>>52618270My impression as a newcomer to the series, who started with Emerald then moved on to Y, has been somewhat disappointing. Y gave me a really bad impression for the first several hours, but it’s starting to grow on me.
I don’t think my issues with Y started with Y. I’d expect the DS games made a lot of the changes I dislike.
To get to the point: Emerald is really quick to play. The sprites, animations, sound effects: everything is just quicker and more satisfying. There is very little delay or confusion between wanting to do something and it happening on screen.
I also grew attached to lots of the pokemon from Emerald, like Sharpedo and Sableye. I think they look great as sprites but lose something as 3D models. The 3D of Y is used in a way that’s clearly meant to show off the 3D effect of the 3DS, and sometimes it interferes with gameplay, by making animations longer than they need to be or changing the camera angle in 3D environments making it a little more annoying to navigate. It’s almost a non-issue but these are just subtle things that make it less fun and less immediate to play as Emerald.
I’m sort of adjusting to Y though. A lot of the pokemon from Emerald that I liked as sprites were slightly mangled in the transition to 3D, but there are pokemon specifically designed for 3D that look good. So I’m gravitating towards those designs. I’m about to play Moon as well, and I hear S/M have changes to the HM system, which I do think I’d welcome. The HMs are a little annoying in Emerald and Y. The Alola region as well is really appealing to me as an idea at least, so we’ll see how I actually like the game, but I’m optimistic.
tl;dr: as a new player, Emerald was great, Y is disappointing compared to Emerald, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad game or the 3DS games were all bad in my eyes, yet. After I play Moon I’ll have a better idea of what I think.
