Pokémon Emerald 1-ups everything about Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. Plus it's a very fun game.
The franchise continues still, and in Christmas of 2005, I got a game. A game called Pokémon Emerald. It was my first Game Boy Advance game, and I still play it often.
But enough with the history lesson. Let's get down to it.
The gameplay concept behind Pokémon games is that you are a wordless character whose objective is to raise a team of captured Pokémon, gaining experience and battling other trainers, until you challenge a superior team of trainers, known in every game as the Elite Four. This is no different in Emerald.
I personally like the concept of going around, forming a team and customizing it the way you want, being able to explore a virtual world, getting experience and money, and trying to match up to your opponents. So the gameplay is better than fair, but my problem with it is that you have to be devoted and willing to put much time into this game. Also, certain objectives can only be reached by stringing a chain of consecutive battle wins, which I find tedious after a very long time.
The graphics are not great, but that isn't worth complaining about. With the gameplay the way it is, Pokémon games can't be expected to come up with any more decent graphics. Even so, I feel that Emerald's graphics are primitive to FireRed and LeafGreen, which were released on the GBA *a whole year before.* Why the graphics could not have at least matched the graphics of FireRed beats me.
The controls can't be complained about in the least. I mean, with a game like this, what could go wrong?
What's next? The sound. Personally, I don't care for the sounds in this game. The sound effects, like picking up an item, running into something, Pokémon cries, or the noise techniques make are okay, but the music is what I don't really care for. I don't know, something about the way a lot of the music sounds just would dispel me.
One aspect that really sets Emerald apart from other games is a bonus feature- yeah, after you beat the Elite Four, the game isn't over- there's a bonus island called the Battle Frontier that you can try to conquer. Let me tell you, it redefines the word "impossible." You have to try and defeat these 7 battle areas in the hoeps of getting a symbol.
It is by no means easy. Frustrations will strike again and again, no matter how good you are, getting a single symbol at this place is next to impossible.
Okay! Here are the individual judgments I have this game to give it the score that it has:
GRAPHICS: 7
SOUND: 9
GAMEPLAY: 8
ENTERTAINMENT: 9
OVERALL: 33 out of 40 (8.25 out of 10)
Thank you for reading.