Pros: new Pokemon are pretty cool (Aggron!!), better graphics, better sound, 2on2 battles
Cons: no Team Rocket, not backward compatible with previous versions, only Ruby
The bottom line: New, veteran, old, young, teenager, adult... Pokemon Sapphire is awesome.
I remember when I had first heard about Pokemon, in one of the issues of Nintendo Power, where they had a special section about a new Japanese game called Pocket Monsters, which translates into the US name - Pokemon. I even thought that the idea was stupid and gave no thought to the game. However when the game was finally released over here in the US, my thoughts on the game had changed, and up to this day, I still enjoy Pokemon as much as I did when I got Pokemon Red. Being that the Gameboy Advance has been out for quite some time now (a little over a year and a half), it was finally time for the newest Pokemon games to come out, and we now have them in the forms of Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire. So are Ruby and Sapphire enough to rekindle that old fire? I certainly think so, this is more than just an “update” like Gold/Silver were to Red/Blue, it’s a new experience.

Plot/Story
Become the greatest Pokemon Trainer in the world. Eh, not much originality as it’s been the same premise in all six games (Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal), and it works, so why change it now.

Gameplay
Like in Gold/Silver/Crystal, you have the option of choosing between either a girl or a guy, and whichever one you don’t choose, will be one of your rivals in the game, but unlike Gary, he/she will also be your friend. No racing for league badges and the amount of Pokemon caught. Whichever you choose, the game starts as you’re moving into a new house in the town of Littleroot, from what I’d say to be the Kanto or Johto regions. The new land in Pokemon Sapphire is called Hoenn, and Kanto and Johto are NOT in the game this time. This may come as a shock to some, but by keeping Kanto and Johto in the game, that would have really limited what Nintendo could add to Sapphire that is NEW content, and so it was decided that neither of them would be in the game. Besides, Hoenn is pretty big in its own right, I’d say twice as big as Johto and Kanto.

The goal of the game is still to catch and train Pokemon as you make your way across the continent, and then battle the gym leader in each main town or city;. There are eight badges to collect, each one harder to obtain than the next. Although there being 8 badges, there are not only 8 towns, and there are many other small towns that you’ll visit which won’t even have a gym, let alone an official Pokemon Center (such as Littleroot).

Those new to Pokemon, a battle will commence either when you’re attacked by a wild Pokemon while walking through tall grass or a cave, or come into another trainer’s eyesight. You can only carry a maximum of 6 Pokemon with you at a time, and you can never have less than 1 Pokemon in your party (well, except the very beginning of the game, but that’s only for about 2 minutes. Battles are turn based, and the Pokemon that has the higher speed will most often be first to attack, unless the opposing Pokemon uses Quick Attack. Each Pokemon is only allowed a maximum of 4 attacks, which you will be able to switch around as new ones are learned or with a TM. Once in battle, there are four selections including Fight, Bag, Pokemon, and Run. You cannot run from a trainer battle, so no matter how bad you’re getting the snot beat out of, you can’t flee from battle.

Now that we’ve gotten to the basics of Sapphire that is what makes all Pokemon games so great, it’s time for the new additions to Pokemon Sapphire which has kept Pokemon Sapphire (and Ruby) from being “just” an update, and instead feels like an entirely new game (of course, it is, but...ah I quit, you know what I mean). First of all, there are new Pokemon, which brings the total to 386 Pokemon. Sadly, Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire are not compatible with any of the earlier versions, and so there is no way to collect all 300 Pokemon by trading, because only 202 of the Pokemon are available in Ruby and Sapphire. Of the 186 new Pokemon in Ruby and Sapphire (36 more than Red and Silver started with), a few of them can only be caught in the Sapphire version, and vice-versa. Also, there are more than two new legendary types, but the main legendaries are Sapphire’s Kyogre - which looks sort of like a flying manta ray, and Ruby’s Groudon - which has the second best animation in the game. They’re both strong like the other legendary types, but I personally never use legendaries in my team. Out of the 202 total Pokemon, there are only a few of the original 150 that made it into the game, and the rest are all brand new Pokemon. Some of the original Pokemon that made the cut include Geodude, Oddish, Koffing, Pikachu, and a few others, but the only one that’s worth training any is Geodude, which of course evolves into the masterful Golem (one of my three favorite Pokemon). Going along with the new Pokemon, there are also some new type combinations, such as Swampert’s water/ground combination, and Whiscash’s water/ground combination also. The best thing about that combination is that they’re immune to electric while getting the best of both worlds (water and ground), however they’re both 4 times as weak to a Grass type attack, and there shouldn’t be much worry for that because there aren’t very many grass type Pokemon anyway.

Speaking of the new Pokemon, they’ve gotten a bit “darker” in appearance, something that bugged me in the Gold and Silver versions on the Gameboy Color was that the Pokemon were too “cute”, and I personally hated most of the new Pokemon in Gold and Silver. But now with Ruby and Sapphire, the Pokemon look much more cooler, and although some of the early evolutions may look slightly cutesy and harmless, the final evolutions are uber-cool, and also very powerful if it was trained right. My favorites are Blaziken, Aggron, and Gardevoir.

Along with new Pokemon, comes new attacks, however there are still only 14 Pokemon types (Grass, Water, Psychic, etc.), including the two newest types that were added in Gold and Silver to balance out the unjustly power that Psychic had over other types, Dark and Steel. There are about an even amount of Pokemon types in Sapphire, so there is a nice selection to choose from. Anyway, back to attacks, there are all sorts of new ones like Magnitude (or was it introduced in Gold/Silver?), Overheat, Rock Smash - you get the drift.

Also new to Sapphire is the inclusion of Pokemon Personalities and Abilities. Every Pokemon now has a certain personality like Gentle, Careful, Naughty, etc. These personalities, depending on what they are, will add points to a Pokemon’s Sp. Defense, Sp. Attack, etc., but it will also cut back on another stat’s points, so for example plus special defense, but minus special offense. So depending on what your Pokemon’s personality is, will allow you to teach them attacks that correspond their stronger ability.

Now, aside from Aggron being the coolest Pokemon ever with Golem and Tyranitar, the new Pokemon abilities make the game even cooler and may heat things up a bit. Every Pokemon has its own ability, which stays with them through their evolutions. The Pokemon abilities aren’t any kind of an attack, nor can you change them, they’re kind of an “always on” type of thing. There are two types of abilities which include battle only and non-battle. An example of battle only abilities would be Blaziken’s Blaze ability which makes its fire attacks stronger, and even Koffing’s levitate ability, which gives Koffing an immunity to all ground attacks, which use to be its biggest weakness. As of now, the only ability that I know of right now that doesn’t do anything in battle is Zigzagzoon/Linoone’s pick-up ability, which is probably the most useful aspect of the game (otherwise Zigzagzoon and Linoone are USELESS in battle, I just used Zigzagzoon as a filler Pokemon and also an HM slut as he can learn almost all of them). With pick-up, when you are walking through tall grass or in a dungeon/cave, Zigzagzoon will pick up items for you. But they aren't just small little items that don't do anything, I'm talking about it finding really rare items.

I personally think that the abilities are really cool, especially pick-up, but otherwise they can either be useless in battle, or they could mean the difference between winning and losing. For example, any Pokemon that has an ability which immunifies (yes I made that word up) any status ailments, if there’s someone who doesn’t like to use those kind of attacks and depends on brute strength, then the Pokemon that is immune to those ailments isn’t going to be getting much help from that ability, since they’re going to be dead before any status ailment could take over.

A little problem in Pokemon R/B/Y/G/S/C was that they were fairly simple to complete. Pokemon R/B weren’t too easy, but since they were the first in the series, they were also challenging at some points (especially against Sabrina, I never used bug types and I didn’t like using one or two Pokemon only, I always had 5 or 6 at equal levels). But then Gold/Silver came out, which featured the new Johto region, however even with the two new types to equal out Psychic’s dominance, the game was very simple and could be ran through using one Pokemon without sweat. But now in Sapphire, Nintendo has addressed the difficulty level of the game in multiple ways. First of all, the Gym Leaders are not push-overs now, and are much, MUCH more challenging to defeat. Take the eight and final Gym Leader for example, he uses water Pokemon, but he is very hard to defeat even with an electric Pokemon, as it took me maybe 6, 10, or 33 times to finally beat him (maybe I should have had other Pokemon aside from Blaziken (fire) and Aggron (Rock) up to the right level, both of which are very weak to water). Secondly it seems that the stats of each Pokemon have been ironed out a little bit, as you can’t just run through the game with only one Pokemon very easily like you could in the previous games, and expect to win, as the Elite 4 would surely take you to school, maybe even pre-school. The final increase in difficulty comes in the way you strategize, something that I felt the other versions seriously lacked. No longer can you rely on one Pokemon anymore, and also trainers, Gym Leaders, and the Elite 4 have a bigger dependency on inflicting status ailments on your Pokemon (Poison, Paralyze, Sleep, etc.), and for attacks that could have side effect like Flamethrower and burn, or Spark and paralyze, occur on a higher ratio than in previous versions where getting burned, paralyzed, or frozen barely happened.

Like in most other RPGs, Pokemon Sapphire of course has an “evil doer”, but to be more Poke-technical, a “rival” - and there’s 3 of them this time. One rival is the opposite gender of whatever you picked as your character in the beginning of the game, and you’ll battle them 2 or 3 times throughout the duration of the game. I must complain though, that your rival in Sapphire is just WAY to easy, unlike Gary in R/B who actually put up a decently good fight. The second rival is a kid named Wally who you help early on in the game to catch his first Pokemon, and you’ll battle him at certain points in the game, although he’s a pushover in all but your last encounter with him before the Elite 4, where he’s got some pretty strong Pokemon. Then there’s the equivalent to Team Rocket (sadly, TR is NOT in Sapphire), Team Aqua, who’s evil plan is to flood the Earth with water, and so you’ll battle them throughout the game also (in Ruby, Team Magma are your third rival and instead of flooding the Earth, they want to expand the landmass).

Since you can no longer “Catch em’ all!”, because of there only being 202 Pokemon in Sapphire, there are other side-quests that you can participate in once you’ve beaten the Elite 4, such as the battle tower brought over from Pokemon Crystal, and also a brand new addition to Pokemon, Beauty Contests. The beauty contest haven’t really interested me any, so I’ve not really gotten into them to much, but it's surely a nice addition to add replayability and also for those who like to show their Pokemon off (I like to also, but I’ll do that by battling instead). As for the battle tower, there are two level classes - Level 50 and Level 100. Only Pokemon who are Level 50 or below are aloud to battle in the lvl50 class, and Pokemon that are above lvl.50 are only aloud to battle in the lvl.100 class. You’ll choose 3 of your Pokemon to battle with, and then test your abilities by battling through a continuous string of trainers. This is a nice way to level up Pokemon, or what I use it for, which is to hone in on my battle techniques, as I plan to participate in Nintendo sponsored tournaments, plus for when I battle my friends.

Speaking of battle, a new addition to Sapphire’s battle system is 2 on 2 battles, a very cool feature which adds twice as much strategy than a regular battle has. For one, the first two Pokemon in your party will be the ones that are sent out to battle. Second, there are some moves that will also affect your partner Pokemon. So, say you’ve got a Graveler that has the move Magnitude, when you use it, not only does the Pokemon that you attacked receive damage, but your partner Pokemon will also take damage (unless it’s a flying type or it has the levitate ability, so there’s a little bit of strategy right there). Unfortunately, I made that mistake using Graveler’s Magnitude with Blaziken as my partner Pokemon when I was facing the seventh gym leader, which is the only 2 on 2 battle that was mandatory. The 2 on 2 battles are actually really fun, however there weren’t enough of them, and so whenever Pokemon Emerald/Topaz/or whatever it’s called comes out (the expansion to Sapphire and Ruby, you know, like Yellow and Crystal), I hope that more 2 on 2 battles are mandatory, and that there are a ton more of them.

Graphics
The visuals in Pokemon have never ceased to amaze me, from the Red/Blue shaded Red and Blue on Gameboy Color (they were originally released for the original Gameboy, but when played on the Gameboy Color, each one had a certain color palette to it’s color, so everything in Pokemon Blue was shaded different shades of Blues), to Gold and Silver’s colorful representation of the GBC’s graphical power (back then at least), however I always thought there could have been much more room for improvement. Now, with the Gameboy Advance’s 32-bit power, the world of Pokemon is brought to life even more.

Pokemon Sapphire is so very colorful, and it’s always a pleasure to look at. Even the minor details such as foot prints in the sand, the falling ash from a volcano, and torrential rains; they were all done so well, not to mention the reflections in the water were totally cool. It’s actually the smaller details in the game that people will most likely appreciate the most, and these little details are visually appealing in many ways; whether you’re a Poke-maniac or are brand new to the series.

Also the Pokemon are much more fine-tuned, making them look very smooth and bright in color, including a kind of “shine” that glare from some Pokemon (no it’s not a shiny Pokemon, the graphics are just that damn good). Most of the new Pokemon designs are really cool like Sharpedo, Aggron, Kyogre, Latias, Blaziken (looks like a mix between Madonna and Aerosmith, and Chanticleer from the classic animation/movie Rockadoodle) and Gardevoir - however there are still the ones that look really stupid, like Treecko for instance, which I personally hate. Also, the few Pokemon from the original 150 are slightly different in appearance, however not much, just something to make them look different than previous versions.

The attack animations have also been changed around a bit, but not really enough to not be able to recognize a certain attack. I was kind of disappointed with some of the old moves new animations, because instead of being a fast and quick attack, such as Bubblebeam and Flamethrower, now they seem like they take way to long for some reason.

Sound
I don’t think there was anything special here, except that the different tunes seemed more orchestrated than midi style, but that’s probably due to the GBA’s hardware being capable of such things. The new Pokemon “cries” aren’t quite as annoying as the previous versions have been, however after hearing a Zigzagzoon or Zubat/Golbat for the billionth time, I’m sure you’ll be ready to throw the cartridge out the window, hoping that it gets smashed into a million pieces.

Overall
Pokemon Sapphire is just what Nintendo needed to resurrect the Pokemon franchise from it’s fading void. There are so many new features that it doesn’t even seem like Sapphire is the 3rd game in the series (7th if you count each of the games as its own game). It’s a refreshing taste of how Pokemon should be, and although the Pokemon attack ratio should be distributed more equally because if I see another Zigzagzoon or Zubat/Golbat, I’m going to scream - the game is still great. For maximum fun, hook up to 3 other buddies to play a 4-player battle. The best of the best - Pokemon Sapphire (and Ruby). Eagerly hopes that online battles can take place in the near future by use of Broadband adapter and/or the Gameboy Player/Link Cable.

happy gaming