Pokemon Emerald is one of the best Pokemon games, and is the definitive GBA Pokemon game. It’s not just called “Emerald”, it’s a true gem in the GBA library. There is nothing wrong with taking one’s time playing through Emerald and appreciating what this game has to offer.

However, this guide is for the man-on-a-mission; the one who seeks out the fastest and most practical way to play through the game. To help such players out, I’ve put together a team building guide for getting through Emerald quickly.

This guide is different from most team building guides that I’ve seen. Many in-game team building guides focus on making a balanced team of 6 battlers, suggesting that players keep all 6 throughout the game. These guides are flawed in that experience values tend to distribute better among fewer pokemon, and by late game, players would have been better off with 2 to 4 higher-level battlers than a full team of 6 pokemon that can’t quite hack it.

Another flaw with those teams is that they seldom consider HM users, leaving players that try them with the task of backtracking to either catch HM users or access PC boxes as they come across roadblocks.

Such guides also suggest keeping every teammate on their team for the rest of the game. While the authors do take care to select teammates that carry their weight for the rest of the game, sometimes, that’s not the most practical way to go about things. Sometimes, you have to box a pokemon that’s no longer carrying its weight, or once you have a pokemon that better serves its purpose.

What this guide gives you are suggestions that are designed to get you through the game. A core of battlers will be considered with the intent of covering the challenges you’d reasonably face in a playthrough, and suggesting HM users to give you maximum mobility.

With that, let’s get this team building guide underway:

The first pokemon on your team would be your starter. It was close, as each of the Hoenn starters are pretty good. But for this game, the best starter would be Mudkip. Mudkip has an advantage at the first gym, so things are easy for it when getting started. But it gets even better when it evolves to Marshtomp. As a combination Water/Ground type, its only weakness is Grass. It’s a double weakness, but Grass attacks are infrequent. With its ground typing, it’s great against the third gym. It’s final form, Swampert, is kind of slow. However, its offensive and defensive stats are great, and Swampert has access to strong Water, Ground, and Rock attacks, giving this pokemon some great coverage against many opponents.

Surprised? So am I. But Taillow actually is an effective early-game pokemon. Its defensive stats are really low, which is something to be careful about. But it’s very fast and has a pretty good Attack stat, so it can hit pretty hard with Wing Attack, which it learns at level 13. Taillow evolves to Swellow at level 22, which results in an even greater boost to its Attack and Speed. Taillow does a great job of making sure that an opposing Grass type isn’t an auto-loss, which is really important considering your rival will eventually face you with Grovyle. What’s more, Taillow will have an advantage in the second gym. Taillow will eventually be replaced with another pokemon, but it’s great at its job until then.

Zigzagoon is a decent HM user. It can be taught Cut, Surf, and Rock Smash. Of those three, you’re likely to use Cut soon after catching it (after getting the first badge), and it can use Rock Smash when you need a pokemon that can use it. Surf comes much later in the game, but by then, you’ll have other pokemon that can learn it. Zigzagoon has a gimmicky use: some players like to try to get a few of them with the Pickup ability and benefit from the items it might pick up after battles. The Pickup item list is different in Emerald, and is influenced by the Pickup pokemon’s level, but it’s still a nice ability that could pay for itself before long. Later, on Route 119, you’ll be able to find Zigzagoon and Linoone that have levels in the 20s, which makes it easier to obtain better items. Unused space in your party can be put to use to obtain items.

A fan favorite, and a pretty good choice. But I had a tough time adding Ralts to this list because it’s encounter rate is so low (4% on Route 102), and is pretty weak at first. However, Ralts has an advantage against the second gym, and evolves into a pretty good Psychic type. Ralts and it’s family learn strong Psychic moves by level, as well as Calm Mind, and it can learn Thunderbolt from a TM for decent coverage. Abra is a good pokemon of the same type, but Kadabra has to be traded to get Alakazam, which might not be an option. Therefore, the nod goes to Ralts. Ralts is not necessary for this playthrough, but you can go with it if the thought of going with just your starter and a Flying type for a while bothers you.

In Dewford Town, next to the gym is a fisherman who gives you an Old Rod. It also happens that it’s right there in Dewford Town that you could fish up a Tentacool with that very same rod. Tentacool is an awesome HM user in that between Tentacool and Tropius (which you can catch later) all 8 HMs can be learned, granting you full mobility while freeing up the rest of your team to teach whatever moves you please. Tentacool’s HM selection is Cut, Surf, Waterfall, and Dive. Most of those moves come much later in the game, but when the time comes to use them, Tentacool is an awesome choice to teach them to.

Also, while you’re in Dewford Town, you’ll obtain TM 47. I suggest saving that for the pokemon that I suggest next.

When you make it to Route 119, Skarmory will be available to capture. Skarmory replaces Swellow, so you’ll be boxing Swellow for another team member. There are a few caveats to this choice worth mentioning. Some players would prefer holding onto Swellow because it’s faster and has a comparable Attack stat. Also, it can take a while to find a Skarmory, since it has only a 5% rate of encounter on Route 119. What’s more, Skarmory levels up slower than Swellow, and when you find Skarmory, it will likely be underleveled compared to the rest of your team.

So, why is Skarmory worth the trouble? Because it pairs excellently with Swampert. Swampert is weak to Grass, while Skarmory resists Grass moves for days. Skarmory is weak to Electric and Fire, two move types that don’t really bother Swampert. Swampert and Skarmory make an excellent tag team which rocks when played well. What’s more, Skarmory benefits well from the bounty of resistances that its Steel typing offers, and thanks to its flying type, it’s immune to the Ground moves that would normally plague Steel types.

You find Skarmory at level 16, and it comes with Peck and Swift, which are so-so attacks, and it doesn’t learn a decent offensive move by level until it learns Air Cutter at level 29. That’s why it’s a great idea to use TM 47 to teach Skarmory Steel Wing, so it has a decent Steel move. It’s also a good choice for Fly (the HM) or Aerial Ace (TM 40). Skarmory may take more EXP to level up, but experience splits pretty well between it and only one or two other teammates. If you can be picky about the ability, in-game Skarmory does pretty well with the Keen Eye ability, which makes life easier against opponents that like lowering Accuracy.

On Route 119, Tropius appears 9% of the time, which isn’t too bad. Once you have it, you’ll have a pokemon that can learn all the HMs that Tentacool doesn’t. Tropius, along with Tentacool, will be your team’s dedicated HM users. With them, you’ll be set as far as HM users goes. You can do something similar by pairing Tropius with Gyarados, but Gyarados is a bit more challenging to obtain.

It’s also on Route 119 that you can find higher-leveled Zigzagoon or Linoone for better Pickup yields, if you’re interested.

You get an opportunity to battle and catch Rayquaza after it resolves the Kyogre/Groudon dispute, and it can be found at the top of Sky Pillar, where you already met it. You’ll have seven badges at this point, so you’ll have almost beat the game. But having Rayquaza on your team ensures that you shred the rest of your way through. The only potential problem for Rayquaza would be Ice moves used by Juan, Glacia, and Wallace. But Rayquaza is so strong, they might not stand a chance, anyway.

Rayquaza comes at level 70, has superhigh stats, and already has team-wrecking moves without having to use a TM on it. But if you do teach it TMs, you’ll find that Rayquaza can learn many different types of moves. It’s a one-pokemon army. Just a few levels after catching it, Rayquaza learns Hyper Beam, which is great if your team needed a wave motion gun.

Rayquaza doesn’t have to replace any team member, but it’s so strong that it might make the rest of your team seem obsolete. The trick is catching the thing. Without resorting to using the Master Ball, catching Rayquaza is a tall order.

But what about…

Pokemon Emerald is packed with great pokemon, so picking out just a few for a team is challenging. Here are a few that didn’t quite make this team, but are still great pokemon.

Torchic – It evolves to a pokemon with great stats and typing, has a great movepool, and does well against several gyms. The nod went to Mudkip because it evolves to a pokemon with just one weakness that doesn’t come up often and is easily covered by another teammate. Also, Blaziken has several weaknesses, relatively low defenses, and its Speed, though higher, is just okay.

Aron – Great defensive typing in Rock/Steel and an awesome Defense stat means that the many Normal moves that you see in-game, especially early on, will hardly leave a dent. However, Aron and family doesn’t take strong Special attacks very well, especially from Water types.

Abra – Needs to be traded to evolve to its final form. If that’s an option, Abra’s a great alternative to Ralts. However, Gardevoir can learn Thunderbolt, while Alakazam would have to settle for Shock Wave.

Miscellaneous other great pokemon such as Lotad or Shroomish – Making this list wasn’t easy, and neither was excluding pokemon that really aren’t bad. Hoenn has a lot of great pokemon. If you’d rather use a pokemon that didn’t make the team, it’s your call. It’s not like Emerald is especially hard. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw a lot of disagreement with the choices, here. It goes to show how balanced the Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald games are that there are so many choices that work well. Unlike Crystal, where if you get an Abra with elemental punches, it could take you through nearly every opponent you face.

What team would you use to get through Pokemon Emerald?

It’s been over a week since Nintendo announced the next main Pokemon games which will be for Nintendo Switch. I think that’s enough time to consider what we’ve been presented with, pondering the implications for the Pokemon series and allowing the information to gel in our minds.

Here’s the trailer for those who haven’t seen it yet:

While one might imagine that I’d be among the most critical of a Kanto retread or of the mechanical changes that the trailer showed us, I’m actually quite optimistic about the new games, and I’m looking forward to them.

I think it’s obvious that GameFreak is looking to make a game that is appealing to as many people as possible. It’s a safe move, but it comes at the risk of alienating a few who might miss some of the game mechanics that they were familiar with for a long time, or who might have wanted a new region to run around in with fresh pokemon.

First, of the fact that this is a Kanto retread, I would have been skeptical of the idea of another Pokemon game that tread through Kanto. After all, as I’ve pointed out already, about one-third of all Pokemon games have included the Kanto setting, so it’s easy to make the case that this setting is over-represented. In fact, I’ve only just last week continued playing my eShop copy of Pokemon Crystal, which I left off after having beat the champion, right before the journey would have continued with the Kanto region. I’ve been through the region so many times, so going through it again kind of seemed like a chore.

However, I would have been in favor of a Kanto retread if GameFreak had some ideas that would make the experience more interesting. By the looks of it, they certainly have! I would have liked seeing what Kanto would have looked like with 3D models, which is just what they did.

Another point of contention among the fans would be the art direction. I know that some might not be fond of the idea of returning to a deformed chibi art style for Pokemon Let’s Go, considering that we’ve had more proportioned characters in Pokemon Sun and Moon. However, the art style in Sun and Moon was very much the exception. Overworld characters were done in the chibi style in nearly all Pokemon games, so it’s very much appropriate that Let’s Go uses this style. It’s certainly the style that was used in the Pokemon Yellow game that these games are based off of, which makes it even more appropriate.

What a Pokemon game looks like.

Another point of discussion is the Pokemon Go style capture mechanics. This is a bit of a risky move, as the wild pokemon battle has been a series mainstay since the very beginning. However, it’s a move that simplifies the game and makes it more approachable to casual gamers, particularly ones familiar with Pokemon Go.

This is a bit of a tangent, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about, and this seems like an appropriate place to bring it up: I find it kind of funny when someone complains about a major game mechanic change in a new installment in a franchise, saying that it somehow makes the game less hardcore.

Fast Fact: There are no hardcore games. Hardcore is a designation of a person who plays video games, and is not a category of the games themselves.

Hardcore gamers play the same games that the rest of us play, including the casuals. What makes hardcore gamers different is that they play these games consummately, putting a large amount of play time into their games, and they tend to play their games until the point that they beat them, possibly much more.

While one can point out that the average hardcore gamer spends more on games than your typical gamer, non-hardcore gamers make up the overwhelming majority of gamers, so it stands to reason that ordinary gamers make a majority of game purchases. This being the case, what point would there be for game companies to pander to the hardcore audience, especially if they’re going to play the games anyway by virtue of the fact that they’re hardcore?

Returning to the main point, Pokemon Go capture mechanics aren’t anything that players aren’t already familiar with, considering just how many people out there are familiar with Pokemon Go. This site lists several statistics for Pokemon Go as of just last month, with the following being the main ones I want to bring to your attention:

• Daily active players: 5 million (amazing for a game nearly two years old)
• Number of active users: 65 million (this number alone exceeds the total sales of any generation of Pokemon games)
• Number of downloads: 800 million (about 1/10th of the world’s population)
• Total revenue for Pokemon Go: $1.2 billion (from a business perspective, this game is doing something very, very right)

So, who exactly is being alienated by the new Pokemon Go style capture mechanics? Pokemon Go is familiar to just about everyone with a smart phone, and the capture mechanics are just about everything there is to that game.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t concerns. After all, in times past, one could level grind off of wild pokemon. That can still be done if your party still gained experience points off of pokemon captured. But for late game level grinding, nothing beats going up against the Elite Four. Trainer’s pokemon give more experience for battles, so they’re a better choice for level grinding.

The two-player co-op seems like an interesting idea, but the challenge might be to find another player to give it a go. There are several people in my family who play Pokemon, so it wouldn’t be much problem for me to find someone else who plays. But not everyone is in the same situation as me. There are players out there that don’t know many people who play the game, so they’re likely to have a far harder time giving the mode a try. One thing they could do is try to incentivize playing the mode with some strong rewards for players that try it, but that would risk making players that have a hard time finding other people to play with feeling further excluded. There’s the obvious fact that you can 2v1 some in-game opponents, which doesn’t seem like a fair fight, but it can help players overcome some tough opponents.

Now for my favorite feature: there are no more random battles. Wild pokemon appear on the overworld, and you can see the identity of the pokemon as it wanders about. If you want to try to capture it, you walk up to it.

YES!!!11

This is something that I’ve wanted to see in a Pokemon game since the very beginning! And they did it! They actually did! Finally, trips through caves are no longer a chore! No frequent interruptions when you have to travel through grass! You can avoid the pokemon you’re not interested in if you’re looking for a certain kind! Everything is right with this!

I don’t know a single person who is just fine with being annoyed by random Zubats every few steps in a cave, so I think that just about everyone is okay with this change. Let’s move on.

Another neat new feature is the Pokeball Plus controller. It’s a bit of a gimmick, but it seems okay. It can work as an optional controller for playing Pokemon Let’s Go, and can add more authenticity to the experience when doing the Pokeball throw. It’s also notable in that it can act as a Pokemon Go Plus device when used with Pokemon Go. I don’t imagine I’d be getting much out of this, and I’d think that anyone with an Apple Watch would have preferred using the Pokemon Go watch app over using Pokemon Go Plus. It’s gimmicky, not really necessary, but I might still give it a try.

What I’d like to see is how creative the modding community gets in making custom pokeballs with the Pokeball Plus.

Paint me.

The next games are supposed to have a transfer compatibility with Pokemon Go. The transfer process seems to be one-way from Pokemon Go to Pokemon Let’s Go. There are some interesting implications to this.

One of which would be that completing the Kanto pokedex will be a snap if you’ve already made huge progress in Pokemon Go. It’s better news still if you’ve managed to obtain Mew in Pokemon Go, since it means that you’re going to have the rarest Kanto pokemon on day one. But I do wonder whether the stats would be recalculated when transferred. I managed to get a Mew that is statistically flawless in Pokemon Go, so if the stats would change, I’d be a little hesitant to send it over.

So then, if the transfer process is one way, would that mean that Pokemon Go might at some point be phased out? I doubt it would happen any time soon, considering that, as shown above, Pokemon Go still has a huge player base, and still makes huge money.

What’s more, would this also mean that Johto or Hoenn pokemon might be in Let’s Go, considering that these pokemon are available in Pokemon Go?

So far, there hasn’t been any word about compatibility with Pokemon Bank or any Gen 7 game. Does this mean that Pokemon is undergoing a hard reboot, and all the old pokemon are going to be stuck in the past? If so, that might not be too bad a thing. After all, online trading from 4th to 7th gen has been plagued with hacked pokemon, and preventing them from being traded up might keep them from continuing to influence the game. Nintendo has been doing a lot more to discourage cheating, such as banning players that do it from using Nintendo network services. Obviously there’s cheating in Pokemon Go, but we’ve been seeing bans there, too.

Another roadblock for cheaters would be the fact that Switch will have paid online features. A paid online feature would act as a deterrent to those who would take the experience less seriously and might drag it down for the rest of us. What’s more, it would ensure that everyone using the feature will have invested something into it, so they’d have a financial loss as a penalty for breaking the rules. Putting the online service behind a paywall might be what it takes to filter out those that misuse it, and bannings can take care of the rest of the undesirables.

The pokemon-following thing has also made a comeback, which has been absent since gen 4. It does include the option to ride pokemon, which might be a variant of the ride mechanic in gen 7. How this will be implemented is something I’m interested in knowing, as I wasn’t a big fan of HMs in most Pokemon games, which forced players to keep certain pokemon in their party and dedicate moveslots to ensure that progress isn’t impeded by roadblocks.

But even if there are still HMs, it won’t be a big deal, since players now get a PC box that they can access whether they’re in a Pokemon Center or not. I’ve wanted to see a feature like that for a long time, so it’s great to see it finally happen!

The end of the trailer mentions a special pokemon that you’ll meet in Pokemon Go after having connected with Let’s Go. It’s already confirmed that this will be a new pokemon, and is not the Alolan Exeggutor that became available right after the trailer was shown. That would mean that there will be one new pokemon in these new games. But would Let’s Go be a 7th generation game, or 8th generation? Are we getting to the point that the generation designations are arbitrary?

And speaking of Alolan pokemon, those will be in Let’s Go, as well. I don’t know how they’ll be implemented, but I suspect that they might be available in certain areas in the game. The previous remakes for the 1st gen games, FireRed and LeafGreen, included extra areas called the Sevii Islands. If those islands function like the Alola region as far as Alola variants are concerned, that would answer the question of how they could implement these variants in future games.

That’s what I think of these games so far. More information will be available next week, when they’ll be playable at E3. But at this point, I’m really looking forward to them, and they might just be the change that the Pokemon series has needed for a long time.

If you’re planning on getting physical copies, you might have a difficult time of it by the time November comes around. As of this writing, Amazon has already sold out of preorders for the Let’s Go Pikachu version. I’ll more likely get a digital download, which I’ve been doing for most Switch games up to this point. I might get both versions, and which one I get first will likely be decided by version exclusives.

Let’s Go? Bring it.