 100 move like that. And a water type that struggles to swap into ground and rock types may not fit into every team. And you KNOW every ground and rock move are going to be physical. And then add on top its cool ability, where if its' status'ed it gets more physical defense, then its a SUPER interesting mon. Being able to be nearly invincible if it gets status'ed, but having a glaring weakness if it's team can't bait out a status move for it. If you jump into gen 4 with these ideas, they fall apart. Milotic can't swap into an earthquake, but can swap into an earth power just fine. If the meta uses more special pokemon, Milotic is stronger--nothing about the types or niche she can fit in due to the types. Misdreavus is another great example, ghosts getting shadow ball as a special move made her WAY more powerful offensively, changing its fundamental direction as a pokemon. It has a different feeling now, because the moves it has access too has changed, and the landscape it exists in is more complicated. Now, i'm not syaing gen 4 was a mistake or bad, I love gen 4 and the changes they made to the game. I'm just saying, I also adore the work they put into making these pokemon exist within the way types worked back then. There are just so many cool interactions or sets on pokemon entirely based on the way the typings worked. Breloom having grass type as a weakness because they didn't have any special attack to take advantage of the typing, Intimidate could absolutely wall certain pokemon, something with two stab physical types unable to do anything--And hidden power!! A move that could be physical or special depending on the type, changing how useful it is from pokemon to pokemon, and the possible coverage was crazy! Aerodactyl having either a flying, bug or fighting physical 70 power move in its back pocket with no way of knowing until it hit was both cool and horrifying--and knowing a single intimidate can ruin its day lol. I mean heck, CROBAT, shadow ball being physical with a fighting or ground hidden power and poison/flying stab is a MONSTER. Elemental punches being used by special attackers--aaahh! I think maybe i'm putting too much importance on it all, but it makes me happy to think about, and I deeply appreciate the way it all works together, even at times the choices can make your head spin lol.
Playing Emerald now. Funny enough, gen 3 and gen 5 are my favorites, too. Man, do i miss being able to explore... I always thought the regis were amazing...!!
Im tempted to replay emerald because of this, and after just a few minute of surfing the internet, its downloadable for android with the size of 11 mb. What a game
How do you feel about the SmithPlays team “Legacy” Romhacks, most recently including emerald? I haven’t played emerald yet but Crystal was spectacular and I just started a second playthrough of it. Probably playing emerald legacy as soon as I’m done
Um Ahktually, nah I don't want to be pretentious. Anyway, I was a kid around Generation 3 in the early 2000s and even among the playground gen 3 was often compared negatively to gen 2, primarily because gen 2 had 2 regions while emerald only has the frontier which was too hard for any mere child. Even when I learned how to use the internet, this was around Gen 4, Gen 3 felt like it was still being panned by gen 1 & 2 fans. That said Emerald is still a masterpiece.
As a kid I thought the Hoenn games were really disappointing after Johto. The world and the pokemon designs were so boring, and the storyline was super lame. I've replayed a few times, but never really warmed to the games.
The 151 was what made pokemon a success, and to my 33 years old butt that’s where my heart about this fantasy world will always be. Gen 2 wasn’t a bad game, it’s actually my favorite gen game because of the improvement in graphics, improvement of the story line and the fuming inspiration from real life Kyoto itself with shrines and the 2 legendary birds Ho-oh and Lugia, also maybe with the 3 legendary dogs that I can tolerate and that was a fun challenge for it’s time, but from there it just kept going downhill with the designs of pokemon and the repetitiveness of the concept. I played Emerald long ago, more than 10-15 years ago yet I can’t remember a damn thing about it. I just remember getting Kyogre, Groudon, Reyquaza and getting to a few of the big machines legendary types of pokemon like registeel or something like that but I don’t remember anything about the story line, the graphics nor even about the starters, I remember nothing of the game as if it went into a black hole of my memory, but it is not so with Pokemon Gold, Silver, Crystal or with Blue, Red and Yellow that I remember so much of. I get it, Emerald is the peak of Pokemon on the gameboy, but I can only tolerate the 151 at the end of the day, and the best memory I have about Pokemon is roaming around Kanto and Johto, just like I will always remember and love the first gen starters, not so much love for gen 2 starters, and no love at all for all other gens that came afterwards. 🤷🏻♂️ that’s just how it is, how I feel about it. Emerald is not the one I grew up with, Pokemon was on a very steep decline after gen 2 release, and that’s why so many people actually never played it, but looking back at the design of this generation and how uninspiring af they look it’s no surprise. When I see what’s your favorite Pokemon I just feel numb and grieving about what people love about Pokemon and you’ve actually convinced me never to touch Emerald again. Everything about this generation of Pokemon is unappealing to me, including the map and for me not to remember a damn thing about the story line simply means it was as good as people say it is. The only good point about this generation is the graphics improvements, everything else is just so easily forgettable. I’m currently playing Fire red which I don’t remember ever playing and to me that’s where it is, the best experience ever, although it really feels like a fan made game and not really made by Game Freak, and the story line is kinda forgettable compared to true Gen 1 and 2 but I can live with it because my favorite Pokemon are there, and I like all original Pokemon, all of them up to Mewtwo and Mew that I can also tolerate, my favorite being Dragonite, but gtfo with Gen 3
Yeah I can still remember it vividly when Ruby and sapphire did drop and we kids got it. Everyone did freak out because of the “insane nearly real life realistic graphics” 😂 There were a shit ton of rumors on the school campus SPECIFICALLY with the Gen 3 legendary it was crazy. More than the mew rumors I remember very well and the best part about Gen 3 is that on top of ALL OF THIS the Gen 3 remake basically did give us megas and that’s my all time favorite mechanic. Like yeah Gen 6 introduced but gen3 remake did give it to us like the berry’s got introduced in Gen 2 but Gen 3 did kinda give it to us lol
Ahh Pokémon emerald, my first Pokémon game…when I was a kid I traded my emerald for my friends sapphire because I liked the color of sapphires cartridge. Wish I didn’t trade lol
What is your problem with Roselia, Nosepass, Shuppet and the Cradily line? Edit 2: Uh Surskit can be caught in Emerald on routes 102, 114, 117 and 120. Meditite I believe you can trade for. As for Roselia, I'm pretty sure it can be found on Route 117.
Emerald was my first Pokemon game and I'm damn happy it was, played it as a kid so I (to this day) have no idea about the whole statmaxing, working out everything mathematically etc, I just picked a cool team and beat and caught the 3 legendaries, I never got around to doing the quests for the Regi's and didn't even know the Steven fight existed til this video, I'm 26 so I grew up on the golden era of Gen 3 to Gen 5 and also played Colosseum as a kid on my friend's Gamecube so hearing that version of the battle theme that's the same in Emerald was really cool. I've gotten into Pocket, the mobile gacha-ish game which is in Gen 1 currently, Gen 2 drops January 30th and I'm so, so excited for Gen 3 (and also terrified for my wallet when it comes out lmao) to see my beloved Gen 3 little creatures in digital card form. I sincerely hope the physical TCG does a Hoenn set for like Emerald's 25th anniversary or something, that would be so cool
My first shiny (on an emulator) was a Poocheyana in Emerald. Such an amazing game. I've also probably spent more hours in Emerald than any other game. That & Kingdom Hearts 2
11:35 idk if you can really call Black and White a “commercial failure” when they only moved 800k fewer units than Ruby and Sapphire. I’d argue that those games sold fewer copies than others due to cyclical trends. For Ruby and Sapphire, many of the kids who loved Gen 1 were teenagers when those games released and were thus more concerned with Xbox and PlayStation games if they even still played video games at all. Same for Black and White. I was 16 when those games released, so I was not really thinking about buying Pokémon games. Also, DS emulation was good enough circa 2010 to just pirate Black and White and play for free. The 3DS games may have benefited from 3DS emulation being rather horrible until very recently. And newer games have benefited from Pokémon Go sparking renewed interest in the franchise as a whole.
What they should have done is not make 2 games and just make one and add everything in it for each new generation. Emerald is their best game yet they haven’t done anything based off of it for no reason
Yeah, I know. I've been insanely busy these past two months or so, like, 5 to 6 hours of work every weekend sort of busy. That's when I normally work on videos, so I didn't have any time to work on anything. That's over now, so hopefully I can get back to uploading something new every month or so.
I remember it different, the gen E 3 games had a rocky start with the designs being somewhat bland and critical reception being that there should have been more advancement for an 'advance' game Double battles caught on and the real excitement came from being able to access all the Pokemon between the remakes. Game Freak seems to have this cycle between wanting to make a revival which stands out for being its own deal to the Everyone Is Here dynamic. I suppose because they get notes from their marketing team to influence sales. And they can pepper in events between to remain relevant Emerald at the very least is lauded for being very competent on the programming side. They went above and beyond to ensure that even the pageants were air tight Playing through it today doesn't feel arcane which is refreshing for gaming
The video is littered with minor inaccuracies, but overall a great message. Here's hoping nintendo puts emerald on virtual console someday because it was one of the least sold pokemon games (making it hard to get now), and when they read that data they made the decision to stop spending development money on the battle frontier (gen 4 was already in development before they made that decision).
Wow, I did NOT think my Roselia comment would be so controversial
I mean, the Cradily line and nosepass were understandable, and no one likes Illumise and Volbeat for a lot of reasons, but putting Roselia in with that entire group is insane. Its "Obvious flaws" vs "Personal preference"
i adore roselia 🥀
but I resent how she disappeared from emerald
also cradily goes hard asf
37 years old and I just played through emerald for the first time. What a wonderful game.
Im 34 and I played thru blue red and yellow silver and gold as a kid and played ruby saphire emerald a couple times but got like old so stopped playing them so never finnished them but my brother literally still has them and I messaged him yesterday to lend me emerald and his Gameboy to run it back next time he drops my niece and nephew off so now I'm looking back at how cool they was and so keen to play again like in go just isn't doing it for me hahaha
The Battle Frontier is up next for you brother!
I had no idea how feature dense this game was, thanks for putting some spotlight on the less commonly talked about parts of the game. I might give it a try sometime.
I’ve probably put more hours into Emerald than any other game in my life. I’m using it as the main hub game for completing the Dex in all 5 Generation 3 games.
Same. In the past few days, I was busy leveling up mawile
@@jastme0102 I've been into Firered, trying to do a playthrough where I have fewer hours playing than types of Pokémon that I've caught.
I’m doing the national dex on emerald rn so fire 🔥
@@TeamHoudiniYGO Right on, I think I'm like 30 Pokemon short as of right now. I'm going to do FR/LG National Dex next.
@@codenamelarry6518 I’m on the same grind with you first emerald in like 300 off and ima do Fire Red next also I’m doing the living dex so it’s a little longer
I'd like to add that the Land vs Sea schtick is a simplied version of the debate about the Ishaya Bay reclamation, where some people wanted to extend the bay for agricultural projects (aka more land) and others wanted to keep it as is to protect the ecosystem (aka more sea).
In real life at least, team Magma won.
Pokemon Emerald will forever be my FAVORITE pokemon game.
And thank you for delving deep into the Regi puzzle. It is literally my favorite legendary puzzle in the series and really made them FEEL like creatures of ancient myth.
Hoenn is my second-favorite region, right behind Johto, for all the reasons you explained. It is just a highly rich game with so much to do. I have fond memories of my buddy and I making secret bases, mixing records, and hunting them down.
To answer why some Pokèmon were missing from Emerald that were obtainable in Ruby and Sapphire, it was to give you a reason to trade with the older games. After all, trading was a huge part of why Pokémon was created in the first place.
Great video!
Sure, I'll leave a comment. Despite my name, I haven't felt a reason to post any comment or replies to videos on this site in the last couple years or so. With all these massive channels with their comment sections filling up within 5 minutes this feels like one of the few channels I can actually post a comment on and have it be seen, Like seriously it's a bit crazy how underrated this channel is with how passionate you are about the topics you cover. I love the variety of this channel, and it honestly represents what I wish RUclips had more of, opinion pieces/personal stories with a unique voice about things the creator genuinely care about. Like you said about in Emerald how all the small optional things in this game just add charm to the experience, that applies to this channel as well, it's great to see. Just know that the videos you make feel genuine, unique, and honest, and to keep doing what you do cause you're adding great things to this world, even if they aren't getting the viewership they deserve imo.
And in terms of Pokemon, your points are pretty agreeable. I'd say that Gen 3 for sure has the overall best roster of new Pokemon in the series, especially with the legendaries, and abilities are probably the best thing ever added to the series, at least battle wise. I guess one thing you could've talked about more was how good the soundtrack in this game is, even with GBA's poor sound quality the tracks in this game compared to the previous 2 Gens just add so much more life to these games, alongside the upgrades in visuals. I wish I had more to say about these games and/or my experiences with Pokemon in general or something, but I haven't put many hours into the series of Pokemon games. I'm a huge fan of the designs, battle system, lore, and whole adventure aspect of it, but just need to set aside the time to completely play through one of them, Emerald is probably a great starting point.
This is more just an appreciation piece of thoughts I've had about this channel for a while. If you read all this thanks for that, and have a wonderful end of your 2024 Hayze.
The soundtrack is awesome! I sometimes use it even in non-pokemon related videos, since it doesn't tend to trigger copyright. And thank you so much for the kind comment!
I'll always have a soft spot for Emerald. Thats the game i caught my first ever shiny, a Shuppet.
Gen3 is really the last generation that I adored. I was like 4 when Gen1 came out and I religiously played that thing, so its 100% nostalgia and not allowed to be criticized by myself lol.
Gen2 was such a cool upgrade with color graphics, day/night cycle, random calls from people I swapped phone number with, tons of brand new Pokemon (some of which had been teased in the anime and the first movie), and then top it off with the massive surprise of post-game kanto.
Gen3, while removing my beloved johto features of day/night and phone calls was really cool with beautiful sprite graphics, abilities, natures, an interesting story that intertwined the bad guys with the legendary pokemon, and tons of side content to burn some time like the contests and battle frontier. While the Battle Frontier felt like a disappointment compared to post-game kanto region, I still thoroughly enjoyed gen3 and bought all 3 games.
Gen4 I really felt the cracks appear, with gameplay feeling super slow and clunky to me. I always felt like the game was trying to wow me with graphics and force me to use the touchscreen gimmick more than I wanted to. Gen4 slowed down that adventure and then gen5 sealed the deal for me with a lot of the same gen4 issues of "please look at how pretty I am" along with a bunch of cutscenes to an intrusive story that didnt connect with me.
Gen3 was just pure, mechanical fun and the last game to use the vastly superior 2D sprite art. I think theres a reason that so many people use this generation for making fan romhacks
Gen 4 and 5 used sprite art too though. Also yeah, Emerald is the best generation for making rom hacks, but ORAS is also pretty good if you're an experienced rom hacker.
@@megaman37456 Yeah but the overworld in gen 4 and 5 were like 90% 3d. I certainly don't mind it though.
@@Nick-yl4qp I'm pretty sure gens 4 and 5 didn't have 3D overworlds and that it was actually 32-bit with strange camera angles to simulate 3D.
Sprites in gen 4 were peak. And the touchscreen gameplay wasn’t a “gimmick,” it was utilizing the literal hardware innovation of the DS. Minigames on the touchscreen were actually really enjoyable to me and I was 4 when gen 2 came out and started my obsession.
Gen 4 gamplay wasn't slow. It's the stupid HP bar.
Even Platinum had people complaining because it was too slow. Emerald was perfect. The game was fast, visually pleasing, and the move animations were peak. Then of course, the battle frontier is amazing in itself, and being able to rebattle gym leaders, and pokemon contest, and wide variety of pokemon to choose from, AND gen 3 has the BEST pokemon designs overall, mainly because the creator said in gen 3 he wanted to let loose and make pokemon with sharper edges and cooler designs. Emerald is the peak of the mainline pokemon games. Right behind it is BW2.
Platinum was less about slowness. Compared to Diamond and Pearl it had been sped up 33%. But the whole Giratina story line ended up making it the same pace as the other games
As much as I love emerald and it is obviously the superior version of of gen3. Damn Steven is such a better champion
Yeah, it's a big downgrade for a pretty lame twist (at least, I think it was supposed to be a twist). I would have much preferred they just replace Wallace with Juan and have Wallace do something else, like be an elite four member or frontier brain or something.
21:16 nah bro. Pacificlodge was my dream place to live. Here's the lore behind it, I was born and brought up in Mumbai, and i got Emerald as my very first pokemon game. And the first time i saw Pacificlodge, it reminded me of my granny's house in the Konkan, which is a rural, tropical coastal area in Western India. Takes me back to carefree days where i went to my grandma's for summer vacations. That's why that town, and Emerald, will always hold a very special place in my heart.
I just looked up Konkan. It looks sick! I can see why you'd love it there.
"Literal gem of a game" really works, considering emerald is a gem! My mind always sparks up when people use the word "literally", as they tend to use it wrong; but you hit the nail right on the head. Great video!
what a nostalgia trip.... Id always see my brother playing his pokemon emerald all my life.... Im so grateful to have many memories playing this gem with him
4:00 Surskit, I think meditite and probably more pokemon are actually legally catchable in emerald. You need to use the trade records option (or something like that) with another player in the second floor of a pokemon center and then, amongst other things, you'll get announcements on tv about rare pokemon appearing in a specific route, and one of them is surskit.
The best part about gen 3 is that the box legendaries truly feel like legends. Mewtwo is one of the coolest concepts ever. But at the end of the day, it was created in a lab, broke out, and hid in a random cave. The legendary birds just kind of exist. The legendary beasts were just regular pokemon that got revived by Ho-Oh. Besides that, Ho-Oh and Lugia have almost no lore in game. I guess they only show themselves to worthy trainers.
Kyogre, Groudon and Rayquaza though? They created the Earth, rule over it, and have the power to destroy it. You all already know the plot of the games so I won't repeat it here. But one thing I want to note is how great their battle theme is. It makes it feel like the being you're fighting is less of a Pokemon and more like a god. Also, I love the fact that Rayquaza is level 70. If you choose to bring it to the elite 4, no one stands a chance against it. It just goes to show that as powerful as the trainers think they are, there are Pokemon out there that are far stronger than them.
"Platinum was the last time we had an uncontestedly good Pokemon Game" is absolutely not true. HGSS was considered peak until it became cool to shit on Johto around like 2018 - Gen 3 was megaturbohated in the same ways Gen 5 and Gen 8 were hated on release. Even Platinum had its detractors as being "More of a bandaid fix on a mediocre-to-bad region, especially compared to G1 and G2". I know because ibwas there browsing on those old forums.
The only way "This Pokemon game was beloved by the fans and pretty much everyonr agrees that its decent/good" is in an "I was a kid when this game came out and everybody loved it because all my peers did" kinda way.
Gen 3 was never "mega turbo hated" as you suggest. Even the people who actually hated gen 3 never came close to the hate gen 5 got, and gen 5 never got anywhere near the hate gen 8 got (deservedly so).
@@megaman37456exactly. Gen 3 was never hated as much as gen 5 or later gens
@@swagbear9965 Exactly. I remember gen 3 being one of the most popular gens. The merchandise was everywhere during the gen 3 era, and the pokemon center in NYC (RIP) was incredible!
I always loved Gen 3 but there were people at the time complaining about things like it having too many new Pokemon and making the in-game clock less impactful (both great things IMO).
That said, I do agree about Gen 4 being the end of an era (if he meant to include HGSS). Everything from Gen 6 onwards has huge issues in terms of poor challenge/difficulty balance, never again having majority new Pokemon in the region making them lack identity in IMO the most important respect, and being linear or simplistic in progression and mostly missing metroidvania elements (other than 9, which I think is pretty underrated and if you can overlook the pop-in and other superficial roughness is IMO the best of these games).
Gen 5 has challenge and heavy focus on new Pokemon, which is great, but it is where the simplification of the world progression started, as well as a non-Japan based setting and overly edgy story that I think makes the atmosphere feel off (overly ambitious use of early polygon graphics doesn't help either, especially when HGSS handled this in a very subtle way that has aged well). I do think it's much closer in quality to Gen 1-4 than the modern games, but it's where the style of the games started to noticeably deviate.
@@globalistgamer6418 Honestly I think you're right the only thing I disagree with is the gen 6 stuff but only because in my eyes ORAS was the last GREAT pokemon game to release. Easily on par with emerald in terms of actual new content if not exceeding, and the only real downside to ORAS was getting blueballed with the battle frontier, which yes, I am still salty about.
However ORAS was like if XD and Colosseum got their much needed mainline sequel game. ORAS was almost the exact same story as Ruby and Sapphire, until the post-game.
Emerald is still bar none my favorite pokemon game out there, but ORAS is literally a single step behind it. Emerald for me really only beats out ORAS due to Emeralds friendliness towards modding.
Showed up on my algorithm because I'm a 32-year-old nostalgia merchant who's still playing this game. It's beautiful indeed.
I remember me and my twin brother and I playing Gen 3-5 all the time as kids. It was our favorite group of pokemon games. They were amazing games to experience with someone else. I'll always cherish the time and memories I had with him before he was taken.
Gen 3 plays like “I remember” Gen 1 and 2 with all the bells and whistles.
Good animations, wide screen, full colour, abilities, held items, double battles
When you go back to Gen 1&2 it’s still good but a little bit toooooo different
Every time I hear that goddamn Littleroot town theme I get so emotional. I've spent well over 300 hours on my copy of sapphire, Shiny Hunting, completing the Pokedex, and much more. To this day my Minecraft skin is still Mudkip. Gen 3 is peak Pokemon. I love Gen 3, and I always will.
I've been playing Emerald legacy for the past few weeks and I'm loving exploring Hoenn (and the major quality of life improvements)
Why am I playing this game in 2025ish? A 2005 version of it. What is stopping Nintendo from releasing a legacy version of each early generation game? Evern on the Nintendo switch, it would go hard. KEEP IT 2D PLEASE
4:57 u said it brother 100 % agreed
One thing I'd like to add is that the game's legendary pokemon especially the three cover pokemon are still some of the most iconic and loved legendary pokemon groups to this day being impactful both causally and meta wise.
And what really sells it is how integrated they are to the lore as well as gameplay.
When these games first released abilities were new and groudon and kyogre were the only pokemon who could set rain and sun.
As the ones who brought the potential to increase the sea or land thus was a neat tie into the lore and the fact it has translated to them fighting in competitive pokemon for who could set up the weather also really cements that little lore bit.
It also helped that the weather being a core mechanic also meant the pokekon was better represented.
In black and white the dragons represent truth and ideals...that cool and all but what does that mean gameplay wise...not much.
Same in other games....dialga and palkia are time and space but just have pressure.
Yvetal and xerneas are life and death...still no actually game play impact.
Even arceus, mew and mewtwo all lack these abilities to make them really stand out compared kyogre and groudon.
One thing to add is that in game there affects are also felt in emerald.
When hunting for kyogre the weather is raining signaling it's nearby and you can benefit from that just by being in the area. In the climax of the story when the weather is going hay wire you experience it during battles.
It really helps sell these guys as being able to warp the world around to suite there whim.
Actually, gen 2 sprite work still holds up to this day and is given recognition for how well made it is. However, gen 1 is absolutely abysmal.
What really kept me playing Emerald was the Battle Frontier. Most Pokémon games feel empty [to me] after you beat the Elite 4 and Champion, but the Battle Frontier in Emerald has SO much extra content that I spent hundreds of hours on. I even had Pokémon Coloseum and XD Gales of Darkness to trade from those games AND my FireRed as a kid. It was insanely fun.
Really enjoyed this video. It was a great combination of explanation, humor, and even mechanics. Keep at it sir.
this is such an amazing video that puts into words what i couldn’t about why gen 3 is so special to me - despite gen 2 being my favorite forever. Yellow was my first, though u was too young to really do more than appreciate the fun characters, but Gold was the first game i really fully understood the story and fully immersed myself with. i spend every waking moment with my Typhlosion and Red Gyarados. then Ruby expanded upon that and had so many more mechanics that 9 year old me took for granted. i knew it was an objectively better game than Gold, but it couldn’t take the place of Gold as my first real experience
I’ve literally never heard of somebody “aging out of pokemon”
Most of this was achieved by Ruby and Sapphire originally…not Emerald. I really hate how Emerald is given all the credit for all the great stuff in Gen 3 when it didn’t really add that much. It was Ruby and Sapphire that established the amazing Pokémon in Gen 3, the sense of exploration in hoenn, great gym leaders, great champion in Steven, abilities and natures, the awesome advancement in graphics and color integration, running shoes, contests, IV/EV system, overhaul of the box system, revamped berries, Double Battles…all of this was R/S and not emerald. Emerald just came along and put a little nice bow tie on some things and it gets all the credit for some reason.
It's just one of those retrospect things where there is literally no reason to replay Ruby/Sapphire over Emerald, but yes at the time Ruby/Sapphire came out, they have most of the innovations.
Imagine GF decide to do the third version in the remake instead of placing the third version of in the same generation as the original game. For example, Yellow for gen 1 remake in gen 3, Crystal for gen 2 remake in gen 4 (the only time they did it right for remake). Then "Delta" Emerald could be coming out with gen 6 graphic and with all Emerald features (OMG). Further down the road We could have Legend platinum in gen 8 instead of two seperate games like BDSP and PLA. What could have been.
Try playing the Pokemon Emerald Legacy game it will not disappoint you
If you got gold symbols on the Battle Frontier with your actual team and no trades you are a MVP just know that
Oh man, this video makes me feel old. Gen 3 absolutely were dogged on when it first came out. There were genwunners complaining that Gamefreak were running out of ideas, designing pokemon that were "just planes with faces", "blob with a mouth" and "just random geometric patterns for no reason". Fans of Crystal were very critical of the fact that there were no sprite animations in Ruby and Sapphire. Even when there were sprite animations in Emerald, Crystal fans complained they were lazy and had fewer frames. There were also complaints about the removal of Day and Night cycles, which didn't come back until Gen 4. And of course, Gen 2 games had 2 regions while Gen 3 only had Hoenn. There were the people who complained about "too much water". There was a lot of talk about how Gen 3 was a downgrade from Gen 2 in terms of quality. The thing people were most pissed about was the lack of backwards compatibility. People couldn't bring their beloved pokemon over from Gen 1 and 2 to Gen 3. This was really controversial, it was like Gen 8 Dexit before Dexit.
Gen 3 was around the time I got my first pokemon games. I was a fan of the anime from before but these were my first chances playing the games. I played all of the first three Gens pretty much around the same time. To me, Gen 3 was clearly superior to the previous Gens in so many ways. So the online hate for Gen 3 from fans of Gens 1 and 2 really hurt, and I still remember it. My point here being, no pokemon game was ever hailed as perfect, except maybe the very first ones, and even those people acknowledge had flaws. Saying "Gamefreak is running out of ideas" and "they are just trying to cash in while they can" are time honored traditions of the pokemon fandom, as is dogpiling on the latest generation of pokemon.
I love the general difficulty rise in Emerald over Ruby/Sapphire. The gyms all received an overall level up, and with the variety of Pokémon on each route, Emerald is the best base gameboy game to nuzlocke. Also shoutout to Tropius/Tentacruel for carrying HM duty
31:33 that's the Battle Arena, not the Battle Factory. The Battle Factory is where you rent pokemon. Shoutout LRXC the goat.
Sorry to nitpick, this was a great video! As a 26 year old man who got a Gameboy for his 9th birthday, it's wild to me reading these comments of people saying stuff like "Cool I might play this game someday". How have you not played Pokemon Emerald yet, not even on a gba emulator???
Just wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this video and subscribed after, your passion for the game was heartwarming and warranted because it is great.
You should try Emrerald Legacy. Its a faithful romhack of emerald withoit going crazy. It adds back in missing ruby and saphirre pokemon, expands on the story, and other stuff.
I do believe town inmersion, overall music and NPC interactions reached a peak point on this gen, but i just can't help to feel more inmersed in gen 4 looking at everyone turn their house light off at 12am.
One thing about secret bases you missed i really liked. You could wireless share your bases with your friends, and your secret base would appear in their game with you standing inside as an npc trainer for them to fight.
as someone who recently has grown deeply fond of the gen 3 villains. this is great 👍
I remember getting a GBA only to get Emerald for Christmas after playing ORAS (my childhood game). I haven't finished my physical copy yet but I've finished it a couple of times on Emulators. I fricking love it
I still just smashed highest damage, but love the optional strats for others haha
Insert “It’s Rayqueza with a Steel chair!” Meme 😂
Glad to see someone make a video about emerald who, like me, played the game a little bit too much
This game and zelda windwaker made my childhood. This game made me love nature and the tropics. My favorite route is the one with the volcano ash. I remember thinking it was snow when i was a child. And its hard choosing your team because most of the pokemon are amazing.
The reason masquerade isn't in emerald because they need you to buy the other games. It's nintendo.
31:57 you CAN bring legendaries, such as the Beasts, Birds, etc but the stronger ones such as Mewtwo, Rayquaza, Deoxys, etc are banned.
2:07 I love Emerald too but I guess forgot monstrosities like Huntail, Gorebyss, Whiscash, Swalot and others. I think Hoenn has a really high rate of "weird" looking Pokemon. I think the roster ist saved by a lot of really really outstanding designs.
Emerald post game literally burned months of my life
would kill to have an Emerald remastered made
Absolutely agree, still remember the joy i got when visiting foretree city… so freakin cool
Woah woah woah, I didn’t know about that battle frontier and pyramid stuff. Granted, I played this game when I was like 9 years old in 2007…that’s cool af.
7.9999/10 too much 35:17 video in a 35:17 video
In all seriousness I love watching your videos they're really fun and good to put in the background of whatever I'm trying to do at the moment looking forward to the next
JUSTICE FOR LILEEP AND CRADILY
disagree with Platinum being the last uncontentious good pokemon game. I think HGSS and BW2 are pretty widely appreciated
Nostalgia hits 1000x more again 😢
Really great video, love it and wish your channel all the best!
I had a 3 month emerald phase this year, played my original cartridge on a gba sp for 200h, got 4/7 gold emblems in the frontier, 199/200 pokemon in the hoenn dex and 3/5 contest master ribbons so far. It's been an absolute blast.
The only thing I disagree on: finding the magma hideout isn't hard if you've paid attention. You could remember the magma grunt standing in front of the wall when you came down there initially or just draw the connection that team MAGMA might be hiding somewhere near the VOLCANO lmao. As team Aqua is openly camping in a marine cave in front of Lilicove. In todays' time it might be disorienting but I think we've just gotten too used to the player character telling you the solution to the riddle if you haven't figured it out after 10 seconds...
It's not horrible, and the magma grunt standing outside of it definitely helps, but it's still one location you're expected to backtrack to out of a huge region. It's not horrible like the Rocket grunt dropping the lift key is, but it's still kind of an unfair puzzle for young kids, I would say.
Ok lets start with this, I like your videos, I like this video, I appreciate all the work you put into stuff like this and this is a WONDERFUL holiday gift. I have a lot of thoughts, but they are all about a very narrow part of your video and I don't wanna come across as like, attacking you or anything, just. . . word vomiting my thoughts. (I do really like your stuff and really hope you keep creating!! Excited to see what you make next!!
can you please explain what you mean specifically by saying this? I think your idea seems interesting but I'm too dumb to get what you mean.
"The last thing I wanted to mention was the lack of the physical special split for moves. It feels like a modern game, so you'd think 'bite' would be physical already but its not. I think a lot of the pokemon in this generation were designed with that in mind, which leads to a lot of interesting interactions. For example, Aggron is physical, and its 4x weakness' are both exclusively physical, so its bulk can actually weather an attack even through 4x weakness--altho I dont know why you would try this, but its a really cool concept. Blaziken has a high physical and special attack because it needs to balance fighting and fire moves--its really cool!! The generation 1 and 2 pokemon had this in mind as well so they feel well suited for the way pokemon is played. . so emerald is really the last game you can feel how a ton of these mons were 'meant' to feel in terms of bulk. Its an extremely unique time that no other game scratches the same."
@@CJGuitarClips Ok so its a little complicated and through the lenses of both competitive battling and casual at the same time. The Physical/Special split happened twice in different ways. In generation 2, they split 'special' into sp. def and sp. atk. In generation 4 they split moves into special or physical moves. A fighting move could be special or physical based on the move. Before generation 4, moves' physical or special trait was determined by the typing and the typing alone. Bite vs Dark Pulse were both special. Mega punch and Hyper beam were both physical. The pokemon of generation 1-3 were all designed with this in mind.
Misdreavus is a great example of this from gen 2, a pure ghost type with high special def and attack and low physical def and attack. A pure ghost is weak to ghost and dark, ghost being physical in gen 1-3, and dark being special, leads this pokemon to be very weak both offensively and defensively to ghosts, but less weak to dark. It doesn't matter what dark or ghost pokemon its fighting, every move of those types will share those traits. Theres also the concept that Misdrevus is a poor physical attacker, making it bad with its own type offensively, keeping the idea of a prankster ghost type in mind. It fits the theme, gives it a niche, and makes its own personal rock paper scissors match a bit more nuanced. Its cool!
Lets look at a pokemon from generation 3. Milotic. HUGE special def of 125, and its only weakness are both special, electric and grass. But it has a very low defensive stat of 80, so it can't just swap into an earthquake, or it'd take a ton of damage from a powerful 100 move like that. And a water type that struggles to swap into ground and rock types may not fit into every team. And you KNOW every ground and rock move are going to be physical. And then add on top its cool ability, where if its' status'ed it gets more physical defense, then its a SUPER interesting mon. Being able to be nearly invincible if it gets status'ed, but having a glaring weakness if it's team can't bait out a status move for it.
If you jump into gen 4 with these ideas, they fall apart. Milotic can't swap into an earthquake, but can swap into an earth power just fine. If the meta uses more special pokemon, Milotic is stronger--nothing about the types or niche she can fit in due to the types. Misdreavus is another great example, ghosts getting shadow ball as a special move made her WAY more powerful offensively, changing its fundamental direction as a pokemon. It has a different feeling now, because the moves it has access too has changed, and the landscape it exists in is more complicated.
Now, i'm not syaing gen 4 was a mistake or bad, I love gen 4 and the changes they made to the game. I'm just saying, I also adore the work they put into making these pokemon exist within the way types worked back then. There are just so many cool interactions or sets on pokemon entirely based on the way the typings worked. Breloom having grass type as a weakness because they didn't have any special attack to take advantage of the typing, Intimidate could absolutely wall certain pokemon, something with two stab physical types unable to do anything--And hidden power!! A move that could be physical or special depending on the type, changing how useful it is from pokemon to pokemon, and the possible coverage was crazy! Aerodactyl having either a flying, bug or fighting physical 70 power move in its back pocket with no way of knowing until it hit was both cool and horrifying--and knowing a single intimidate can ruin its day lol. I mean heck, CROBAT, shadow ball being physical with a fighting or ground hidden power and poison/flying stab is a MONSTER. Elemental punches being used by special attackers--aaahh!
I think maybe i'm putting too much importance on it all, but it makes me happy to think about, and I deeply appreciate the way it all works together, even at times the choices can make your head spin lol.
Playing Emerald now. Funny enough, gen 3 and gen 5 are my favorites, too. Man, do i miss being able to explore... I always thought the regis were amazing...!!
As a single child I played 1000+ hours into all 3 hoenn games and could tell you every pixle in the game fr
When you first pass the rock going down the mountain there is a magma grunt standing in front of it. Not the best puzzle but they did give a clue.
Enjoyed the retrospective!
Im tempted to replay emerald because of this, and after just a few minute of surfing the internet, its downloadable for android with the size of 11 mb. What a game
great video man
How do you feel about the SmithPlays team “Legacy” Romhacks, most recently including emerald? I haven’t played emerald yet but Crystal was spectacular and I just started a second playthrough of it. Probably playing emerald legacy as soon as I’m done
Um Ahktually, nah I don't want to be pretentious. Anyway, I was a kid around Generation 3 in the early 2000s and even among the playground gen 3 was often compared negatively to gen 2, primarily because gen 2 had 2 regions while emerald only has the frontier which was too hard for any mere child. Even when I learned how to use the internet, this was around Gen 4, Gen 3 felt like it was still being panned by gen 1 & 2 fans.
That said Emerald is still a masterpiece.
Yellow, Crystal, Emerald. The three monuments of Pokemon. That or im just old.
Beloom is one of my favourite pokemon ❤. Grass + fighting type
almost halfway to 50k 🔥
As a kid I thought the Hoenn games were really disappointing after Johto. The world and the pokemon designs were so boring, and the storyline was super lame.
I've replayed a few times, but never really warmed to the games.
The 151 was what made pokemon a success, and to my 33 years old butt that’s where my heart about this fantasy world will always be.
Gen 2 wasn’t a bad game, it’s actually my favorite gen game because of the improvement in graphics, improvement of the story line and the fuming inspiration from real life Kyoto itself with shrines and the 2 legendary birds Ho-oh and Lugia, also maybe with the 3 legendary dogs that I can tolerate and that was a fun challenge for it’s time, but from there it just kept going downhill with the designs of pokemon and the repetitiveness of the concept.
I played Emerald long ago, more than 10-15 years ago yet I can’t remember a damn thing about it. I just remember getting Kyogre, Groudon, Reyquaza and getting to a few of the big machines legendary types of pokemon like registeel or something like that but I don’t remember anything about the story line, the graphics nor even about the starters, I remember nothing of the game as if it went into a black hole of my memory, but it is not so with Pokemon Gold, Silver, Crystal or with Blue, Red and Yellow that I remember so much of.
I get it, Emerald is the peak of Pokemon on the gameboy, but I can only tolerate the 151 at the end of the day, and the best memory I have about Pokemon is roaming around Kanto and Johto, just like I will always remember and love the first gen starters, not so much love for gen 2 starters, and no love at all for all other gens that came afterwards. 🤷🏻♂️ that’s just how it is, how I feel about it.
Emerald is not the one I grew up with, Pokemon was on a very steep decline after gen 2 release, and that’s why so many people actually never played it, but looking back at the design of this generation and how uninspiring af they look it’s no surprise.
When I see what’s your favorite Pokemon I just feel numb and grieving about what people love about Pokemon and you’ve actually convinced me never to touch Emerald again. Everything about this generation of Pokemon is unappealing to me, including the map and for me not to remember a damn thing about the story line simply means it was as good as people say it is.
The only good point about this generation is the graphics improvements, everything else is just so easily forgettable.
I’m currently playing Fire red which I don’t remember ever playing and to me that’s where it is, the best experience ever, although it really feels like a fan made game and not really made by Game Freak, and the story line is kinda forgettable compared to true Gen 1 and 2 but I can live with it because my favorite Pokemon are there, and I like all original Pokemon, all of them up to Mewtwo and Mew that I can also tolerate, my favorite being Dragonite, but gtfo with Gen 3
you missed out the trick house! one of my favorite side things to do in emerald
Yeah I can still remember it vividly when Ruby and sapphire did drop and we kids got it. Everyone did freak out because of the “insane nearly real life realistic graphics” 😂
There were a shit ton of rumors on the school campus SPECIFICALLY with the Gen 3 legendary it was crazy. More than the mew rumors
I remember very well and the best part about Gen 3 is that on top of ALL OF THIS the Gen 3 remake basically did give us megas and that’s my all time favorite mechanic. Like yeah Gen 6 introduced but gen3 remake did give it to us like the berry’s got introduced in Gen 2 but Gen 3 did kinda give it to us lol
Cool video! :)
I gotta say what I love is the diversity of environments. You literally have just about everything except an arctic biome.
Winona’s Altaria got HANDS
There is a reason why even though it was over 200 dollars i still got myself a copy to have and played it for 200 hours lol
HeartGold/SoulSilver, Platinum, Emerald and Crystal are the best Pokémon games.
Ahh Pokémon emerald, my first Pokémon game…when I was a kid I traded my emerald for my friends sapphire because I liked the color of sapphires cartridge. Wish I didn’t trade lol
What is your problem with Roselia, Nosepass, Shuppet and the Cradily line?
Edit 2: Uh Surskit can be caught in Emerald on routes 102, 114, 117 and 120.
Meditite I believe you can trade for.
As for Roselia, I'm pretty sure it can be found on Route 117.
this video
Emerald was my first Pokemon game and I'm damn happy it was, played it as a kid so I (to this day) have no idea about the whole statmaxing, working out everything mathematically etc, I just picked a cool team and beat and caught the 3 legendaries, I never got around to doing the quests for the Regi's and didn't even know the Steven fight existed til this video, I'm 26 so I grew up on the golden era of Gen 3 to Gen 5 and also played Colosseum as a kid on my friend's Gamecube so hearing that version of the battle theme that's the same in Emerald was really cool.
I've gotten into Pocket, the mobile gacha-ish game which is in Gen 1 currently, Gen 2 drops January 30th and I'm so, so excited for Gen 3 (and also terrified for my wallet when it comes out lmao) to see my beloved Gen 3 little creatures in digital card form. I sincerely hope the physical TCG does a Hoenn set for like Emerald's 25th anniversary or something, that would be so cool
My first shiny (on an emulator) was a Poocheyana in Emerald. Such an amazing game. I've also probably spent more hours in Emerald than any other game. That & Kingdom Hearts 2
30:28 how do you make it all the way to the postgame without knowing how to save?
I prefer Platinum to Emerald in every way but they’re still my #1 and #2 games respectively!
I just started playing Emerald for the first time because my favorite Pokemon is Rayquaza. I gotta say, it's pretty good so far!
Gotta stop you right there at 2:00…
Spinda has always seemed silly to me and I wish they did more with it.. BUT ROSELIA? NAH, you’re literally cooked
good video. funny funny. might sub
11:35 idk if you can really call Black and White a “commercial failure” when they only moved 800k fewer units than Ruby and Sapphire.
I’d argue that those games sold fewer copies than others due to cyclical trends. For Ruby and Sapphire, many of the kids who loved Gen 1 were teenagers when those games released and were thus more concerned with Xbox and PlayStation games if they even still played video games at all. Same for Black and White. I was 16 when those games released, so I was not really thinking about buying Pokémon games.
Also, DS emulation was good enough circa 2010 to just pirate Black and White and play for free. The 3DS games may have benefited from 3DS emulation being rather horrible until very recently. And newer games have benefited from Pokémon Go sparking renewed interest in the franchise as a whole.
What they should have done is not make 2 games and just make one and add everything in it for each new generation. Emerald is their best game yet they haven’t done anything based off of it for no reason
AAHHHHHH! He's alive!
*that's some good upload schedule for ya right there bud :D*
Yeah, I know. I've been insanely busy these past two months or so, like, 5 to 6 hours of work every weekend sort of busy. That's when I normally work on videos, so I didn't have any time to work on anything. That's over now, so hopefully I can get back to uploading something new every month or so.
We were so lucky to grow up with this awesome game!
I remember it different, the gen E
3 games had a rocky start with the designs being somewhat bland and critical reception being that there should have been more advancement for an 'advance' game
Double battles caught on and the real excitement came from being able to access all the Pokemon between the remakes. Game Freak seems to have this cycle between wanting to make a revival which stands out for being its own deal to the Everyone Is Here dynamic. I suppose because they get notes from their marketing team to influence sales. And they can pepper in events between to remain relevant
Emerald at the very least is lauded for being very competent on the programming side. They went above and beyond to ensure that even the pageants were air tight
Playing through it today doesn't feel arcane which is refreshing for gaming
All of the Hoenn pokemon that are unavailable in Emerald can be found in XD: Gale of Darkness
You can make surskit to appear in emerald by mixing records
Gen 2 may be my fav, but gen 3 is where my OC hits her stride.
Bro gen 3 was NOT free of heavy criticism, one if em was the complete lack of gen 1 and 2 Pokémon
The video is littered with minor inaccuracies, but overall a great message. Here's hoping nintendo puts emerald on virtual console someday because it was one of the least sold pokemon games (making it hard to get now), and when they read that data they made the decision to stop spending development money on the battle frontier (gen 4 was already in development before they made that decision).