This will serve as a review of emerald as well, as I feel like both ORAS and emerald have pros and cons to them that add to the atmosphere and feel of the region, making both pretty valid experiences of the hoenn region. For emerald, the most important part for the atmosphere here is obviously the nostalgia. With the GBA sprites, and the pixel art, it is truly a great experience that captures a region’s beauty. Besides that, there are only two more cons in preference of emerald for me. That being the obvious missing battle frontier, and the difficulty curve in emerald. To say emerald is a more difficult game is a understatement. The base game is just more harsh on the natural progression of the game, and gives you more of a challenge. And then the battle frontier is self explanatory, this is literally a place for the most hardcore Pokémon battling you can get without playing literal competitive lol. But besides the difficulty and the nostalgic atmosphere, I would say ORAS takes everything else great about the already expansion of emerald and expands even more. It keeps the added depth and goals of the evil teams of the region, magma and plasma, and adds depth to a rival who was so bad in the original games that it’s funny.(Wally btw) On top of that, the physical special spilt and the added 6 generations of Pokémon are a added bonus, because I feel like the physical specIal spilt is such a great feature that every game that doesn’t have it is already at a disadvantage and point negative. But yea overall I like the added pros of a more fluid gameplay and physical special spilt, alongside the added postgame legendaries content and etc. Slightly prefer ORAS-7.5/10