Pokémon Emerald Version
• Game Boy Advance • Adventure, RPGThe player starts their journey in Littleroot Town, where the family has just moved after the player's father, Norman, became a gym leader. As usual, the game follows the player on their path to collecting the gym badges and becoming the next Pokémon Champion.
Thoughts
Pokémon Emerald must have been the second video game I ever played, following Pokémon FireRed. I initially played parts of this game when I was around six years old, using my brother’s Game Boy Advance SP and a shared save file that he was (rightfully) very protective of. Because of this, I never felt like I truly completed the game. With the newer games in the series being a bit of a miss for me, it felt like the right time to revisit the Hoenn region.
As my chat with Prof. Birch finished and I was greeted with the inside of a moving truck, a wave of nostalgia hit me. I chose my starter Pokémon and set out on an adventure. But it would be a bit more exhausting than I remembered.
The game difficulty was one of the first things I noticed when I embarked on my new journey. Compared to the latest entries, Emerald is less forgiving. Not only will you need to engage in every single battle to be at the same level as the next gym leader, but your little companions won’t avoid status effects just because they love you, and these will be carried from one battle to the next. There’s no easy way to level up your Pokémon because the experience you gain is not shared by your party. This choosing which ones to train and use way more strategic.
In terms of the story progression, earlier games were more cryptic about next steps. You’ll get some hints about your next destination, but I often found myself revisiting previous locations and running around in hopes that I’d talk to the NPC that would point me in the right direction. That said, I’m not a massive fan of the new approach where you’re told exactly what to do at every step of the way, so I believe there needs to be a balance and I hope the series is able to find it for its next instalments.
There were many positives to this game though. The more challenging gameplay made every victory feel more fulfilling. At 53 hours of gameplay, the journey itself was longer. This genuinely made me feel like I had more time to care about my Pokémon and gave me the impression that they had grown during this time.
When I choose to re-experience a piece of media that I grew up with, I often find that it’s not as good as I remembered it. However, Pokémon Emerald managed to match my expectations. It also managed to make me feel a bit old…