Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire (shortened to ORAS) for the Nintendo 3DS are remakes of the well-received third generation games Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire for the Gameboy Advance released just over 10 years ago. The remakes do the original games justice while adding little things to the Pokemon formula used for 6 generations of Pokemon games to offer a unique experience.

The gameplay of ORAS sticks to the tried-and-tested formula used from Red and Blue, released in 1994, all the way to Pokemon X and Y (XY), released in 2013. You are a pre-adolescent boy or girl living in a small town, when one day you are given your first Pokemon by a Pokemon professor. He then asks you to go on a journey to record data for his research. Along the way you battle at various Gyms (like boss battles in Pokemon games), stop a diabolical plan to rule the world involving legendary Pokemon (usually the one on the game’s box art), and then beat the region’s most elite trainers. Battles are conducted in a turn-based RPG fashion where you use your Pokemon that you catch in the wild to beat your opponent’s Pokemon, either owned by an NPC or by another player.

And it still works really well. After all, why fix something that isn’t even broken? What it does is add little things to the formula.

A neat new feature in ORAS is DexNav—now you have the ability to see which Pokemon can appear in each route using the bottom screen and even actively search for them.When you do find Pokemon, you have to sneak up on them in order to start a battle. Doing this may yield Pokemon with special abilities or unique moves. It’s a useful tool for people who want to canvas every Pokemon possible in the game.

Secret Bases have returned as “Super-Secret Bases.” These are hideouts you can customize and share using QR Codes or using Streetpass. When you pass by someone with the 3DS’ wireless turned on, the person you passed by will be able to find your secret base in the game’s world and battle the Pokemon team you assigned to be with you in that base.

The ability to “soar” has also been added. At one point in the game you will be given a certain Pokemon and an item that will enable you to fly around the game’s overworld map and choose where to land, comparable to travelling using the airship in the old Final Fantasy games or the 3DS’ Bravely Default. What makes this interesting is that all of the islands in Hoenn—the region of the world where ORAS takes place in—can be visited. What were once just decorative pieces of land on the map in 2003 are now accessible to the player.

Speaking of Hoenn, the whole map has been recreated faithfully in 3D in the graphical style of XY and it is beautiful. But while it is beautiful, the faithful recreation lends itself to bland level design.

Pokemon’s unique art style is preserved even in 3D

One of the gripes from the original Ruby and Sapphire was that there was too much time spent on traversing the seas of Hoenn. This is still true as around 40% of the map is made up of water. The design of the world isn’t as great as XY, which I found to be comparatively varied, colorful and vibrant with enough diversity between each town and city. Thankfully, the blandness of the level design doesn’t leak onto the creature designs as Hoenn’s generation of Pokemon are some of the coolest and noteworthy of all ‘mon designs. I mean, we have things like fire-wristed blazing ninja chicken, quadrupedal cross-face spider and fierce-but-still-cute blue whale:

FEED ME CUPCAKES

Taking Hoenn as it is, the world is still pretty much alive. A lot of the NPCs talk about things that you may discover all around you: a hidden passage, a certain Pokemon, and many legendary Pokemon, giving a certain element of mystery and discovery to the game’s world. There is a ton of lore waiting to be known and to be explored in ORAS.

The story present in ORAS is just as it was in Ruby and Sapphire. Depending on your game, you will have to prevent the evil Team Magma or Team Aqua from bringing the world to hell by stopping them from controlling the legendary Pokemon found on the game’s cover. The story is okay, but I will commend it for being better than XY’s, which was mostly nonsense. To put it simply without spoiling either of these games’ stories: ORAS’ story doesn’t feel detached from the journey you’re making, as it is cohesive and is actually worth paying attention to.

ORAS still has some things to offer after beating the story. A new post-game story dubbed the “Delta Episode” starts right after finishing the story and offers an explanation for the differences in this Hoenn and the original Hoenn in 2003. The Battle Resort opens up after the Delta Episode, giving you a place to test your abilities against (mostly) competitive-level teams used by NPC’s. And in case you got disappointed by the underwhelming amount of legendary Pokemon in XY (SPOILER: There were only 3), in ORAS you can catch a total of 17 legendary Pokemon using the game’s soar mechanic. Good luck trying to find them all!

Aside from this, every mechanic from XY (except for customizable avatars… L) were copied and pasted into the game. You can still battle and trade with anyone around the world, meaning as long as you’re online in ORAS, you are never alone and yes, ORAS can also communicate with X and Y, leading to endless possibilities after completing the game. Battles are as deep as ever in ORAS, with multiple move sets for each Pokemon, multiple team combinations, and stat-building that give multiple dimensions to your battle strategy, as every competitive Pokemon player would know. (Understanding the whole Pokemon “metagame” would take a separate article on its own!)

Is Pokemon ORAS a good game? Yes it is. A deep battle system, decent story and setting make this game a fine RPG. Is it a good Pokemon game? You bet. Is it better than XY? If you never played the original Ruby and Sapphire, the answer would be a resounding YES, but if you are a person (such as me) who played through every generation of Pokemon games, you’d find a hard time deciding. XY ushered in a new generation of Pokemon that brought us the closest thing we could get to a Pokemon MMORPG. ORAS just took that and placed it in an old map with better graphics, albeit they did it really well. Playing ORAS after playing XY and Ruby and Sapphire makes it feel like revisiting an old friend after a long time, as opposed to meeting a new person that you instantly had chemistry with and took out to dinner. ORAS caters a lot to nostalgia, but will entertain newcomers a whole lot too.

Should you buy it? If you’re looking to get into Pokemon for the first time, XY would be a better place to start. If you’re returning to the Pokemon franchise or skipped XY, ORAS would be a better choice. If you’re a huge Pokemon fan, you probably went out and bought the game already.

Sources:

All images except for the blue whale were taken fromthe Pokemon Company: www.pokemon.com

Blue whale: www.knowyourmeme.com