Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire

Pokémon Omega Ruby Pokémon Alpha Sapphire
The cover art for Alpha Sapphire featuring the legendary Pokémon Kyogre in its new Primal Kyogre state. Omega Ruby's cover art features Primal Groudon.
Developer(s)	Game Freak
Publisher(s)	The Pokémon Company
Distributor(s)	Nintendo
Director(s)	Shigeru Ohmori
Producer(s)	Junichi Masuda Satoshi Tajiri
Designer(s)	Masafumi Saito (lead) Kazumasa Iwao (lead) Masafumi Nukita (lead) Suguru Nakatsui (lead)
Artist(s)	Mana Ibe (lead) Ken Sugimori Yusuke Ohmura
Writer(s)	Masafumi Nukita (lead) Suguru Nakatsui Hitomi Sato
Composer(s)	Shota Kageyama Minako Adachi Hideaki Kuroda Hitomi Sato
Series	Pokémon
Platforms	Nintendo 3DS
Release date(s)
Genre(s)	Role-playing

Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire (ポケットモンスター オメガルビー&アルファサファイア, Poketto Monsutā Omega Rubī & Arufa Safaia) are two 2014 role-playing video games developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems. They are part of the sixth generation of the Pokémon series, serving as enhanced remakes of the 2002 Game Boy Advance titles Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. The games were announced on May 7, 2014, in a teaser trailer released by Nintendo. As with Pokémon X and Y, the games include all official translations, unlike previous generations where each game contained only a single language.

Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were released in Japan, North America, and Australia on November 21, 2014, exactly twelve years after the release date of the original Ruby and Sapphire; the European and Indian release was one week later on November 28, 2014.

Setting and Plot

See also: Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire § Synopsis

The setting and plot of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire are mostly the same as the original Ruby and Sapphire games. The game begins as the player is seen riding in a moving truck. The player character starts by moving to the Hoenn Region with his/her mother, as their father Norman has been hired as the Petalburg Gym Leader for a town in the Hoenn region. The player character begins their Pokémon Trainer journey by saving Professor Birch from a wild Pokémon, choosing either Treecko, Torchic, or Mudkip as their first partner Pokémon. They then travel around the Hoenn Region to complete their Pokédex and battle the eight Gym Leaders of the Hoenn Pokémon League. Along the way, the player character encounters the antagonist group Team Magma in Omega Ruby or Team Aqua in Alpha Sapphire who wish to use the power of the Legendary Pokémon, Primal Kyogre in Alpha Sapphire and Primal Groudon in Omega Ruby, to change the world to suit their desires. Team Magma wants to use Groudon to dry up the oceans to make the world a haven for land Pokémon while Team Aqua wishes to summon Kyogre to flood the lands to suit Water Pokémon. With the help of Steven Stone and the Gym Leader Wallace, the player character defeats Team Magma or Team Aqua and then captures the Legendary Pokémon to prevent a global drought/flooding, and thus ensuring the teams' mutual reformation. The player then advances on to the Pokémon League, challenging the Elite Four and then the champion Steven to become the new Hoenn Pokémon League Champion. The player also has the option of participating in the various Pokémon Contests throughout Hoenn, using their Pokémon to put on a performance for an audience and judges. Aside from the gameplay, 20 new Mega Evolutions were added since Pokémon X and Y to enhance gameplay. A new side quest featured in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire is called the Delta Episode. The player character must work with the new character Zinnia, Steven, and Professor Cozmo to find a way to stop a meteor from crashing into the planet, which requires capturing the Legendary Pokémon, Rayquaza, in order to stop the meteor which contains the Legendary Pokémon Deoxys.

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings 83.79% (OR) 82.73% (AS) Metacritic 83/100 (OR) 82/100 (AS) Review scores Publication Score Famitsu 37/40 Game Informer 8.75/10 GameSpot 8/10 IGN 7.8/10 Joystiq Nintendo World Report 9/10 Polygon 8/10 Hardcore Gamer 4/5

Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire have received positive reviews from video game critics. GameSpot's Peter Brown praised the 3D visuals and the super training mechanic, but believed the game failed to fully resolve general issues in the game formula. IGN's Kallie Plagge also praised the game's 3D reinvention of Hoenn and online functionality. Plagge was critical of the over-abundance of HMs needed to play the game as well as the perceived imbalance favoring Water-type Pokémon (she played Alpha Sapphire which features Team Aqua as the villains) and the reliance on water-based routes, despite this being a defining characteristic of the original games upon which the remakes were based. She remarked that while the Dive feature was novel in the original release, it had since become tedious.

The games sold 3,040,000 copies in their first three days of sale. Of the total sales, 1,534,593 copies were sold in Japan, the rest were sold in North America and Australia. Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire had the biggest launch in the series history in the United Kingdom, beating the previous record held by Pokémon Black and White. At the end of 2014 the games have sold 2.4 million copies in Japan. As of March 31, 2016, the games have sold 11.84 million copies worldwide.

External links

• Official website (Japanese)
• Official website (International)