Pokémon Alpha Sapphire - Nintendo 3DS

Pokémon Alpha Sapphire for the Nintendo 3DS is an amazing game and one of the best Pokémon remakes. The updated graphics make the Hoenn region look beautiful, and the gameplay feels smooth and modern while still keeping the classic Pokémon adventure fans love. One of my favorite features is Soaring, which lets you fly around the region and discover hidden islands and legendary Pokémon. The game also adds Mega Evolutions, new story elements, and the Delta Episode, which makes the experience feel fresh even if you played the original games. The connectivity features are also great. Trading and battling with friends is easy through the Nintendo 3DS system, and the online features make it fun to interact with other players. For the amount of content you get, this game offers excellent value for money. There are hours of gameplay, tons of Pokémon to catch, and many side activities to enjoy. It’s a perfect game for both longtime Pokémon fans and new players. Overall, Pokémon Alpha Sapphire is a fun, nostalgic adventure that delivers great gameplay, strong connectivity features, and hours of entertainment. Highly recommended! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This review is useful for both Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire as both are practically the same game, with only slight version differences. The version differences are explained in this article: [...] This is a must have game for any Pokemon fan. I have played every generation of Pokemon game (only main series titles) and I have to say this is the best experience so far. All of the best things that you remember are present, with updates added for smoother play. This modern take on the original Ruby and Sapphire is refreshingly nostalgic, with the addition of new game elements, making the entire experience feel new. This is not meant to be a full review ( here is a link for a full review: http://kotaku.com/pokemon-omega-ruby-and-alpha-sapphire-the-kotaku-revie-1659957634 ), but I will touch on some things. - The game is much more cinematic due to 3d Before in Ruby in Sapphire (though then they were a major improvement to graphics), much was left to the imagination. In ORAS, you see things from angles you haven't seen before and animations are much better. This leads you to feel much more immersed in the story. - A much better map, utilizing spotpass Before it was a chore to check on your berries. With this new map you can see when your berries are ready to be collected anywhere in the world. It will even tell you what berries you were growing. The same thing is true for trainers. This time around trainer's eye is much more user friendly, letting you know exactly when and where a trainer is ready. The best thing, you can fly directly to them. No more flying to just pokemon centers. Now you can fly directly to berry and trainer locations. Bases too! You can tell if the base features that can only be used once per day are ready and can fly directly to bases. However, if you are just wandering around, the map will still pop up a berry/base/trainer notification letting you know something is ready. Super useful tool while playing. With spotpass, if you pass a friend, their base information will automatically update in your game, allowing you to find their base in your world. In addition, if you are connected to the internet, you have many options to interact with players around the world. -Super training and affection You can now super train your pokemon. In addition to giving pokemon calcium and protein (and other stat boosting items) you can actually select what base stats you wish to improve on any given pokemon. You can also grow closer with your pokemon by playing games, feeding them, and petting them. Super training can lead to seriously strong pokemon, and affectionate pokemon will dodge attacks and even negate status affecting moves. -Experience sharing Remember when you move your experience share item around your party to boost to the level of your pokemon, always preventing them from holding that one good item. NO MORE. Experience share is now a key item that you can turn on and off, allowing all pokemon in your party to experience (no pun intended) the benefits without giving up an item slot. -Seamless inclusion of mega evolution Not much more needs to be said, now you can mega evolve many 3rd generation pokemon. The already strong starters become seriously mean. -SO MUCH TO DO This is not an understatement. After one of the best story lines imo, and the pokemon league, there is still so much to do. After you finish the pokemon league, an after story called the delta episode appears. But, even before that, you unlock one of the coolest features in the game. Using either Mega Latios or Latias you can soar around all of Hoenn. This is a beautiful game, but this part has to be the most beautiful feature to date in all of Pokemon. This is the realization of the childhood imagination of what it actually would like like soaring the sky on the back of a Pokemon. With this ability you can catch (between the two versions) every single legendary that has ever been in a Pokemon game. The amount of exploration you can do is immense, making this easily one of the largest games (as far as content) yet. -You will not be bored if you played Ruby and Sapphire and Emerald before I was personally worried that this would effectively be replaying a game generation I have already put hundreds of hours into. Not the case. Though the main story is the same, you remember the similarities with a smile instead of a bored gaze. The modern improvements are really that, improvements. When you play you will recall many "oh i wish....", because many of those wishes have frustration-solving improvements in ORAS. This was a remake made for players to recall the things they felt playing those games (personally my favorite, with johto and kento a close second and third of course), not simply to regurgitate material. Final thoughts: This is good. Very good. Hard to imagine good. This is so much more than any pokemon game before, which such a pleasant air of familiarity. If you ever played the original games, or played RSE, or are just completely new to the world of Pokemon, ORAS is for you. All the pleasant nostalgia with modern amenities that make it smoother, more enjoyable, and better than ever before. Definite buy. Should I buy both versions? While you need both versions to get all of the pokemon (there are time where you need two specific legendaries, one available in OR and one in AS just to unlock another legendary on your map), the ability of internet play gives you access to players around the world. The best case would be for you to get one version, and a friend to get another. There is so much content in one version alone (and the two are so similar), the other version would only a slave for getting all the pokemon. I doubt you would invest another proper play through. Since you can connect with many players for trading, I would recommend you only purchase one of the two versions.

This is a pretty long review. I summed up the entire thing in the very final, short paragraph. If you want to get specific then read the whole thing. Otherwise, just go straight to the bottom, and read the last paragraph. Before I get started, I should say that this is my first Pokemon game. Ever. Everybody always told me that Pokemon is amazing and all that but I never really believed them. I heard it so much that I decided to buckle down and try it. This game is pretty awesome. There is a lot to cover, so I'll try to make it brief. It starts off with you moving to another town, from who-knows-where. If it was mentioned, I forgot. You are next door neighbors to the Pokemon Professor dude, and he's pretty cool. So basically, you go to meet him and he's gone. Asking around a bit, he was on some route studying Pokemon. When you find him he is being chased by a Pokemon, so you choose your starter and fend the aggressive Pokemon off. From there, what you do is simple: you travel around the region, collecting more Pokemon, strengthening them, while collecting enough gym badges to enter the Pokemon league. Those are the absolute basics, there is a LOT more plot and all, but I don't want to ruin it for anybody. If you don't know what a gym badge is, I'll tell ya: there are gyms with strong Pokemon trainers as the leader. 8 to be exact. You go to the gym, challenge the trainer, and if you win you get a specific badge. You can only get one once. Each of the badges has some special abilities that you can use once you get them. There is a tad more to it than that, but you'll figure it out once you get playing. It isn't hard. There are different approaches to playing this game. Some people want to try and collect any and every Pokemon they ever come across. Even if they already have one of that kind. Some people want to get one of each. Some people want to get what ones they need and just ditch the rest. However you play is up to you. I personally don't ditch any, but I don't go for every single one either. If i don't have it, and I kinda want it, I'll try to get it. I have heard that in Pokemon X/Y, you customize your trainer. I haven't played either, although I plan to. Point is that there is no character customization to be had here. There are more things to do with your Pokemon than catch them and force them to fight, like this is some sort of animal fighting ring. There is a place in the menus called " Pokemon Amie". I have no clue what Amie means, but basically this is the place where you play with your Pokemon. You can pet them, certain areas of them make them angry. You can feed them, luckily you can't overfeed them. You can play mini games with them, like puzzle tiles for example. The more you do these things with them, the more affection they will have for you. Eventually, if they have enough affection, it can have some SERIOUS bonuses in battle. They can shake off negative status effects because they want to impress you or whatever. They can survive a hit that would normally would have made them faint, forcing you to throw out another Pokemon. Small things like that are more helpful than you would think. There is a super training place for your Pokemon next to the Pokemon Amie. I can't tell you much about it because I never use it. Then, there is online play.Online play allows you to do many things. You can battle people on your friends list. You can battle random people who are in the same area as you in the game (you don't see them). You can trade. The battle and trade things are pretty self explanatory, so I won't bother going into those, but there is one thing you should be aware of, which is Wonder Trade. Wonder Trade allows you to put up a Pokemon of your choosing. If you decide to trade it, THERE IS NO GOING BACK AT ALL FAIR WARNING. Once you choose the Pokemon you are going to trade, you are paired with another random person who is using Wonder Trade as well, and you trade Pokemon. You have no idea what it is going to be until you receive it. They keep whatever nickname the Original Trainer gave them, and there is no way to change them. Some of the names are obscene. I won't even name one because they get so bad, but honestly it is pretty rare that you get an obscene name. I've only ever come across it twice. There are some problems with Wonder Trade though. It is 100% random. There isn't anything like "Only Pokemon above lvl 50 will be counted" nothing like that. As a result, out of every 10 Wonder Trades you do, 9 will be a level 1 Pokemon that usually sucks. I didn't even know it was possible to get these Pokemon at level one. I think there might be a way to breed Pokemon but I have no clue. That's the only explanation I can come up with other than hacks. Consider yourself warned: Wonder Trade is not, in any way, wonderful. There is only really one other thing that I should mention before I end this review: trainers. They are everywhere. I mean everywhere. It's unbelievably annoying. Trainers are NPC characters that battle you. If you walk in front of them, or basically anywhere near them, a battle begins. It isn't like "would you like to battle? Yes/No" You walk in front of them and the battle begins. No joke. There is no way to tell if somebody is a trainer or not. Just assume that everybody is, because probably 90% of all other characters in the game are trainers you must battle. There is no way to escape the battle besides quitting the game. They like to stand next to doorways that you are required to get through to continue the game. There are very few that are avoidable. It gives you a lot of experience points, and aside from selling stuff it is the only way you can get money that I am aware of. But there are just SO MANY. You walk not even 10 steps, then BAM a trainer goes "nice weather for a picnic, huh?" and then a battle begins. They say the most random things for the start of a battle... To sum up, a nice game. Fun, lots of different styles of playing for different gamers. The only real downs to this game I can come up with are Wonder Trade and Trainer Battles. Wonder Trade is something that one can just ignore. The trainers are an annoyance, but the rest of the game is good enough that you are fine with having to battle them as long as you get to continue. They don't ruin the game, they just make it tedious. I would say 5 stars. It has it's negatives, like every game ever, but is has enough goods to outweigh the negatives. Update: A few days after completing the game. I have a few things to add. There is only one save file in this game. You can't have multiple, you can only have one. I found out about this thing called the Nuzlocke challenge and I really want to do it, but that would mean deleting my current save. Not only is it my first Pokemon game save ever, it also has a couple Pokemon in it that you can only possibly ever get once. Other than trading, there isn't any way to get a Diance after the event ended...that I know of. What's important is that if I deleted my save file, it would all be gone forever. The game saves onto the cartridge, not the SD card, so I couldn't copy the save to my computer. If there were two save files then that would be great. It would also allow you to try different methods of raising your Pokemon. There are many different ways to complete your goals in this game, but I can't try them without deleting precious mementos of extreme rarity. And one more thing: the rival of this game is the most annoying character ever. A lot of people love him, but I personally cannot stand him. My main problem is that he gets too sentimental whenever something happens. For instance, every time you battle him and win, this really dramatic music begins to play and he goes on a speech about how much you've helped him grow not only as a trainer, but as a person blablahblah it's annoying. And it only gets worse and lasts longer as you get further into the game. And he always wears pajamas. I personally would like a rival who gave me a reason to want to beat them. A good reason. Doing something that got in the way of completing something important, like taking the starter that you had already chosen and forcing you to pick another. Stealing a key item or whatever while you were busy. I don't know, something! All I think when I run into this guy is "Man, I just want to absolutely obliterate his Pokemon so he won't bother me anymore" I know he'll keep coming, but he's an annoyance. I want one that makes me think "ugh! I need to show this guy who's boss! I hope he battles me!" You know. And it wouldn't hurt to make the rival related to the story. Update: So it has been a while after I beat the Pokemon League for the first time. Decided I should add more things. I have owned this game for close to a month now, and I still haven't gotten even close to 100% completion. I recently have started going around visiting secret bases of fellow players, and it is pretty fun. You can add the owner of the secret base to your own if you want to, and they are available for battle once a day. They only use 3 pokemon, but they can be pretty difficult. It's good experience points and money if you want to train some of your Pokemon. There's those contest things, but I have no interest in them. Online battles are available, but I have heard about bad things happening to players who participate recently. I have been told that some people hack their cartridges or something, and make it so that if you online battle them, your save file is deleted. So, I am avoiding it like the plague. Then there is catching more Pokemon.The thing about the Pokemon catching part is that you really have to be into the "catch em' all!" slogan. To me, catching them all seems like too much of a chore, especially since there isn't even enough room on the game cart to hold all pokemon available in the game. Besides the fact that I don't think you get any items for getting them all. Not enough incentive for me. However, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. For all I know, there may be some special item at the end of the long road. Or maybe you just enjoy catching as much stuff as possible. The fun factor of the post-game content really depends on what kind of player you are. I am the kind that won't do a tedious and painstaking task if it doesn't have some sort of reward at the end of it. Some players really just like to entirely do every single thing in the game just because they can, or for bragging rights. Whatever it is, you can still enjoy yourself once the main and secondary story end, because there is still lots to do.

Product as described, received a worldwide edition of Pokémon Alpha Sapphire which has no discerning difference to a North American version in case anybody is wondering about that. Awesome game!

First thing's first. If you get the reference in the review headline, kudos! :) Alright, down to business. Many people who are considering this game are long-time Pokemon fans who have played the original Ruby, Sapphire and/or Emerald. Many consider the Hoenn region to be the best of all of the regions to date. If this is how you feel, you won't be let down by this game. Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire rebuild the entirety of the Hoenn region in spectacular 3D. Every route is nearly identical. Some routes and areas have new paths or areas tacked on to give them a fresh, remastered feel. Nintendo left no stone unturned in this remastered Hoenn region. SUPER-SECRET BASES The secret bases of the original game make their return with WiFi features! It's great fun to decorate your base in a manner that makes it quite difficult (but NOT impossible) to take your flag. :) POKEMON Nothing new to see here! That's probably a relief. I'm sure many long-time fans of the original R/S/E wouldn't like to see new Pokemon from later generations added to the wild Pokemon roster. :) You can find wild Pokemon from other generations after defeating the Elite 4, but not during your normal pre-Elite 4 playthrough. POKENAV PLUS The PokeNav Plus is a great upgrade to the original PokeNav. You still receive the Player Search System (or PSS) for online functions, Super Training and Pokemon Amie. Other new features are added, such as the DexNav which allows you to search for and chain specific Pokemon similarly to the PokeRadar. The AreaNav is essentially the town map, but on the lower screen! It can show you where you have berries ready to harvest, the Trainer's Eyes app is there, and you can locate Super-Secret Bases with it, as well! EXPLORING The Hoenn region was probably the first region to really include any in-depth exploration opportunities. All the same opportunities exist, with a few extra thrown in! Some routes have new areas or paths tacked on, and there are entirely new secret areas added for Super-Secret Bases! ;) EXPERIENCE Overall, I have more than 80 hours pumped into this game (I only play when my girlfriend does) and still have not gone to the Elite 4. There is just that much to do in the game. The DexNav has taken up the majority of my time, though. But be careful with the DexNav and Exp. Share! As a result of my abuse of the DexNav and always-on Exp. Share (you can turn it off), my entire team is over leveled by upwards of 25! My Sceptile is almost level 70 and I still don't have the Sootopolis badge. CONCLUSION If you like Pokemon, this should be a no-brainer. If you liked the original Ruby, Sapphire and/or Emerald, this should be a no-brainer. What are you waiting for? Grab yourself a copy today!

ORAS is honestly my favorite Pokemon game remake, it's so so so worth playing. One star off just because there was no sticker on the game cartridge, which is weird. It's the only game in my library like that.

A great remake of the famous third generation Pokemon games. While I have tried to keep spoilers to a minimum, there are a few mild, spoilers below. Nothing plot-ruining, but nonetheless spoilers. Pros ~New overworld graphics ~New moves and move graphics ~Can have both bikes ~New mega-evolutions ~Delta episode ~New and updated NPC text ~Tie-ins to XY and Mega-Evolutions ~Contests ~New Surfing abilities ~Soaring in the Sky Cons ~Double battles and horde battles not in 3D ~No character customization -The Delta Episode is a playable instance after you have beat the Elite Four, and is seemingly the spiritual successor to Pokemon Emerald. It has a never before seen story that helps fill in the background of Mega-Evolution. It allows you to catch Rayquaza and Deoxys. -Contests make a return in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. They are optional and have their own small story line. -Several old characters are fleshed out. May/Brendan become more like teenager girls/boys than a stiff uncaring NPC. Steven Stone's history and personal life is told in greater detail, giving us a better look into the Hoenn Champions mind. The leaders and admins of Team Aqua/Magma have distinct personalities and stories that are both intriguing and appealing. We learn a little bit more about Wallace, the gym leader of Sootopolis City and his connection to the Cave of Origins and Rayquaza's Tower. Wally becomes an interesting character instead of a tedious side note. -Once you meet Latios/Latias and recieve the Eon Flute you can call upon one of them to ride anywhere in Hoenn. We have all wished to have an actual flying mechanic in the Pokemon games and now we have it. -A lot of the legendary Pokemon can be unlocked and captured through mysterious portals. There is a lot more to say and not much time or space to say it. All in all Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, are in my opinion, one of the if not the best Pokemon games ever made. It is a beautiful remake, with both new and recurring mechanics that blend together into a game that entices both the old Pokemon players and the new. It is both fresh and nostalgic allowing for tons of hours of play-through even for those who played the originals (I put over 500 hours into Pokemon Emerald over the years, in the past few weeks I have already put over 50 hours into Alpha Sapphire and intend to put a lot more).

I'm a longtime Pokemon fan. I still own my original GBA copies of Ruby and Emerald. The reason I bought Alpha Sapphire is because I originally played Ruby and wanted to try something different this time. It's great seeing Hoenn remastered in 3D. For anyone who's played pokemon, the concept is still the same. Start off in your hometown, get your 1st pokemon from a pokemon professor, start your journey to become pokemon league champion, get a rival, beat some gyms, couple sidequests along the way, beat the elite four, become champion, and enjoy post-game (or start over). Yet for some reason, I can't help myself but to buy into it year after year. I'll make this review short by outlining some key things to consider before buying this game. - No battle frontier - No character customization like in X/Y - Lots of legendary pokemon to catch post-game - Nostalgia for days - lots of throwbacks and references to the original RSE - Upgraded flying system. You now have the option to fly to specific routes/places on top of cities. (i.e. route 121, Safari Zone, etc.) - More mega evolutions if that's your thing. Also primal evolutions - Same shiny rate as X/Y - Wally. That is all. - The pokemon league aethestics were amazingly well done by gamefreak. Shout out to them on that. - Mirage spots replacing original Mirage Island from RSE - PSS is back along with O-Powers wonder trade and all that good stuff - New dexnav feature apart of the pokenav which has that pokeradar feel to it. Its nice that gamefreak added something like this considering there was no item like this in the original RSE. Pokeradar wasn't until Gen IV. - Streetpass integrated into buzznav (another pokenav feature which has a love/hate relationship with most pokemon players currently; not all players have great streetpass reception) - Delta Episode (post-game story) is amazing - Learn little more about pokemon game universe (how some games might be connected to ea other i.e ORAS and X/Y) I don't want to say much more about this without spoiling so I'll leave it at that. - Apparently too much water Point is, if you're a pokemon fan, you should definitely buy one of these games. Even though this is the Alpha Sapphire page, I recommend buying whichever one you feel suits you best. There are guides that will explain to you the differences between omega ruby and alpha sapphire.