Pros: Graphics, 2-on-2 battles, and everything else new...
Cons: Just about all of the new Pokemon look queer
The bottom line: Pokemon Sapphire is an improvement over Gold/Silver and Red/Blue in just about every way.
Throughout the past six years Pokemon RPG's have been some of the best sellers for Gameboy and Gameboy Color. It started with Red/Blue versions, one year after that Yellow came out, then Gold/Silver and soon after that was Crystal. With each of them being a success, It was smart for Nintendo to release new versions for the GBA. About a year ago Pokemon Advance (the original name) was announced for GBA. It ended up being two versions for the same reason as Red/Blue and was called Ruby/Sapphire. Now that they have been released, I'd have to say that there probably the best Pokemon games yet.

Story

Your a new kid in town and your next door neighbor is a Pokemon trainer. You become friends with your neighbor and you says you should become one to so you do. Now your goal is to become the best trainer in the world. Not much for a story but the Pokemon games never were known for an epic story, rather great gameplay with lots of replay value.

Gameplay

Pokemon Sapphire is an RPG where you view your character in an overhead view when walking around. You walk around the world going through towns, caves, fields and such. A random encounter will occur at times when your walking in tall grass or anywhere in a cave. During random encounters you'll face wild Pokemon which can be captured to use as your own. Besides random encounters, there's also trainer battles. These happen when you walk in front of a trainer. If there facing you, they'll challenge you.

The Pokemon games never really had much for puzzles. Sometimes you'll have to move a rock onto a switch or drop things down holes. To complete puzzles and get past objects in your way, one of your Pokemon will have to know a certain move. These moves can be learned by leveling up or taught by a TM/HM, but most of the time by a TM or HM. If there's a big rock in your way you'll have to either break it with ROCK SMASH or move it out of the way with STRENGTH. CUT is used to chop down a bush or something like that in your way. You can use SURF to surf across bodies of water. Many different things like that can be used in certain situations.

Technical Machines (TM's) and Hidden Machines (HM's) are items that you can get throughout the game to teach a Pokemon a move. TM's can only be used once so choose wisely which Pokemon will get it. TM's are usually found on the ground or given to you by people as a reward, but can be bought at certain shops. HM's are items just like TM's but they can be used as many times as you want. What sucks about them though is that when you teach an HM move to a Pokemon, they know it forever and you can't get rid of it. HM's are always given to you by people as a reward and I believe you'll need to use the move that they teach at least once in the game.

The battles in Sapphire are turn based. You decide what to do for your turn whether it be using an item, switching your current Pokemon or attack. Whichever Pokemon has the higher speed goes first on the turn. When a battle starts, whichever Pokemon is on the left side of the list gets sent out automatically. You can switch it on any turn with any other Pokemon in your party unless their fainted. You can hold up to six pokemon at a time in your party, the rest will go into your PC and you can switch any of them with one in your party when you see a PC. When attacking, you choose what move you want your Pokemon to perform. Each Pokemon can know four moves the most. There's a huge variety of attacks ranging from moves that just do damage, effect your condition like poisoning and paralyzing, raises or lowers stats of a Pokemon and more. A Pokemon should have a variety of attacks and not just moves to do damage.

New to Sapphire/Ruby is two on two battles. You take two of your Pokemon and fight against two of your opponents trainers Pokemon at a time. There isn't that many of these but there awesome. Another that was added for Gold/Silver was the ability to equip an item to your Pokemon. Each Pokemon can hold one item. It's usually a berry but can also be a power up that increases the power of a certain element. Berries serve different purposes, some heal when your HP is low and some get rid of an ailment.

Every attack has an element, as well as the Pokemon. Elements are the type of Pokemon or attack. Learning what elements are effective against what is the key to winning. Each element has something that's its effective against and something that's it's weak against. For example, Grass attacks are super effective against Water, Rock and Ground type Pokemon but there not effective against Flying and a couple of others. When using an attack that's element isn't very effective against the opponent makes it do a lot less damage. A super effective attack will do twice as much damage as normal. A good Pokemon to have on your final team for multiplayer should have all different elements of attacks.

Something new to Ruby/Sapphire is the Pokemon abilities. Each Pokemon has a special ability which they use randomly during battle. There is many different abilities which do all kinds of things. Some will get rid of a status ailment, return some damage received and stuff like that. Each Pokemon has like two abilities they can use. Abilities are used randomly so you have no control over them.

Another new thing in Ruby/Sapphire is Pokemon Contests. These are where your Pokemon go into a contest and get judged for the moves they perform. You can enter in five different types of contests, I'm not sure how there different because I've only done one. Basically what you do is perform one of your Pokemons attacks. They can earn you points if the crowd likes you and some can confuse opponents to minus there points and stuff. You'll have to use a variety of moves because repetition and mess ups minus you points.

To create your party of six Pokemon, you can catch 200 of them to choose from. Ruby/Sapphire has 100 new Pokemon added from Gold/Silver, which that would equal up to about 360 Pokemon in total ever created. Well, if there was about 360 Pokemon ever created then why only 200 in this game? My guess is for ram purposes. They probably couldn't fit all those Pokemon along with all the new things added to the game. They should have just stuck with the original 260 Pokemon because just about all of the new 100 look queer. You can catch Pokemon in the wild by weakening them in a fight then throwing a Pokeball at them. The higher the level the harder to catch, so you should keep buying the strongest balls.

An improvement over the older versions is the difficulty increase. The older Pokemon games were pretty easy, but Ruby/Sapphire have a somewhat increased difficulty. Not really for random encounters or trainers but mostly for gym leaders. Some of them will be hard enough for you to lose a few times, something unheard of in an older version. The stats seem to be more elevated to keep you from having a really powerful Pokemon. Some people won't like an increased difficulty, but to me it makes it more fun.

Graphics

One big improvement over the older versions is the graphics. They look so much better. The entire game is a lot more colorful. The battles are no longer just white and crappy looking. Each of the Pokemon look really good and even have some ground showing under them. Like if your in a cave then there's rocks around them, or grass if your in a field. Another cool thing was in the menu of your party. In older versions there was only a few different icons that your Pokemon would have. Now each Pokemon has a small picture of themselves as an icon which is pretty cool. Most of the moves look cool in battle to. Showing tornados go at the opponent with WING ATTACK and ice blocks with BLIZZARD. Even the effects from using like HM moves outside looks cool to. Instead of the rock just breaking or the tree just getting cut it shows your Pokemon fly by the screen, not much but still a little cool. That and a lot of other little things make the graphics so great.

Sound

The sounds are improved in Sapphire as well. The sounds during battles and stuff sound a little better now. There's nothing for voices but Pokemon has a noise they make when they come out into a battle. Each Pokemon have their own noise in Sapphire as well. The well sounds better to. Some of the songs are the same like the one in the Pokemon center, but there's a lot of new ones. The music is really good and sounds better then the older versions music, but I find the older music stuck in my head and not the newer stuff.

Final Comments

Pokemon Sapphire is an improvement over Gold/Silver and Red/Blue in just about every way. If it wasn't for the 160 cut Pokemon, this game would be pretty much excellent.

Release: March 17th, 2003
Developer: Nintendo
Console: GameBoy Advance
Genre: RPG
1-2 or 4 Player(s)

Final Rating: 9.6/10