POKEMON OMEGA RUBY SERIES

While you can still be ambushed by unseen Pokemon in the tall grass, the DexNav allows players to scan the nearby area for special Pokemon that come equipped with attacks they wouldn't otherwise naturally learn. Most notably, you're given a new Pokedex app called the DexNav that quickly becomes the most important new addition to the series. Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire (henceforth Pokemon ORAS), do bring a few new plot elements to this basic structure, but if you've played any Pokemon RPG released this century, you know exactly what's in store.Īs in all Pokemon games, the first few hours see your character (either a boy or a girl, though the differences are almost entirely aesthetic) gathering the tools they'll use throughout their adventure. It's exactly enough plot to sustain a Saturday morning cartoon show, but as an excuse to throw myriad fascinating Pokemon against one another in strategic, surprisingly complex battle it works perfectly well. Your youthful avatar will inevitably foil these plans, but that's largely incidental compared to a player's ultimate goal of beating the Elite Four (read: the very top tier of Pokemon trainers) and earning a spot in the regional hall of fame. Somewhere along the line a group of idealistic, yet ultimately bumbling goons will hatch a nefarious, far-reaching plan to somehow control the planet, its Pokemon or both. A young boy or girl meets an eccentric researcher, is introduced to the world of adorable fighting monsters, and embarks on a quest to prove that they are they best critter wrangler/battler in the region. If Pokemon X and Y were Game Freak's first tentative steps into the world of 3D monster taming, Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire are proof that the studio has mastered the technology.For those who've somehow managed to avoid the Pokemon RPGs for the past 18 years, they all play out in pretty much the same way. It might seem lazy to rehash these old storylines, but after working my way through the remakes, it's clear that it was a wise decision that allowed the developer to forgo writing a new plot and instead focus on the aspects of Pokemon games that truly matter to players: combat, the expansive world and, of course, the Pokemon themselves.

Now, developer Game Freak is ready to take another shot at it, using the same enhanced graphics technology, but leaning on the existing plot found in the 2003 GameBoy Advance releases Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire.

POKEMON OMEGA RUBY SERIES

The biggest leap in series history arrived last year with Pokemon X and Y, and while our review of those games was glowing, they weren't without flaws. Despite nearly two decades of success, the series' core - the handheld Pokemon role-playing games - have remained perennially good, if not particularly revolutionary. It's been 18 years since Nintendo first introduced humanity to a world of adorable monsters that would capture the hearts of millions and grow into the sort of media juggernaut that usually involves a teenaged British wizard or an especially smug Robert Downey Jr.

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