#subbydations

The Gym Leaders

When ORAS was announced, I figured “oh cool, the gym leaders might all get a buff by using mega evolutions”… and they did not. No, they all have their parties from the original Ruby and Sapphire, some of which, well, let’s face it, are pathetic compared to Emerald.

Wattson just has his Magnetson, no Manectric or Mega Manectric-- y’know, the signature Electric-type of Gen 3? Something that would have been cool and challenging?

Winona doesn’t have a Mega Altaria either, again, stuck with the mediocre party she had in the original R/S, no Tropius in sight. Giving her a Mega Altaria would have been a good challenge because people who come into the gym with electric types would have no idea how to deal with Dragon/Fairy.

And oh boy, how can we forget Tate and Liza? You would think ORAS would have changed something to make them a bit more challenging, but no. You just double battle their Solrock and Lunatone, probably wiping them before they get a chance.

Also, unlike in Emerald or HG/SS… you can’t even rematch the Gym leaders (except for Wallace in the Delta Episode). You just fight them once with their pathetically weak teams, then that’s it, no more from them ever again.

The Elite Four members got the better end of it mostly, but their initial teams are still weak. I also hate Steven’s rematch team. Why does he have Carbink and Aerodactyl? There are plenty of Steel-types, one of which is a fossil Pokémon! Carbink is weak to Steel anyway!

Wally’s party also made me sad. GameFreak didn’t like the idea of a boy trainer having a male Gardevoir I guess, so they forced a Gallade on him prior to getting National Dex or whatever. :\

Legendaries

While I already hated the roaming legendaries (seriously GameFreak, remove these), simply handing over Latios and Latias with their Mega Evolution and zero effort to obtain them was… pretty awful. It makes the entire game pathetically easy from there on out if you do speedrunning. I dunno about you, but I like getting my legendaries through a challenge.

Remember in gens 3, 4, and 5 when certain legendaries, when found, would give you a cool event? Well, ORAS just hands everything to you by flying around on Latios/Latias to certain areas, and you go to dimensional rips and rings created by Hoopa.

I have a feeling Hoopa was just made to create the excuse of randomly dropping Pokémon… I don’t know why they didn’t make a small, new area for each legendary available. FireRed/LeafGreen and Emerald did that for Lugia, Ho-Oh, Mew, and Deoxys. Simply recycling assets from the already existing mystery lands from soaring would have worked just fine.

Of course, this is a minor nitpick compared to actual issues I have. I’m glad that Pokémon like Zekrom are in the game at all, but I wish a little more effort was put in.

The Audio

I don’t like the soundtrack ORAS introduced compared to the original gen 3 games. The Champion theme against Steven, in particular, feels neutered of its GBA trumpets.

Honestly, I would be fine with it-- if they programmed in the GB Sounds, an item that was available in HG/SS! Gee, imagine that, an item that lets you play classic sounds if you prefer some of the original, classic soundtracks!

“Jelli they can’t program in old music!” Is what you’re going to say, and I’m going to prove you wrong, because somehow GameFreak managed to copypaste the themes of Lugia, Ho-Oh, Giratina, etc into ORAS… from their original DS sound fonts.

Wanna know what’s even funnier about this? In ORAS, Ho-Oh and Lugia have their themes from HG/SS, but the legendary beasts all have their Pokémon Crystal theme as opposed to the separate ones given in HG/SS. Sure, it’s nostalgic, but it clashes horribly given the others themes being from DS games.

I think if they cropped out all that legendary music (and simply made one song for all of them), they could have fit the GB (or rather GBA) Sounds into ORAS.

“But Jelli, that sounds like it would be too much for the 3DS.”

Definitely not, but if it was, here’s my last point.

The Delta Episode

I hated this, lol. I was fine with the remake up until this point. This was a poor excuse of post-game, it’s basically one big, handheld cutscene where you go from place to place and put up with the most annoying character in the world; Zinnia. (who is an even more obnoxious jerk in the manga if one can believe that)

Honestly, they should have cut this entirely and allowed the players to find Mega Rayquaza on their own so they could use the remaining data to put in the Battle Frontier, GB Sounds, and Gym leader rematches. I don’t play Pokémon to watch a short movie with poor story-telling, sorry.

I know it sounds like I’m being harsh for the sake of shitting on GameFreak but… that’s not true. I’m saying this because I absolutely love Gen 3! It’s my favorite Pokémon generation next to 5 and Hoenn is probably my favorite region. I still go back to Pokémon Emerald sometimes (I recently transferred my shinies to SoulSilver) and just embrace everything.

ORAS… I have not gone back to. It made me feel empty from how unfinished this was. This game didn’t have the love put into it like HG/SS or FR/LG did, and as someone who did want Hoenn remakes, that makes me extremely depressed.

It makes me worry for the people who want Sinnoh remakes, they’re going to be stuck with the Gym leaders having terrible parties like in the original Diamond/Pearl rather than Platinum, with no post-game content.