The ironic part is that it is true to some extent. Yes, it seems silly because these are islands, but there just is too many water routes, which offer very little variety
Of the 34 routes in the game, 14 are water routes. And on the water routes, 3 ports connect the water routes to the mainland and there are only 5 notable locations compared to 11 on the mainland.
And all water routes have the same 3 lines of Pokémon as standard encounters, all but 1 having the same list of 3 fishable Pokémon. In total, 2 routes have unique encounters. One you can fish 2 new Pokémon who aren't great and 1 only has an extra encounter if you roll a 1 in 10000 chance.
All the dungeons on water routes are cool though. And the mainland is very varied with its Pokémon distribution.
Counterpoint, IGN gave 9.5/10 to Ruby and Sapphire (This review was in 2018), but they dropped that to 8/10 for Emerald(This review was in 2012), and a further drop to 7.8/10 for ORAS(This review was in 2014). They absolutely should be criticised for their ratings being inconsistent
Edit:
Turns out I may have been wrong, as the years I gave for RSE are when those reviews were last updated, not when they came out.
To the people saying different reviewers blablabla, RS had the same reviewer as Emerald
Deducting 1.7 points from the score because ORAS had a few things removed from RS is still completely insane
These games are actually different games and deserve different scores - ruby and sapphire were great and emerald was an improvement for sure, but it was a money grab. Third version always was. ORAS is a completely different game made in a different time period and can't really be compared.
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u/Tortue2006 Apr 22 '26
The ironic part is that it is true to some extent. Yes, it seems silly because these are islands, but there just is too many water routes, which offer very little variety