Review: Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire

I have been playing the Japanese version of Sapphire for about 20+ hours now, and I believe I might be able to shed some light on what to expect.

Overview: The game starts out with the ability to choose between a boy and a girl character. Like previous games, you may choose the name of your character HOWEVER you can not choose the name of your rival. After taking care of some basic things, you head out to become a Pokemon master. The same aspects of the previous games once again apply, and of course, Team Rocket(in the form of Team Aqua) will once again try to stop you. The game is very easy to follow and manipulate, so even the youngest fan won't have a hard time becoming a Pokemon master.

Graphics: Unlike Crystal, the Pokemon are no longer given an "intro" animation. While this does reduce battle time significantly in the long term, it might be a dissapointment for many younger players. However, the animation for attacks and item usage has been greatly improved. Certain attacks, like "attract" are now given a greater spotlight and have become long-term status effects. This new addition, along with many other new TMs, will greatly delight even the oldest Pokefan.

Music: The music is rather cheesy. This newest release does feature variations of the battle themes that most G/S/C fans are accustomed to, but the variations aren't incredibly good.

Pokedex: Yes, the Pokedex has once again gone a major upgrade and it will not be a dissapointment. The most interesting feature is that your Pokemon will now be shown relative to your character, giving the player a better idea of how large each Pokemon is.

New Pokemon: If you expect the new release to have lots of Pokemon, you will be in for a let-down. 186 of the "old" Pokemon are not availble in either Sapphire or Ruby, and as you can not trade with the earlier versions of the game, completing your Pokedex will be impossible until further versions are released. The nice thing is that, until Milo Town(3rd town), you won't encounter any of the old Pokemon. This means that you can not longer rely on familiar faces like Mareep and instead you'll have to adapt to new Pokemon like Jigumaguma. There are 5 Pokemon featured in this game that can not be caught in Ruby; Habunake, Hassboh, Latias, Kyogre and Runatoon. Both Latias & Kyogre are "legendary" Pokemon.

Overall, despite the music and the inability to trade Pokemon with previous versions, this is a great game that will keep anyone busy for hours on end. Sapphire is definetely worth the [price].