Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen lacked the time function that Ruby and Sapphire had to match Pokémon Red and Green/Blue better. This made it so that Eevee couldn't evolve into Espeon and Umbreon and also meant the game lack features such as the lottery, berries, etc.
How did you feel about the removal of this important feature? Do you wish they had included it? Do you think it was necessary to remove time to keep it like the originals?
I hated that the time feature was removed in
FireRed/
LeafGreen. While RSE didn't depend on it as much as GSC, it
does limit how often you can battle Trainers in Secret Bases after mixing Records (once per day; can be done additional times in one day each time you mix Records again). It's so weird that time is passing (if it
weren't, your character would be stuck in his/her room in Pallet Town for eternity) and at the same, time it's not (doesn't play much of a role in-game). We *know* about Espeon and Umbreon's existence, so how is Eevee barred from evolving into them in Kanto simply because time "passes" in Hoenn and not Kanto? -_-
Kanto's story is still technically enjoyable without a time feature, but it just majorly inconveniences Espeon and Umbreon fans. It's good to for a remake to stay true to its source material/game, but sometimes enhancements are liked, as well as needed/required (to make more sense of things). A lottery similar to the one held in Lilycove City's Department Store would be nice in Celadon's Department Store, even.
(Speaking of which, I'm calling
hax on Twins Jen & Kira of the Trainer Tower in Sevii Archipelago's Quest Island. Unless they somehow went to Johto illegally, there is no way that they should be able to own an Espeon in FR/LG, much less a
shiny one. That seems like
more of an insult to the player, even. -.-)
The
one good thing about the lack of a time feature in
FireRed/LeafGreen is that the Pokerus is effectively permanent in those games if you trade a Pokemon over from RSE (although you can still only contract the actual "disease"/life-form in
Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald).
It wasn't necessary to remove it, but at the same time, since there weren't any visible changes between day and night in R/S/E anyway, it really didn't make much of a difference to me at all. I never used any of the time-dependent evolution Pokemon anyway and there was no place to even plant berries, so I didn't really care. In 3rd gen as a whole, the time feature wasn't nearly as important since day didn't visibly turn to night and there weren't any time-specific wild Pokemon appearances.
If anything, it's one less variable that the game's internal memory has to keep track of. I'm not sure if this means FR/LG carts will last longer than R/S/E carts, but it's certainly food for thought.
This.
Myeh, I just Water Stoned Eevee when I got it. The time removal didn't bother me too greatly, though I did miss planting and growing berries. That was fun. Other than that, it had no effect on anything else in the game other than the ability to get Espeon or Umbreon. Even though I love Espeon, I didn't miss it too greatly.
The absence of Berry Planting/Farming/Growing also bothered me greatly, as it's an entertaining feature at times. Despite Berries being available in certain methods/locations in-game, it's just not the same as actually expending effort in cultivating your own Berries. :cer_no: At the very least, the Berry Growing feature would've given the player more to do in an otherwise mundane Kanto region.
Strangely,
FireRed/LeafGreen are one of the sets of games that can
fix the Berry Glitch (which causes the cessation of time-based events) in
Ruby/Sapphire. @_@
I thought the whole reason that Wes started with both Espeon and Umbreon in Pokémon Colosseum was a sort of apology/alternative for not including time events in FR/LG...
And while obviously I don't agree with that as a solution or reason for removing them, you have to admit that it makes good sense from a marketing POV.
Marketing Man #1: "Hey, R/B/Y never had time-based events... maybe we should take them out for the remakes."
MM #2: "But what about the day/night evolvers?"
*cash register eyes*
MM #1: "Well. People can just buy a Gamecube and a nice new expensive Pokémon game if they want them that badly..."
0_0 I admit, such a tactic would be kind of underhanded and clever. XD
It would have been odd to have a time function in a game that was a remake of a game that didn't have one, so that's probably why it was excluded. But I agree that there should have been some kind of item for day/night evolvers (which at this time though, was only Umbreon and Espeon). They did that in Pokemon XD. Likely because Eevee was your starter, but perhaps they realized they messed up with FRLG in not having at least some kind of way to obtain Umbreon and Espeon.
So no, I don't think time functions belong in FRLG, but there could have been some solutions to these problems. Just more reasons why I don't like FRLG.
Secret? Pffft. They couldn't have been more obvious if they'd printed a gigantic banner reading 'NO UMBREONZ FOR U TROLOLOL' and hung it beneath an billboard for Pokémon XD.
Also, day/night items would've been epic, but I don't know how they'd have worked canonwise. Moon dust, maybe? Sunbeds? A solar panel you could strap to your Eevee's back? None of the above because those are all incredibly stupid ideas?
Problem solved. :cer_laugh:
(Honestly, would the Sun Shard and Moon Shard have come from anything else? Yeah, they kind of spoil the exclusivity of time-based evolutionary Pokemon, but "rarity of a certain stone" makes much more sense for inhibiting an evolution than "ER, THIS GAME DOESN'T HAZ TIME FEATURE LIKE TEH ORIGINALS SO UM YEAH WAIT FOR PKMN XD". People in Johto should've imported these the minute they heard about their existence...and the anime has even less of an excuse for why Eevee had to wait until the Johto arc to "evolve temporally." -.-)
