Pokemon Emerald is very much a mixed bag for me. It wasn't the first game/generation I played but I have memories of my friends and people on the bus playing this and me watching. The story is interesting, with team magma and aqua trying to summon their respective legendaries to re-do the earth (essentially). Rayquaza comes down, beats the fuck out of the two of them, then you catch it and do the standard story. The evil teams in this game weren't too threatening or particularily interesting. Obviously their goals are flawed and it's funny when they realize how wrong they were. That being said, they were stereotypical villains. The map itself is somewhat generic and that IGN review is kind of right, I was annoyed with how much water there was. Otherwise though it was pretty standard. One thing I didn't enjoy and know I will continue to hate is the EXP grind. In later games the EXP share applies to your whole party, but here it's only the one holding it. While I understand some people would like this more (difficulty) I view it as tedious and annoying. I have to switch pokemon out to farm EXP and it just gets annoying and makes me not want to try new mons. This is also before the special/physical split, so there wasn't as many options. Overall, I don't regret playing this as I transferred the pokemon over to Platinum, but it definitely shows it's age and I wouldn't recommend playing through it unless you have nostalgia or it's your first time.