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I'm playing through Emerald right now and I just beat the 7th gym. My main complaint is the lack of wild pokemon to train off of. I'm forced to sit through the fishing mini-game (if you could call it that) just to get scraps of exp to catch my team up.
Really haven't cared too much about the water routes. After playing Black right before starting this run I can say all this water is actually nice.
I really haven't noticed more trumpets than the other games.
The only other Gen 3 game I've played was Sapphire and I've long since forgotten about that play through.
On a side note are you specifying the Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald
games and excluding FR/LG or including them all? As a whole I can say the games were good for their time certainly.
FR/LG have excellent re-playability. The other three are an acquired taste in my opinion.