About time I join this club, I've been meaning to ever since it was made D:
Username: Pidgey
3 Partner Pokémon: Mega Banette, Mudkip and Breloom
What makes you love Hoenn?
I made a pretty long post on my opinions of the third generation over in
this thread, but that also includes the thing that I dislike, so I guess I'll summarize on what I like.
One of the main things that I liked about the third generation, was the progression it made in Pokemon games. Not only was it much more technically advanced than the previous generation, but it also changed the formula in a way that I feel like has really made the Pokemon games better overall; with the inclusion of an actual storyline. The previous two generations were basically just "beat gyms, defeat evil team who are evil, become champion, catch 'em all", and that's about all there was to it. No real depth to the characters you meet or the evil team or anything. They just wanted to steal Pokemon, and the rest were just there to battle you. The third generation really took it a lot further, especially in regards to the motives of the evil teams. They were no longer just your generic bad guys trying to steal Pokemon, they were people with intentions they actually thought to be good. And every encounter you had with them, every action they took, was leading up to something bigger. It's not like with Team Rocket, where they were basically just there in your way; like another rival battle. The battles against Magma and Aqua actually meant something for the story. And this is a trend that continued in all the generations to come. This made me enjoy playing through the games more, because there was an actual story to it. It actually made a difference whether you started over, or just kept playing after having beaten everything, because it actually made a difference. And to add onto that, I think the storyline of the third generation games was actually the best one yet. I know that might be an unpopular opinion, but I found the goals to be reasonable, and with the remakes, the characters actually became really likable as well. In general I think the third generation did a really solid job in that aspect.
Other than that, I really liked pretty much everything about the games bar the giant amount of surfing you had to do, with super expensive repels and constant overleveled Pelippers that knew supersonic and were impossible to run from. The Pokemon were cool and really well designed for the most part, despite how much flack they got from the fanbase. And it introduced a lot of Pokemon that are still super popular today. The gym leaders and E4 were a good balance of fun and difficult, and I feel like they showed more character than what we saw in the previous generations. Also your character finally got a dad :D It introduced a lot of new and interesting mechanics, and like I said, it overall improved on a lot of aspects of the Pokemon games.
What is your favorite gym leader and why?
I would have to go with Norman. First off; it was the first gym leader which you actually kinda got to know something about. And I just liked the idea of you training to eventually beat your dad, however I feel like it would've been much cooler if you fought him early on as a scripted loss, since that would just add on to it. As for him as a trainer, he's definitely one of the more challenging of the third generation games. Most of the fighting types you can obtain aren't very defensive, which makes it difficult to survive the attacks from most of his Pokemon, while they're still bulky enough to not be one shot. The saving grace is the fact that his Slaking can't do anything every second turn, which is usually where I manage to find an opening. But I still remember the first time, where I opted to just tanking everything with my Aron and slowly widdling them down. I had a bit of an easier time last time I fought him, when my Breloom was actually at a decent level, but it wasn't able to take him out on its own still :(
The only thing I don't really like about Norman is the gym. There isn't much of a puzzle to it, and I never really saw much difference between the trainers anyways, so it was just kind boring to reach him. At least it was a lot of free experience :p
