Why is Pokémon Emerald so grindy?
So I'm trying to replay some gen 3 pokemon. I played Saphire as a kid and I loved it. Going back now as an adult, I'm really struggling. I'm finding it incredibly grindy, and I die inside a little every time I see a long stretch of tall grass. What have I forgotten? What am I missing now that I got as a kid? Any tips?
what am I missing now that I got as a kid?
Free time. Pokemon games are, and always have been, very slow and grindy. Even in the latest entry (Violet) you need to actively avoid encounters since animations take so long
animations take so long
This is my biggest annoyance with Pokemon games, personally. Everything. Takes. So. Fucking. Long. To. Get. To. The. Point. I'm pretty sure 50% of 'gameplay' is waiting for fucking animations and waiting for the one or two lines of text at a time to get to the actual important information after telling you about friendship and the joy of raising Pokemon for the 100th time first.
I don't think that I would ever be able to play these games on the original hardware because being able to fast forward in an emulator is a gift from the gods.
That’s why Legends Arceus is my favorite game. Catching Pokémon is a joy instead of a tedious activity to be avoided. I hoped they’d keep the mechanics, maybe next game. I even liked lets go Pikachu more than others because it had a different mechanism at least.
That’s how I’m feeling about final fantasy 7 remake.
No, I don’t want to slowly crawl along the wall, just make the space a little bigger.
No, I don’t want you to force me to slow walk.
No, I don’t want to sometimes have to hold “y” to interact with something.
Thank god it lets me skip the cutscenes.
I just wanted to play through and see the different sections and how it was remade.
It’s so annoying I’m not even looking for gear anymore since I know I’m near the end of the game and none of the stuff carries over to the second part.
On the modern games taking forever to get to the point: I've been playing the Paper Mario TTYD remake on Switch. Out of curiosity, I watched a little gameplay from the GameCube original... and glory be, does it look snappy. They definitely padded out the animations and stuff in the remake.
My biggest gripe as well. I've got the Pokemon TCG app at the moment and my god it's impossible to do anything quickly because of all the transitions, animations, and pointless popups that occur.
Just trying to do one thing in the game you literally need to push like 8 popups informing you about something that's obvious and that you've done a thousand times before and you can't turn it off.
This is why I hate almost all turn based games and these pokemon/final fantasy style random encounter games. Just obnoxious to play.
Hold B and spam A
I mean I kind of disagree with this. Pokemon games got slower. Not that the first couple were speed demons or anything, but they got progressively slower. Gen 3 is when it started getting noticeable I think as op is mentioning here, Generation 4 was downright excruciating.
i picked up diamond again a few years ago and was flabberghasted by how slow it was, even compared to the gold and silver remakes. i was using a real cartridge on a real DS but it felt like i was playing in an emulator on a potato. i even disabled attack animations and it didn't seem to speed things up at all. and then once the games became 3D, forget it, you can pick a move and make a run to the fridge before your turn is over
The dialogue in SV alone took up half my play through time.
Any tips?
Going from my memories, use Mudkip lol. By the time it's Swampert, you can arm it with both Surf and Earthquake and steamroll almost anything in your path. And Ice Beam gives you a nice counter to your biggest weakness too. I used to solo the elite 4 with Swampert. The only ones that give you trouble are the Ghost types that cause you to use double PP, so go prepared with Leppa berries or a pill that makes your PP go up.
a pill that makes your PP go up.
OP did say he was getting older, there's no shame in needing one of these
Just don't get the ones from the gas station counter.
yeah i always go Mudkip and the only time i ever have to do any grinding is before the mossdeep gym
Shit, I feel a bit shame when I play it with double speed.
They've always been basic as fuck games. when red and blue and gold and silver were new they were fun as hell but 30 years down the line and 0 innovations beyond “they get big now”—the games are literally half baked garbage.
Go play Ni No Kuni or Palworld if you want and experience of what pokémon should’ve done with its video games at any point in the past 3 decades.
I'd say go play temtem not palworld
Could it be that you had a lot more time on your hands, and perhaps fewer games to play, as a kid? I know that aligns with my experience with other games. (Then again, having not played gen 3 myself, it might not be that deep)
I would suggest using a community version of the game. (There are many)
They typically come with many quality of life improvements intended for people who want to revisit the game.
Pokemon Modern Emerald sounds most suitable. They add many quality of life fixes including being able to bump the experience rate.
Edit: these games came from an era where you probably only had a few games. And imagine the disappointment if you could clear the game quickly and easily. Parents would feel ripped off.
Biggest tip I have is playing an emulator so you can up the speed. Pokemon games as they progressed got slow. And I don't mean just the grind I mean like the game play itself like shit took longer. Moves and every little animation took longer to happen. Jesus Christ doing HM moves by like the Gen 4 were just excruciatingly slow I had to stop playing. Absolutely emulator double or triple speed helps tremendously.
I feel grinding is kind of the point of Pokemon games, tbh. Without needing to grind, how long would it take to just steamroll through the story, a few hours at most? Even as is with the difficultly assuming grinding, people are still speed running gen 3 in under 2 hours
Have you considered cheating?
Honestly, hacking in Rare Candies and Max Repels into my games fixed this and made the games far more enjoyable
I played it recently on my Miyoo Mini Plus, and I played it almost exclusive at double speed. Only way the game was bearable.
You mentioned dread of long stretches of grass. Buy Repels!
Seriously, that skips 90% of the useless animations.
If you find yourself underleveled, just use X-Items, those are busted.
For the Elite Four use the legendary Pokémon Rayquaza, it’s overleveled in Emerald at level 70. If you don’t want to use legendaries, you can use Linoone to sweep the the whole Elite Four.