Pokemon with lots of extras

I will start out by saying that Pokemon Emerald will feel just like a rehash of Ruby and Sapphire however until you play through the game and beat the elite 4 you really dont start to see many changes. Do not dismiss this game after just a little while of playing because of that, after you beat the elite 4 you will find another whole world to explore called the battle frontier.

The Battle frontier is possibly the game's best addition, its actually very large and will add much more challenge to the game. Emerald basically combines Pokemon Colloseum and R/S into one game, which is fantastic. There are 7 different battle arena's in this game, which should be enough to keep veteran trainers quite busy!

Be warned though if you havent been raising pokemon diligently since Ruby and Sapphire you may have some problems conquering the battle frontier so this section of the game is really geared toward veteran trainers. If you raised a decent team in emerald you should be ok but be prepared to raise even more pokemon to conquer the battle frontier!

Another important change from R/S is that this game has true double battles. This is a really good feature, and something i feel that should have been in the first R/S games. Basically what happens is when you are walking you are able to catch the eye of 2 trainers at once in certain situations, and they team up to battle you. Also these true double battles happen quite frequently so you will not be dissapointed by them only happening a few times in the game.

All 3 legendary pokemon are catchable in this game, Kyogre, Groudon and Rayquaza, so you dont have to trade with another version in order to get the missing legendary. Also you can choose if you want Latios or Latias in this game by choosing the color red or blue when you are prompted to do so. You can catch the one you didnt pick if you mix records with a game (R/S) that had the Eon Ticket from R/S scanned into it.

Some other features: The match call, trainers calling you to battle them again; some pokemon's ablities will have effects outside of battle now; some berries also have different effects. These are Emerald-Exclusive features.

The dissapointments of this game, you still cannot get Mew, Deoxys, Celebi or Jirachi in game. Jirachi is fairly easy to obtain as it comes on the Bonus Disk for Pokemon Colloseum. However you could only get this disk if you pre-ordered Pokemon Colloseum in March of 2004. Your best bet if you still want this pokemon is to find a friend with the disk or buy a disk off ebay. Keep in mind you will need a Gamecube and a Gamecube/GBA link cable, and either Pokemon Ruby or Sapphire to access Jirachi. The bonus disk doesnt work with Emerald so you will have to trade with a R/S game to get Jirachi on Emerald.

Deoxys was already released at certain promotional events and most likely will not be released again so if you dont have one you are screwed.

I would say if you dont live near the Nintendo Store in NYC then basically your chances of getting Mew, Deoxys and Celebi are none, dont count on getting these pokemon. Nintendo is still being stupid and only releasing them at travelling promotional events which dont reach all cities.

Please note that it is not essential in the game to have these pokemon, its just a nice addition, especially after paying 35$ for the game.

Which brings me to the price of this game, 35$ is way too much especially since this game feels like a rehash for a part of the game. It should have been 19.99 at most since there have already been 4 other Pokemon RPG games for the Gameboy advance.