6th Gen ORAS in review

[Sopheria]

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No one game holds our interest forever, and despite the expansive world and large variety of things they give us to do--Pokemon main series games are no exception. With OR/AS in particular, we were all super excited when they were first announced, but did the long awaited Hoenn remakes live up to our expectations? Were some of us simply hooked in by the novelty of traveling through the Hoenn region in full 3D?

We've discussed a lot of things we loved about these games, and we might not necessarily get to often hear the opinions of people who have moved on from the games. So! This topic will be given the "Featured" status, as we're hoping to start getting some discussion from players of all kind--active players and retired Hoenn champions alike ;)

So, did these games manage to maintain your interest long? Did they keep you coming back, or did they lose their luster after a while? If the latter, is there anything you feel they could have done better? Any major flaws that you'd like not to see repeated in future games? Anything they did better than other games you'd like to see repeated? Any thoughts you have about the game, positive or negative, feel free to vent them in this thread, and have fun discussing with your fellow Hoenn trainers!

 

[Wicked3DS]

For some reason I never really went back to the game much after finishing the Delta Episode, even though I knew there was a lot left to do. Most of this had to do with completing the Pokédex in X, so I plan on going back and doing some of the extra stuff soon.

 

[Sopheria]

For some reason I never really went back to the game much after finishing the Delta Episode, even though I knew there was a lot left to do. Most of this had to do with completing the Pokédex in X, so I plan on going back and doing some of the extra stuff soon.

Yea, a lot of my ORAS mileage comes from trying to complete the Pokedex, so I can imagine if you already did it in X, doing it in ORAS isn't particularly exciting.

One of the things that I love about ORAS, which makes them among my favorite Pokemon games ever, is the number of Pokemon available in them. Between hidden Pokemon and the Mirage Spot legendaries, I've had so much fun going through the whole region attempting to catch every single one.

On the other hand though, in terms of post-game content, I think they put a lot of investment into the Delta Episode, which was good while it lasted, but after that there's not a whole lot to do besides going for Dex completion. One big thing that really would have really improved the games, for me at least, would be the inclusion of Wi-Fi Contests. I would have spent so much more effort on developing good Contest Pokemon if they had given us the ability to compete in Contests over Wi-Fi! But since they didn't, I haven't personally done a whole lot with contests :s

 

[PlatinumDude]

The Battle Maison (strangely), online battles, and DexNav is enough to keep my interest in OR/AS going. I'm still getting some unfinished business done in OR first, which are rematching the Elite 4, re-battling Deoxys, doing the Battle Maison challenges, and re-breeding Pokemon for the next main series game.

 

[Kaiyu]

Pokémon ORAS definitely met my expectations. It actually exceeded them. When I saw the graphics I was really amazed. It took a while to adjust from seeing sprites all the time to 3D. I was wondering if a remake would ever be made for the games and when news about it were being brought up I was really happy. I'm still playing Alpha Sapphire and trying out things I didn't do in my first play-through such as shiny hunting, contests and Battle Maison.

 

[Sopheria]

Pokémon ORAS definitely met my expectations. It actually exceeded them. When I saw the graphics I was really amazed. It took a while to adjust from seeing sprites all the time to 3D. I was wondering if a remake would ever be made for the games and when news about it were being brought up I was really happy. I'm still playing Alpha Sapphire and trying out things I didn't do in my first play-through such as shiny hunting, contests and Battle Maison.

It definitely was exciting seeing Hoenn in 3D! For all the time we spent hoping for Hoenn remakes, I'm actually glad we got them in gen 6 rather than gen 5, since Hoenn looks great in 3D. Say, just out of curiosity, was Alpha Sapphire your first gen 6 game? Or had you played X or Y before?

 

[Kaiyu]

It definitely was exciting seeing Hoenn in 3D! For all the time we spent hoping for Hoenn remakes, I'm actually glad we got them in gen 6 rather than gen 5, since Hoenn looks great in 3D. Say, just out of curiosity, was Alpha Sapphire your first gen 6 game? Or had you played X or Y before?

Pokémon Alpha Sapphire was my first game to play from generation six. I didn't know Pokémon XY was around already. I started playing Pokémon Y after I beat Pokémon Alpha Sapphire.

 

[Hikamaru]

These games had a notable connection to me given the original Hoenn games was the first Pokemon game I properly played myself. Seeing all these old locations getting a 3D facelift and the updated music was bringing back so many memories.

Not only did the original stuff get improved, they still managed to keep it fresh by adding some new features and characters, and also updating the Hoenn Pokedex. It was refreshing for a region like Hoenn, but it was a great attempt of balance for Game Freak.

 

[Sopheria]

These games had a notable connection to me given the original Hoenn games was the first Pokemon game I properly played myself. Seeing all these old locations getting a 3D facelift and the updated music was bringing back so many memories.

Not only did the original stuff get improved, they still managed to keep it fresh by adding some new features and characters, and also updating the Hoenn Pokedex. It was refreshing for a region like Hoenn, but it was a great attempt of balance for Game Freak.

Yes! I love all the new things they added to the things that already made the originals great.

As someone who started with RSE though, is there anything that you thought wasn't so great in ORAS? Any criticisms? Anything you thought they could have been done better? Just wondering ^^

 

[llysender]

The pros(for AS anyways)
-good story(?), Delta ep almost felt like it was trying to retcon itself by turning a grunt into admin/adviser class
-Dex nav, esp for trainer rematches and fighting other trainers from streetpass
-Dex nav, the pokemon scanner thing
-less lag
-Brendon and May pmof
-Waily is harder then the E4+Steven
-Visual brale(?) makes a return and is used to catch the Regies AND NOTHING ELSE
-Secret bases are more useful now(including blissey base abuse making the food court completely useless)
-some breeding stuff I personally don't care about

Cons
-The bleeping theme of the game is imgration, the soar feature and the dive feature(or the intire game for that matter) do not show migration of pokemon .
-Delta ep, esp for the defend stone corp building part(although the rest is almost as bad) The info dump at sky tower should have been spread out thoughout Delta ep and bring back march bike from hell dungeon plox
-Post game? What post game, oh post game. Go catch them all. Good enough postgame.
-Soar, was good on paper but in practice it really bad. Its lack of dropshadow makes it had to navigate to whatever route you want to go. The only use soar has is for postgame/hoopla's rings.
-Pokemon contest might as well be worthless considering how every pokemon can max stat and cheese your way though with raw heart bonus. Only wifi contests are of any interest because of that.

 

[Sopheria]

The pros(for AS anyways)
-good story(?), Delta ep almost felt like it was trying to retcon itself by turning a grunt into admin/adviser class
-Dex nav, esp for trainer rematches and fighting other trainers from streetpass
-Dex nav, the pokemon scanner thing
-less lag
-Brendon and May pmof
-Waily is harder then the E4+Steven
-Visual brale(?) makes a return and is used to catch the Regies AND NOTHING ELSE
-Secret bases are more useful now(including blissey base abuse making the food court completely useless)
-some breeding stuff I personally don't care about

Cons
-The bleeping theme of the game is imgration, the soar feature and the dive feature(or the intire game for that matter) do not show migration of pokemon .
-Delta ep, esp for the defend stone corp building part(although the rest is almost as bad) The info dump at sky tower should have been spread out thoughout Delta ep and bring back march bike from hell dungeon plox
-Post game? What post game, oh post game. Go catch them all. Good enough postgame.
-Soar, was good on paper but in practice it really bad. Its lack of dropshadow makes it had to navigate to whatever route you want to go. The only use soar has is for postgame/hoopla's rings.
-Pokemon contest might as well be worthless considering how every pokemon can max stat and cheese your way though with raw heart bonus. Only wifi contests are of any interest because of that.

Wow, you make a really good point about the Delta Episode. I definitely agree that it would have worked a little bit better if instead of having you run around from one task to another, they actually gradually revealed all the important information Zinnia gives us at the end. A "show, don't tell" kind of thing that's generally the hallmark of quality writing.

Just two things I'm wondering about though:

• What do you mean when you say that "the theme of the game is migration"? And what do you mean about soaring and diving not showing it?
• What do you mean about the drop shadow when soaring? I'm thinking you're saying there should be a shadow cast by Latios/Latias to show where exactly you're about to land, but I just wanted to check to be sure :P

 

[llysender]

Wow, you make a really good point about the Delta Episode. I definitely agree that it would have worked a little bit better if instead of having you run around from one task to another, they actually gradually revealed all the important information Zinnia gives us at the end. A "show, don't tell" kind of thing that's generally the hallmark of quality writing.

Just two things I'm wondering about though:

• What do you mean when you say that "the theme of the game is migration"? And what do you mean about soaring and diving not showing it?
• What do you mean about the drop shadow when soaring? I'm thinking you're saying there should be a shadow cast by Latios/Latias to show where exactly you're about to land, but I just wanted to check to be sure :P

Birch research is habitats and distribution change of pokemon I think. Personally I thought that it was a wasted opputunity to show the migration of flying and sea creatures though hoenn.

Also yeah I wanted a drop shadow on where Latios/Latias is going to land. I remember basically having a hard time chosing the correct route to land on(esp the Mt chimney arena) when the routes are clustered in a small area.

I have to go boot up my AS cart when i have excess to it later to check on the soaring.

 

[acatfrommars]

Okay, I fall into the category of Hoenn Champion who doesn't play the game anymore. Partly because I really enjoyed the games but they didn't wow me like X & Y did, and the main reason is because I don't even have a Nintendo 3DS anymore. The in-game story was fun, I loved a lot of the redesigns and the new 3D graphics were really good but outside the game and The Delta Episode I would rather have watched paint dry. I'm not a huge fan of contests and didn't really utilize the battle mansion. The time I did have the game the main things I did post game were Wonder Trade and battle other players but that was about it. I'm hoping to see more post-game legendaries in future games, and maybe the addition of more DLC or just post-game things to do. Bring the Battle Frontier or The World Tournament or have players be able to participate in tournaments with other players online, but in-game (3 vs 3 or 1 vs 1 so the tournaments are shorter).

 

[Drayton]

Mirage Spots, DexNav, Amie, On-line Functionality keeps hook to ORAS because catching and training keeps me hooked for a while also soaring was a nice addon so does spectacular contest which I enjoy doing the most due to boredome and trying to win master ribbons (thankfully, I did win with my Volcarona) Online have interesting battle format while In-game those are very lackluster

 

[Sopheria]

Online have interesting battle format while In-game those are very lackluster

So you mean they would have been better if other battle formats besides Singles were common in-game?

A few more Sky Battles would have been nice to have. X&Y had a few of them interspersed here and there on various routes, but they never played an essential part of the game per se. I guess pretty much every Pokemon game in the past has been primarily made up of ordinary single battles, so while I wouldn't say that's a flaw on the part of OR/AS per se, they did miss a big opportunity by not building on and improving a great battle format that was introduced in X&Y.

 

[Skillah]

With sapphire being my first pokemon game ever, oras is definitely one of my favorite games of all time. Dex nav, shiny huntimg, and breeding and everything else is more than enough to keep my interest

 

[bobandbill]

I took a break... in part because of other video games, haha. I'll likely get back into it sooner or later, e.g. catching legendaries for VGC for the fun of it (along with finally making more teams and perhaps trying more battles with my Ludicolo army >:]), doing contests in full, and also working on my living pokedex as well.

Certainly more to do than training/battles/dex in ORAS than XY. Post-game story, Abandoned Ship's stuff, dexnav, contests, mirage spots, etc are fun aspects imo.

So you mean they would have been better if other battle formats besides Singles were common in-game?

A few more Sky Battles would have been nice to have. X&Y had a few of them interspersed here and there on various routes, but they never played an essential part of the game per se. I guess pretty much every Pokemon game in the past has been primarily made up of ordinary single battles, so while I wouldn't say that's a flaw on the part of OR/AS per se, they did miss a big opportunity by not building on and improving a great battle format that was introduced in X&Y.

I'm kinda glad Sky battles were dropped (heh). They weren't a great idea in practice imo, and I much rather stuff like doubles and triples. Those should have featured more imo, like how Emerald had more double battles than Ruby/Sapphire.

 

[Sopheria]

I took a break... in part because of other video games, haha. I'll likely get back into it sooner or later, e.g. catching legendaries for VGC for the fun of it (along with finally making more teams and perhaps trying more battles with my Ludicolo army >:]), doing contests in full, and also working on my living pokedex as well.

Certainly more to do than training/battles/dex in ORAS than XY. Post-game story, Abandoned Ship's stuff, dexnav, contests, mirage spots, etc are fun aspects imo. I'm kinda glad Sky battles were dropped (heh). They weren't a great idea in practice imo, and I much rather stuff like doubles and triples. Those should have featured more imo, like how Emerald had more double battles than Ruby/Sapphire.

One game can only hold our interest for so long before we need a break from it haha. Nice thing about Pokemon games is that there's always something for us to do if we ever decide to pick them back up ^^

I see what you mean about Sky Battles but...idk, I feel like they have potential if they're used right. In X/Y it felt like they were sorta shoehorned in, what with them being totally optional (and therefore 9/10 you go in fully prepared). I think they would be pretty cool if they were mandatory during soaring encounters in OR/AS, for example :) Or maybe if Winona's gym battle was done in Sky Battle format.

 

[Drayton]

They should carry out various battle format rather than strictly focus on single battles all the time. It's VERY CLICHÉ if you ask me

 

[Hikamaru]

Soaring around Hoenn got dull fast when all we could explore was the land we already knew… and some islands that randomly appear each day. No new towns or routes to see, no more story to explore… it was drab.

That's the problem with remakes, you're too familiar with the region to the point you don't find the game as entertaining as the original. But I do at least have to give credit how they did give some areas very noticeable facelifts and expansion, such as the new Mauville City. There were also a few new locations not present in the originals, like the Mirage Spots.