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Gen 3's defenders had to have started with gen 3. If you started with gen 3, you don't care if certain pokemon from before were cut since you know fuckall about them. They overlook the water problem because it's their first game in the series, they don't care if there's a ton of water. They don't care about catching them all in a game where it's impossible to without about 500 bucks worth of stuff. They don't care that the game didn't even have an actual rival and no I don't consider Mr. Make a Wish a rival.
They care about stomping everything with their starter, and maybe a catch or two. They care about fucking around with rematches and secret bases, and maybe a couple contests thrown in there somewhere. Simply put they easily overlook the flaws of the games because it was their first experience with the games, and their memories totally overshadow legitimate complaints, to the point where they'll just shitpost at you if you mention Water/HM's
tl;dr they got ruby when they were 6
Personally i think any good from the game vanishes once you hit Lilycove. You go from forests, caves, mountains, a route covered in ash, deserts, rainforests right to...water. The game was doing good with environments right until then
