Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire Review

I finished Omega Ruby last night. I didn’t post any progress pictures since I honestly wasn’t feeling this version of the game. It’s been well over a decade since I last beat Pokémon Emerald but I feel it is still the superior version of the Hoenn games. I remember it being genuinely a lot more challenging and getting to see both sides of Team Magma and Team Aqua was nice. Not saying Emerald was this perfect Pokémon game, just in comparison I feel it still stands out for 3rd Gen.

That being said a lot of my issues from the original games make a come back here. The pacing is all over the place. A story focused around climate change and global warming could have been great but was handled very poorly. People will say it’s a Pokémon game so they made it simple for kids but anyone who’s played this can tell you it’s not simple, it just doesn’t make sense. Neither teams reasoning has any sense or backing at all and when they have their change of heart later in the game it’s like…really? No shit it didn’t work as you intended. Now I an 11 year old boys has to go save the region form a literal force of nature, twice. I wish with the chance for a remake they fixed a lot of these issues with the story or reworked it altogether. I mean it’s a whole new timeline. Why not have it make a little sense?

Also IGN was right. Hoenn has too much water. The last 20% of the game or so you spend on your surf Pokémon. I found it annoying in Ruby and then Emerald over a decade ago and I still find it annoying now. I was expecting some sort of quality of life improvements when it came to this but it was how I remembered it. And yes I know Hoenn is An island based region, so is Alola and getting around worked fine there. (Partly because of ride Pokémon) Speaking of ride Pokémon, how much do I miss them? A lot that’s for sure. The amount of HM you need is a bit ridiculous really. Dive and Waterfall are not needed as HMs at all and could have been worked into Surf or worked around very easily. Instead of having to lose 2 more moves. It’s really annoying when trying to do a nuzlocke or a mono type run.

Something I admit I really liked was the very end and I mean the very end. I’m talking after the credits when your rival now borderline girlfriend or boyfriend waits for you and you head back to Littleroot together and have one last battle. Even showing the small pond that keeps coming up in the opening cinematic of the game as the place you first met. My dark frozen heart melted a little with that. Sadly everything before the credits didn’t get any of this quality treatment. It also felt really random since you rarely even interact with your rival through the game. Regardless it is my favourite addition to the original games.

Now onto the Delta episode which I like a good bit more than the main game. Nice to have some sort of a story here that isn’t complete nonsense and a decent tie in to the Mega timeline games. It was a bit too wordy and there was a lot of just going from place to place but overall I didn’t mind it. Flying is for sure better than surfing.

Overall I’m glad to be done with Omega Ruby. It for sure over stayed it’s welcome and I don’t see myself replaying it for at least another decade. That is unless they remake it again which could be great if done right and with some heart like the after credits portion. My final thoughts are, as a Pokémon game it’s just fine. Far from the best and I can’t say if it’s the worst but you know what to expect here if you know Pokémon. For a Pokémon game I would rate it at about a 4 out of 10 for the main game and at about a 6 out of 10 for the Delta Episode.