Even though the 10 or more Pokemon games that Nintendo has released for the Game Boy, then the Color, and now the Advance have been very popular, the core of the series has remained unshakable. A boy or girl hero goes out into the world to become the greatest trainer of a bizarre yet mysterious race of creatures known as the Pokemon.

Along the way the hero will have some “different” adventures. Although Emerald is somewhat of a director’s cut of Ruby and Sapphire, it will feel very familiar to players and will likely hold a great deal of appeal to the uninitiated or those who have taken a vacation away from Pokemon.

At the start of the game, you’ll choose a young boy or young girl who is recently transplanted to a new town. You’ll quickly ditch your mom in order to follow in the footsteps of your dad, who as luck would have it is already a Pokemon master. After being given your first Pokemon by a local science man named Professor Birch, you’ll head off into the world to catch, train, and fight Pokemon.

You’ll quickly rank up your own standing as a Pokemon trainer by traveling around the many towns and beating the head trainer of the local Pokemon gym. During your quest you’ll eventually get mixed up with some unsavory business with Team Aqua and Team Magma, two nefarious groups of Pokemon trainers. Although the writing isn’t as clever as series of the past, it still pops and normally avoids the kind of repeating tone that makes most kids games boring by people outside of the intended age bracket.

In general, the Pokemon are a fairly weird yet likeable bunch of creatures. Even within the game’s reality, their origins are somewhat vague, yet despite their widely varied abilities and appearances, all Pokemon will have a few things in common. The most important thing of all is the fact that Pokemon LOVE to fight other Pokemon, whether it’s a head to head brawl or a two on two match up.

As they fight more and more in the game, they will gain experience and learn new move sets. Occasionally, a Pokemon will evolve itself into a sleeker yet more aggressive version of what it already is, taking on a new name as well. The Pokemon genre has always been expertly programmed in to compulsive yet obsessive traits of gamers, making fighting a key part of the game.

Although you’ll spend a great deal of time fighting and looking for fights, there are many other activities as well. You can breed your Pokemon, enter them into contests, pick and plant berries (you can feed them to your Pokemon for stat points), gamble in casinos, and much more. There’s plenty of optional stuff such as this that will help to flesh out the entire world of Emerald.

The biggest strength and driving force of Pokemon Emerald is the overall accessibility. The RPG (Role Playing Game) structure has been completely streamlined to make it easier to pick up and play for non gamers, without losing the depth that will make avid gamers play for days and days. Although Pokemon fans will find this to be something they have played before, it does add new areas and tweaks a lot of other details as well. There are new abilities in the game as well as the ability to use a GBA adapter to link up with other players.

Avid players who have already soaked up everything that Pokemon games in the past have to offer will definitely appreciate the great changes that Emerald makes; thanks in part to the “got to catch them all” mentality that the series is well known for. Despite the fact that the game is made from mostly recycled parts, it still proves that the Pokemon formula works great after all these years. Resulting from this is a great RPG that most fans will find to be a great experience.

- Top-GBA-Games.com