The showdown with Primal Groudon was certainly a visually impressive moment for the game, though the fact that each of my party member’s levels was in the mid-fifties made the battle and capture process more frustrating than need be. Some of my Pokémon were all too likely to one-hit-K.O. Groudon, while the legendary Pokémon’s moveset was still powerful enough to knock out anyone in my party within two or three moves. And the fact that Groudon kept using rest only drew the process out further, resulting in about seven attempts before I actually had a decent shot at catching the beast.
Wallace’s gym battle offered a much appreciated variety in Pokémon that was absent in nearly every gym that preceded it, but my Trevenant was still able to sweep his entire team while taking hardly any damage. The sea routes that are so frequent late in the game do not bother me much, but the game’s archaic design for the overworld and excessive reliance on HMs is borderline-infuriating. I had hoped that with this reimagining of Ruby and Sapphire, Game Freak would incorporate as much from the generation VI titles as possible into streamlining the experience and making the whole package more user-friendly, but as I’ve seen time and time again during my playthrough, Omega Ruby is a classic case of ‘one step forward, two steps back’.
The brief glimpse of Zinnia did not go unnoticed by my eyes, and I’m very much hoping that the bonus content in the post-game Delta Episode makes up for some of Omega Ruby’s fumbles. I clocked in a couple more hours today, and I intend to try my best to burn through the remainder of Omega Ruby’s main story within the next week. Hopefully the Elite Four at least offer something of a challenge – right now, I fear they may be as much a cakewalk as their Kalos counterparts. Going into Victory Road, I’m already having flashbacks to Platinum's nauseating reliance on HM moves to mindlessly zigzag through a labyrinth of tunnels, bridges, and waterways.
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