Game Freak had a habit of crowning every generation with a definitive third version, and Emerald is the best of them all: it took Ruby and Sapphire, pitted the two villainous teams — Magma and Aqua — against each other in a single plot with Rayquaza as referee, and added the Battle Frontier, seven battle facilities that turned the postgame into an almost endless challenge. Hoenn, with its water routes and tropical climate, was the most geographically ambitious region yet.
Two decades later, it's one of the most replayed Pokémon games in the world: the just-right pace of the Game Boy Advance, honest difficulty, and the best postgame in the series. If you're only going to play one classic Pokémon game, the community has been pointing at this one for years.
If you liked this one
