she/her
gracidea fields
Seen December 30th, 2022
Posted December 29th, 2022
hi, gen 3 fan here! guess that's a criminal opinion these days, much like disliking gen 5 (which is also an opinion i somewhat have! whoops i'm a terrible pokemon fan, apparently). for this post, when i mention "gen 3" i'm referring to RSE in particular, and not FRLG. not because i don't count FRLG, but just for the sake of clarity and because RSE seems to be what this thread is about.
admittedly, there is a nostalgia factor in liking gen 3 for me. it was one of the first mainline pokemon games that i've owned (i've owned ruby before sapphire) so i've had tons of fun as a kid just starting off with my torchic and fighting team magma and eventually aqua (i later on got sapphire). gen 3 had a lot of magic for me. and i really mean a lot. i think the two biggest factors that made me love gen 3 a lot were the pokemon and the post-game in emerald's case.
to start with, i love the pokemon selection. gen 3 has a lot of pokemon designs that i absolutely love over most other generations. like, if i had to rank each generation by design, gen 3 would come in a solid second behind gen 4. ludicolo, gardevoir, jirachi, the weather trio, zigzagoon/linoone... i can go on and on really. as someone who also likes gen 7, gen 7 doesn't come anywhere close to the memorability of gen 3's pokemon designs. that's pretty much my second main reason for enjoying it. gen 3's pokemon design, for me, is nearly unrivaled. different strokes for different folks of course, people are free to dislike the region or the pokemon or whatever. but a lot of the pokemon in gen 3 grew on me over the years. some more examples: breloom (which is actually one of my top favourite grass types), salamence (used this pokemon EXTENSIVELY in my teams), latios/latias... i think i've rambled on enough about the pokemon selection and how much it meant and still means to me but it really has introduced some of the best and most memorable pokemon in the entire franchise. but anyway, enough about the pokemon and into my first reason for being such a huge fan: the post-game.
i know some people are tired of hearing "battle frontier", but man, that's how i personally enjoy my pokemon games. some people care about the plot, some people care about the dialogue, i just want something to do (battle-wise) after i beat the game. i want some degree of being stuck to my game after i beat it. this is one of the biggest reasons why i don't like BW. the battle subway will always be such a disappointment and a downgrade to gen 4's battle frontier because game freak had the potential to do so much better, and they didn't. it was kind of a slap to the face that they made something as incredible as the pokemon world tournament in B2W2 that was on par if not even better by a hair than the battle frontier but they didn't put that much effort into BW's postgame battle facilities. but anyway, my point is that i was stuck to emerald for a good long time after i beat the main story because the post-game battle facilities kept me going and going. it was fun and enjoyable for me. it offered somewhat of an appropriate level of challenge that i think a lot of people are clamoring for these days that's missing in current-era pokemon games.
also, i'd be remiss if i spoke about hoenn without mentioning diving. yes, i'm going to be that person and say that i loved diving. it's such a damn shame that Game Freak didn't bother to do much about it other than have it return in ORAS in a prettier way, but i loved the experience. it's something i wish would be brought back as a permanent feature in every generation because it doesn't make any sense not to. why can we surf but not dive in gen 7? especially in USUM, where as evident by the mantine surf minigame, there's a whole sea to explore out there? why not make a diving minigame or something? why not bring back a diving-themed safari zone or something, and make looking for underwater pokemon fun that way? i can see Dawn's point in that yeah, there's a lot more that can be done with it, but as a concept, i loved it for the same reason i loved soaring. there's a whole sky out there and we finally got a chance to explore it alongside running into wild pokemon while in the middle of flight, and even encountering legendary pokemon in flight. it feels somewhat natural in a way, and i think that's why i'm a huge fan of both so much.
all these factors combined (also i don't care if you insult hoenn's OST but meteor falls will be memorable as hell to me and i can perfectly remember it without even looking up the soundtrack), is what made hoenn such a great generation for me. it's fine if you have a different opinion, what's great about pokemon and especially pokemon gaming is that there's so many games out there that appeals to all sorts of people with different tastes. i'm not going to lie though and say that this thread makes me feel somewhat bad because i can't help but feel like the intent is to shame people who like gen 3 when i feel that we're better than that.