Format: Advance
Genre: RPG
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo

Welcome to status effect hell. If you haven't seen my review of Pokemon Sapphire, I suggest checking that out first. I'll mostly be talking about Ruby specifically in comparison to Sapphire in this review. To start off, Pokemon Ruby is an RPG, if you haven't played it, it's your basic monster catch RPG, catch enemies, make them slaves, level them up. Simple. The difference between Ruby and Sapphire is that this time around you're fighting team magma instead of team aqua. Their goal is to expand the land, not the ocean. Interestingly enough, their choice in pokemon is far better than sapphire. Team Aqua uses an absurd amount of poochyenas, whereas team magma throws in a good combination, including a lot of numels. Another difference are the wild pokemon you can catch. In Sapphire you can get a Sableye early on in the game which helps a lot with HM moves, however, Mawile is the replacement pokemon in that area in Ruby. Unlike Sableye, Mawile fits more of the role of a dedicated party member, similiar to geodude from generation 1. Lotads have been replaced by Seedots as well, which can learn a few decent HMs. Fake-Ekans has been replaced by Zangoose, which could possibly be the strongest pokemon in the game. No matter how many times I fight it, it's always scary when throwing slashes. Lunatone gets replaced by Solrock, favoring a more variety of moves like fire spin, rock slide, and solarbeam compared to it's purely psychic moon counterpart. The biggest switch up is obviously the legendary Groudon vs Kyogre. I earnestly question what gamefreak was thinking when they made Groudon a "ground" type pokemon instead of a fire type. They could have at least made him a ground/fire type. His big gimmick is that he makes a permanent "sunny day" effect which increases fire-type moves and lets you solarbeam every time. If you're quick on the upkeep like I am, you also made sure to grab a pokemon with chlorophyll to take advantage of the speed bonus you get from it. The game is identical to sapphire in it's story and gameplay. Despite being identical, the simple fact that Team magma uses a slightly more diverse set of pokemon than Team Aqua makes the game feel far more fleshed out and balanced by comparison. By the end of the game, it's still a piece of crap with balance and leveling issues. Personally I think that Groudon made the elite 4 harder than his aquatic brother. With Groudon, he lacked special defense, and often was hit with super effective moves. While Kyogre may not have had the exact answer to fight every enemy, his natural spdef was far superior and he had a strong moveset as well. The elite 4 were an absolute pain regardless, as they would spam paralysis or confusion along with highly damaging moves. Level grinding alone at the end of the game took a much more ridiculous amount of time this time around because I did not have Kyogre to rely on. Bellossom was my bread winner, who did take advantage of Groudon's Drought. I'll end it here with this just like I did last time: I'd take gen 2 any day of the week or fire red/leaf green over R/S/E. +0.1 score for variety of enemies #TeamMagma.

Hot Tips: Mawile can learn icebeam and flamethrower ($80,000 from game corner each), Mawile's Fake Tears is -2 SpDef.

Wailmer can learn Dive, Strength, Rock Smash, Surf, and Waterfall.

Groudon Road Requirements: Dive, Strength, Rock Smash, Surf

Victory Road Requirements: Flash, Strength, Rock Smash, Surf

All in All, This game is getting an 8.6 and I'm not sure if I'm being too generous. The game has issues, mostly exp being stupidly hard to get, as well as the same problems that sapphire has where everything knows paralysis or confusion jutsu. The balance between difficulty and reward is slightly better in this version but it's like picking between a turd and a wet turd. HM requirements are just stupid. removing max revives was a terrible idea.