I still don't like it.
- Battle Frontier, yeah, but that's been beaten to death.
- Splitting the story back into Ruby and Sapphire was a mistake. Emerald's narrative was more complete, with both Magma and Aqua competing against each other throughout Hoenn. They had their own hideouts (pic related is part of Team Magma's dungeon), their own boss encounters, and they both saw proper closure for their arcs. Why even put them both in the game as rival gangs if one of them is functionally worthless?
- Gym Battles were completely dumbed down. Wattson in particular, for whatever reason lost, his Manectric. The rest of his Pokemon don't even have finished movesets. Tate and Liza's Double Battle is another noteworthy one. A-lot less challenging without their other Pokemon to support Solrock/Lunatone. Now you can just click Surf and win. Post-game Gym Battles are also non-existent. They appear to have been left on the cutting room floor though, because all of the Gym Leaders are on the Trainer's Eye rematch list. It's really sad, because Emerald was the first game to feature post-game Gym battles, and they would appear again in Sinnoh and Johto.
- Zinnia was a terrible character to write the post-game around. I thought the Delta Chapter was really boring. It continued this recent trend of 'post-game content' consisting entirely of story-driven episodes. Nothing like Sevii-Islands, unlocking new parts of the map, or challenges like the Frontier. It's mostly dialogue and exposition.
- They split the Contest Halls back into 4, even though you only need to have one. Emerald understood this, and so did the Sinnoh games that came later on. This was just a weird regression.
- New Safari Zone is convoluted.
- Not a fan of the new character designs. What is up with Courtney's 'personality'? What is Wallace supposed to be wearing? Why did Tabitha put on so much weight? etc. It just seems like a-lot of exaggeration.
