>>28809172Emerald is like Gold, except there's no Silver to balance him out because his arc's side characters are an insipid reporter and a Latios/Latias pair working with him who don't appear as often as they should. Also his fashion sense is amazingly terrifying and partially due to shenanigans from another OC character. His developments also are pretty lackluster, he's less of a dickhead at the end after learning to like Pokemon but that's about it.
To be fair, though, Wally, the one that some people hoped to have a greater presence in the Emerald arc, doesn't have the force of character that Emerald has and some of the Frontier Brains are a little too uppity and shallow when it comes to judging Emerald. This is balanced by Wally already not being a premier dickhead during what little we saw of him in R/S.
Also, while Yellow's story is a bit more free-form, Emerald's character actions are shackled by the shit base settings that constitutes any story arc related to the Battle Frontiers. Even with the insane fast-forwarding of Emerald's progress through the facilities, the whole gimmick is stale by the time the arc hits climax. The Guile subplot vastly overshadows the BF subplot in Emerald in terms of interest generated and it's the same during the Platinum arc.
