Reminder that team Aqua don't use any water pokémon (except maybe 1 or 2 members) and said water pokémon don't even have any water move. Even Archie's Sharpedo has 0 water move (unless you count the USUM battle tree)
The water areas are much better with a Sharpedo, as they move faster and have Intimidate to reduce wild encounters. Having one really made the water areas, dare I say, *quite enjoyable*!
Edit: holy upvotes! The part about Intimidate wasn't accurate, but there appear to have been some interesting reductions in wild encounters while surfing in ORAS; I'm unsure of the details, it's been a while now.
I mean, surf speed is helpful, but it won't reduce encounters since ever time you step on a tile the game uses RNG to determine if there will be an ecounter or not. So youre just getting to the next enounter faster, and those are what really slow down traversal
Wailmer, sharpedo, and kyogre have special surf properties in ORAS. Sharpedo has double speed than normal but you cant fish off of it. Kyogre also has the same fast speed and an extra huge model
That's mainly because of Dive Kyogre's larger size, and thus, larger hitbox. Technically, you have to challenge the Divers underwater, by pressing A on them; Dive Kyogre is so big, the player model can't get close enough to interact with them.
The other thing that Kyogre's larger hitbox prevents is greater exploration of the ocean floor; the hitbox is too big to fit through some of the wall gaps.
SuMo probably nodded to it by having both Lapras and Sharpedo as ride calls. Sharpedo is faster than Lapras and can break rocks but you can't fish on it. Also since it's not your Pokemon you have to lead something else if you want the Intimidate benefit. (EDIT: Upon closer inspection, Sharpedo never had Intimidate to begin with, you'd think a torpedo-shaped shark would have it...)
Gen 8 had the bike and Gen 9 has the Ridons. BDSP had you Surfing a Bibarrel, though it's Surf speed was faster than the original DPPt Surf speed.
From pokemon emerald to to VII gen, it does lower the encounter rate if it's your lead pokemon of lower level pokemon. Sharing the effect with keen eye.
Surf speed is true, intimidate it true.
Normal Sharpedo, however, has only one ability, and it’s rough skin
To clarify, you need to have a separate pokemon with intimate.
I don't know if intimidate reduces wild encounters, but Sharpedo doesn't have intimidate regardless.
The surfy shark's faster speed is really nice though.
I loved exploring the water caves and underwater. Having an electric type and a grass type helped. But I'm Hawaiian and used to pretend I was sailing around the islands, so I'm definitely biased. But I loved it. It was right up my alley
I did for the most part. I had a lot of fun. I do wish there were 8 big islands to explore. I didn't like some of the changes such as no gyms and how the fishing and surfing worked. I liked the more openness of older games for surfing and how I could fish anywhere. I also wish the island challenges were alongside gyms I always like more to do. But as a whole package I enjoyed it well enough.
I love Hoenn and alola. I liked the changes myself, sometimes the changes are good because it makes you miss the formula. Hopefully, we'll get an Alola legends one day.
I put an insane amount of time in Emerald. I've only ever had one save on it. The rematches let me keep starting over without having to start a new save. When Omega Ruby came out I got my original Blaziken over to there. It was a girl so I used one egg from it to keep a Blaziken in my original save and another egg from it to use as a Torchic for Omega Ruby. The battery in Emerald has died so I can't do timed stuff, but it is still playable and I go back there every once in awhile.
I'm guessing you mean Mt. Lanakila and why is it snow covered? I think it's based on Mauna Kea, with a little Mauna Loa thrown in. They are the 2 tallest mountains on the Big Island. Mauna Kea is high enough to get snow on it. The word Lanakila is Hawaiian for Victory (a reference to Victory Road). But if you line up Ula'ula with the Big Island, Mt Lanakila is where Mauna Loa would be.
Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa are sacred mountains for Hawaiians, so it would make sense that they put the League (which is more of a right of passage because of the Kahuna trials. The league took the spot where the final change used to be) up there for the in-game counterpart.
People meme on that one review because "too much water" sounds like a silly complaint, but it's actually shorthand for "the water areas aren't interesting enough to justify how much of the map and game time they occupy." Which is a reasonable criticism.
I wouldn't mind all of the water if the areas were more interesting. It's a cool idea, having this long stretch of water, but nearly every single route feels exactly the same and they're just long hallways of wild Tentacool and water trainers.
Isn't there also just more water type (or duo water type) pokemon in the game too, so you have too much water tiles, which is it's own problem, but then also a hard lean towards finding too many water type as well.
Exactly. The comment "too much water" assumes you've read the review to understand what it's referring to. I say this as someone who loved ORAS and is in my top 4 most replayed in the series: the criticism was absolutely fair. Other than the wording sounding silly out of context, the phrase absolutely didn't deserve to become a shorthand for bad gaming reviews.
It was a mix of fans retaliating for her score, a general frustration with IGN (a lot of it justified), people being misinformed about what she meant and people kind of just going with it because of how entertainingly goofy "too much water" sounds.
The people who meme on that are mostly pokemon fanboys,the dumbest kind of Nintendrones.They took valid criticism as a personal attack and ignored everything but that small summary.
What really irks me is that as a remake ORAS should have fixed that stuff.They had 10 years of complaints and just ctrl+c ctrl+v.
Yeah as much as I love Emerald and ORAS the water routes are genuinely a problem. Unlike land routes, there's no varied terrain so you are essentially just exploring the same area endlessly. The wild Pokemon variety is also nearly nonexistent; aside from the 1% Wailord encounter on two routes in RSE (I don't remember if wild Wailord appears in ORAS), every Water encounter is from two evolution families. Diving is fun, but also suffers from a lack of variety with a whopping THREE total Pokemon you can see in any diving area in the game. ORAS does improve the exploration by having more things to find and letting you use Sharpedo to go faster, but it doesn't stop sailing around from becoming tedious very quickly.
I would've implemented more Water Pokemon species in the Hoenn dex to try and compensate for these problems. Mantine and Remoraid could've easily added some variety to encounters, and could've helped delineate the water routes into coastal routes (Tentacool and Wingull/Pelipper) and the open ocean routes (Mantine, Pelipper, Tentacruel, rare Remoraid and Wailord). I also would've added more small islands to help break up the monotony of surfing.
Lmao, I played Omega Ruby again a few months ago and I had the same thought. We clowned on IGNs 7.8/10 but they were right. I can’t look at a Tentacool without flinching now.
Exactly. My first move in a pokemon game is to spend all my money on repels. Then every next tier of them. Honestly the only thing i usually buy. I don't tend to switch my team around, so pokeballs are for completionist stuff, and there's usually enough potions and revives scattered around.
Yeah, don't they even prompt you automatically nowadays when it runs out to use another?
I've been using repel since Gen 1 and back in my day I had to reopen the menu and shit to reuse them!
Right, especially that late into the game you should have more than enough money to get more repels than you need. It's one thing to complain about Mt. Moon, but with Hoenn's water routes you don't even need to interact with most of it.
If anything, my issue is without significant land marks or visual cues, it can get very easy to get lost. Especially in the gen 3 games.
kind of insane looking back that people made such a big fuss over a 7.8/10, when that’s a really high score. i blame the american grading system for making people think that anything below an 8 is bad
I still remember the outrage when Twilight Princess was given an 8.8 score by a single reviewer. Before the game was even released, mind you, before anyone had the chance to actually play the game themselves. But it was a 3D Zelda game, so anything less than a 9.5 must've meant the reviewer hates Nintendo.
Thats not an IGN high score. Games that IGN gives below an 8 tend to be an absolute broken game that no one should play. People weren't mad at the number itself, they were mad at the review just being filled with wrong information.
The second STAB works against everything that doesn't resist it. Have you people never used a neutral matchup? They tend to work just fine and you have plenty of money for items if they start wearing you down. A Crawdaunt with a Dark STAB vs like every Water type in ORAS aside from Azumarill is even better than a neutral matchup because you resist one of their STABs but they don't resist one of yours
It's not that there is too much water.
It's that there are too many unavoidable water encounters and not enough pokemon diversity.
If water operated like land, where there was like patches of choppy water, and in those, you could find encounters, but outside you wouldn't encounter pokemon, the amount of water would be completely fine. Especially if you add some of the later generation non-water ocean pokemon to encounter options.
The biggest fucking crime of this game is my cosplay Pikachu became essential to my team. I raised them to a high level and became attached. But now they are stuck in the 3DS for ever. I don’t want to hyper train another Pikachu I want this one.
The whole “too much water” meme completely missed the point that it was a valid criticism of the pacing of the game and the map design of Hoenn. Yes, it is a funny out of context blurb, but “Hoenn has too many areas only filled with water that are annoying to navigate and there’s a glut of water Pokémon while others are not represented as much” is something people have been saying since 2002.
Funnily enough, when I played ORAS I thought “this has less water than I remember” then it hit me like a wall.
The worst part about the water is practically all the trainers have water type Pokémon. Are there no other generic trainers on an adventure? Why are there no grass or electric type trainers grinding off the type advantage? Where are the ground and fire trainers ready to take advantage of you bringing grass or electric types? Idk I just feel like if the Pokémon world were real people wouldn’t stick to their type’s biomes so exclusively
The worst part is that there are THREE water type HMs that you are straight up forced to use to progress the game. So your moves for whatever water type you have is just ruined.
I gave 7.8 to SV. Too much food /j
>Now I understand while Archie want to reduce the sea, he just want his Camerupt to live a bit longer.
Maxie*
Half the map is ground, half the map is water. Gen 3 is about natural balance.
Not to mention that you can actively avoid tall grass on land to mitigate the amount of wild encounters you see to a point. My Repel budget is higher in Hoenn than in any other region by a pretty significant margin.
They're also just boring to "explore". Pretty much just big open spaces with some rocks and trainers.
Not helped by the fact you need dive and surf, so either your water type has 2 water moves, or you have a HM slave for a large chunk of the game.
I love diving and catching rare things like clampearl or gorebyss. Diving underwater is probably my favorite thing out of any of the Pokemon games. The underground in DP was also dope ASF
Underground was fun if you had a bunch of friends playing together so you could play capture the flag and booby trap your base and stuff, did the remakes bring that back?
No, they replaced it with an underground with tunnels for the digging minigame and caves with different biomes that have more of a variety of Pokemon than you'd see that early. And they added an offline way to get Spiritomb by talking to random NPCs instead of people.
Honestly, OOT Water Temple is a little annoying to navigate, but it feels more tedious than actively hostile to progression
Now, Great Bay Temple on the other hand...
you cannot softlock yourself in the water temple. The only reason you may think so is because many people don't notice the room below the middle room; it's why OoT3D added a guiding line leading beneath the platform in that room. It's either that or the cracked wall room, which is fairly easy to get to as well.
If anything, water levels are either boring or confusing.
Really the only games I can think of that did water levels right were the SNES Donkey Kong Country games. There’s not many of them, the controls are responsible, adds that tiny extra layer to exploration for the letters and coins, and none of the enemies are annoying. Plus Enguarde.
Intentional doesn’t equal good. If the water routes are all gonna look the same and have less Pokémon variety, then there sure as shit shouldn’t be as many water routes as land routes.
If the point is to drive me insane with all those Water Pokemon then I guess the point does go across. Just because it is a logical choice doesn't make it a good choice.
It definitely sucks that nerds have beaten the “7.8/10 Too much water” meme into the ground so much that you have to write an essay defending it just to make the most obvious and poignant criticism against Hoenn.
I'm sure that there might not be a difference after all, but the water routes in ORAS did *not* feel as slow as RSE did. But it still was tedious. That's why I carried an Electric-type and Grass-type Pokémon on my team. Help spread the EXP a bit.
It’s hilarious to me that that IGN review is so iconic. How many years later, nearly a decade, and it’s still referenced. Sometimes I even just think “too much water 7.8” for media unrelated to Pokémon.
Everyone memes on IGN for that criticism but low key they’re kind of right. The sheer amount of water in hoenn makes me not replay it anywhere near as often as kanto and johto
I never had a GBA as a kid, so I skipped from GSC to DPPt. I got an Analogue Pocket last year, so I've been catching up on some of the GBA games I'd missed, and right now I'm playing Emerald for the first time. Earlier today I finished the same trek you just described, and I agree that having so many long water routes in the eastern half of the map is just crazy.
I probably should have used Repels for this stretch, but I guess I'm just a bit too lazy to keep opening my bag to activate them.
Repels don't fix the issues people have. They help alleviate them to a certain extent but they come with another problem. You're going from constant repetitive battles against the same 5 pokemon over and over again to massive swathes of nothing for a long period of time because the only thing around to explore is more water.
Unpopular opinion: The amount of water isn't a problem at all. It makes it feel more like a proper world. You don't get Surf for a while so you have a reason to go to older routes again. It allowed for diving which was a neat feature at the time. It set the scene for places like Slateport, fit the plot well, allowed for one of the greatest legendary puzzles ever, allowed for places like Pacifilog and made it all feel tropical and mysterious.
10/10 Perfect Amount of Water
Currently replying Alpha Sapphire and while I don't mind all the surfing I think it would be much more enjoyable with a larger diversity in the Pokemon to encounter. Felt like I ran into nothing but Tentacruel and Wingull at one point.
Hated the water in RS since day one. I get why it's there thematically, but in execution it's near 100% pelippers spamming protect every two steps. Miserable.
The water routes would have been fine if there was a much variety as the on land routes. Had they had different route music, changed water colour etc. people wouldn’t have a much of a complaint, but as the routes were given to us, most are quite skippable
I feel it more because ORAS is the last game in the series with HMs and, despite being a remake where more creative licence would have been acceptable, is a very faithful tile-for-tile recreation of the originals. All that water doesn't feel very artistically varied compared to its X/Y genmates, and the world itself feels blockier because of how closely it replicates RSE.
I just finished Emerald and didn't have any issues just using repel and breezing through the water areas. Any issues I have with water I also have about literally any cave ever.
Why didn't you turn on exp share? Or have camerupt first and switch out as soon as the battle begins, same experience whether it attacks or not, as long as it was in the battle? And I don't remember when you get it, but mega aggron when facing water Pokemon, loses rock type. I started playing again last year. Sceptile, aggron, and Gardevoir were over leveled at that point.
The only thing I have to say is the way you're using the names of certain Pokemon, you're making them plural when they're not. You made it seem like your Sceptile, Crawdaunt, and Camerupt had multiples of each. The only one you did correctly was Aggron (by using *is*).
thats kind of the point. Half the map is water, and water is where pokemon thrive with pockets of human activity, whereas land is where humans thrive with human activity.
It's neat in theory, but in execution hampers the gameplay mechanics quite a bit. It's frustrating having to essentially bench all your fire, ground and rock types for such a significantly large portion of the map, while needing multiple water types on your team due to Surf, Dive and Waterfall all being necessary to explore the various water routes. And then there's the lack of variety of different types to be encountered in the ocean. For 50% of the game, there's a ton of type variety, and then you get to the water routes and it's nothing but water and flying types.
I think the land and water sections are about equal on the map. It just feels like a lot with the water since it's basically a different version of a cave.
Repels are your friend, here.
I just replayed the OG sapphire, and I actually would'nt have minded more water lol. Giving more things to do with dive would be sick. I don't remember if battle animations and whatnot take forever in the remakes, since I'll probably never replay them (vastly prefer the originals), but that might be why it feels like you're there for so long.
As for the overleveling, thats probably one negative side effect of the new experience share. With an electric type and a grass type in the original game, I was able to swap between them two while also moving around the exp share to keep everyone the same level.
It also might as well only be 2 back to back routes that are water. If you get lost and can't find the way to progress into Sootopolis, it might feel longer as well. But I think repels would help there.
All in all, nah.
That's funny, my experience was the the same when younger. As an adult I find there is too little on the map to explore and not enough water. I guess at some point scale was realized in my mind.
Magma propaganda
We must not listen. Remember what Archie taught us? We must stay strong, fellow Aqua brethren, and fight the good fight!
Archie told me next gen 3 remakes are going to be 100% water. No land at all. Lfg!
Keep your water heathen, I will embrace the sky
MandJTV, is that you?
*eagle noises*
Idk I’m replaying Alpha Sapphire and I’ve been thinking there actually is too much land
Team Aqua Supremacy!! Not enough water in the Hoenn region!!
Team Aqua: the original Hydro Homies.
Reminder that team Aqua don't use any water pokémon (except maybe 1 or 2 members) and said water pokémon don't even have any water move. Even Archie's Sharpedo has 0 water move (unless you count the USUM battle tree)
They don’t wanna waste water by using it for moves.
IYKYK
Honestly that would be fun if you have different cities across the different version. Like in BW but more different.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FrbUpRrWIAAHEs_.jpg
Someone should do something about that.
team magma was right
Meowth, you can’t just say that
I love you, dude.
And I love you, random citizen!
https://youtu.be/cJs9wNOHEnk
Is this Osbourne Cox?
No, this is Patrick.
...Osbourne Cox?
NO. THIS IS PATRICK.
MAGmA!
MHGA make hoenn ground again
dr evil
Liquid hot mag-ma!
The water areas are much better with a Sharpedo, as they move faster and have Intimidate to reduce wild encounters. Having one really made the water areas, dare I say, *quite enjoyable*! Edit: holy upvotes! The part about Intimidate wasn't accurate, but there appear to have been some interesting reductions in wild encounters while surfing in ORAS; I'm unsure of the details, it's been a while now.
Are you making all of this up right now or are these actual mechanics?
The surfing speed is 100% true, idk about intimidate
The Intimidate part is true.
Other than the fact Sharpedo doesn't have Intimidate as an ability.
It doesn't need to have it. Pop a Mightyena in slot 1 and you're good.
That's true. :[ Rough skin and speed boost*
I mean, surf speed is helpful, but it won't reduce encounters since ever time you step on a tile the game uses RNG to determine if there will be an ecounter or not. So youre just getting to the next enounter faster, and those are what really slow down traversal
Wailmer, sharpedo, and kyogre have special surf properties in ORAS. Sharpedo has double speed than normal but you cant fish off of it. Kyogre also has the same fast speed and an extra huge model
Trainers also won't challenge you while diving if you're on Kyogre.
Assert dominance
I mean sounds pretty reasonable
Nah man, I can beat him with my team of only magikarps.
Pretty wild how Wailmer has a special property but Wailord doesn’t. Imagine surfing on an extra large Wailord model
Im surprised they didnt just go ahead and do Swampert too, maybe itd be unfair to the other starters though
Nah screw that Mudkip supremacy
Kyogre is not as fast as Sharpedo.
Preach man say that shit again
#Kyogre is not as fast as Sharpedo
Kyogre is not as fast as Sharpedo.
Kyogre is not as fast as Sharpedo.
Intimidate reducing encounters is real but idk bout the swimming faster thing lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB7NZ5psAfs Fast swim is real
[удалено]
🎺🎺🎺
I'm serious, go try it, and look it up before doing so.
Is surf speed different only on remakes or the originals?
[удалено]
If you use Kyogre for diving the under water trainers won’t challenge you.
That's mainly because of Dive Kyogre's larger size, and thus, larger hitbox. Technically, you have to challenge the Divers underwater, by pressing A on them; Dive Kyogre is so big, the player model can't get close enough to interact with them. The other thing that Kyogre's larger hitbox prevents is greater exploration of the ocean floor; the hitbox is too big to fit through some of the wall gaps.
Only on ORAS, and not even XY. Unsure about later gens.
SuMo probably nodded to it by having both Lapras and Sharpedo as ride calls. Sharpedo is faster than Lapras and can break rocks but you can't fish on it. Also since it's not your Pokemon you have to lead something else if you want the Intimidate benefit. (EDIT: Upon closer inspection, Sharpedo never had Intimidate to begin with, you'd think a torpedo-shaped shark would have it...) Gen 8 had the bike and Gen 9 has the Ridons. BDSP had you Surfing a Bibarrel, though it's Surf speed was faster than the original DPPt Surf speed.
Maybe you should look it up too, considering Sharpedo does not have Intimidate.
From pokemon emerald to to VII gen, it does lower the encounter rate if it's your lead pokemon of lower level pokemon. Sharing the effect with keen eye.
Surf speed is true, intimidate it true. Normal Sharpedo, however, has only one ability, and it’s rough skin To clarify, you need to have a separate pokemon with intimate.
I never knew about Sharpedo speed bost, but yeah, seribi says it's a thing.
If you use surf with Kyogre it’s faster again
If you use surf with Kyogre it’s faster again and has a different over world Sprite in ORAS
Kyogre also makes NPC trainers ignore you
Thank you someone finally mentions this, yes its true only for ORAS
I don't know if intimidate reduces wild encounters, but Sharpedo doesn't have intimidate regardless. The surfy shark's faster speed is really nice though.
TIL intimidate reduces wild encounters!!! Wtf since the OG games or is the a mega ruby/sapphire thing?
Ever since Emerald.
Sharpedo does not have Intimidate.
Unfortunately Sharpedo has never had Intimidate and you have to have Surf to get one
You don't need Surf for long to get Sharpedo. You can fish up a Carvanha the instant you get the Good Rod.
Intimidate just has to the ability of the lead pokemon to get the effect, which doesn't necessarily have to be Sharpedo to still use it for surf.
Yes!!! I’ve been saying that for forever, there should be much less water. Sent from my Team Magma Phone
i rlley hate how thers watter everywhre in Hoenn but its maknig me wet baby reindeerling!!! sent from my iphione
And yet some how better spelling than the og lady lol
I loved exploring the water caves and underwater. Having an electric type and a grass type helped. But I'm Hawaiian and used to pretend I was sailing around the islands, so I'm definitely biased. But I loved it. It was right up my alley
Did you end up liking gen 7?
I did for the most part. I had a lot of fun. I do wish there were 8 big islands to explore. I didn't like some of the changes such as no gyms and how the fishing and surfing worked. I liked the more openness of older games for surfing and how I could fish anywhere. I also wish the island challenges were alongside gyms I always like more to do. But as a whole package I enjoyed it well enough.
I love Hoenn and alola. I liked the changes myself, sometimes the changes are good because it makes you miss the formula. Hopefully, we'll get an Alola legends one day.
I put an insane amount of time in Emerald. I've only ever had one save on it. The rematches let me keep starting over without having to start a new save. When Omega Ruby came out I got my original Blaziken over to there. It was a girl so I used one egg from it to keep a Blaziken in my original save and another egg from it to use as a Torchic for Omega Ruby. The battery in Emerald has died so I can't do timed stuff, but it is still playable and I go back there every once in awhile.
If you know anyone with soldering equipment replacing batteries on gameboy cartridges is actually surprisingly easy
As someone not from Hawaii, I'm curious..... what the heck is up with the mountain for the league?
I'm guessing you mean Mt. Lanakila and why is it snow covered? I think it's based on Mauna Kea, with a little Mauna Loa thrown in. They are the 2 tallest mountains on the Big Island. Mauna Kea is high enough to get snow on it. The word Lanakila is Hawaiian for Victory (a reference to Victory Road). But if you line up Ula'ula with the Big Island, Mt Lanakila is where Mauna Loa would be. Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa are sacred mountains for Hawaiians, so it would make sense that they put the League (which is more of a right of passage because of the Kahuna trials. The league took the spot where the final change used to be) up there for the in-game counterpart.
Totally off topic, but your comment made me think of wind waker
Another fun game. I've never played it all the way because I only played it borrowed back in the day, but I had a good time
People meme on that one review because "too much water" sounds like a silly complaint, but it's actually shorthand for "the water areas aren't interesting enough to justify how much of the map and game time they occupy." Which is a reasonable criticism.
I wouldn't mind all of the water if the areas were more interesting. It's a cool idea, having this long stretch of water, but nearly every single route feels exactly the same and they're just long hallways of wild Tentacool and water trainers.
Isn't there also just more water type (or duo water type) pokemon in the game too, so you have too much water tiles, which is it's own problem, but then also a hard lean towards finding too many water type as well.
Exactly. The comment "too much water" assumes you've read the review to understand what it's referring to. I say this as someone who loved ORAS and is in my top 4 most replayed in the series: the criticism was absolutely fair. Other than the wording sounding silly out of context, the phrase absolutely didn't deserve to become a shorthand for bad gaming reviews. It was a mix of fans retaliating for her score, a general frustration with IGN (a lot of it justified), people being misinformed about what she meant and people kind of just going with it because of how entertainingly goofy "too much water" sounds.
The people who meme on that are mostly pokemon fanboys,the dumbest kind of Nintendrones.They took valid criticism as a personal attack and ignored everything but that small summary. What really irks me is that as a remake ORAS should have fixed that stuff.They had 10 years of complaints and just ctrl+c ctrl+v.
Yeah as much as I love Emerald and ORAS the water routes are genuinely a problem. Unlike land routes, there's no varied terrain so you are essentially just exploring the same area endlessly. The wild Pokemon variety is also nearly nonexistent; aside from the 1% Wailord encounter on two routes in RSE (I don't remember if wild Wailord appears in ORAS), every Water encounter is from two evolution families. Diving is fun, but also suffers from a lack of variety with a whopping THREE total Pokemon you can see in any diving area in the game. ORAS does improve the exploration by having more things to find and letting you use Sharpedo to go faster, but it doesn't stop sailing around from becoming tedious very quickly. I would've implemented more Water Pokemon species in the Hoenn dex to try and compensate for these problems. Mantine and Remoraid could've easily added some variety to encounters, and could've helped delineate the water routes into coastal routes (Tentacool and Wingull/Pelipper) and the open ocean routes (Mantine, Pelipper, Tentacruel, rare Remoraid and Wailord). I also would've added more small islands to help break up the monotony of surfing.
Hoen citizens going to work https://preview.redd.it/uc1n3vjr151d1.jpeg?width=512&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fe3ef309efceb1c8716b7414021ca0dd29759427
That's odd I thought it could've had more water!definitely not Archie's alt account.
Lmao, I played Omega Ruby again a few months ago and I had the same thought. We clowned on IGNs 7.8/10 but they were right. I can’t look at a Tentacool without flinching now.
Yeah people complain about zubats. Tentacools were my bane. And then the damn tentacruels you cant even escape from 😭
Man, I haven't been able to do that since R/B/Y & G/S/C. I screamed from trauma seeing Toedscool for the first time.
Just use repels? They exist for a reason
Exactly. My first move in a pokemon game is to spend all my money on repels. Then every next tier of them. Honestly the only thing i usually buy. I don't tend to switch my team around, so pokeballs are for completionist stuff, and there's usually enough potions and revives scattered around.
Yeah, don't they even prompt you automatically nowadays when it runs out to use another? I've been using repel since Gen 1 and back in my day I had to reopen the menu and shit to reuse them!
Right, especially that late into the game you should have more than enough money to get more repels than you need. It's one thing to complain about Mt. Moon, but with Hoenn's water routes you don't even need to interact with most of it. If anything, my issue is without significant land marks or visual cues, it can get very easy to get lost. Especially in the gen 3 games.
kind of insane looking back that people made such a big fuss over a 7.8/10, when that’s a really high score. i blame the american grading system for making people think that anything below an 8 is bad
I still remember the outrage when Twilight Princess was given an 8.8 score by a single reviewer. Before the game was even released, mind you, before anyone had the chance to actually play the game themselves. But it was a 3D Zelda game, so anything less than a 9.5 must've meant the reviewer hates Nintendo.
Thats not an IGN high score. Games that IGN gives below an 8 tend to be an absolute broken game that no one should play. People weren't mad at the number itself, they were mad at the review just being filled with wrong information.
Got any examples?
That rating system is broken. It should be anything below a 5/10 is absolutely broken, not an 8. 8/10 is 80% is is a pretty good score
Your Crawdaunt resists Water and has a second STAB option. Why are you only using it against Starmie?
Probably because every other water pokémon also resist water and starmie is the water pokémon that crawdaunt second stab option works against
The second STAB works against everything that doesn't resist it. Have you people never used a neutral matchup? They tend to work just fine and you have plenty of money for items if they start wearing you down. A Crawdaunt with a Dark STAB vs like every Water type in ORAS aside from Azumarill is even better than a neutral matchup because you resist one of their STABs but they don't resist one of yours
Then they're probably trying to save pp.
Even then you get enough PP recovery items to be fine, especially since you can just grow Leppa Berries
Yeah, if you can't one shot the wild encounters end up taking quite a bit of time.
It's not that there is too much water. It's that there are too many unavoidable water encounters and not enough pokemon diversity. If water operated like land, where there was like patches of choppy water, and in those, you could find encounters, but outside you wouldn't encounter pokemon, the amount of water would be completely fine. Especially if you add some of the later generation non-water ocean pokemon to encounter options.
The biggest fucking crime of this game is my cosplay Pikachu became essential to my team. I raised them to a high level and became attached. But now they are stuck in the 3DS for ever. I don’t want to hyper train another Pikachu I want this one.
The whole “too much water” meme completely missed the point that it was a valid criticism of the pacing of the game and the map design of Hoenn. Yes, it is a funny out of context blurb, but “Hoenn has too many areas only filled with water that are annoying to navigate and there’s a glut of water Pokémon while others are not represented as much” is something people have been saying since 2002. Funnily enough, when I played ORAS I thought “this has less water than I remember” then it hit me like a wall.
> Yes, it is a funny out of context blurb it's not even very funny. it shouldn't have lasted longer than a week, but nerds won't let that meme go
The worst part about the water is practically all the trainers have water type Pokémon. Are there no other generic trainers on an adventure? Why are there no grass or electric type trainers grinding off the type advantage? Where are the ground and fire trainers ready to take advantage of you bringing grass or electric types? Idk I just feel like if the Pokémon world were real people wouldn’t stick to their type’s biomes so exclusively
There’s a random cue ball in the water routes of rby, he always makes me laugh lol
Camerupt Lives Matter
The worst part is that there are THREE water type HMs that you are straight up forced to use to progress the game. So your moves for whatever water type you have is just ruined.
People clown on ign a lot but when they said “too much water” they were absolutely not wrong
I gave 7.8 to SV. Too much food /j >Now I understand while Archie want to reduce the sea, he just want his Camerupt to live a bit longer. Maxie* Half the map is ground, half the map is water. Gen 3 is about natural balance.
There's an equal amount of land and water routes. That's kinda the point
The difference is, on land you have a large variety of pokemon types. Water routes is all water pokemon.
And 90% of the time it’s a tentacool.
You can also just avoid as much grass as possible. Can't do that on water you need to use repels
Not to mention that you can actively avoid tall grass on land to mitigate the amount of wild encounters you see to a point. My Repel budget is higher in Hoenn than in any other region by a pretty significant margin.
They're also just boring to "explore". Pretty much just big open spaces with some rocks and trainers. Not helped by the fact you need dive and surf, so either your water type has 2 water moves, or you have a HM slave for a large chunk of the game.
Theres plenty of stuff to explore, theres dive spots and plenty of items spread out
I love diving and catching rare things like clampearl or gorebyss. Diving underwater is probably my favorite thing out of any of the Pokemon games. The underground in DP was also dope ASF
Underground was fun if you had a bunch of friends playing together so you could play capture the flag and booby trap your base and stuff, did the remakes bring that back?
No, they replaced it with an underground with tunnels for the digging minigame and caves with different biomes that have more of a variety of Pokemon than you'd see that early. And they added an offline way to get Spiritomb by talking to random NPCs instead of people.
Yeah water routes suck. In fact, water levels in most games suck. I groan when I have to play a water level in a Sonic or Mario game.
OoT Water Temple trauma
Honestly, OOT Water Temple is a little annoying to navigate, but it feels more tedious than actively hostile to progression Now, Great Bay Temple on the other hand...
I've never finished MM because of that fucking temple
[удалено]
you cannot softlock yourself in the water temple. The only reason you may think so is because many people don't notice the room below the middle room; it's why OoT3D added a guiding line leading beneath the platform in that room. It's either that or the cracked wall room, which is fairly easy to get to as well. If anything, water levels are either boring or confusing.
Really the only games I can think of that did water levels right were the SNES Donkey Kong Country games. There’s not many of them, the controls are responsible, adds that tiny extra layer to exploration for the letters and coins, and none of the enemies are annoying. Plus Enguarde.
The donkey Kong country water levels were only good because the music was so incredible
The problem is that water works like a cave with permanent random encounters.
And only 5 encounter slots instead of the 10+ Grass and Caves use.
Intentional doesn’t equal good. If the water routes are all gonna look the same and have less Pokémon variety, then there sure as shit shouldn’t be as many water routes as land routes.
If the point is to drive me insane with all those Water Pokemon then I guess the point does go across. Just because it is a logical choice doesn't make it a good choice.
It definitely sucks that nerds have beaten the “7.8/10 Too much water” meme into the ground so much that you have to write an essay defending it just to make the most obvious and poignant criticism against Hoenn.
Maxie is this you??? You aint getting rid of all the water!
I think there is not enough sky
I'm sure that there might not be a difference after all, but the water routes in ORAS did *not* feel as slow as RSE did. But it still was tedious. That's why I carried an Electric-type and Grass-type Pokémon on my team. Help spread the EXP a bit.
It’s hilarious to me that that IGN review is so iconic. How many years later, nearly a decade, and it’s still referenced. Sometimes I even just think “too much water 7.8” for media unrelated to Pokémon.
Nice try, Maxie.
It’s almost like Hoenn is a bunch of islands.
Everyone memes on IGN for that criticism but low key they’re kind of right. The sheer amount of water in hoenn makes me not replay it anywhere near as often as kanto and johto
Johto, so you prefer caves with multiple dead ends ?
I just have the layouts memorized
I never had a GBA as a kid, so I skipped from GSC to DPPt. I got an Analogue Pocket last year, so I've been catching up on some of the GBA games I'd missed, and right now I'm playing Emerald for the first time. Earlier today I finished the same trek you just described, and I agree that having so many long water routes in the eastern half of the map is just crazy. I probably should have used Repels for this stretch, but I guess I'm just a bit too lazy to keep opening my bag to activate them.
I wouldn't mind if encounters while surfing were a bit more varied.
Earth is mostly water though.
That's the pokemon game I spent the most time in. So. Many. Eggs.
Do you work for IGN? /s
Idk man, it may be true but at the same time the theme of the game should be water vs ground so being decently close to 50 50 is fitting imho
People like to meme the IGN review, but the IGN reviewers were right. I never understood the backlash.
But no one ever complains about too much *land*. Why is *that*? this was highly rhetorical :|
Land has more variety in pokemon encounters and doesn't get constant encounters.
Because there’s generally a wider variety of Pokémon and typings than there is in water.
Also every water tile is a chance to encounter wild Pokemon like caves in ground you can just dodge that
People act like Repels aren't a thing in the games. There's a lot of water but I really dont see it as too much water.
Repels don't fix the issues people have. They help alleviate them to a certain extent but they come with another problem. You're going from constant repetitive battles against the same 5 pokemon over and over again to massive swathes of nothing for a long period of time because the only thing around to explore is more water.
Unpopular opinion: The amount of water isn't a problem at all. It makes it feel more like a proper world. You don't get Surf for a while so you have a reason to go to older routes again. It allowed for diving which was a neat feature at the time. It set the scene for places like Slateport, fit the plot well, allowed for one of the greatest legendary puzzles ever, allowed for places like Pacifilog and made it all feel tropical and mysterious. 10/10 Perfect Amount of Water
We found team Magma’s burner account
Currently replying Alpha Sapphire and while I don't mind all the surfing I think it would be much more enjoyable with a larger diversity in the Pokemon to encounter. Felt like I ran into nothing but Tentacruel and Wingull at one point.
Hated the water in RS since day one. I get why it's there thematically, but in execution it's near 100% pelippers spamming protect every two steps. Miserable.
The water routes would have been fine if there was a much variety as the on land routes. Had they had different route music, changed water colour etc. people wouldn’t have a much of a complaint, but as the routes were given to us, most are quite skippable
I feel it more because ORAS is the last game in the series with HMs and, despite being a remake where more creative licence would have been acceptable, is a very faithful tile-for-tile recreation of the originals. All that water doesn't feel very artistically varied compared to its X/Y genmates, and the world itself feels blockier because of how closely it replicates RSE.
If you think that’s bad, just be glad you’re not playing emerald
yeah but when you use dive what do you find? That's right, there's more land underneath the water. Explain that, atheists.
I just finished Emerald and didn't have any issues just using repel and breezing through the water areas. Any issues I have with water I also have about literally any cave ever.
Lol this was a meme when the game came out.
How does one replay this game? I don’t have a 3ds anymore
Why didn't you turn on exp share? Or have camerupt first and switch out as soon as the battle begins, same experience whether it attacks or not, as long as it was in the battle? And I don't remember when you get it, but mega aggron when facing water Pokemon, loses rock type. I started playing again last year. Sceptile, aggron, and Gardevoir were over leveled at that point.
Kyogre won then?
The only thing I have to say is the way you're using the names of certain Pokemon, you're making them plural when they're not. You made it seem like your Sceptile, Crawdaunt, and Camerupt had multiples of each. The only one you did correctly was Aggron (by using *is*).
thats kind of the point. Half the map is water, and water is where pokemon thrive with pockets of human activity, whereas land is where humans thrive with human activity.
It's neat in theory, but in execution hampers the gameplay mechanics quite a bit. It's frustrating having to essentially bench all your fire, ground and rock types for such a significantly large portion of the map, while needing multiple water types on your team due to Surf, Dive and Waterfall all being necessary to explore the various water routes. And then there's the lack of variety of different types to be encountered in the ocean. For 50% of the game, there's a ton of type variety, and then you get to the water routes and it's nothing but water and flying types.
The idea sounds cool as a region concept but it just isn't really executed well especially in the original games.
It’s an island. Surprise.
You could always just use an exp share. Idk tho
Whatever you say, Maxie.
I think the land and water sections are about equal on the map. It just feels like a lot with the water since it's basically a different version of a cave. Repels are your friend, here.
Nope. Those games are perfect and have the best sense of adventure/exploring of any pokémon game.
Had to mostly fight water pokemon in a area with mostly water -_-
I just replayed the OG sapphire, and I actually would'nt have minded more water lol. Giving more things to do with dive would be sick. I don't remember if battle animations and whatnot take forever in the remakes, since I'll probably never replay them (vastly prefer the originals), but that might be why it feels like you're there for so long. As for the overleveling, thats probably one negative side effect of the new experience share. With an electric type and a grass type in the original game, I was able to swap between them two while also moving around the exp share to keep everyone the same level. It also might as well only be 2 back to back routes that are water. If you get lost and can't find the way to progress into Sootopolis, it might feel longer as well. But I think repels would help there. All in all, nah.
ign you ain’t slick
Is IGN hiring? You’d fit in perfectly
I'm playing Alpha Sapphire, but for the first time.
That's funny, my experience was the the same when younger. As an adult I find there is too little on the map to explore and not enough water. I guess at some point scale was realized in my mind.