6th Gen ORAS

I personally am in love with Oras, which probably doesn't shock anyone. I think it captures the pastoral, intimate quality of the Hoenn region, give or take an instance or two-- Mauville city being an anamoly that seems more like Castelia or Lumiose city than the place it was intended to be, but generally I thought the games were attentive to recreating the experience of being back in Hoenn. Sometimes it may have been overly strict by removing some convenient features that a lot of us would be accustomed to by gen 6, like having the pokemart and pokémon center be one multiplex building, and trainer customisation, but in doing this it does at least contribute to maintaining a certain aesthetic of gen 3.

It had like 8 or 9 out of 10 of the features of Hoenn that I personally find memorable like the trick house, the glass workshop, contests, secret bases. I was a bit crestfallen about the Game Corner being shut down though, and don't see why they could not have at least given us another Voltorb Flip-like game as a compromise like they did in Heart Gold Soul Silver. I think the battle tents and the frontier should have come back too. Even though it was technically remaking Ruby and Sapphire, they could have still put it all in the remakes if they wanted, just as HGSS included content that was introduced specifically in Crystal, and not just from Gold and Silver.

Overall though, I still adored this game. It felt really nostalgic for me, yet at the same time managed to work the major XY mechanical changes of mega evolution into the story in a really interesting way in my opinion, and greatly expanded on the existing lore for the region around the weather trio that I always foud interesting. I also have always liked Hoenn characters, and I think ORAS adds some meaningful new dialogue, scenes and situations that flesh out the cast of characters much more, especially Steven Stone.

I think Emerald has a stronger main story than ORAS, and I think it's a more challenging game to play with the level curb, no broken exp share mechanics, trainer hill, the battle frontier and the final boss fight in meteor falls. Even just catching Pokemon requires more effort, the particular way you acquire and evolve Feebas and Milotic, lati twins being roamers, and still having a safari zone where the Pokemon have to be caught in safari balls and can run away. And I think all of this is good. Yet I really like what they did with the delta episode as a post game story in ORAS. I think what Oras may have lost in some of the available features and difficulty level in the post game, they made up for in my eyes by not just having an end game with things to do, but weaving it all together into a dramatic narrative, and I welcomed that as a pleasant change. Also liked being able to go soaring to mirage spots post game looking for legendaries and playing with the dexnav to shiny hunt and find pokémon outside the regional Dex, and hidden ability Pokemon, and have probably spent more hours in Omega Ruby than any of my other core series games.

I go back and forth on which Hoenn I prefer, because there are things that I like about both. But maybe I like Oras a wee bit more.

However, I think that the Delta Episode is literally the part that Game Freak made, telling everyone "hey, we didn't forget about Emerald. We're gonna do something for that too". And I LOVED it. Honestly, this game made me feel the desire of replaying it as soon as possible. On the opposite, when it comes to the story, despite it's quite a new story, it still kinda doesn't make sense to me. I feel that Emerald represents how events would have really happened. Emerald story is more logical and realistic. But, however, on this I can't blame the remakes. That part of the game is based on the original games.