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Why do some people think oras is the worst remake?

Was oras really that bad?

  • Oras sucks

    Votes: 9 25.0%
  • Oras was OK/good

    Votes: 27 75.0%

  • Total voters
    36
Then they shouldn't have opened that can of worms with BW2. If they can't meet people's expectations then people are going to stop buying.

Maybe not. But then again, I'm not so sure about your assessment of peoples' expectations of remakes. It could be the case, but I'm not convinced. As I've said before, I think if they'd thrown in a Battle Fronter, most of the controversy around ORAS would dissipate. I've always felt like my more radical preferences for remakes were a minority position.

My sense of it is that people didn't want "sequelesque" Ruby/Sapphire remakes, they just wanted a faithful Emerald remake.

And really, ORAS are arguably the remakes that change the most about the originals. FRLG didn't really change anything about Kanto, they just added the Sevii Islands. HGSS made additions, but more in the way of filling in the empty spaces that existed in the originals. ORAS completely rework the Abandoned Ship and Mauville City, and they expand the Scorched Slab into a small dungeon with multiple items and a Legendary Pokémon rather than a single room with a TM. That may not be a lot compared to what they could have changed, but I'd say it's a step in the right direction.

Sinnoh doesn't really need a sequel as much as Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Kalos really, the major reasons for a sequel are to either expand the region, progress the storyline, or provide some other kind of major change, and Sinnoh doesn't really need that. I suppose seeing how Galactic's focus on new sources of energy under Saturn could be interesting to see, but beyond that the only thing Sinnoh could really use is a few more Pokemon in the Sinnoh Dex. Really, they don't need a sequel per se, nothing I suggested for ORAS requires a time skip either, they just need to be flexible enough to make larger scale changes when needed.

I dunno man, I think Sinnoh is actually pretty repetitive. I love Sinnoh as a whole, certainly more than Hoenn, but it's as addicted to caves as Hoenn is addicted to water. At the least, I think they'd be wise to overhaul the caves so as to make each of them more unique.

I also think that Hoenn and Kalos are fine regions for the most part; they've got diverse environments and I think there's a good length to both of their main campaigns. They could both use something to do in the post-game, but I don't have much of an issue with the main body of either region.

And if they linearize Sinnoh they're going to get a lot more grief from the fans because Sinnoh's primary appeal is that it's a large, open ended, and content rich region, if they ruin that they're defeating half of the purpose of remaking it in the first place and that's going to kill off their hardcore audience. If they're smart though, what they should really be doing is going back through Sinnoh and evaluating how they can make it more casual friendly WITHOUT compromising the region's appeal. Otherwise there's really not much point in remaking it in the first place.

I think what they'll do is the same as what they did with ORAS - keep the layout the same, but provide optional shortcuts for whenever the path branches out.
 
Maybe not. But then again, I'm not so sure about your assessment of peoples' expectations of remakes. It could be the case, but I'm not convinced. As I've said before, I think if they'd thrown in a Battle Fronter, most of the controversy around ORAS would dissipate. I've always felt like my more radical preferences for remakes were a minority position.

My sense of it is that people didn't want "sequelesque" Ruby/Sapphire remakes, they just wanted a faithful Emerald remake.

Oh no, there was a lot of confusion in ORAS' prerelease about exactly what kind of game it was thanks to some of the PR surrounding it (such as calling it "a brand new adventure" and having "new Pokemon") which led to a lot of expectations that ORAS would be a sequel and have a major dex expansion and they ended up disappointed when we saw that it wasn't any of those things. It's not just the Battle Frontier and Emerald elements.

And really, ORAS are arguably the remakes that change the most about the originals. FRLG didn't really change anything about Kanto, they just added the Sevii Islands. HGSS made additions, but more in the way of filling in the empty spaces that existed in the originals. ORAS completely rework the Abandoned Ship and Mauville City, and they expand the Scorched Slab into a small dungeon with multiple items and a Legendary Pokémon rather than a single room with a TM. That may not be a lot compared to what they could have changed, but I'd say it's a step in the right direction.

And I won't exactly disagree with you there, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter if they changed more than FRLG and HGSS if it doesn't meet the fans' expectations.

I dunno man, I think Sinnoh is actually pretty repetitive. I love Sinnoh as a whole, certainly more than Hoenn, but it's as addicted to caves as Hoenn is addicted to water. At the least, I think they'd be wise to overhaul the caves so as to make each of them more unique.

The other thing they need to do, which is something that a dex expansion could also benefit, is put unique Pokemon in there. At the very least then there'd be something significant to make each of those caves worth your time. This is another reason I wanted to see a Hoenn Dex expansion, because a lot of areas have pretty repetitive distributions and feel almost redundant (primarily the water routes, but Rt. 123 is another example).

I also think that Hoenn and Kalos are fine regions for the most part; they've got diverse environments and I think there's a good length to both of their main campaigns. They could both use something to do in the post-game, but I don't have much of an issue with the main body of either region.

The post game is kind of major, but there's other issues going on. Hoenn has regional dex problems and general design/aesthetic issues. Kalos just isn't very fleshed out and has a lot of areas that are lacking in character or lore and just feels like it's hiding a lot more than we could experience (much more so than any other region).

I think what they'll do is the same as what they did with ORAS - keep the layout the same, but provide optional shortcuts for whenever the path branches out.

I would be fine with this, I think there's a couple of sections that could benefit from being more navigable after you've gone through them before. Ravaged Path serves as little more than a roadblock until you use Rock Smash, it'd be very nice to just have a set of stairs climbing up to Rt. 204N as a shortcut (maybe through Strength). Mt. Coronet and Solaceon Ruins also have some secret areas that could also make for nice shortcuts, Solaceon Ruins could let you use Maniac's Tunnel to cut across to Veilstone and Mt. Coronet could allow you to use that hidden exit to Rt. 207 as a shortcut up the mountain. I have no problem with little things like that, my issue would be more with things like if they removed or nerfed an area that existed in the originals or added another roadblock.
 
I think I have a few ideas on how to approach the open-ends of Sinnoh without alienating casual players. But it requires the addition of a mechanic that was scrapped since X/Y

Yes I'm talking about seasons. The idea would be that certain pokemon would be stronger in certain seasons, this would encourage a different path per RL month For example the area around Hearthome City from the West would have pokemon suited for the point between the 2nd (Oreburg) and 3rd gyms but would be more challenging during the Winter being more appropriate for before the 6th Gym instead.

Alternatively we could have flags in place in certain areas, where the badge order would dictate what level the pokemon in the respective area would be. Using Hearthome again, if Fantina was the leader beaten, the pokemon would be around 25-30ish, but if Crasher Wake and Maylene were beaten before her then that means the pokemon around there would jump to around 10 levels max. (Candice and Volkner would be unaffected on this because the plot forces them to be the 7th and 8th leaders, respectively). It might cause problems if people skip too many gyms and explore too many areas, but it could be fixed by adding another flag where the path the player is backtracking has a level spike. (For example, going Wake>Fantina>Maylene would mean the the pokemon along that ares would progressively improve. The same would apply to Maylene>Wake>Fantina, Maylene>Fantina>Wake and Wake>Maylene>Fantina. Until one of thsoe three are beat, all pokemon in those areas would be at the same level average)
 
My sense of it is that people didn't want "sequelesque" Ruby/Sapphire remakes, they just wanted a faithful Emerald remake.
If a "faithful Emerald remake" meant Wallace being the champion and Steven Stone being locked away for a one-time-only boss-battle, then it would have been really disappointing ._.

That being said, I do agree that as RS remakes, ORAS did change a lot of things significantly, and threw in extra story plots here and there. I think they did their best to include as much Emerald elements as possible while giving characters more personal details - Wally being one of the most improved and becoming an actual rival figure instead of the random boy people often forgot about. Courtney wasn't even in the Emerald games, and they gave her a whole new design and a personality that made her popular. Magma and Aqua were shown to be clearly different groups with different goals instead of mirroring one another. We even got a Contest Spectacular side-quest. And the Secret Bases got upgraded. And you can get all the mega stones in each game. The diving areas got developed and expanded.

Maybe it's because Hoenn is my favorite region that I'm biased, but seriously, ORAS are cool remakes.
 
Oh no, there was a lot of confusion in ORAS' prerelease about exactly what kind of game it was thanks to some of the PR surrounding it (such as calling it "a brand new adventure" and having "new Pokemon") which led to a lot of expectations that ORAS would be a sequel and have a major dex expansion and they ended up disappointed when we saw that it wasn't any of those things. It's not just the Battle Frontier and Emerald elements.

I think you may be exaggerating there. I don't know what sites you frequent, but personally, while I remember there being a bit of confusion over the use of those terms (as well as an equally-sized contingent of people who still expected typical remakes - we had Iwata's description of them as "full remakes" and the fact that Game Freak have used those terms in an inexact context before), I don't remember any drastic negative fallout resulting from their inaccuracy. I definitely don't see very many recurring complaints about ORAS not being sequels these days.

In any case, that's not really a problem with the games themselves so much as it is a problem with the marketing.

The other thing they need to do, which is something that a dex expansion could also benefit, is put unique Pokemon in there. At the very least then there'd be something significant to make each of those caves worth your time. This is another reason I wanted to see a Hoenn Dex expansion, because a lot of areas have pretty repetitive distributions and feel almost redundant (primarily the water routes, but Rt. 123 is another example).

Agreed. The water routes in ORAS were still wretched, distribution-wise.

The post game is kind of major, but there's other issues going on. Hoenn has regional dex problems and general design/aesthetic issues. Kalos just isn't very fleshed out and has a lot of areas that are lacking in character or lore and just feels like it's hiding a lot more than we could experience (much more so than any other region).

I guess. I don't like Hoenn's Regional Dex either and it's certainly not my favorite region (second-least, in fact). I am a big fan of Kalos, although I'll agree that they could have done more with certain areas. On the whole, I was still largely satisfied with both of them in Gen 6, though, so we've now entered an area in which I just don't share the same level of disappointment as you.

I would be fine with this, I think there's a couple of sections that could benefit from being more navigable after you've gone through them before. Ravaged Path serves as little more than a roadblock until you use Rock Smash, it'd be very nice to just have a set of stairs climbing up to Rt. 204N as a shortcut (maybe through Strength). Mt. Coronet and Solaceon Ruins also have some secret areas that could also make for nice shortcuts, Solaceon Ruins could let you use Maniac's Tunnel to cut across to Veilstone and Mt. Coronet could allow you to use that hidden exit to Rt. 207 as a shortcut up the mountain. I have no problem with little things like that, my issue would be more with things like if they removed or nerfed an area that existed in the originals or added another roadblock.

As far as any Rock Smash obstacles go, I think the boulders should just stay permanently smashed. This is something that irritated the high hell out of me in ORAS - clearly, they were capable of doing it from a programming perspective, since the boulders in Rusturf Tunnel stay gone. But what about the boulders north of Mauville (a path we're more likely to be reusing)? Inexcusable.

That being said, I do agree that as RS remakes, ORAS did change a lot of things significantly, and threw in extra story plots here and there. I think they did their best to include as much Emerald elements as possible while giving characters more personal details - Wally being one of the most improved and becoming an actual rival figure instead of the random boy people often forgot about. Courtney wasn't even in the Emerald games, and they gave her a whole new design and a personality that made her popular. Magma and Aqua were shown to be clearly different groups with different goals instead of mirroring one another. We even got a Contest Spectacular side-quest. And the Secret Bases got upgraded. And you can get all the mega stones in each game. The diving areas got developed and expanded.

I mean, keep in mind that I like ORAS very much and have no problem with them leaving out what they did from Emerald. I think most of it wouldn't have added that much anyway, or would have been redundant. As I've said, I think the Battle Frontier was a more complicated issue than the rest of the Emerald stuff, but it's also one that I don't personally care about since I wouldn't have been likely to use it much anyway. I think there are absolutely areas in which ORAS could have done better, just like XY, but in the cases of both those games, the good far outweighs the bad for me.
 
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I think you may be exaggerating there. I don't know what sites you frequent, but personally, while I remember there being a bit of confusion over the use of those terms (as well as an equally-sized contingent of people who still expected typical remakes - we had Iwata's description of them as "full remakes" and the fact that Game Freak have used those terms in an inexact context before), I don't remember any drastic negative fallout resulting from their inaccuracy. I definitely don't see very many recurring complaints about ORAS not being sequels these days.

In any case, that's not really a problem with the games themselves so much as it is a problem with the marketing.

It's a problem with both really, because in the end people just expected more changes from the game and latched onto whatever "evidence" they could to convince themselves more change was happening.

As far as any Rock Smash obstacles go, I think the boulders should just stay permanently smashed. This is something that irritated the high hell out of me in ORAS - clearly, they were capable of doing it from a programming perspective, since the boulders in Rusturf Tunnel stay gone. But what about the boulders north of Mauville (a path we're more likely to be reusing)? Inexcusable.

Depending on what the Rock Smash boulders are used for, they can't really do that. Usually there's also Pokemon and items to be found in them, and leaving them permanently smashed robs people of the opportunity to find those things.
 
It's a problem with both really, because in the end people just expected more changes from the game and latched onto whatever "evidence" they could to convince themselves more change was happening.

That's... still not the games' fault. If they had been more specific in their wording, then certain people wouldn't have gotten the wrong expectations. That's pretty much the root of the issue.

Not that it actually translated into a commercial problem, of course. I'd argue that, relatively speaking, fans probably whip themselves up into a frenzy of wild expectations for every game.

Depending on what the Rock Smash boulders are used for, they can't really do that. Usually there's also Pokemon and items to be found in them, and leaving them permanently smashed robs people of the opportunity to find those things.

I realize that (Although, does anyone really care that much? There's no item that has to be locked to Rock Smash, and none of the Pokémon that are available through the method are very impressive...), but they could simply, you know, perma-smash the main boulders and then have some respawning ones off to the side.
 
Because they actively omitted things that people liked about Emerald, and designed the game largely around their more modern audience. So it left them feeling like the game just wasn't a complete Hoenn experience.

Coming off of Morimoto's direction for HGSS ('Let's do as much as we can to reach as wide an audience as we can'), it was disappointing. Meanwhile FRLG is just sort of there, and I don't think there are many strong opinions on it. It didn't change a-lot about Kanto, but it didn't make the game less fun either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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Because they actively omitted things that people liked about Emerald, and designed the game largely around their more modern audience. So it left them feeling like the game just wasn't a complete Hoenn experience.

Coming off of Morimoto's direction for HGSS ('Let's do as much as we can to reach as wide an audience as we can'), it was disappointing. Meanwhile FRLG is just sort of there, and I don't think there are many strong opinions on it. It didn't change a-lot about Kanto, but it didn't make the game less fun either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sort of there? It was big at the time.
 
Sort of there? It was big at the time.

At the time yes, but HGSS and ORAS have put FRLG to shame. And that's the thing, while FRLG might have been novel at the time, that style of remake just isn't very impressive anymore, not when we've seen other regions get much bigger improvements.
 
At the time yes, but HGSS and ORAS have put FRLG to shame. And that's the thing, while FRLG might have been novel at the time, that style of remake just isn't very impressive anymore, not when we've seen other regions get much bigger improvements.

Obviously noted the at that time. Don't see the reason to add some tacked on stuff that bears no difference to what I posted but whatevs.

Anyway remakes are shit and don't add much. I don't care about region lore or expanding it, or having new features that are really dull or add nothing to my experience. So in saying that I think ORAS sucks, HGSS sucks and FRLG sucks, I would rather go back and play those games and they are accessible through Virtual Console and GBA.
 
None of the 3 remakes we have had sofar has been shit imo. Far from it. FRLG was ok, HGSS is great, and ORAS is equally great. That's how I judge the 3 of them.
 
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I liked ORAS. Considering my favorite Pokémon was in Ruby / Sapphire and I never had Emerald, I didn't have much to nitpick about, except maybe the re-inclusion of the Sevii Islands (being present in FRLG and how finishing the post-game quest led to being able to trade with RSE players, it'd have made sense to have them again). Maybe it wasn't the best remake overall, but I'm pretty content with it.

... That didn't answer the main question of the topic, did it ? xD

Some players thought the RSE games (at least RS) felt weaker than the other versions in many ways. Or they don't like water routes. Or berry planting. Meh, I don't know. Every version of any game will have someone nitpicking about something, either trivial or important.
 
I wouldn't say any of the remakes have been shit, but we can definitely do better with remakes now. FRLG was pretty pedestrian for its time and feels mediocre now, HGSS was the most constructive of the three but we can still see better nowadays, and ORAS adds some neat things but is overall disappointing. BW2's approach to revisiting old regions puts all of these games to shame, and there's multiple regions that could benefit from a similar approach (Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Kalos).
 
Lets not confuse between sequel and remake. BW2 is a sequel, and it doesn´t really compete with remakes at all. It is its own concept, just like remakes are.

If FRLG, HGSS and ORAS had "BW2- amount of changes" they wouldn´t be remakes anymore, and a significant portion of the fandom would complain that they are not accurate enough...

GF simply can´t please everyone. And when you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody. So GF should just keep making remakes the way they have made them until now, (especially like HGSS and ORAS.)

Not to mention, sales show that that they don´t need to change their style of remaking, because all 3 remakes were very successful, with ORAS being the best seller.
 
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BW2's approach to revisiting old regions puts all of these games to shame

But the thing there is, I don't think Game Freak view "revisiting old regions" as a broad thing that covers sequels, third versions, and remakes alike. I think they probably see each of those as individual prompts, with each one calling for different things. I'd be surprised if anybody at Game Freak thought that a remake should attempt B2W2-level revision.

For instance, B2W2 came immediately after a pair of Unova games. It follows that they would want to change up the Unova region a lot, so as to provide a substantially different experience from the one you just played a year or two ago. Remakes, on the other hand, come many years after the originals and are more about reliving old memories. So I think the inclination would be to keep things closer to the same. You obviously upgrade and change some things, but "making the region better" simply isn't the goal (actually, I'd argue that "making the region better" wasn't the goal with B2W2 either).

It reminds me of a quote from one of the Game Freak employees in HGSS:

> "What do you think? I am the President here. We are remaking an old game, but this is quite a challenge. Old fans would not want us to mess with their good memories... but there is no point in just redoing the same thing, right? We are working toward something that brings back memories, yet is also completely new! I've been in this business for 20 years now, but creating a game is always a rewarding challenge!"

Evidently, the amount of change seen in HGSS was deemed appropriate. So, new features like the Pokéathlon, Pokéwalker, Johto Safari Zone, etc., but otherwise still the same.
 
There really isn't much of a difference between the three. The only differences are third versions are made a few years after the original, remakes are made several generations after the original, and sequels have a time skip. For the most part the updates each of them make can easily translate into any of the others, and that includes new features, new areas, storyline improvements, and dex expansions. In the case of a remake, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect a time skip because it's supposed to be a recreation of the original experience, but that doesn't mean they can't make some large scale improvements. It really just comes down to knowing what to keep the same and what to change, and Game Freak definitely needs to improve in that area (not just for remakes, but in general).
 
The problem I had with ORAS is that they didn't re-create the nostalgic experience I had since I began with Emerald. I never played Sapphire or Ruby since I never had a reason to.

This could be another reason for some hate towards ORAS.
 
I doubt many fans wanted to see Wallace as Champion in ORAS, instead of Steven. I know I didn´t...

Trainer´s Eye is also a better rematch system than Emerald´s Match Call imo, since we don´t need to wait for a phone call in order to rematch somebody. We can directly go and rematch whoever we want at our own pace with Trainer´s Eye.

Not to mention, Emerald also nerfed Origin´s Cave, and made it permanently inaccessible after the main game is over. ORAS restored it back to it´s full size and made it available to explore in the postgame again.

All things considered, there was always gonna be somebody unsatisfied with ORAS. GF just decided to cater to the majority. And it´s not like they did nothing for us Emerald fanboys, either. The Delta Episode is full of Emerald homages and nods, for instance.
 
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The problem I had with ORAS is that they didn't re-create the nostalgic experience I had since I began with Emerald. I never played Sapphire or Ruby since I never had a reason to.

Which is unfortunate if you're somebody who started with Emerald, but recreating Emerald wasn't what they were trying to do. They weren't trying to recreate Crystal with HGSS, either, even with as much as people like to say "But Suicune!!!!!!!"
 
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