Pros: Catching monsters is very attractive and challenging. Some small game are very interesting.
Cons: The story is too simple and short.
The bottom line: if you own a GBA, Pokemon is the most necessary game to buy
Last player has provided very detailed information for Pokemon Ruby. I think that he has played every former versions of Pokemon. Unlike him, playing this version is my first time to contact Pokemon series games. Therefore, I want to show my own point of view to this game. Maybe it is not professional; I think some people who have not played Pokemon will have interest to try it.
Story
As this game is not a RPG, the story is very simple. If you just want to accomplish all missions, you can finish this game within one day. However, I believe that no one buy this game in order just to know the story of the main role.
Pokemons catching
Catching and collecting all Pokemons is the most important work for most players. Take me as an example, in order to collect and raise the level of my monsters, I have played the same part---final boss stage for more than 20 times. There are totally 351 monsters in the game, of which we can only catch 202. Till now, Nintendo have not release any information about the rest ones. Although I have tried my best, I have not collected all of them. It is because that some of them appear in Sapphire version, some need to be incubated by their ¡°father¡± and ¡°mother¡±, and some is gave by other roles in the game. Among those monsters, which can be caught, some only appear one time and their caught rate is very low. For these reasons, I utilized Save/Load methods very often. Because none of my friends like to play it, I cannot have those ones that need to be gained through exchanging. The difficulty of catching Pokemens is the most attractive thing to me.
Pokemon fighting
Personal speaking, I do not like the fighting in this game. Although we should catch monsters through battles, sometimes, it is a boring thing when I want to accomplish other missions. Furthermore, the battle is very dull in my opinion. Each monster can only handle 4 skills. Also, some attacks to change rivals¡¯ situation is useless. However, I still support last reviewer that the 2 v.s.2 mode and Battle Tower are good ideas.
Others attractive systems
In my opinion, some small games, such as growing fruits, picking beauties are very attractive. You can use fruits to catch monsters in garden and feed monsters to enhance their beautiful ability. As some are very precious, you should gain them through seeding, watering and waiting. If you have the confidence of your monsters¡¯ beauty, you can select one to attend the first-level match. If you got the top place, you can continue to join the other 3 levels. Now, I am trying to enhance my Pokemens¡¯ ability to take part in the final match.
Overall
Graphics and music are the weak points for this game, but I think these shortcomings cannot stop its fast growing sales. Recently, Nintendo declared that it would release Pokemon games in GameCube in May 30. The name is Pokemen Box. According to current information, it is interactive between GBA and NGC. Players can store at most 1500 monsters in this version. I believe at that time, there must be another Pokemon upsurge all over the world.