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It was the best game until after Gym 7. The starters were solid, the Pokemon were solid, the evil team wasn't fucking annoying (Gen 1 and 2 Team Rocket were huge turnoffs for me, Silph Co., the Rocket Hideouts, the radio tower, all of that were shit). The caves were small and nice, hell, I even like the music and most people hardly notice that they use trumpets a lot until they come across /vp/'s le epik honchkrow meme tyme. I don't even know why people hate trumpets and love chiptunes. The region introduced new biomes, before that everywhere pretty much had the same normal tiles, tall grass, trees, and mountains. It was a nice, solid change of pace.
Then bam. You just defeated Tate and Liza. There's a neat Shoal Cave nearby with a pretty cool reward and new Pokemon. But EVERYTHING south was water. Everything south was level 5-35 Tentacools, level 10-30 Wingulls, and level 25-30 Pelippers. Occasionally you'd be able to fish for a Corsola or a Staryu, but that's it. Contrary to what people say, the water routes weren't annoying at all to traverse. The surfing speeds were fast and there were enough areas to fly to.
You still have the Elite Four, Sky Tower, which was awesome, diving was a cool but underutilized gimmick, and the Regis have a cool way to be found. But there could have been so much more.
Emerald fixed a few things up though, by introducing the first real postgame (Kanto in Gen 2 is more like an extension, it ends too quickly and it's too easy compared to the challenges in the Battle Tower/Frontier/Subway and the PWT). It gave you something to look forward to postgame, in contrast to surfing the wide sea looking for shards you can trade for stones so that your Pokemon can level up.
Not letting you trade forward your Pokemon was lame too, but I'd rather have no trading between Gen 2 and 3 than no abilities.
