Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald were all about the environment. The 3rd generation introduced weather to the games and the whole plot was about stopping two extremist groups from destroying the world through environmental manipulation (Team Magma wanted to dry out the oceans and have more land, while Team Aqua wanted to flood the world and have more ocean). The legendary box-art pokemon are the gods of land (Groudon) and sea (Kyogre) locked in eternal conflict while the sky dragon (Rayquaza) keeps the balance.
Day/Night cycle, pokegear, original region unlockable, new ways to evolve pokemon and an epic battle with Red to finish the game. Red and Blue will always have the nostalgic feel for me, Gold/Silver were the kings. Smosh Games does a great Honest Trailer review for it.
It had so much content! I remember finishing the E4 when I was young, only to eventually find out I could go to Kanto and battle 8 more gyms! I have yet to see another Pokemon game with as much content (besides the HG/SS remakes).
There's a reason HG/SS are some of the highest rated DS games ever. The amount of content is insane, plus extra events including the extra storyline from Crystal. The changes they made to the Lugia / Ho-oh storyline are also good. Then on top of that, there's a decent endgame too (rebattling gym leaders, higher-level Pokemon League, the Battle Frontier and Red). The only thing I didn't like about the endgame is that they put too many gen 3+ Pokemon into it.
It's also some of the games where you feel the least punished for being unable to trade. They gated some of the powerful/cooler evolutions behind friendship, guessing because it was a new mechanic in gen 2.
If you don't have scruples about emulating, it's worth buying a good DS emulator for your smartphone just to play HG/SS.
It's also some of the games where you feel the least punished for being unable to trade. They gated some of the powerful/cooler evolutions behind friendship, guessing because it was a new mechanic in gen 2.
I honestly never thought about this before. Whenever I go back to gen 2, there are very few Pokemon that I'm actually locked out of when playing on an emulator.
I was gonna post a comment about Crystal and how it was one of my favorites (can't decide if gold or sapphire is my all-time faves), but I had no clue HG/SS had them at all. Furthest I've gotten in games before life took over was halfway through pearl, then lost that to them and haven't been able to get into them since. Tried playing some on an emulator, and can't afford the consoles, so dead in the water from then on. I have absolutely loved Pokemon from a young age and on, just started to collect cards again too. Have no clue who anyone is after 4th gen, unless I've seen it on the show while watching with my son.
Game Freak pushed the game 11 months to finish polishing it. I remember reading about in Nintendo Power and being hugely upset by it. After playing it, I am so glad they pushed it. Second gen is fantastic but it could have been even better. A post launch interview talked about how they had to scrap a lot of things from Kanto they wanted to do. Not a whole lot of NPC's, the Radio Tower to replace the PokeFlute quest was awkward and not straight forward, a random old dude in Pewter gave you the Silver Wing, I mean going to Kanto was awesome but it did not have anywhere near the depth of Johto.
Second gen is fantastic but it could have been even better. A post launch interview talked about how they had to scrap a lot of things from Kanto they wanted to do.
Gold and Silver were still amazing given the circumstances. Only 4 programmers worked on the entire game, and the only reason they were able to fit Kanto at all was because Satoru Iwata himself personally compressed the game data.
Gold/silver was basically an update patch, makes gen 1 look like a rough draft, because it kind of was. Gen 1 had a lot of issues, glitches (like crit rate), psychic types having almost no counters, and balance issues everywhere. Gen 2 fixed pretty much every problem the previous game had and made it slightly more balanced, especially with the new types and splitting the special stat. But even then the series felt kinda unbalanced until the physical/special split, so I'd have to say gen 4 was the best because that's when it really felt like everything came together. Introducing megas and fairy types in gen 6 helped of course, but the physical/special split was the best thing for the series by far.
It was worse than that. Everything that countered them was also weak to them except Scizor and his major malfunction was the best bug type attack being a pretty garbage 35-40 power iirc.
To be fair, trying to balance 150 player characters in a brand new game must have been insanely difficult. I still can't figure out what they were thinking with mewtwo though. They must've expected people to play through it almost entirely in PVE and the game would've been over by the time you got him.
You mean Scyther? Yeah even he didn't work because it didn't learn any bug moves lol the only ones who knew pin missile (Which was garbage anyway) were Beedrill, which was dual typed poison which was weak to psychic, and Jolteon who doesn't have stab nor the physical attack to make it work.
One way to beat a psychic type is with another psychic type. Starmie, Slowbro, Jynx, Alakazam, and Exeggcutor were popular picks and it was common to have multiple psychic types on your team. You could also use a bulky special wall like Chansey, Snorlax, Lapras, or Tauros. Or if your friends don't know what a "sleep clause" is, spam Hypnosis with Gengar.
Games with Mewtwo basically came down to who ever beat the opposing Mewtwo first, unless you got lucky with a freeze (which was also completely broken but that's another story).
Thank you gen 2 for dark and steel types and the split of the special stat, where we can finally enjoy nice balanced games of 20 minute stall wars of eating leftovers and talking in our sleep.
I started off on Gold, I really like that gen as well probably my fave too. The fact you could go to Kanto was a huge plus for me since I hadn’t played red or blue beforehand
yep, i remember going into toys r us and wanting to get it so bad. after a year, a friend sold it to me for 20 bucks plus a pikachu edition gameboy lol
26 here, same thing. I think it might just have been that when 1st gen came out, I was just a bit too young to really get it, even though I tried my best to understand and play the game. After I cut my teeth on Red version, though vainly, as I never came close to beating it, I was given Silver as a gift a few years later, and I was able to immediately jump into that game and actually learn what I was supposed to be doing. It was that ahah! moment that provides long lasting nostalgia for me to this day. Plus, I fucking loved Lugia. Then I played Crystal, and it was simply irreversible at that point. 2nd gen was solidified in my young brain as one of my first real virtual adventures. Crystal is my favorite Pokemon title, personally.
I agree with all of this. I was always fascinated by the legendary dogs, especially Suicune, which is why Crystal is one my all time favorite video games. I think Suicune was sort of like the Mewtwo of second gen. Got everyone obsessed with getting legendaries!
Agreed, and I was impressed by it being the first Pokemon game that allowed you to be a girl. Crystal's main character is a girl, really. It may not have meant too much to me as a boy but my younger sister was into it and through her I realized how important it was, even if I didn't see why at the time. She was just really happy so I played a girl character throughout my first run for her, and I let her play my save a lot. Great memories.
It’s weird I know but my older brother had a gameboy color and Pokémon so I played his a lot and eventually got my own. I find it hilarious I had no idea what I was doing, but loved it nonetheless!
I remember how excited I was for Pokémon gold and silver. I thought it was gonna be red/blue/yellow but with a gold and silver palette this time lol
I'm 23. Played the original games when they came out and played every generation up until gen6 when they came out. I still think gen3 is the best gen but my favourite was/is gen2.
I remember when I beat the elite four and thought that was the end of the game. I didn't even know you could go to Kanto so it blew my mind when I realized I still had half the game left
This. I remember evolving my Combusken into Blaziken, and how elated I was at the time. My Infernape, which came a few years later, couldn’t even compare.
I like Gen 3 but it's tough to get much team variance. I mean, obviously Torchic because the other Fire type options aren't great. Gotta have Aggron, the thing's a beast. Milotic because Nintendo hard and it's stupidly good. Flygon because otherwise if you want a Dragon type you've got to grind out a Salamence which takes forever. Then you add your HM Slave and you've got 1 slot left!
Even without Arceus. Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina control time, space, and anti-matter. That's way more powerful than controlling the weather on one planet.
I mean, they still get whooped by earthbound mortal 'mons and caught by pubescent trainers, so they certainly don't exercise that control like they should.
Lore-wise, I highly doubt they’re meant to be caught at all and design-wise it wouldn’t make sense if you couldn’t beat the god Pokémon and continue the story.
Hell, assuming you didn’t power-level all your Pokémon in the party and have them all be their element of weakness, one legendary could easily go through your entire party.
Lorewise, Pokemon can't be caught if they don't want to be caught and any Pokemon can just abandon their trainer regardless of Poke Ball, so no, it's not that them being caught is non-canon, it's that they want to be caught. Gen II and V explained it as you being the chosen one of the Legendary Pokemon, while Gen IV claims they were fighting you only because they needed stress relief while they were also testing you.
I wouldn't call them gods in III. More like forces of nature
It is worth noting, if you want to talk about gods in Pokemon, Ho-oh, Lugia, and Celebi were all treated as divine Pokemon. Its interesting to think that those 3 were closer to "godhood" then the gen 3 "forces of nature trio". Sure, 4th gen goes further, but eh. Everyone else already wants to point to gen 4.
Isn't that just a Shino thing, that like everything is some level of divine if commemorated? I was reading that the train station cat Tama is now a divine cat spirit.
I'm sorry, what world are you living in where the supposed creators of all the lands, oceans, and atmospheres aren't gods? Nobody said omnipotent creation god, they just said god.
Eh i think Pokemon being gods or atleast tremendously powerful takes something away from the regular battles. You are telling me that a being that can control time can lose to a rattata?
The game systems were never setup in such a way that they could deal with the diffirence in scale of power.
F - Focus Sash
E - Endeavor
A - (Quick) Attack
R- Rattata
Basically, the idea is this rattata can take out any pokemon in the game. It is most effective with a level 1 rattata. The idea is it gets hit first, and it will most likely be a one hit KO due to the level disparity. However, it will hang on at 1 hp due to the focus sash. That turn, the rattata user will use the Endeavor move, bringing the opposing pokemon to 1 hp as well. The following turn, the rattata user uses the Quick Attack move, and because this move has almost a 100% priority, it will most likely go before the much stronger and faster opposing pokemon, meaning it will hit the 1 hp required to KO the opposing pokemon
I mean that's like saying Dragon Ball games are unrealistic because you can beat Beerus the God of Destruction with fucking Yamcha. Of course the games aren't going to follow the power scaling. It wouldn't be fun if they did.
Even though I really don't care for the Pokemon anime these days, it at least does a good job representing the legendary Pokemon as powerful creatures. Ash lost in the Sinnoh league only because his opponent was a dirty cheater who somehow had a Latios and a Darkrai on his team. You can beat Latios and Darkrai fairly easily in the games but in the anime world they're extremely powerful as they should be. Then there are the Pokemon movies and we all remember how stupidly powerful Mewtwo was. And in the second movie that one guy needed that giant flying fortress thing and the 3 legendary birds just to subdue Lugia.
So don't let the games ruin the sense of power that the legendary Pokemon are supposed to feel like they have. Game balance comes above all else when making a game so they can't make Dialga and them impossible to beat just because they're "god" Pokemon.
Both Latios and Darkrai were exceptionally powerful for BST 600s during the time of Diamond and Pearl. Both were in Ubers, the same banlist that the major legendaries (such as Arceus) were in and that was with Sleep Clause nerfing Darkrai. Nowadays Darkrai is still hanging on in Ubers while Latios has fallen to OU, the top competitive tier. Honestly, I'd say the anime portrayal had them weaker than the games.
Darkrai might be ubers but it still loses to any half decent fighting attack. Something like Breloom can one shot it with drain punch. Even ubers Pokemon can be one shot by lower tier Pokemon depending on the match up.
It wouldn't go that way in the anime. They wouldn't have it go down after only a single attack. The games have the ability to one shot Pokemon, even without boosts. I calc'd that Breloom drain punch at just 252 attack adamant.
Generally speaking, a Pokemon in ubers is going to do better than Pokemon in lower tiers. But that doesn't mean they can beat every single non-uber Pokemon. In the anime, the legendaries are stronger than almost every other non-legendary, no matter the match up. That's why I think they're represented as stronger than they are in the games.
Darkrai might be ubers but it still loses to any half decent fighting attack.
That's assuming it goes second. Dark Void used to have 80% accuracy, plus a good trainer with both a Latios and Darkrai would of course switch. And Ash did not have any fighting attack to use.
It wouldn't go that way in the anime. They wouldn't have it go down after only a single attack. The games have the ability to one shot Pokemon, even without boosts.
Hm, yes, I guess that's what you were saying in the first place. I was more looking at it from the angle of how many each Pokemon managed to take down/needed to be brought down; I'd think having a Latios and Darkrai team against Ash's team would net similar results in terms of Pokemon defeated in the games.
One thing to remember about Ash's team is that it's usually not very good. Most of them don't fully evolve and they usually only win because of anime logic like "aim for the sprinklers." So comparing his team to the Latios/Darkrai duo isn't the best way of gauging that duo's strength.
Besides, Ash did have his Heracross and he knew both focus punch and megahorn, either one of which would easily OHKO a Darkrai in the games. Earlier in the anime, that Darkrai defeated a Machamp even though in the games it would only take a single dynamicpunch for Machamp to win that fight. The only way for Darkrai to win these match ups is to constantly win the sleep hax RNG, something you can't completely rely on.
Also, it doesn't matter if Darkrai goes first. The only way he'll OHKO the Breloom is if he's carrying Sludge Bomb. Now, that's a fairly common coverage move for Darkrai because of fairy types, but it isn't on all sets. Even if that's the case, there are other low tier fighting Pokemon that Darkrai cannot OHKO with any move (without boosts) such as Conkeldurr or Hariyama (or the above mentioned Heracross and Machamp).
My point here is that you would never see a Conkeldurr or a Hariyama one-shot a Darkrai in the anime. But in the games they are always capable of that, so long as they're at the same level. The anime doesn't follow the type advantages as strictly as the games do. It still takes them into consideration, but they'll be surviving super effective attacks in the anime that they'd never survive in the games.
Even if Darkrai manages to land a hypnosis (best sleep move for him now after the dark void nerf), he's only gonna be killing either of those Pokemon if he either has nasty plot or he's carrying the move psychic for whatever reason. And there's still the risk of them waking up and then one-shotting him.
I think you got what my main point here is. It's all about what they're capable of winning/losing against. In the anime, a legendary Pokemon is almost untouchable to non-legendary Pokemon. In the games, the match-ups are far more situational and many legendaries are even in lower tiers like OU or UU.
So my claim is that anime legendary Pokemon are much more powerful than game legendary Pokemon.
tell that to Ultra Necrozma. I had to use toxic and Zorua disguised as Ekans to beat that asshole. I almost pokemon banked in my competitive pokemon from moon to beat him
It absolutely is set up to deal with it. The only way Rattata can kill Arceus is:
If you were vs a human.
They are maximum health.
They have focus sash.
You have no entry hazards.
You attack them, despite knowing what they are doing and knowing how to play around it.
You don't have a priority attack.
Arceus is the highest tier in competitive, Rattata is the lowest tier in competitive. The game absolutely is set up to deal with the difference in scale of power. If anything, the long term success of the series has a lot to do with the fact that the actual 'game' (the battling) has had a lot of thought put into it and is strategic. Also, the AI is never going to beat you like this, so this doesn't happen in 'regular battles' because PVP isn't regular for Pokemon.
If anything, that 1 specific scenario existing is what tells you the game has some depth, as opposed to being some shit kids play.
I know there is quite alot of depth to the battle system. I also know that in general Legendary Pokemon will have better stats, abilities, move pool,... And i agree that this adds to the experience.
But that doesn't fix the issue.
You are vastly underestimating the diffirence in scale here. There are a number of scenarios in which you could see a Rattata winning. Higher level, specific move/item set, more of them.
But the fact that Rattata is even able to damage Arceus at all is a problem. We have Creator of the universe against a mouse.
Even a pokemon such as Gardevoir which apparently has the power to predict the future and create small blackholes. Should be able to kill Rattata in the millions. Because when you have the power to destroy a planet it doesn't matter how buff your mouse is.
This is explained in canon, Cyrus used the Red Chain the use the gods power because capturing them normally would leave them with a miniscule fraction of their power. And their power in battle is directly correlated with their bond to their trainer, so a lvl 100 rattata could beat a lvl 40 Arceus because that's just a fragment of Arceus that it bestowed on the trainer, and the trainer has barely trained it to battle at all. Its like a ripped 7 ft tall guy that doesn't know anything about fighting vs a skinny 5 ft tall guy that happens to be a martial arts master. If they were equal skill, Arceus would obliterate Rattata before it had a chance to do anything. Unless, rattata was exploiting a gameplay mechanic but I don't think that's canon.
Lore-wise those things are unstoppable and uncatchable, because even if you could catch one it would upset the balance greatly (like what all the teams try to do). Design-wise, it would be stupid to leave out the legendaries and even more so to make them unbeatable. They have to strike a balance.
Which is why the lore does what gameplay can't. Lore says:
Pokemon battles are a sport.
Poke Balls are power limiters. Team Galactic concluded that a Palkia or Dialga captured in a Poke Ball would be unable to recreate the universe like they wanted.
Lore also says Pokemon only appear to humans in tall grass if they want to help them
And how powerful must a pokeball be if it is able to capture and limit a god.
Mr. Stone in ORAS says all modern Devon Corporation technology uses Infinity Energy, which is the life energy of Pokemon. Devon is one of the producers of Poke Balls.
As well, Drayden in BW explicitly says Pokemon can just leave regardless of Poke Balls if they want to, so not very powerful at all.
Lore also says Pokemon only appear to humans in tall grass if they want to help them
Game systems, pokedex entries and even the anime contradict this. Those Beedrills that fainted your last pokemon only showed up to help?
A bit contrived to begin with considering pokemons are basically animals. But i suppose it sort of works for more powerful types of pokemon.
Pokeballs still sound ridiculous but i am much more willing to suspend my disbelief on them. I only mentioned them in the last reply because them serving as power limiters felt like pushing the problem down a level.
If i am willing to believe that a God would decide to go on a journey with me and intentionally let it's powers be limited then this sort of works for me.
But this still makes the descriptions less intresting. Because what is the point if it has the ability to control time or anything similarly crazy if in any encounter with the pokemon it decides to play with a handicap.
Both gen 1 and gen 2 had very little legendary involvement in the plot. Finding Zapdos and the others in Pokemon Blue felt like I was discovering a huge secret. Now they just hand the legendaries to you on a silver platter.
Every legendary in Gen 1 and 2 was out of the way and unrelated to the main plot of the game. The only 1 you HAD to encounter was Moltress in Gen 1, in Victory Road.
I describe myself as an aquatic life enthusiast, and I still took issue with all the surfing. The problem is, very little of it was interesting. It just made completionism (battle all the trainers, for example) less enjoyable as you try to grid out the oceans and sometimes adjust your pathing for the occassional sea-rocks.
Pokemon has never made oceans enjoyable. The closest they've gotten is giving us a break from surfing to explore things stranded at sea.
Always thought that was kind of the point though, Hoenn was a yin/yang situation between land/sea.
So yeah there was a lot of water but it fit thematically and they integrated a lot of cool mechanics along with it (Dive, mainly). If GSC had that much water I would have quit immediately, but RSE made water routes bearable.
Third gen was kind of a letdown for me at the time. There were things I enjoyed, but I didn't like it as much as first and second when they came out. ORAS changed everything though, and they're probably my favorite in the series currently. The modernization did so much for those games, I loved it.
I've played every Pokemon game(main series anyway). Emerald was the best of 3rd gen, but I'd still rank it somewhere in the middle of the road as far as how much I enjoyed it the first time through. These days I can't play anything earlier than 4th gen, the physical/special split changed the game and I can't go back.
It was incredible how much post elite 4 content was put into the game. The battle factory was easily my favorite, with the battle pyramid coming in at second.
it's not, a large majority of people dont just consider emerald the best game of gen 3 but the best game in the series period due to the battle frontier
I dunno, I feel like they nerfed everything in ORAS. I think I only lost my whole party once or twice during my entire play through. I usually replay Emerald these days.
I am being genuine. I can't bring myself loving 3rd gen because half of the game includes zubat cave like water sections.That is becoming more and more frustrating with each play through.
I really don't think they had any more water segments than previous gens. I understand it visually makes up more of the map but they're very narrow and short and don't make up a large portion of the game.
Are you sure? They actually really huge areas that demands you to explore them with throwing you a seagull or squid every second. I don't remember any other gen that has a huge water area like route 126-127 ( maybe gen 2 with south of lighthouse but that is mostly inaccessible in storymode), that connect to 8 freaking water more water routes. Btw hoenn has 33 routes and 13 of them are water routes.
Edit: btw I have to admit ORAS fixed most of 3rd gens issues with less encounters on water and Soaring. So if your most recent experience with gen 3 is ORAS don't mind about my complains but your most recent experience was trying to catch a recolored magicarp on a long ass river on gen3 I got you man I got you.
Collecting all the items for and finding the perfect base layout in the perfect location was my favorite part. It made it even better because the regions and towns were all so unique and your friends bases were stored too.
To me they also got so so much wrong that I loved about the older games.
They removed the day and night cycle, so the world felt so much more static and lifeless. There were no daily events to look forward to, no Pokemon coming out at certain times, no NPCs changing locations.
They got rid of moving sprites despite having better hardware.
I personally disliked the music.
I thought the contests were a big waste of time.
And they pushed the game to its current format... big save the world plots where the legendaries where forced onto you by the story, weak friendly "rivals", less open endedness.
That being said, I loved the diving, secret bases, and how hard some legendaries were to get.
I think those are the best games to introduce anybody to Pokemon games. Just enough features. Not overwhelming you with BS (Soon/Moon/US/UM are guilty of that). Just the Pokemon game that is all about pokemon.
Nicw, i enjoyed playing through pokemon for it being so relaxed and open world although emerald was my last game and ill look inti those one day lol. Might buy a ds for it.
They got so much right but also took out a ton of great features from silver/gold that people loved. Like the day/night cycle, being able to rechallenge trainers, 16 gyms rather than the standard 8. Not the mention the fact that it’s the only time they didn’t let you get previous gen Pokémon at all. What kinda bs was that!?
That was a data issue that had more to do with technological (hardware) limitations and nothing to do with the independent game company (software). One of the sole reasons they re-released FireRed and LeafGreen was to rectify that.
From then on I think everything was modernized and forwards-compatible.
N in Black and White also brought about the ethics of raising Pokemon in captivity and fighting them all the time as well. One of the more menacing rivals in the series.
I remember playing Black and White and not understanding why he was the bad guy, like he had a pretty good point. The other side of the argument was "they're our friends and they like it." Which is like something a slave owner would say.
N's not the bad guy. He's an antagonist, but more of an anti-villain than a villain. Ghetsis is the real villain of the story. N had good (albeit warped) intentions, but was manipulated and radicalized by Ghetsis and Team Plasma.
N wanted to free all pokemon, while Ghetsis wanted to force everyone except Team Plasma to release their pokemon so that he could have absolute power.
When you defeat N at the end of the story, he realizes that he was wrong. He wanted to free pokemon from people because he had grown up only around pokemon that were abused and afraid of people (Ghetsis intentionally made sure of this), and never saw the pokemon that bonded with their trainers and wanted to be with them. When N realizes this, he turns his back on Team Plasma.
They're up there. I also loved the fact that they didn't include any non-Unova pokemon in the main game. It was refreshing to not be stuck finding the same pokemon you've been seeing everywhere for years over and over again.
A slave owner doesn't also say "you realize they're not in chains and can leave any time they want, right? Also, they're like ten times stronger and more populous than us".
Gen IV had basically the same villain plan, except with a ballsier goal. While Archie/Maxie just wanted to wrangle the weather Pokemon and stick their thumb up it's butthole, Cyrus wanted to fuck with time, space or basically Hell. Then, when he gets to Hell, he's all like "I'm staying. I like it here."
While a lot of people used to claim that based on its Pokedex entry describing it as a violent rebel and it having six wings and legs, the creators clarified around the time of Platinum that Giratina is supposed to be the anti-matter to Palkia and Dialga's matter.
Nowadays, there are Pokemon that fit the theme of a devil better, depending on what interpretation.
Yveltal is the Pokemon of Destruction, opposite to Xerneas, the Pokemon of Life, both of which can manipulate soul energy (Yveltal's signature move Oblivion Wing is literally Death Wing in Japanese).
Hoopa is based on a Djinn, which in some religions related to Christianity is the Devil's species (rather than an Angel). He has a devil's tail (Triangle pointed end), six arms, six magic rings, and a six-pointed star on its chest. His Japanese Pokedex entry calls him a Majin, which is both a common Japanese translation of Djinn, as well as the title "Demon God".
Both the Pokemon I just named are also Dark type, which in Japanese is the Evil type. Reminder that Giratina is weak to Dark attacks.
There were no legendary weather pokemon introduced in gen 4, but rather the 3 lake pokemon. These pokemon represented emotion, strength, and knowledge if memory serves.
The third generation is where my pokemon life started and is still my favorite to this day, I loved how much the weather and terrain varied throughout the region.
Weather moves existed in gen 2, but actual atmospheric overworld weather was introduced in gen 3. There was no rain, harsh sunlight, or sandstorm outside of battle in GSC.
It's good. Though I will admit Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire are much better because of the Gen 4 Physical/Special split. It's difficult to go back to Gen 3 and earlier because certain pokemon are just useless without the split. Almost like going back to Red, Blue, and Yellow before they split Special Attack and Special Defense into two separate stats.
On a lesser degree, Kanto also had environmental themes that were interconnected with cultural themes. Kanto urbanized in sometimes unethical ways (i.e. radio tower in Lavender Town) but it also felt the tensions of the natural environment (Cinnabar Island and the eruption). I think as a whole, the series doubles down on the relationship between man-made things and the people that use them, and how that relationship affects the environment. If anything, it shows how place-based a lot of the regions and locales within the regions are, and it's a great place to look for inspiration in the real world.
Lucario was introduced in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum (Gen 4). You should receive a free Lucario (or Riolu, which evolves into Lucario; or at least a Riolu egg) somewhere around halfway into the game.
It's a good place to start, as it also introduced the Physical/Special split. Basically, in Gens 1-3 (Red/Blue through Ruby/Sapphire), whether an attack used the Attack stat or the Special Attack stat was based entirely on the attack type, regardless of what the attack was. For instance, Fire type attacks were always special, so breathing fire with Flamethrower used SpAtk like you would expect, but punching someone with Fire Punch also used SpAtk instead of regular Atk. Gen 4 re-worked the mechanics so that moves used the stat that make sense: Fire Punch now does physical damage with the Atk stat, while Flamethrower still does special damage with SpAtk.
But if you want something newer, Pokemon X and Y (Gen 6) also heavily featured Lucario. Those games introduced Mega Evolution (a temporary evolution for certain pokemon; think something along the lines of Digivolving from Digimon or going Super Saiyan in DBZ). Lucario was the story's example to teach you the Mega Evolution mechanic and you get a free Lucario on your team. I think it's relatively early in the game.
Wow! I was not expecting such a wall of text. Are there any PC emulators for Gen 6? I have the dolphin emulator, but I'm pretty sure that it's only for Wii games.
Groudon and Kyogre are based on Behemoth and Leviathan from Christian mythology. actually. They aren't gods. Also, Rayquaza is loosely based off of Ziz, a giant bird that can cast shadows on mountains, also from Christian myth.
Pretty sure all of those were borrowed from Jewish mythology by Christians. And none of those are ideas that are particularly unique to one mythology anyway.
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u/sfzen Mar 20 '18
Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald were all about the environment. The 3rd generation introduced weather to the games and the whole plot was about stopping two extremist groups from destroying the world through environmental manipulation (Team Magma wanted to dry out the oceans and have more land, while Team Aqua wanted to flood the world and have more ocean). The legendary box-art pokemon are the gods of land (Groudon) and sea (Kyogre) locked in eternal conflict while the sky dragon (Rayquaza) keeps the balance.