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Welcome to Hoenn!

In Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire you once again play the part of a young trainer (either the male trainer Brendan or the female trainer May depending on your gender) starting out on their Pokémon journey. This time around, your family has just moved from Johto and as you set out to explore your new home region you come across the local Pokémon professor, Professor Birch (yes, I know, another professor named after a tree). Birch is being attacked by a wild Poochyena and needs your help, so you quicly take a pokéball from his bag and start your first battle. After that it's back to the lab where he'll give you the Pokémon to keep. Before you know it, you're off to fill a Pokédex, collect badges, and fight off bad guys all while working your way to the Elite Four and Champion in Ever Grande City. Ah yes, same stuff different region. Now that that's out of the way, here's the real meat and potatoes of these games: the features.

For the first time ever, you actually fight a different evil team depending on which version you play. In Ruby, you'll fight the fire-type-using Team Magma in an attempt to stop their goal of awakening the Ground-type legendary Groudon in order to expand the continents. In Sapphire, you're trying to thwart the water-type using Team Aqua's attempts to awaken the water-type legendary Kyogre to expand the oceans.

Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire represent a huge leap forward for the Pokémon series. The games offer several new features, but there are some downsides.

First of all, Ruby and Sapphire make what is perhaps the biggest graphical leap forward in pokemon games to date. The grass is actually green this time, and the Pokémon sprites (images) are better than ever, finally able to consist of more than two colors. In addition to all the vivid colors, the games also include some nice visual effects like footprints in the sand and reflections in water.

The games also add 135 Pokémon, bringing the total up to 386, but only 200 of them are catchable between Ruby and Sapphire. If you want the others, you'll have to catch them in FireRed, LeafGreen, Emerald, Colosseum, and XD, and of course, a few are only obtainable as event pokemon.

All those Pokémon won't just be battling this time around. Now you can also take part in Pokémon contests, where your Pokémon will use their moves to show off their coolness, cuteness, toughness, smartness, or beauty. If you want to do particularly good in contests, you'll have to feed your Pokémon pokéblocks, a new item made from berries, to improve one of those stats. Those stats aren't just for contests, one Pokémon, Feebas, will only evolve if its beauty stat is high enough.

But what do they offer for battling you might ask? The biggest thing is double battles, battles where each trainer sends out two Pokémon. This was the flagship feature of the third generation, also being introduced in the TCG and anime at the time. The games also gave Pokémon abilities for the first time, adding a whole new level of strategy to battles, for example, coming face-to-face with a Gyarados will now cut your Pokémon's attack stat, forcing you to either switch or fight in this weakened state. Natures are also introduced, allowing Pokémon to have personalities. These personalities really only affect two things: which type of pokéblocks the Pokémon will eat, and its stats. Each type will raise one stat and lower another, for example a Timid-natured Pokémon will have higer speed, but lower attack. Another change is that the Stat Exp. system of old has been replaced with the new revamped effort system.

With all of those changes it should come as no surprise that Pokémon from the old games are completely incompatable with Ruby and Sapphire and therefore can't be traded to them. The ability to go back to an old region is also gone, so Ruby and Sapphire are more of a fresh start than a sequel.

If you've never played a Pokémon game before, Ruby and Sapphire would certainly be good games to start off with, but there are better Pokémon games out there. The newer games would be an obvious choice, but some fans feel that even the earlier versions, Gold, Silver, and Crystal, were better. If you're looking for a trip to the Hoenn region, your best bet is to pick up Emerald instead. The only reason to get Ruby or Sapphire at this point is to catch Pokémon such as Zangoose and Lunatone which still can't be found in any other version (at least not without the help of Ruby or Sapphire in some way shape or form), but that could soon change.