If you were to read the article I posted last week with my initial impressions of playing through the Demo of Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire you would know that the two major points I wanted to see improved upon over Pokemon X and Y were the low difficulty and the amount of end game content. Did Pokemon ORAS deliver the goods? Let’s find out.

Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire are the two latest releases in the Pokemon franchise on the 3DS. They’re both remakes of the GameBoy Advance games Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. The originals are well known for being innovative with the amount of additional gameplay elements they introduced into the series. Omega and Sapphire were the 3^rd generation of Pokemon games and brought various series staples that have continued to thrive, elements that are now taken for granted such as double battles and weather patterns affecting battles. I was interested to see if the remakes would merely throw a fresh coat of paint on the games or if they would maintain that air of ingenuity that the originals showed so clearly.

Straight off the bat we are introduced to that same innovation with the new DexNav feature. It  is an incredibly welcome feature and one that seems like it should have been in from the very beginning. The DexNav works in coalition with the Pokedex which of course updates whenever you see a Pokemon in the wild or in a trainer battle and now even when seeing a Pokemon anywhere in the game world, whether it’s a school of swimming Luvdisk or a Wingull flying by. The Pokedex updates with further information if you catch it the Pokemon, hence the Catch ‘Em All motto. The combination of the Pokedex and the DexNav means that the bottom screen on the 3DS is finally an integral part of playing Pokemon.

DexNav is especially useful for finding lots of precious Wingulls.

The bottom screen populates with shadows of the Pokemon you’ve seen but not captured and are then filled in when you eventually capture them. This immediately makes the goal of catching them all a lot more reachable, having a clear view of your progress gives that extra incentive and the addition of a small crown in the top corner to signal that you’ve caught all Pokemon in the area does just that. This feature alone improves upon the end game content as revisiting early areas to see shadows that weren’t there before is exciting and almost demands that you set out to finish that Pokedex. Another great feature of the DexNav is ‘Hidden Pokemon’ often you will see a Pokemon tail or head sticking out of the grass water or sand. Gently pushing on the control stick allows you to sneak up to the Pokemon without it running away, the benefit to this is these Pokemon can have rare moves often referred to as Egg Moves. By encountering the same Pokemon repeatedly you are able to search for them by tapping their icon in the DexNav, the more you encounter that Pokemon the better chance you have of finding them with a rare move! Upon completing the game and getting the National Pokedex this feature becomes even more useful with more Pokemon appearing and Platinum crowns replacing the gold ones when you’ve caught all the additional Pokemon as well.

Platinum crown appears when all National Pokedex Pokemon are also caught.

As I have mentioned I felt that Pokemon X and Y were both excellent entries into the Pokemon series, though they were just much too easy. In Y I faced barely any challenge even towards the end of the game, even my efforts of not using any overpowered Pokemon didn’t help. I seemed to plough through anything standing in my way and it eventually stopped being fun, although there was Battle Frontier, that just wasn’t enough for me. I’m happy to say that during my playthrough of Alpha Sapphire I did not have this problem. The beginning of the game was of course overly easy as all the Pokemon games are, and I do feel that it took too long for challenging opponents to appear, but by the 5^th Gym I found myself sweating and cursing at myself for having three Grass Pokemon in my party when a ridiculously powerful Slugma destroyed them all with it’s fiery prowess.

 The face of pure evil.

Now when I say 5^th Gym it initially sounds like it’s late in the game considering there’s only 8 Gym Leaders (nine if you count the twins Tate and Liza) but Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire definitely deliver the goods in regards to end game content. As well as the DexNav giving cause to return to previous routes to grab Pokemon you may have missed, Soar is another new addition to the series that allows you to control either your Latios or Latias and fly freely above the Hoenn region. This puts a new spin on hunting for after-game Legendaries as you can search for ‘Mirage Spots’ that change location daily that lead you to these Legendary encounters. Previous features of the franchise are improved upon this time around, Contests that see your Pokemon wow audiences around the region, (especially with the new cosplay Pikachu) the Secret Bases from the original games and the Battle Resort all now have their own side stories and dedicated characters. Although slight, these features now feel less of an added experience and instead blend into the game world which in turn makes them more enjoyable.

Putting Pikachu into these costumes surely counts as Poke abuse?

The game as a whole begins rather weakly and feels almost generic in its progression, although after a few hours the difficulty rises, new experiences begin to populate the game world and eventually you become absorbed in the Hoenn region. Every original element seems largely improved upon, the music as a primary example has a clear influence from the originals but has been improved exponentially. If you played the originals, you know there were trumpets, lots of trumpets. Almost every song featured trumpets in some form and it has become synonymous with Generation 3. The music now features more instruments than just trumpets and honesty sounds fantastic, it may not have the nostalgic chip tune beats, but the music is heart-warming when it needs to be and works at getting you sufficiently pumped up before battling a Gym Leader. While most aspects have been improved I felt that one key point of the original games that did not translate well to the remake was the emphasis on water. During the main story I felt that I only really dipped my feet in the water towards the end, and with the addition of the new Soar ability I felt as though the attention to water was rather misused. In the originals I felt a sense of mystery when considering the prospect of water Pokemon and how it relates to the mystery of our own seas, this time I was much more focused on the skies.

From the beginning the Pokemon videogames have been a steady progression of innovation. Some entries have broken new ground while others have dwindled in the shadow of their predecessor. With Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire I found that while no ground was broken, so many elements of the series were improved upon that the result is an extremely inviting world that’s worth returning to again and again.

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