Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire/YMMV

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< Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire
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  • Anticlimax Boss: One of the more noted weakness of this set of games is that both the rival (who doesn't fully evolve his/her starter and is the only one who can't be battled infinitely) and the Aqua/Magma Admins (who only use a mere three Pokémon, all of them ones that every one of their grunts use) are really pathetic compared to the rivals and admins in the rest of the series.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: This generation started the trend of marking what ball you caught a pokemon in. So yes, if you catch a Legendary in a Poke Ball, everyone will know.
  • Breather Boss: Tate and Liza are fairly easy in Ruby and Sapphire, only having 2 Pokemon between them, both of which are easily taken down by Surf which is required to get to their Gym in the first place. In Emerald they took a level in badass.
    • Flannery is fairly easy to take down provided you have a water type.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny:
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Archie's and Maxie's battle theme.
    • Every battle theme in the whole game. And even the title screen and overworld music could qualify.
  • Demonic Spiders: Whismur. WHISMUR used UPROAR! Half of your team's health meters are yellow (or possibly red) thanks to it doing a lot of damage. And if you're not careful, it can result in a couple Pokémon dy-fainting.
  • Disappointing Last Level: The last quarter of the game requires an immense amount of surfing. Hope you like Tentacool and Wingull.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Sure, Archie and Maxie were some of the least openly-evil villain bosses to begin with, but some fans go even further and remove any traces of responsibility for their crimes from them. And then there's their underlings, who get this treatment as well despite being Psycho Supporters or Jerkasses.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Mudkip, thanks to Memetic Mutation. There are plenty of people that never evolve their Mudkip at all because of this.
    • The weather trio has been popular enough that their dynamics have been duplicated in all of the subsequent generations. Especially Rayquaza.
    • Gardevoir. Just... Gardevoir.
    • Aggron is pretty popular, thanks to a certain poster. (See Memetic Badass below)
  • Evil Is Sexy: Archie, Maxie, and their Dragons.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Skitty and Wailord.
  • Fashion Victim Villain: The Team Magma grunts.
  • Foe Yay: Shelly seems to flirt with you no matter what your gender.
    • Maxie with Archie, as well as the player in Emerald.
    • Seviper and Zangoose can breed, despite being enemies.
  • Guide Dang It: So you want to catch the Regis do you? Good luck with that one unless you have a guide. That snazzy Milotic you saw Wallace using? Don't even think about trying to get it unless you have a guide. It's just not worth it.
  • Hell Is That Noise: The drought and flood songs are pretty creepy.
  • Junk Rare: Chimecho, found only in one area with a measly 2% encounter rate. Close to completely useless in battle.
    • Skitty as well, thanks to it also having a 2% encounter rate.
  • Memetic Badass: Aggron, due to this poster. (Warning: Contains Cluster F Bombs)
  • Memetic Molester: Maxie, in certain fandom circles.
  • Memetic Mutation: so i herd u liek mudkipz
  • Mis Blamed: The one thing fans seem to remember to blame Game Freak for rather than Nintendo in the Pokémon games is the inability to transfer Pokémon from the first two generations' games to Ruby and Sapphire onward. However, this is - coincidentally enough - the one complaint that the company had no control over - the Game Boy Advance wouldn't allow interaction with the Game Boy and Game Boy Color games at all, even if they wanted to make it possible (which it probably would have been considering every other generation at least allows transfers from the old games to the new ones).
    • Not to mention, the haters of the series as well as even some of the fans...they don't even realize eight years later that Nintendo is only the publisher and most gameplay issues (with the exception of "Cutting off ties to previous generations") were actually due to Game Freak.
  • Older Than They Think: Species aside, Milotic is the first Shout-Out to The Ugly Duckling, long before Ducklett/Swanna.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Well, Scrappy might be too strong of a word here, but Steven is considerably more popular as the Champion than Wallace.
    • Some prefer Steven to Wallace because Steven uses the Steel type but doesn't exclusively use Steel-type Pokémon due to the lack of Steel-types in the Pokédex, so he's a bit more of a Worthy Opponent than Wallace; who uses Water-types and is quite easy to beat. Your Mileage May Vary; but some also prefer Wallace just because he helps Sceptile catch up...and the Water-type actually is rather powerful due to the "One type uses one stat".
  • The Scrappy: Wingull joins Tentacool and Zubat in the ranks of Pokémon Scrappies.
    • Luvdisc.
    • Spinda.
    • Mightyena. Let's see: Intimidate, Swagger and Roar. Surely makes for an annoying foe.
  • Scrappy Mechanic
    • The incredibly exhausting way of catching a Feebas, and then evolving it to a Milotic.
    • The fishing mechanic as a whole was much more needlessly complicated than in the other generations. Previously and after, you would cast your line and wait a few seconds and either get a bite or don't. In this generation, there's a needlessly long series of button pushes that literally amounts to "Oh a bite! Oh a bite! Oh a bite! Oh a bite! Oh a bite! Oh a bite! Oh a bite! Oh a bite!"
    • Berry farming could be aggravating, since it lacked any means of finding where you planted your berries.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: When originally released, there was no hint of a Generation I remake, meaning that around 184 Pokémon were completely absent from the games. The only hint that they would return was their isolated data, which usually indicates event Pokémon (a very beloved game mechanic). That, combined with a number of expies for the missing 'mons, replacements for Team Rocket, no way to return to Kanto or Johto, minimal time-based events, and an overall similar structure to Generation I led many a fan to think RS was a franchise reboot, and said fans were not happy.
  • That One Boss: Tate and Liza in Emerald, Drake and Norman in general.
    • Norman is slightly less of a That One Boss in Emerald, though, since he only has one Slaking, possibly to make up for Tate and Liza. He's still got that other Slaking, though...
    • The last leg of Victory Road, merely inches from the exit, has a surprise (they're hiding under a bridge) encounter with a couple of Ace Trainers. They both have Slaking, and the female also has Gardevoir, which has Skill Swap (one of the skills that can remove Slaking's "moves only every other turn" limiter, Truant, by exchanging abilities; and worse, can pass it to you). Fortunately, you can bypass them, but if it's your first time through, you wouldn't know they were even there until they see you. Good luck.
      • You can just barely see the tops of their heads if you're paying close attention, so you can talk to them individually to avoid the Skill Swap... But since they both have Slaking, even separately they could still count for this.
  • That One Level:
    • The Sky Pillar. Anyone who doesn't have good finger-reflexes and control over the Mach Bike is going to pull their hair out trying to get to Rayquaza, let alone catching the bastard. The good news is if you do catch him, the trip down is trivial since falling down is probably what you've been doing in the pillar.
    • Traversing the ocean is also considered one of the worst parts in all of the main games. On the other hand, the Under the Sea segments are considered some of the most memorable parts, very likely because one can only encounter wild Pokémon if one travels in seaweed. As a result, some people use Dive in order to avoid encounters when surfing.
  • Unconventional Learning Experience: Obtaining the Regis requires the player to learn some Braille.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Wally's Gardevoir is male and always is a male. It's in the data.
    • Also, Maxie. His English Gender Blender Name doesn't help matters.
    • Speaking of Team Magma, TABITHA. Who is male, by the way.
      • And Tabitha's name is even more confusing than Maxie's is.
    • Mossdeep Gym Leader Tate has been mistaken for being a girl by many fans. It doesn't help that he looks almost exactly like his sister, Liza.
  1. ↑ RYDEL, RYDEL, RYDEL, RYDEL, RYDEL, RYDEL, RYDEL, RYDEL, RYDEL, RYDEL
  2. ↑ "Yes Town? Never heard of it." Or, "You have to have come from somewhere!"
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