"Third versions" even existing should be considered the premier bellwether element of Gamefreak's practices which signaled that they'd never respect the idea of creating content for the consumer. In a more defined, granular retrospective, Yellow and Crystal can be arguably forgiven, due to hardware limitations, the limited Pokemon roster, and the experimentalism of Pokemon's first debut years. However, it's Emerald where they were content with just placing a little cherry atop Ruby and Sapphire, despite the clear ability they had to easily expand the Pokedex, add more postgame content, and sophisticate the Hoenn region. They could've easily added way more new routes, programmed in more available Pokemon from gens 1&2 in the map (including Legendary encounters), gave the postgame an actual extended plotline, and had the Battle Frontier ~twice or triple the size it was given the time they had to develop it. However, we got scraps; some Pokemon were even removed from availability from Ruby and Sapphire to lure consumers to shell up purchasing more copies to get the little missing game data like the Meditite line that a Gameshark could provide with the clicking of a few buttons.

It's a horrid realization that the third version "grail" games of the series (Emerald, Platinum, B2W2) are considered high-tier among the rest because they represent the basic framework that we should've gotten as the first versions anyway; the first versions themselves being objectively barebones.