#12. Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire (GBA)
Do you hear that? That is the sound of angry generation 3 fans, working themselves up into a furious, frenzied stampede as they rush here to disavow everything that I have ever stood for. Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire have perhaps the most vocal fanbase out of any game in the series, and they are the very definition of a cult classic.
But long before #HoennConfirmed became a meme, Ruby and Sapphire’s original release was met with indifference at best, and genuine disappointment at worst- the games were considered to be the first missteps the series had made so far, and for the longest time, the franchise’s worst showing.
There was a lot the games got wrong- they cut back on almost everything that Pokemon Gold and Silver had introduced not too long ago, making the games feel barer, more stripped out, than their predecessors. Something as simple as the day/night cycle, which added a layer of immersion to the game world, was gone (though the two games still did act on a real time clock).
The staggering amount of post game content that Gold and Silver had offered was gone. And perhaps, worst of all, the games broke compatibility with the previous games in the franchise. Any Pokemon you had caught and raised in the older Pokemon games were doomed to stay there forever, because Ruby and Sapphire were incompatible with them.
And yet, for all that Ruby and Sapphire did wrong, they also got an amazing amount right (there is a reason they are so well beloved now, after all)- they introduced perhaps the best batch of new Pokemon to the series till date. They added scores of new features to the franchise, such as secret bases and Pokemon contests. They upped the ante on the franchise’s social interactivity.
They were the first games in the franchise to try and tell a story. They also provide the mechanical base for every single Pokemon game that followed them, till today- things like EVs, IVs, Natures, Abilities, these were all things that Ruby and Sapphire introduced. The modern Berries/TMs/HMs system? All things that Ruby and Sapphire introduced.
In many ways, Ruby and Sapphire were necessary- a clean break from what had come before was needed if the franchise was to grow, and Ruby and Sapphire provide just the base for doing that. Today, going back to them to play them is redundant- there are other games that do what they did, and they do it better. But if you do decide to play them, you will find a set of adventures unlike any in the Pokemon saga.
