In a bold affront to every "what your favorite Pokemon generation says about you" image, being born in time for my first Pokemon game to be Emerald does not make the third generation my favorite. It's actually one of my least favorite generations to revisit. I won't dwell on those reasons here, because this isn't my thoughts on Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald. Instead, it's about Omega Ruby, probably the boldest and most distinct Pokemon remakes, and for that they're also my favorite remakes in the series.

While Omega Ruby is faithful enough to its predecessor to still be recognizable, it brings over a lot of QoL features from modern entries while taking active steps to fix some of the game's most egregious issues and making other changes to keep the experience fresh. Not every change is a total win; the new plot material (especially the Delta Episode) is needlessly wordy and poorly written, and while I appreciate the idea of newer Pokemon in the base game, they come too late to make much of an impact. Other additions such as the DexNav, soaring, and the revamp to secret bases more than make up for it though. They even tried to bandage the tedium of the endgame with faster surfing and way less encounters! It's... still just a bandage, but anything is appreciated.

The game obviously isn't perfect, and has a lot more room for improvement. Considering how apprehensive Pokemon as a series is to these sorts of changes, though, I'm appreciative of how much they were willing to tinker with in this game, and it was enough to substantially improve my opinion of Hoenn. In my eyes, remakes offer a lot more worth when they're willing to look back and make changes for the sake of improvement, instead of offering an experience that's faithful to a fault... and this is not a sentiment that would ever come back to haunt me within this series' future, surely!

Reviewed on Sep 23, 2022


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