

The result might be less cohesive than X & Y's clever take on Poké-France, but it's classic Pokémon, taking you from lush forests to haunted houses to active volcanoes with little transition between. Pokémon ORAS' aesthetic is more vibrant and scattershot than that of X & Y, featuring brighter hues and more disparate habitats than its predecessor. Most jarring is how trainers actually turn their heads to look at you when you're close - after years of seeing statuesque trainers, that effect was a bit creepy. Those touches are small, but appreciated: bird-type Pokemon fly overhead in certain routes, and schools of Luvdisc swarm by when you dive undersea. Pokémon ORAS also received the same drastic visual overhaul that Pokémon X & Y introduced, but with slightly more emphasis on making the world of Hoenn feel real, rather than just real pretty. Super Training and Pokémon Amie are also back, giving you accessible options for boosting your team's stats and friendship levels. Connecting to other players for trading, battling or sharing heals or buffs through the (still unfortunately named) O-Power system is a breeze, and makes multiplayer an integral part of the experience. The Player Search System makes a triumphant return, and operates exactly as it did in X & Y. At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, ORAS feels less like a remake, and more like an X & Y expansion, as all of its best features were introduced in last year's game.

Pokémon ORAS could best be described as a supplemental entry in the current generation of the franchise - a generation that X & Y kicked off on 3DS last year. Pokemon's problems are hard-wired into ORAS' DNA The interconnected world, vibrant aesthetic and unparalleled charm of last year's games have been layered onto Pokémon ORAS, giving it a look and feel that is unrecognizable when compared to the original 2003 Game Boy Advance titles Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire.īut the issues this franchise has always suffered from are hard-wired into the DNA of Ruby & Sapphire, and no amount of visual polish or social functionality can buff them out. That's not a condemnation of Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire ( ORAS), which smartly utilize the features that made X & Y such a long-overdue revitalization for the series.
