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[Lindsay]

It's been a month since XD:GoD's release which was the last main game of this POKé-Generation so now it's time ta look back before looking ahead!

Main Games

Ruby
Sapphire
Colosseum
Fire Red
Leaf Green
Emerald
XD: Gale of Darkness

Filler

Pinball R & S
Channel
Dash

Other

Jirachi Bonus Disc
Box



How would ya rank 'em? What're the best and worst new aspects this generation has brought to the series? Don't forget ta list your L100's & other stats / thoughts!

----

My Ranking - Main Games

1.) Emerald
2.) Colosseum
3.) XD: Gale of Darkness
4.) Sapphire
5.) Ruby
6.) Leaf Green
7.) Fire Red

My Ranking - Filler

1.) Pinball R & S
2.) Channel
n/a) Dash

My Ranking - All

1.) Emerald
2.) Colosseum
3.) Pinball R & S
4.) XD: Gale of Darkness
5.) Sapphire
6.) Ruby
7.) Channel
8.) Leaf Green
9.) Fire Red
n/a) Dash

----

Favorite New POKéMON:

L100's: Blaziken, Camerupt, Crawdaunt, Ho-oh, Huntail, Jirachi, Manectric, Regirock, Shuckle, Steelix, Swampert

Scores!

R/S/E: Cycling Road - 0 collisions, time: 9.30

Pinball R & S:

Ruby Board - 1,014,079,499
Sapphire Board - 2,756,567,736
Most POKéMON Caught in One Game - 46
POKéDEX - 179/179 of 201

Battle Pike - Open Level - 37 w
Battle Factory Double - Open Level - 31 w

R/S Battle Tower - 31 w

Time Played:

S: 345:48
C: 99:99 + (games timer doesn't go past that)
E: 110:52
R: 42:55 + (beat this twice, don't remember the first go throughs time)
XD: 62:24
Lg: 56:42
Fr: 25:52

Total: 742:71 +

----

Okay Okay! With all that aside~my thoughts!

This set of games felt real good. I enjoyed having to start over from scratch and once I got used to one thing the next game came along and added more for me to learn. Natures/EVs/IVs....then came Move Tutors, now the Battle Frontier and Orre Colosseum..it's alot ta deal with!

I think the worst aspects were how the Sevii Islands were handled. I may have enjoyed Fr/Lg a tiny bit more had these islands not been forced into the storyline. You have to go through 6 of the 7 just to unlock trading instead of allowing them to be a nice post-game bonus that you could explore at your own whim. Speaking of trading that was another botched thing. I don't wanna get into details but it coulda been handled much better.

The best stuff is definetely Natures/EVs/IVs. Add those to Egg & Tutor moves and held items and you can now fully customize your POKéMON. I'll also throw in Contests even though I still suck at them. Ya see with the ability to tailor fit your PKMN for any need...you need a reason to do that to begin with. Contests & the Frontier are those reasons. They offer a different and more strategic style of play once finished with the main game.

This generations gonna be hard ta top when it comes to adding new stuff. I'm guessing the D/P era will be a refinement period riding the wave of online play to make people forget there's not much new~

 

[cvxfreak]

My favorites in order:

1. Fire Red / Leaf Green
2. Emerald
3. Ruby / Sapphire
4. Colosseum

Haven't tried XD yet.

 

[Error]

1)Emeral
2)Fire Red/Leaf Green
3)Ruby/Sapphire

haven't tried anything else.

 

[John Harker]

My favorite Pokemon is Squirtle.

And my favorite episode of the TV show was the Squirtle Squad.

And as far as games go...

Uh, I played Snap a little.

And I think the original GB version for a couple hours back in the day.

 

[nubbe]

My 5 favorite all-time Pokemon games are:

1. Emerald
2. Gold/Silver
3. FireRed/LeafGreen
4. Ruby/Sapphire
5. Pokemon Stadium G/S

They should have redone Gold/Silver instead of Fire/Leaf... 2 games in 1 :/

My favorite Pokemon(s) are:

Wish they add more Eons like grass, ground, ghost ect.. ect..

Colosseum sucks... Pokemon Box >x10> Colosseum

Emerald is awesome for breeding since it makes it real easy to get a good nature and great IV without spending hundreds of hours on a lucky hatching.

I have spent around 600+ hours on the advance generation games... still less than the original generations...

 

[Brandon F]

I've bought Pokemon games in the past, but I never actually 'played' through any of them until this summer when I finished FireRed. I got pretty hooked and nearly hung up my talis in favor of embracing Pokemontology, but that passed.

I'd like to play Emerald sometime, though I can just wait for the DS stuff.

 

[Ironclad]

You put Channel above Leaf Green and Fire Red? Blasphemy.

All games:
Emerald
Fire Red/Leaf Green
Ruby/Sapphire
Pinball R & S
Box
Colosseum
Gale of Darkness
Channel
Dash, which shouldn't even be allowed on ths list.

Favorite New Pokemon:

Gold/Silver will forever remain my favorite of all the Pokemon games. Red/Blue hold a special place as well because, well, they started it all. I can't begin to count how many hours I put into these four games in particular. I went to many tournaments as well, some NOA sponsored, and I even battled against an NOA employee and won. All I got was a hat though. :lol

It's too much effort to dig out my carts to start listing scores and teams and such so I will leave this post at this.

 

[Jiggy]

Alright, a discussion of my favorite game series.

How would ya rank 'em?

1) Leaf Green
2) Fire Red
3) Emerald
4) Sapphire
5) Ruby
6) XD
7) Colosseum

The thing is, XD and Colosseum would SO easily be ahead of Sapphire and Ruby if only they had any replay value at all.

What're the best and worst new aspects this generation has brought to the series?

Ruby/Sapphire best:

-ABILITIES. Single most awesome, most intuitive, most important (gameplay-wise), most logical, and most necessary change since the beginning of the series. Abilities such as Levitate, Intimidate, Immunity, Thick Fat, Volt Absorb, Water Absorb, Flash Fire, and Guts (among others, of course) just fundamentally take the game to a different and better level.

-The new EV system. It really adds a ton of strategy if you know what you're doing.

-The new IV system. This includes both the way of passing stats through breeding and the system itself, with HP no longer being determined by the other stats and gender no longer being determined by Attack. My one complaint is that for someone like me, who tends to be a perfectionist and like games with fixed stats, there's a big part of me that hates the fact that all Pokemon aren't equal and that there's no easy way (other than AR/Gameshark) to get ones with perfect stats. I just want them to either make it much easier to breed super Pokemon (e.g. stats always improve slightly among the next generation of eggs) or create some random legendary trainer NPC who teaches your Pokemon how to "push themselves past their limits" or something cheesy like that.

-Natures. Same reasoning as the above two.

-The Mach Bike. It was really needed.

-The ability to have rematches with 59 different trainers. People sometimes overlook this, but you could only register a few particular people in G/S/C, and if they didn't call you, your only method of leveling was fighting wild Pokemon, which got way too tedious.

-2-on-2 battles. While they were used far too sporadically in-game to have the impact on the main quest that they should have, the idea itself was great and provided another way of changing things up.

-Secret bases. Just a fun little idea that I'd like to see expanded on in the future, preferably with bigger bases than the ones in R/S.

-Contests. I still haven't gotten used to them, but I'm sure some people really have fun with them.


Ruby/Sapphire worst:

-The region in general was just terrible. Massive expanses of almost completely empty ocean, large areas of almost completely empty grass--I understand that they wanted to make Hoenn seem like a really verdant place (IIRC, one guy in the game even calls it "verdant" in his own words), but they did it at the expense of its fun factor. Thankfully, you spend so much time in battle and Pokemon's core gameplay is still so awesome that 95% of the series' greatness stayed intact.

-The music. While there were a few standouts like Slateport, for the most part it was a half-step down from G/S/C and about five steps down from R/B/Y.

-Most of the new Pokemon designs didn't seem as inspired as older ones, or seemed to be ripoffs (Beautifly/Butterfree, Dustox/Venomoth). Some, though, like Ludicolo, Metagross, Salamence, and Latias definitely lived up to previous games.

-Only 200 Pokemon in the game was somewhat absurd when G/S/C had 225. I understand wanting to force players to get acquainted with the new Pokemon instead of always falling back on the old standbys, but that didn't mean they couldn't have worked in the older ones later in the game, or even after beating it.

-No Ditto equalled too much resetting for females.


Fire Red/Leaf Green best:

-The VS Seeker, which should be in every Pokemon game from now on. It was fantastic being able to battle probably 75%+ of the trainers in the game whenever you felt like it, especially since probably half of them upgraded their teams at least once.

-The Trainer Tower. To be honest, I didn't really care for it too much, but just the fact that it's there is a good thing since I know some people will.

-Move tutors. I don't see why they couldn't have just added more TMs, but if they didn't want to, this was the way to go.


Fire Red/Leaf Green worst:

-No Battle Tower?

-Breeding is way too tedious. Between not having the Mach Bike and not having a big open path to ride back and forth on like in R/S/E, who wants to bother hatching eggs in FR/LG?

-Kicked off the real beginning of Nintendo-sponsored events being the only way to unlock several legendary Pokemon. Yeah, there were Mew and Celebi, but they were the truly uber rare Pokemon, and only one in each game; here Lugia, Ho-oh, and Deoxys were all catchable only via Nintendo events, which to me is stupid. Provide other incentives to attend the events, but let people complete the game on their own and with a few local friends (to trade with); don't limit it to only a few of the very biggest cities in places like California, Texas, New York, England, and Japan.


Emerald best:

-The entire concepts behind the Battle Frontier. I say "concepts" because the execution didn't turn out as fun as I'd hoped, mainly because you have to start all over if you lose a round (unlike, say, Mt. Battle in Colosseum or XD, where you just restart from the beginning of that round). But yeah, let me go over the four best ones (IMO):

-Battle Factory. Fantastic idea, a way of actually letting players use all sorts of powerful Pokemon with pretty decent movesets and great stats that they'd never have the time to raise for themselves. This NEEDS to have a multiplayer incarnation next-gen.

-Battle Dome. I think most Pokemon fans have been waiting for a bracket-style tournament to be in the series since the beginning, and now it is. Again, this needs to go multiplayer as well.

-Battle Pyramid. Takes the core gameplay and turns it into a dungeon crawler. The only things I'd do to improve this are make a selectable difficulty level (e.g. the room lights up more with each battle) and create multiplayer co-op/competitive.

-Battle Pike. It's like the Battle Pyramid, except really randomized... Needs a competitive multiplayer race option.

Anyway, moving on...

-Fixable EVs via berries. Makes perfect sense and helps you out competitively, especially since most won't bother EV training when they're going through the main single-player quest.

-Pick Up getting different stuff at different levels. Getting numerous Leftovers, Rest TMs, and Earthquake TMs probably makes me happier than it has any right to.

-Passing natures via an Everstone. Really, really cuts down on the tediousness of breeding.

-Abilities having different effects on the map screen. Most notably, Flame Body and Magma Armor cutting hatching time in half.

-Much, much better focus on 2-on-2 battles than R/S. Colosseum and XD pretty much eliminated 1-on-1 battles entirely, so thus far Emerald is the only Pokemon title to really blend single and double battles together cohesively in a single game. It almost made me forget that the region sucks.

-Gym leader rematches. I've been wanting these since R/B/Y, and I think a lot of other people have as well.


Emerald worst:

-No VS Seeker!

-It's still in Hoenn.

-More building up to Nintendo events being the only way to get some Pokemon, what with adding Mew back into the picture. Argh!


Colosseum best:

-Surprisingly awesome music. I hope most of this material is incorporated into future GB games, because themes like Phenac City, The Under, and every single piece of battle music are just wonderful.

-Having exclusively double battles really made the game feel fresh despite some of its flaws, like the several recycled character models.

-The storyline was different from other entries in the series, and Shadow Pokemon were a cool idea.

-It was really fun to start off at level 25 and to have Pokemon using powerful TM moves right off the bat after catching them, as opposed to working through the usual weak stuff like Tackle and Scratch and Water Gun before eventually getting to the good stuff.


Colosseum worst:

-Absolutely zero replay value due to extreme linearity and the slow purification process.

-No rental Pokemon in the multiplayer battle options, even though Stadium and Stadium 2 had them.


XD best:

-Probably the best use of nostalgia I've ever seen for a game that was released just a year and a half after its prequel. I genuinely enjoyed visiting a bunch of old locations and seeing how many things had changed in five years, seeing some characters grown up or some characters still the same. It's kind of like the old Phantasy Star effect...

-Better use of Shadow Pokemon, what with their much more varied movesets. You also got a wider variety of Pokemon to choose from.

-The Purification Chamber really sped up purification and made sure you weren't running around with half-awesome and half-terrible teams all the time.

-An even more amazing soundtrack than Colosseum. Again, themes like the Purification Chamber, the Mt. Battle battles, or the wild battles absolutely need to be used in regular rotation in the portable games, because this is just great, great music and it really fits the series.


XD worst:

-Still no rental Pokemon, still no replay value.





I'm not going to load up all of my Pokemon games just to find out exactly what my times are and what Pokemon I've got at level 100, but off the top of my head:

Time Played:
Ruby: About 100 hours. I can't remember exactly because I started over twice.
Sapphire: 255 hours.
Emerald copy 1 (I won one in a Nintendo contest): 112 hours.
Emerald copy 2: 61 hours.
Fire Red: 120 hours. Again, I started over twice, so I don't know exactly.
Leaf Green: 110 hours.
Colosseum: 65 hours.
XD: 45 hours.
Total: About 868 hours. And don't take the higher Sapphire and Emerald counts to mean I liked them better than FR/LG; it's just that breeding was a lot faster in those games, so that was where I did it.

Levle 100 Pokemon: Blastoise, Wigglytuff, Suicune, Rayquaza, Kyogre, Groudon, Mewtwo, Misdreavus, Jolteon, Metagross, Umbreon, Espeon

 

[E-Nature]

did the battle action actually get a bit better in the newer incarnations of the game?
I remember in pokemon blue the fights were pretty boring. has anything changed in terms of battle-action?

 

[Apenheul]

I never bothered to look at pokemon games, I only played Snap a few times. But I'm giving the series a chance, I bought Fire Red and Leaf Green. I gave Fire Red to a girlfriend of mine as a birthday present so I'll be playing Leaf Green pretty soon and I can trade pokemon with her using the wireless adapter. Seeing how much time you put into these games I'm expecting to get addicted

 

[Lindsay]

You put Channel above Leaf Green and Fire Red? Blasphemy.

pfft! I rank based on fun and usefulness. While Channel wasn't useful I did play through it twice and it was more fun then the retrashes. Channel is kinda like Animal Crossing so it's an easy sit back and enjoy a brief but nice ride kinda thing. If it weren't for me working for a POKéSite I wouldn't even own Fr/Lg..what did those games give me? Nothing except I guess the Onix which became my Steelix. *shrug*

-The Mach Bike. It was really needed.

Waauughhh you said almost everything I wanted to! If only I were a better writer~but I didn't say almost for a reason so lemme argue some points!

Mach Bike? It's nice but the Running Shoes were an even nicer addition!

2-on-2 battles. While they were used far too sporadically in-game to have the impact on the main quest that they should have, the idea itself was great and provided another way of changing things up.

Oh gawds how could I forget my most fave addition?! Double Battles for the win!

The region in general was just terrible. Massive expanses of almost completely empty ocean, large areas of almost completely empty grass--I understand that they wanted to make Hoenn seem like a really verdant place (IIRC, one guy in the game even calls it "verdant" in his own words), but they did it at the expense of its fun factor. Thankfully, you spend so much time in battle and Pokemon's core gameplay is still so awesome that 95% of the series' greatness stayed intact.

Whaaaaat? Empty nothing. The place is supposed to be huge ta give you a sense of adventure. And while some routes may go on long its a test of your mettle. The ocean saga was also nice. Places to dive, things to see, even getting lost on more then one occasion! I thought it was pretty fun that these games didn't hold your hand in a super linear fashion.

-The VS Seeker, which should be in every Pokemon game from now on. It was fantastic being able to battle probably 75%+ of the trainers in the game whenever you felt like it, especially since probably half of them upgraded their teams at least once.

YES. Except you can't use it against former opponents in caves and buildings.

-No Battle Tower?

Fr/Lg are for the babies umm beginners. They can't handle something as advanced as a Battle Tower or Contests or TV / Time related events.

-Pick Up getting different stuff at different levels. Getting numerous Leftovers, Rest TMs, and Earthquake TMs probably makes me happier than it has any right to.

Rare Candy!

-Gym leader rematches. I've been wanting these since R/B/Y, and I think a lot of other people have as well.

Only up to 5 times though.

-Absolutely zero replay value due to extreme linearity and the slow purification process.

Deep Colosseum baby. The reason my Colo timer got maxed out is because of that place. After I finish EV training I ship 'em over to Colo and get huge EXP gains from the DC all the way up to L100.

-Still no rental Pokemon, still no replay value.

Battle Bingo and Battle Sims say otherwise!

 

[rainer516]

This has inspired me to pick up my GBA and restart pokemon Ruby. Now only if I could find my GBA.

 

[Error]

time to ask this here, is the GC Pokemon worth it? I mean XD

 

[nubbe]

time to ask this here, is the GC Pokemon worth it? I mean XD

If you don't own a GBA and want to play a Pokemon game with a "deeper story"… probably…
Or if you want Lugia

 

[Error]

I have a GBA and I owned and beaten Emerald, FireRed and Ruby. so not worth it then?

 

[nubbe]

It depends on if you want any of the stuff it offers. Because there isn't anything here you cant get in the other games if you own them, except Lugia.

Purchasable TM30 Shadow Ball
Catch Lugia
Catch the legendary birds
Quest to get a Lucky Egg
Beat new tournaments
Play a new story
Access to some of the Pokemons which arnt in the GBA versions
Move Tutors
New set of TMs
New set of held items
More berries
…

I would personally only get it for Lugia since it dosnt offer anything if you own Fr/Lg and Ru/Sa/Em

You should probably check it out and look over if it has anything you want.

http://www.serebii.net/xd/

 

[lyre]

Heh, everything that has to be said about Pocket Monsters has already been stated, except, like Gold/Silver's PokeGear feature, getting random inane phonecalls from other trainers get too annoying to bother with battling with them to begin with. But continuing on:

Favourite games:
1: Emerald (#2 games plus more monsters and more stuff)
2: Sapphire/Ruby (added a whole lot of great stuff to the original formula which means more fun )
3: Fire Red/Leaf Green (still enjoyable but not as much to do in these games unlike Ru/Sa)
4: Coloseum (played for a little bit and didn't like it. doubt I'll get around to playing)

Level 100s (Ru/Sa only):

(still my only shiney monster so far "/ )

Favourite Pokemon added in Ru/Sa/Em: Combusken, Blaziken, Swampert, Gardevoir, Flygon, Cacturne, Breloom, Beldum, Metang, Metagross, and Milotic

Though nothing will beat a pair of mice when it comes to favourites for me.

 

[demi]

I have both Ruby and Fire Red yet have no urge to play them, I dunno

 

[mCACGj]

Coloseum is trash. It's not like Pokemon at all. Everything is too linear, it's too confined, and purifying Pokemon is a bitch. It's a bad story idea, just trying to give the Pokemon image a new "bad ass" look. It failed. Miserably. Not to mention starting out with a level 25 Umbreon and Espeon was stupid. I felt like I didnt do anything. Part of the fun of Pokemon is raising it up from really low levels. The game was terrible, and I love Pokemon.

As for my new favorite Pokemon, it's gotta be Shiftry, and Gardevoir.

Here's to a Pokemon MMORPG for the Revolution, or hell, even the DS. That is my dream, and when that dream comes true, my life will be Pokemon.

 

[captainbiotch]

Are there any good R/S or FR/LG guides out there? I'm more interested in stats/item information, not really a walkthrough.

 

[lyre]

Are there any good R/S or FR/LG guides out there? I'm more interested in stats/item information, not really a walkthrough.

Well there's the UPNetwork Pokedex or the Serebii.net Pokedex (the one that I refer to). Either one is good and should be required for party building. I would like to suggest Meowth346's Pokemon Forever site, but it's gone now. "/

 

[Mac the KNife]

What's with Pokemon Box? Does it only work with R/S? Easy to use? Just need link cable?

 

[Lindsay]

Well there's the UPNetwork Pokedex or the Serebii.net Pokedex (the one that I refer to). Either one is good and should be required for party building. I would like to suggest Meowth346's Pokemon Forever site, but it's gone now. "/

Meowth346's isn't quite gone -> http://pokefor.greenchu.de/zukan/gba/pokemon

And wow someone knows of UPN! That's a nice sign. I'll have to update over there again today. But I must admit I'm not sure when I'll be able to update the Pokedex since there's so much new info ta add that throwing it all in could get sloppy. My personal sites pokedex is all done though and from it I will copy the info to UPN......one day. o.x

What's with Pokemon Box? Does it only work with R/S? Easy to use? Just need link cable?

It works with all 5 of the GBA games for "Box Mode" but for the "Adventure Mode" you can only use R/S.


btw Since most of Meowth346's place is gone~anyone know the location of a good new IV calculator? I wanna raise more L100's but just can't go back to the old way of leveling up any old PKMN. I must know IV's!

 

[lyre]

Meowth346's isn't quite gone -> http://pokefor.greenchu.de/zukan/gba/pokemon

And wow someone knows of UPN! That's a nice sign. I'll have to update over there again today. But I must admit I'm not sure when I'll be able to update the Pokedex since there's so much new info ta add that throwing it all in could get sloppy. My personal sites pokedex is all done though and from it I will copy the info to UPN......one day. o.x

True but the charts, sprites, calculators and misc programs are gone, which was the main reason why I went there. While other sites have the sprites and similar charts, Pokefor has the Spinda calculator, trainer number calculator, IV/EV/stat calculator, time reset calculator (for G/S/C) and other goodness like that. Though good to know the Pokedex is still up. I've always liked how he set up his Pokedex (at least his older ones, this one has too many links)

btw Since most of Meowth346's place is gone~anyone know the location of a good new IV calculator? I wanna raise more L100's but just can't go back to the old way of leveling up any old PKMN. I must know IV's!

Like said a second ago, THE reason to go to Pokefor. I haven't found one since, so I've been abusing my 250+ rare candies in my Sapphire cart.


Edit:

And after a quick and dirty google seach, here's a download calculator and javascript one. No idea how great they are (like I said, I use my near infinite Rare Candies), but here ya go.