Ask any Pokemon fans about their memories of the Hoenn region, and in between all the trumpets and surfing jokes, you’ll likely find fond flashbacks to a time where most of the game’s core mechanics that we take for granted today were introduced, people in the Pokemon World finally realized they could run, the first huge graphics overhaul came through in the transition between the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, and when we witnessed the debut of some of the most iconic monsters in franchise history. Is it any surprise that the Internet exploded with excitement when the long joked about, (but essentially inevitable,) Ruby and Sapphire remakes? With Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, it wasn’t enough just to develop a faithful remake, because the longtime Pokemon Masters at Game Freak went above and beyond, improving nearly everything we loved about the originals while advancing the series as a whole in ways that were hard to anticipate. It’s just too bad that these improvements are hampered by a series of head scratching decisions to remove popular aspects from X and Y while doing little to avoid the annoyances that have held the series back for far too long.
Stop me if this sounds familiar. OR/AS stars you as a child, who has recently moved to the quiet town of Littleroot, which is conveniently surrounded by low level monsters. The kid stumbles upon their first Pokemon after rescuing your new hometown’s bumbling Professor from a vicious Poochyena, kicking off an adventure that has you following in your finally present father’s footsteps in becoming a great trainer, while filling the Pokedex as much as you can by catching each new creature you come across.
If you’re expecting the formula to have changed much in the latest Pokemon remake, then you’re looking at the wrong game, (and why would you?) In typical fashion, you’ll spend most of the time traveling from town to town building a team, battling trainers along the way, and getting stronger against the wild Pokemon of each town and route. In terms of similarities to Ruby and Sapphire specifically, you’ll instantly recognize the berry plots scattered throughout the world, Contest Halls, which offer a different form of battling that focuses more on points and exclusive move types as opposed to beating your opponents into submission, the return of secret bases, and stopping a plot that involves the evil Team Magma or Team Aqua destroying the world with the power of an ancient Pokemon. But identifying these aspects on the surface are all they have in common with their original games, because Omega and Alpha improve on each of these aspects in nearly every way.
First, the touch screen is finally put to good use, thanks to the Pokenav Plus. Using different apps, trainers can switch between a more detailed map, (that can show where you’re missing Pokemon, where Secret Bases or planted berries are located, etc.,) the online, Super Training, and Pokemon-Amie features from X and Y, a PokeBuzz TV station that gives tips, expanded story info, and data from players you’ve met through Streetpass, and the Pokedex app, which might be the show stealer of the whole game.
Almost mimicking the anime, this app introduces a whole new way to encounter Pokemon, both in and out of battle. Rather than every battle being a random encounter, most battles are purposefully initiated by making contact with silhouettes that appear in the grass, water, or even the dreaded cave. A new sneak mechanic lets players approach them slowly by slightly tilting the circle pad, revealing more information about the Pokemon as you get closer to it. Is it a new Pokemon? How many times have you seen it? What’s its first move? What’s its level? All of this and more is revealed before the battle even starts, allowing the player to decide whether or not it’s even worth it to battle before it starts. Yet, battling constantly has its own reward, since encountering the same Pokemon multiple times increases the chances of you finding one with either hidden moves that can only be typically learned through extensive breeding, versions with higher stats, (or IVs for the hardcore Pokefan,) or hidden abilities that are nearly impossible to find otherwise.
It eventually led to the point where I wondered why random battles were included at all, still making caves that you’re at an equal level with insanely tedious when you’re getting into fights every five steps. Even worse? When you’re sneaking up on a Pokemon, only for a random battle to ruin your approach. To add to the annoyance, the routes between towns are littered with trainers, constantly stopping your progress to the point where I needed to avoid them for my own sanity. There’s no reason battles should feel like such a chore, which could be fixed with better pacing.
Random battles have always been an annoyance in not only the Pokemon franchise, but in turn based RPGs as a whole. But we tolerated them because it’s hard to imagine a game of this kind without them. Well, guess what? We now have a mechanic that makes battling a choice that players can make beforehand, with added incentive for continuing to fight! Can sneaking just be the standard going forward? Please, Game Freak?
Speaking of long running annoyances with the series, HMs and moves that are needed outside of battle are back with a vengeance. Every Pokemon game has had them, but in more recent iterations, the reliance on them has been scaled back, usually being able to squeeze all the moves you need onto one or two monsters that you only need in short bursts. Well, in a misguided attempt at being too faithful to the games they were remaking, Omega and Alpha has more moves than I’d ever care to use. From the usual offenders like Strength, Fly, Surf and Cut, to the return of Dive and Waterfall, and even demoted HMs like Rock Smash becoming HMs once again, these moves are especially annoying since they can’t be deleted without talking to a special character. And is that character easy to get to? Of course not. He doesn’t show up until one of the last towns in the game, so you’ll be stuck with mostly weak moves that you would never use otherwise for most of the story. And this isn’t even including TMs that have uses in the overworld, like Flash or Secret Power. That many moves requires you to clog your party with at least three members with these attacks, or constant trips back and forth to pull that Poke with as many of the moves that it can fit.
Making this glaring, longtime flaw even more frustrating is the new ability to soar. Late in the story, an item allows trainers to manually fly over a fully 3D Hoenn, creating a new type of terrain to explore and allowing access to hidden areas, all while offering a new method of travel. It’s a breathtaking experience to say the least. But what makes it frustrating is that this is triggered by an item. Yes, an item. You don’t need the Pokemon in your party who flies you around, you don’t need to waste a move slot, and you can use it as much as you want. Why can’t all HMs be relegated to Key Items. If the next game doesn’t allow me to use a surfboard or a saw to surf and cut, then something is seriously wrong. We’ve hated HMs for years. Fix them!
But with the major complaints out of the way, that clears the way to talk about all the things Omega and Alpha get right. Aside from the already stellar Pokenav features and Soaring sections that we couldn’t get enough of, nearly every individual aspect of what made generation three so special has been refined to perfection this time around, especially the contests. Essentially Pokemon’s version of a pageant, Contests feel more important than they did before, featuring their own side quest that gives you incentive to conquer every class rather than a distraction from the main game. With moves also divided in various categories for these sections, such as “Beauty,” “Tough,” “Smart,” and “Cool” attacks, each one awards points while creating different outcomes for the show, like rearranging the turn order or reducing the points of an opponent. It’s like bringing the dickishness from a game of Mario Party into the Pokemon universe! Performing multiple moves that correlate with the type of show you’re in rewards aspiring coordinators with a huge bonus too, which is now accompanied by an awesome cutscene that puts your Poke’s skill on display.
What made Contests special in the past was their ability to make you rethink move sets for more than just battling. This mentality is fully intact in the remakes, while streamlining the process when raising their special stats. In previous versions, snacks called “Pokeblock” or “Poffins” could be fed to your team by mixing certain berries. What made it more stressful than anything else however, was that each teammate could only consume 10, and if you mixed the wrong berries or did poorly on the mixing mini game, the benefit would become greatly reduced. So what we often ended up with, were droves of half developed participants who topped out on their Pokeblock before their maximum was reached, while STILL needing one for each category. While I’m sad to see mini games go in OR and AS, what we gain in their place is a much more forgiving system that lets you feed an unlimited amount of mixtures to each Pokemon, making it possible to have an all purpose Contest participant with maxed out stats. Gone is the stress that came with creating that perfect stat balance, which leaves contests as a whole better off. This, in addition to the added story content and a special “Cosplay Pikachu” that changes appearance and moves depending on what contests it focuses on, do you really need any other reason to sink another five hours or so into conquering these circuits?
Speaking of story, here’s where the remakes also took this veteran trainer by surprise. If you’re expecting to blow through the shallow story of the evil team trying to awaken the ancient Pokemon to reshape the world in the image they see fit, well… That’s still here, but with much more detail, development, and plenty of new twists that weren’t in the original. With retcons abound, the ancient lore set up by X and Y plays a big role in how and why this remade version of Hoenn has become what it is, adding plenty of interesting facets to a world that many of us have been engrossed in for years. I won’t spoil anything here, but it definitely sets up some huge possibilities assuming the developers ever decide to take them anywhere. While it’s still a step below Black and White’s story, (which still holds the title for best story in the series from where I sit,) there will still be plenty of moments that will surprise even the most seasoned of trainers, (assuming the numerous official trailers didn’t ruin most of it for you already.)
And of course, we can’t talk about Pokemon Gen III without touching on Secret Bases, the mechanic where players can make their own home on the map, allowing customizable rooms that other players could visit. Most importantly, whatever party you had when you designed it could be battled by others, thanks to a CPU version of yourself, which was great for level grinding. Now tied to the 3DS Streetpass feature, bases can either be picked up by passing by a friend, or scanning a QR code that can be shared and scanned. New to the remakes is the ability to recruit other base leaders to become your grunts when people challenge your base, allowing you to turn it into your own mini Pokemon gym! The only limitation is that bases are capped at level 40, so considering how easy it is to level up with the return of X an Y‘s EXP Share, (which distributes EXP to your entire party regardless of if they fought,) these bases will hardly be a challenge. Thankfully, a post game item lets you remove the level cap, so you’ll be free to fight maxed out ‘Mons to your heart’s content.
Speaking of features taken from X and Y, these remakes seemed to have taken nearly everything that we enjoyed from the latest generation and removed them. So no trainer customization, no roller skates, and no berry farm, where you can keep all your berries in one place. Instead, what we did keep was the massive framerate issues the game encountered in 3D mode, and even at certain points in 2D. The fact that there’s zero improvement is a big disappointment, especially with how bad the previous games got universally panned for it. The series has this weird habit of removing features that we love, only to fix them years down the line. It looks like OR/AS are no exception.
Yet, that’s not to say there aren’t any improvements. If X and Y was lacking in anything, it was a true post game. While the Friend Safari, Battle Maison, and bonus Looker mission kept the game going, it held little for those who wanted to explore hidden areas, or find secrets buried in the game like in previous entries. OR/AS make up for this in spades, with post game content that begins appearing BEFORE the game is over. By the time you’re left to your own devices after you beat the Elite Four and complete the epilogue, or Delta Episode, (which adds some amazing story content that’s muddled with way too much fetching and back tracking,) you’ll have new areas to explore, hidden attacks to learn, hundreds of Pokemon to rediscover on the map, and former opponents who are itching for a rematch at much higher levels. In addition to all of this, the Battle Maison returns in nearly identical fashion, which is a bit disappointing when the game flat out teases the popular Battle Frontier from Emerald. Maybe in another remake?
It’s true that nostalgia can only carry a game so far, which is why OR/AS strive to be so much more. While a simple remake would have surely sold millions, these titles go on to improve on a number of core mechanics such as battling in the wild and Contests, while providing new, exciting features and a much improved story, all while rebuilding the whole thing in 3D! With these games doing so much right, it makes it so frustrating that many longtime issues like HMs, a bombardment of random battles in certain areas, a slow, plodding pace thanks to the overabundance of trainer battles, and the return of X and Y‘s signature slowdown hold the games back from being the very best. Still, the new ideas introduced have the potential to make us rethink what a Pokemon game can be, leading OR/AS to feeling more ambitious than anyone would expect from a remake. For RPG gamers, collectors, and of course, Pokefans, this return trip to Hoenn is one that shouldn’t be missed, as long as you’re okay with a few bumps in the road.
tl;dr
+ New sneaking mechanics revitalize the art of finding, catching, and improving Pokemon!
+ Soaring introduces a fun, new way to travel, making us wonder why we need HMs in the first place!
+ Contests and Secret Bases return with improved features and less tedium.
+ The story is much improved, pointing at some exciting potential directions.
+ Hours of post game content will have you competing, catching and uncovering hidden areas for hours on end.
+ The return of Pokemon-Amie, Super Training, Horde Battles and the PSS, sans the awful Sky Battles.
– The large amount of trainer battles and caves slow down the pace of the game far too often, leading to too much tedium.
– HMs and some TMs restrict your progress, forcing you to sacrifice moves or Pokemon to advance.
– The puzzling removal of some of X/Y‘s best features, such as trainer customization and roller blades.
– The return of X/Y‘s biggest flaw; its massive slowdown, especially when the 3D is on.
– Not enough land.
Final Score: 4/5