HOENN CONFIRMED
Well, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire have been released, and I am a consummate pokemon fan. Generation 3 was one of the defining generations of pokemon for me, having played generation 3 games the most during my childhood and having replayed the thing several times by heart. So while a remake might not really sound exciting to me on the surface... at the same time, it's Ruby and Sapphire... in 3D! With improved mechanics and graphics! Needless to say, I pre-ordered the shit out of these games, and they're freaking out. So I played it, at least up until I reach Petalburg.
More after the break.
Anyway, my pre-order thingie came with a Primal Kyogre figurine of him just BWAAA-ing out of the waves. It's pretty cool, egg yolk and all. Certainly preferable than 100 Potions I won't use. I also get a Rock Star Pikachu sticker and a little Shieldon minifigure as a promotion from the shop that sold me the cartridge, so there's a nice bonus.
Anyway, Omega Ruby! Alpha Sapphire! I've been waiting for these games for months and I just can't really fathom that they're in my hand, honestly.
I've played Emerald and Sapphire at least a dozen times, and they're like the games that blew my mind away. Having played generation 1 and kind of waning off during generation 2, generation 3 and the absolutely enhanced GBA graphics have blown my impressionable brains right off and, well, I basically didn't play any generation after 3 until much, much later. I played generations 4 and 5 right before XY came out, but Ruby and Sapphire holds just this nice amount of balance between being actually impressive and being old enough to make me fucking nostalgic. Hell yeah. This is a gorgeous game.
And I do love the opening! We get something identical to the original 2D Ruby/Sapphire game with Professor Birch's sprite doing the same talking as the 2D games and releasing the Azurill... before my character lowers down the PokeNav and reveals the 3D surroundings. It's an awesome callback and a nice little leaning-on-the-fourth-wall moment. It's beautiful. We're then treated to a little cutscene with 3D pokemon moving, one of which is an Azurill, which is a nice little nod on how we've progressed so far from sprites to 3D models.
And the cutscenes! The moving truck, those awesome 3D Machokes moving stuff...
I'm not going to talk about every single thing I did in the game, but just point out the major differences and stuff that interests me.
But the graphics, though! And the music! Everything is so good! I just can't really say much more other than that it is fucking good. There's like a bunch of extra stuff all around. Better music, for one. Azurill dolls and a big Snorlax sofa-plush thing in my house. This crazy-looking sci fi map of Hoenn in Birch's lab. There's some altered angles and improved stuff in the battling, and it does look slightly better than XY even though they run on the same engine. The camera's zoomed out a little to resemble the proportions of the original generation 3 look, and I feel it ends up being better.
There's a bit of a frowny moment where my mother asks me to set up the clock, when this game uses the internal time of the 3DS. Literally the only reason they tell you to do this is because it's a leftover from the original Ruby/Sapphire game where that was the way to set the time. Running Shoes are also already activated from the get go, so during the point in Ruby/Sapphire where my mother stops me and gives me the shoes ends up being some generic 'hey wait, good luck' thing.
The cutscene of Professor Birch being chased is absolutely hilarious!
Of course, my starter is a Mudkip. I like Mudkip. Who's female! She doesn't get a nickname until I can think of a suitable one. A male Mega-Swampert would've easily gotten the name Alex Louis Armstrong from me, but a female... needs some thinking.
Like how the Gen 6 starters do, Mudkip already knows Water Gun straight off the bat, unlike how generation 3 didn't have an elemental move until they level up.
The plot goes almost identically to Ruby-Sapphire, with some expanded dialogue on May's part, at least up until before I enter Petalburg City, but there are some differences. There's a new major mechanic in the PokeNav Plus, which take up the lower screen. May quickly installs the PokeNav feature which allows me to see every pokemon in the route... or most of them, really, as I'm about to find out.
Another new feature to tie in with that is sneaking up to pokemon who have their tails or whatnot sticking out of the grass. It's kind of similar with the Radar in Diamond, Pearl and Platinum, except we actually see the pokemon in question. And sometimes, well, they've got exotic moves! The Poochyena that May points out for the tutorial has Fire Fang, for instance.
I capture a bunch of pokemon -- which is nice since a bunch of these aren't even around in X and Y, so it's definitely nice to see their 3D models. So far my team has the Fire Fang Poochyena, a Zigzagoon and a Lotad, neither of which has an attacking move as of the moment.
The Pokemon Center looks freaking awesome!
And then there's this little feature I discovered while just mucking around with the PokeNav at the infamous Ralts route. I've had 'fond' memories of slugging through this route trying to capture a Ralts back when I'm playing Sapphire and Emerald versions, and I was puzzled to see no Ralts silhouette on the bottom screen... and as I was wandering around beating up youngsters, the PokeNav goes 'a hidden pokemon is nearby'... and lo and behold, there's a Ralts' head in the bushes! It was the most tense moment as I tip-toe to the thing and just chuck pokeball after pokeball after pokeball, finally capturing the Ralts on my very last one.
Fucking tense. But I do have a Ralts, and both Ralts and Mudkip have been staples in nearly all the generation 3 games I play. So it's appropriate that I start Alpha Sapphire off with these two.
The pokedex registration screen is pretty cool, and after XY's single-sentence pokemon entries, it's awesome to see ORAS make the return of more verbose pokemon entries.
I'm also apparently able to register pokemon I see flying past like Wingull and Beautifly, which is a bit odd but okay.
What else? I think an NPC in Petalburg mentioned that pokemon can get poisoned while walking again, which is a feature that generation 5 and 6 dealt away with which is stupid. But poison damage while walking is still a thing in this one which is awesome.
Also, like how everyone got the Speed Boost Torchic holding a Blazikenite during XY's debut, and how everyone got the Liberty Ticket during Black-White's debut (which I naturally missed, since I wasn't playing back then) ORAS gives away a shiny Beldum holding a Metagrossite. It's a shiny and those are hard to come by, so I might actually consider reset-spamming to obtain one with a favourable nature.
Anyway, interested to play more and I guess I'll explore Petalburg Town and Forest next time.
JUST SO FILLED WITH HYPE RIGHT NOW
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