I'm from Kanto,
My starter is from Johto,
But my heart is in Hoenn
That is to say I started with Gen 1, Cyndaquill is my homie, BUT I FREAKIN' LOVE HOENN BABY! So remember how like a week ago I beat Crystal? Well guess who accidentally beat Ruby today? THIS GUY. Whoops.
So every time I bring up Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald everyone starts grumbling and talking about all the water and stuff. I thought maybe I was just looking at this through rose-colored glasses. Maybe
I was wrong. Maybe I had good memories since I played this my senior(?) year in college and those were good times.
No. Everyone else was wrong. Hoenn is the best. I love this game still after all these years. They fixed everything that was wrong with Gen2 with Gen3. Good moves? ALL OF THEM. Good story? GOT IT. Open World feeling while still not needing a strategy guide to know were to go? OH HOENN'S GOT IT ALL, BABY.
There's a lot to unpack but I wanted to touch on two things I noticed during the playthrough.
1. HMs. So Gen3, like Gen2 has a buttload of HMs. The difference is that you rarely need them. I didn't even realize I
had strength until the last gym city because I suddenly needed it. Flash? Ok, you probably need that unless you have a map- and you'll probably miss a lot of Victory Road without said map or flash. Cut? NOT NEEDED TO PROGRESS THE STORYLINE. It's there, but it's just for convenience. They force you to use waterfall once and then even on Victory road you can use an alternate path than the waterfall one. One sucky one though is Rock Smash was added, and implemented somewhat liberally. I just wish it was stronger, like brick break. Oh well.
2. Challenge. So when I got started on this, DT warned me "the grind is real." And he's both right and wrong. I realized that instead of making the game frustrating, they made it a game of challenge and reward. Most of the pre-evolved forms objectively suck (except carvanha, which learns crunch before it evolves [OP much?]). Like lotad? Terrible. The acorn thing? Terrible. Shroomish? Awful. Swablu? The worst. But after they evolve they all gain better moves and get WAY stronger. So yeah, you gotta slog through a pokemon that's a little weak at first but later the reward is there. Like Beldum is awful, it only knows a move that hurts itself- but when it evolves? Let's just say the grind would be worth it. So yeah, you might have to struggle with a weaker mon for a while, but the game pays you back in full with awesomeness you didn't expect.
Overall: HECK YEAH HOENN, BABY!
Let's look at my team!
37. Herbert Hoover Haha, get it, Hoover? Because he sucks? No, not really. Actually I was a mudkip nay-sayer back in the day (due to 4x weakness to grass) but beyond it's glaring weakness Swampert is a great pokemon. For most of the game I didn't think of Hoover as a water pokemon but as a ground pokemon that happened to Surf. Later that changed though as he learned another extremely strong water attack. Also Gen3 has ice beam and Hoover learned he could annihilate dragons pretty well. I also put strength on him.
38. Wendi Richter As I mentioned above, Hoover was 4x weak to plant type. And guess what the rival has? Oh that's right, a plant pokemon. I panicked and grabbed the first poison pokemon I found. It was a great decision. Although Wendi needs to shave
real bad she ended up carrying my team really well for a long time. Had she leveled up one more time she would have learned sludge bomb, an amazingly powerful poison attack- she didn't though because I didn't use her much for the Elite 4. Her primary job was rock smashing. Amusingly enough though, just like the other women's wrestler from last time, she learned body slam naturally. It's like the game knows, man.
39. Franklin Delano Roosevelt As a rule I always grab a flyer. Unfortunately, there aren't that many flyers in Gen3, so I'm having to carefully plan each one. As I mentioned above, swablu is garbage but FDR is a dragon; so it's kind of worth it. Altaria is a weak as heck dragon, I think it's somehow supposed to be a white mage but with no healing moves. Either way it got a lot of traction in the Elite 4 because it's weakness put it in first in my line up- but it knew sing so I'd be able to switch to the Pokemon I needed each time. FDR was good, and for being incredibly weak, held himself up; just like the real FDR, who was such a boss that he walked sometimes even though he was a paraplegic.
40. Harry Truman Every pokemon player knows that you need a cutter. As it turns out that's not true. Whoops. Either way, Truman was one of those challenge/reward pokemon. When he evolved he gained the fighting type and a boss fighting move called sky uppercut. He was hugely helpful in the Elite 4 vs the dark and steel trainers. Steven Stone though he had me when he whipped out his aggrigon, but BAM I hit him so hard he didn't even try to heal the thing because he knew it'd be pointless. 10/10 would uppercut again.
41. Dwight Eisenhower I like Ike! So my original plan had been to use the plant dark acorn thing as my cutter. But I looked at it's moves and it was just a dark pokemon that happened to have grass typing. Like it didn't have hardly any grass moves and grass is useful IN A COUNTRY FILLED WITH WATER. So I got the mushroom and that left me the opportunity to get a dark/water type. As it turns out Ike was just a dark pokemon that happened to have water typing. But Ike also learned crunch (dark's equivalent to psychic) at like level 22 before it even evolved. This angry shark was a glass cannon- but most of the emphasis was on cannon. Great pokemon that was really fun to work with. He was my diver AND my waterfall climber (so he got very watery later on!)
42. John F. Kennedy I had planned this grab from the beginning. Hoenn makes their legendaries part of the story (ANOTHER REASON WHY IT ROCKS, DT). And they give you the master ball pretty soon before you fight it. Usually I talk about how the legendary was fine but I didn't use it much- that was not the case this time. Kennedy was extremely clutch and probably why I beat the Elite 4 on just a joke run to see how things would play out. He came knowing Earthquake, I switched Fire Blast for Flamethrower, and he can learn thunderbolt. Between those three (and the fact that his ability boosts the heck out of fire) he was a wrecking ball. It's not surprising though since in the storyline he almost destroyed the world. And then I caught him. A child caught a threat to humanity and decided to train it as a pet and nobody batted an eye. That's like taking a serial killer out of a prison "but it's ok because he's on a leash."
Anyway, the point is bros, Pokemon Ruby rocked, I love Gen3 and I love Hoenn. Everything is good. Though I might slow down a little for Sapphire, lol. ROCK ON GUYS, SMELL YOU LATER!