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The Faults of Gen III

RileyXY1

Young Battle Trainer
Inspired by the threads for Gens 2, 4, and 6, you can use this thread to discuss your gripes about the third generation of the franchise.
 

Mega Altaria

☆~Shiny hunter▢~
I personally didn't have too many problems with RSE, but there were a couple of spikes in difficulty in the game that weren't too clustered. The main issue I had with these games were the availability of Pokémon from other regions, especially with Ho-Oh and Lugia being hard to obtain without access to events and Pokémon Colosseum and XD.
 

Doziz

Fossil Hunter
I'LL FIGHT ALL OF YOU GEN 3 WAS FLAWLESS

Too much water.

Honestly, my main gripe was that you never fought your rival's fully evolved starter. I just wish there'd been a good rematch feature against Brendan / May, the only time they were really dangerous to me was on the bridge beneath Cycling Road. After that, they just lost some punch.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
I'LL FIGHT ALL OF YOU GEN 3 WAS FLAWLESS

Too much water.

Honestly, my main gripe was that you never fought your rival's fully evolved starter. I just wish there'd been a good rematch feature against Brendan / May, the only time they were really dangerous to me was on the bridge beneath Cycling Road. After that, they just lost some punch.

I disliked how weak their teams were in general, and looking back, it's somewhat funny how Mitsuru (Wally) had an even stronger team than them by the end of the games.
 

KyogreThunder

Call of Fate
I really dislike the fact Brendan/May give up on being your rivals and never fully evolve their starter Pokemon. In R/S, Wattson, Flannery, and Tate&Liza have boring teams. The regional Dex lacks Ice and Ghost types. In Emerald, because you have to visit Sky Pillar earlier, the wild Pokemon there are too weak, making them useless for grinding. The lack of time in FR/LG means you can't grow berries nor get Espeon/Umbreon without trading. The Elite Four don't use Hoenn Pokemon in rematches, in addition to Johto ones.
 

RileyXY1

Young Battle Trainer
May and Brendan never fully evolving their starter.
Many of the gym rosters (in RS) were lackluster.
Lack of Ice & Ghost types.
PokeBlocks being too hard to create.
Removal of the Day/Night system.
 

WalesNote

Well-Known Member
  • Lack of day and night time system
  • There was a lot of water... Just a bit too much? Maybe could have used boats more to travel
  • Didn't really understand Team Aqua/Magma, still don't
  • The music wasn't always that great to my ears, though loved the Team boss theme, and the champion's theme
  • I found the hud to be a bit ugly (I'm really picky about such things, like the hp bar being to thin)
  • Mt Pyre wasn't really all that creepy
  • Rival battles stopped at Lilycove without their starter fully evolved
  • Weak characters overall
 

Ariki

Well-Known Member
Difficulty of obtaining evolution stones in R/S

Lack of compatibility with Poketransporter. I wish they’d develop a version compatible with the original DS that allows Pokemon to be transported directly from gen 3 into Bank.

I’ve been trying to create a living dex in Bank and so I’m playing my gen 3 games and transferring the Pokemon I catch/evolve through to Bank.

It’s time consuming to say the least.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
The lack of the day and night system in Generation III did bug me somewhat, although I realize now how impractical the feature would've been on the first GBA given the device's relatively dark screen tone.
 

Captain Jigglypuff

Leader of Jigglypuff Army
Finding a Feebas was a total nightmare along with very little chance of getting Mirage Island and the Liechi Berry. I don’t care too much about the Wild Wynaut considering Wobbuffet could be found and caught in the Safari Zone and you get a Wynaut egg in Lavaridge City. I wanted Gold Pokéblocks to do Contests. The fact Pokemon could get full before a certain Contest Stat was maxed out was also annoying. I did find Feebas once but I had to keep breeding it to get Milotic because of the Pokéblock feeding limit.
 

The Admiral

the star of the masquerade
  • Massive backloaded soggy bullshit zone -- yes, the previous games had lengthy surfing areas, but not near as bad as RSE, and most of it was optional in RGBY. Everything after you set out of Lilycove City to the east is extremely boring. I'm surprised I even finished it when playing the remakes.
  • F E E B A S. Was someone just trying to compete with the guy who hid that one bonus room in the first factory level in Donkey Kong Country?
  • This is really the start of Legendary Pokemon "percentage creep" with new generations. It makes it feel like there are fewer new species than there actually are; they were trying to rectify this at one point, though.
  • Contest stats overall were kind of a pain. This ties into Feebas even more, up until they fixed that issue in Gen 5 (then it wasn't in ORAS because of contest stats returning /groan)
  • Your rival is just a speed bump unless you hold back intentionally.
  • The FRLG remakes have a lot of issues imo but I don't know if they go here. A big one being the MUSIC; man the music in FRLG sucks out loud (there were some problems in RSE but they are more pronounced in FRLG where the instrument bank sounds like trash).

The fact that we couldn't trade or transfer Pokemon from R/G/B/Y and G/S/C to the Generation III games comes to mind as a huge flaw. I'm still not over it.
This is because the data structure for 'mons was massively changed between gens 2 and 3, if I remember right. So at the time it was not really something they could figure out how to fix easily.
 

Kage-Pikachu

Well-Known Member
My biggest complaint was the fact that the "rival" (if you can even call them that) never obtained a full team and virtually disappeared from the story... I also dislike how there were NO hints at all about how you were supposed to do certain things like finding the Regis and Feebas! It would have been nice to have some hints as to the importance of Wailord and Relicanth instead of forcing people to buy the guide (thank goodness for this site) and the rarity of Feebas.

Also, not being able to capture all of the Pokemon between the paired generations.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
  • The FRLG remakes have a lot of issues imo but I don't know if they go here. A big one being the MUSIC; man the music in FRLG sucks out loud (there were some problems in RSE but they are more pronounced in FRLG where the instrument bank sounds like trash).

The Kanto remakes did have lackluster music from my perspective. I love the Champion battle music and the Deoxys theme, but in general I feel like R/S/E surpasses LG/FR when it comes to the soundtrack.
 

AuroraBeam

Well-Known Member
There is an npc who will trade you a corsola for a bellossom in Pacifidlog Town in R/S. In a game where I believe there is only one sunstone obtained normally. In Ruby, sometimes solrock will carry them but no such luck in Sapphire. On top of that, corsola are available to be caught in the wild not too far from this npc...

In Emerald, I believe it's replaced by a bagon-for-a-horsea trade. Still not a great trade, but a bit more fair to the player.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
There is an npc who will trade you a corsola for a bellossom in Pacifidlog Town in R/S. In a game where I believe there is only one sunstone obtained normally. In Ruby, sometimes solrock will carry them but no such luck in Sapphire. On top of that, corsola are available to be caught in the wild not too far from this npc...

In Emerald, I believe it's replaced by a bagon-for-a-horsea trade. Still not a great trade, but a bit more fair to the player.

I disliked all of the in-game trades in R/S/E since none of them were worth the effort, in contrast to how LG/FR had several trades that were crucial for Zukan (Pokedex) purposes.
 

The Admiral

the star of the masquerade
Most of the ingame trades in FRLG are taken from R/G anyway, fittingly. I actually completely forgot there were ingame trades in RSE because their worthlessness was next-level.
 

MockingJ

Banned
Let's see just from the Hoenn games: almost no post game stuff in R/S, lack of old Pokemon, Feebas was a pain to catch, and the Elite Four were too simple to beat.
 
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