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Favorite Third/Enhanced Version?

Which One Did you Like Best?

  • Yellow

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Crystal

    Votes: 2 9.5%
  • Emerald

    Votes: 5 23.8%
  • Platinum

    Votes: 12 57.1%
  • Ultra Sun/Moon

    Votes: 2 9.5%

  • Total voters
    21

SammyW27

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Now that they are thing of the past (or so it seems), now feels like a good time to talk about our faves!

Me, I'm partial to Platinum. It actually felt like an improvement over its predecessors.
 
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^ personally, i wouldn't. wheras platinum/emerald etc assume a different timeline altogether, b2w2 is an actual sequel, so it is rather different in that regard. that's me, though.

but i'm more partial to platinum on this list, with crystal being a very close second if i had to pick, i think.
 
I voted Crystal. However, I can say I never played/owned Emerald or Platinum because during that time I saw no need to have more than one version of a Pokemon game (I disliked Ruby, so there's no way I was going to get Emerald, for one). Right now I'm playing through US. Seeing as I didn't much care for Sun, I can't see US causing any changes to my pick here.
 
Emerald or Platinum, I'd say. Even though my overal biggest problem of Diamond and Pearl (The goddamn slowness of it) still hasn't really been properly fixed.
 
I'd say Platinum, but all Platinum has to do is improve on Diamond & Pearl, which is setting the bar really low.

I'm not going to nominate Yellow or USUM, for the reasons I discussed in the other thread. They'd be my least-favorite picks.

So that leaves a competition between Crystal and Emerald for 1.5th place. My heart belongs to Crystal, without question, with its boundless visual charm, its quaint, immersive setting, its mystical story qualities, and its beautiful and atmospheric locales. But in all fairness, most of those things were established by Gold & Silver, and I've always felt that between Gens 2 and 3, Gen 3 is the stronger one overall. Emerald doesn't have nearly as much magic within it, but I think it is technically a better game, and aside from having a worse story compared to RS, the gameplay advancements are more appreciable than any that Crystal added relative to GS.

So since I seem to be gridlocked on that debate, I'm gonna loop back around and say Platinum lol. "Make Sinnoh Playable," yes please and thank you
 
crystal. I swear I can play this game over and over and over... it's so fun. I never get bored! the one downside is that Mareep was removed from the list of obtainable Pokémon, so I'd have to trade. =( and that's a pretty big downside for me, though I enjoy the game very much anyway.
 
I owe my heart to Emerald for giving me a complete Pokémon experience before I knew what that meant. I love the new postgame zones, the well-paced story, the Johto safari and the Battle Frontier.

I liked Platinum but most features don't feel nearly as essential, and the few interesting ones (Wi-Fi plaza, Regis, Rotom forms) are locked behind events or disconnected servers. Of course, I'd still play it over DP and the Distortion World rules.

I'm in a weird state with USUM right now, some features were flawed but others were truly great and I liked how they tied perfectly to Alola's culture. Maybe I'm just feeling last generation nostalgia because I can't play the game right now, but I'm giving it a solid second place.
 
Platinum gets my vote for being the one that improved upon its predecessors the most. It made a lot of the same improvements that Emerald made (better story, both legendaries available, more postgame content, slightly enhanced overworld graphics) as well as a few more (expanded Pokedex, new Pokemon forms, increased gameplay speed). I still think that the Distortion World is one of the most amazing things we've seen in a Pokemon game to date.

I don't rate any of the Gen I games particularly highly, but I like Yellow a lot more than Red and Blue. The partner Pikachu, the colours and the drastic improvements made to the front sprites (but not the back sprites, sadly) help to make the somewhat clunky gameplay more charming.

I adore Crystal for its sprite animations, which were ahead of their time (and are arguably better than the Emerald and Gen IV ones), and the fact that you can catch Celebi in the Virtual Console version. But apart from these things, the Suicune subplot and the Battle Tower, it's almost the same as Gold and Silver.

Emerald is a great game; I particularly liked fighting both Team Magma and Team Aqua (as opposed to one team being the "good guys", which I always thought was a bit silly) and the addition of more, optional double battles. The only things that bothered me about Emerald were the battle tents replacing three of the contest halls, and the fact that they kept Rayquaza at level 70 despite it now being available before the Pokemon League. The only way you can realistically catch a level 70 legendary at this stage of the game is to use the Master Ball, and then if you do, the rest of the game becomes too easy.

Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon failed to improve upon Sun and Moon overall due to the incoherent story, something I talked about in the other thread.
 
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slightly enhanced overworld graphics

Me I'd say it's a fair bit more than a slight improvement. Comparing the Battle Zone between the originals and Platinum is just... man, they redid the whole tileset just to give it its own unique volcanic atmosphere, where in the originals it was just more of the same brown/seafoam green paste you spent the whole main campaign looking at. But maybe I put extra emphasis on it because mainland Sinnoh looks pretty ugly to me in general.

Sinnoh_Route_228_DP.png

Sinnoh_Route_228_Pt.png
 
I'd actually forgotten about the changes to the Battle Zone! That's even more reason to celebrate Platinum. I was thinking about the minor changes to the main Sinnoh region - updates to the trees, tall grass etc.

I've been thinking about these enhanced version polls and how I might have voted differently if I had used different criteria. This is how I rank them based on how much they improved upon their predecessors (the criteria I used for voting):

1. Platinum
2. Emerald
3. Crystal
4. Yellow
5. Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon

But if I were to rank them based on how much I like each game overall, including elements carried over from their predecessors, it's a slightly different story:

1. Crystal
2. Platinum
3. Emerald
4. Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon
5. Yellow

I thought that the first ranking system was fairer, because it prevents some games from having an unfair advantage by having better predecessors to improve upon. But now I'm not so sure. Perhaps the only reason Platinum made so many improvements is because Diamond and Pearl had so many flaws.

I could even judge them based on how drastically different they are from their predecessors, in which case Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon would definitely win, no matter how much I dislike the story. You could say that the more different an enhanced version is, for better or worse, the easier it is to justify its existence.

I find it difficult to rank games - or anything, for that matter - because there are so many different sets criteria you can use.
 
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I thought that the first ranking system was fairer, because it prevents some games from having an unfair advantage by having better predecessors to improve upon. But now I'm not so sure. Perhaps the only reason Platinum made so many improvements is because Diamond and Pearl had so many flaws.

I could even judge them based on how drastically different they are from their predecessors, in which case Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon would definitely win, no matter how much I dislike the story. You could say that the more different an enhanced version is, for better or worse, the easier it is to justify its existence.

I find it difficult to rank games - or anything, for that matter - because there are so many different sets criteria you can use.

Yeah I waffled on what criteria was best as well. I always do when thinking about Pokémon games, because for instance, pretty much all of the introductory pairs make some huge, critical advancements for the series, so sometimes I feel like their relative shortcomings don't matter as much in terms of how much refinement or reinvention they brought to the table. Red & Blue is probably the hardest for me to give an obvious place to, since I can't stand to actually play them (and even as a child I had problems with them, so it's not just me being older now), but there's no denying the unparalleled power they clearly possess by virtue of launching the series so successfully and establishing core concepts that have stood the test of time for two whole decades.
 
Platinum, it has a massive amount of content, the regional Dex was good for its time, Distortion World is amazing, th storyline is decent by Pokemon standards, and Cynthia, Gym Leaders and Team Galactic aren't complete pushovers.
That being said, I also like Emerald and Black 2/White 2, if those count.
 
Crystal! It's still my favorite of the "old" games. I love Johto and while HGSS are my favorites in that regard, Crystal is still a really fun experience.

If BW2 were on the list then that would win hands down, but I agree that those aren't really an enhanced version - they're an actual sequel rather than the same thing with a few changes, so they don't count.
 
I'll go with Platinum. I remember really enjoying the expanded storyline, especially the new areas for the post-storyline, the Distortion World was so cool, the Sinnoh Pokedex was improved upon and the Battle Frontier was much more enjoyable for me than it was in Emerald.

Crystal would be a close second. While it isn't my first Pokemon game, it was the first game where I got my team up to level one hundred. I remember being so happy about that and in retrospect, I'm kind of surprised I was able to do that when level grinding was so tedious for the earlier generations. I loved the animation for the sprites and being able to play as a girl for the first time was neat. I'm surprised that I don't have more nostalgic fondness for Kris, especially when her design is pretty good, but I think it's a combination of the playable characters being blank slates and other playable girl trainers having better/more memorable default designs. I really enjoyed the Suicune storyline too.

US/UM would honestly be third. Like I said in the previous thread, I have mixed feelings on the games. A lot of the major changes didn't sit well with me, but a lot of the new features and small changes were great. I loved having the chance to train Pokemon like Skrelp and Tyrunt that I had missed out on before and the updates to the Alola Pokedex were pretty great. Using different teams combined with those changes to the storyline and new features helped to make going through Alola again feel fresh.

I don't remember liking Emerald that much, but since I can't remember why exactly, I guess it would be more fair to put it at fourth. Yellow would be my least favorite as a result instead.
 
In order of preference

1. Platinum
2. Emerald
3. Yellow
4. B2W2
5. Crystal
6. Gen 6's lack of 3rd version
7. USUM

Isle of Armour on its own would be between B2W2 and Crystal, Crown Tundra added on could push it even higher.
 
Please note: The thread is from 4 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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