The increased emphasis on romantic sub plots is a rather strange approach for Game Freak, it was a fairly important part of the story in X and Y as well as here. I’m personally looking forward to this because in the transfer from the DS games to the 3DS Pokébank denied my LEGITIMATE Darkrai and Shaymin (Two of the rarest legendries). I feel like this is a good sign that perhaps Game Freak is going to begin involving more event-exclusive Pokémon in the plots of the games in order to make them less rare and to cut down on fake Pokémon. Up until this point, Deoxys had only ever been given away through special WFC events or by going to specific conventions. Surprise! It’s Deoxys in its first ever non-special event based appearance. A little black triangle that those who are lucky enough to have gotten the special event back on Gen 3 will recognise. The interesting part of this is what follows the asteroid being destroyed. Once again without spoiling much, you end up flying Rayquaza into space where you Mega-Evolve it and destroy the asteroid that poses the threat against the world. Of course the Delta Episode ends in a battle with Rayquaza and the new character Zinnia. The writers are let off their chains in this part and suddenly I’m actually invested in the fate of all the people in Hoenn as they bring up real world consequences for what is happening, as well as fleshing out some genuinely multi-layered characters. The story really begins to shine in the post-game Delta Episode as a way of involving Rayquaza in the plot without making a separate ‘Delta Emerald’ game. Hey there incredibly out of place romantic sub-plot Without spoiling too much, you end up riding Groudon to the deepest point in Hoenn where you witness its Primal Reversion. Building up to the battle with Primal Groudon was fantastic thanks to the ever-so-amazing music that Game Freak always supplies with Pokémon (Once again, the less said about Gen 4 the better). The final battle against the Team Magma boss was made more exciting thanks to him being the first trainer other than you to use a Mega-Evolution.
More emphasis is put on Mega Evolutions thanks to Steven Stone (the Champion for this game) and the new form of evolution for Kyogre and Groudon called Primal Reversion. This contrast of characters actually made me interested and I began to consider Archie to be an ally (at this point I should mention that the only time he ever threatens you is in regards to you potentially trying to stop Team Aqua from stopping Team Magma). Archie on the other hand, in my version, came off as more of a level headed, average intelligence person who is trying to reasonably explain to Maxie that what he is doing is wrong even though he doesn’t quite have the means to. I picked up Omega Ruby myself and as such I had Team Magma and their leader Maxie who basically comes off as a male version of Franziska Von Karma without the whip and the “foolishly foolish fools”, highly educated and looks down upon all those who refuse to understand him, he does give the protagonist a chance though. There seems to be a few alterations to the game script which make the leaders of Teams Aqua and Magma seem more distinct as characters. Let’s start with the story, in most Pokémon games story is about as important as that last little kid whose entire team of Weedle’s you just destroyed with your level 100 Blaziken. Thankfully in ORAS they fix so many of these problems and more. The reasons I held for this were that a lot of the Pokémon didn’t particularly ‘wow’ me when I first played it, the routes seemed unoriginal in design, the abundance of water made me frustrated and the stupidly large amount of HM’s required made me annoyed that towards end game when I just wanted to go through the game without having to have an HM Slave in my party. I don’t keep it a secret that Gen 3 was for a very long time my second least favourite generation (the less we say about Gen 4 the better).
I also managed to pick up a couple of 3DS eShop games that I want to go further into at some point. Most of you probably got a 3DS/Wii-U for Christmas as well as Super Smash Bros 4 or Pokémon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire (ORAS), am I right to guess that? Well don’t feel bad, I was one of those people too. How were your holidays everyone? Hopefully I didn’t cause too much of a shit storm with my article, however, that is behind us.