Going Hoenn With The Pokémon Alpha Ruby And Omega Sapphire Demo

As I stepped into the demo version of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire – which will be available to all 3DS users next week – I didn’t know what to expect. Well, I sort of did: I knew it was Pokémon, and that meant that it might be quite similar to the last one, but I never progressed too far in the original Ruby and Sapphire and this demo had been dropped on us without warning by Nintendo.

This wasn’t the full game, mind. It’s a targeted, scripted section for demonstration purposes, where doors are locked and areas are blocked off. It guides you through battling, evolution, mega evolution, and several other features of the Pokémon franchise. It’s a concentrated dose of the series, but it was enough to remind me how much I love it. I had truly forgotten; all of the brilliance of Pokémon X was marred by some technical issues which have stuck in my mind, for some reason.

But, as soon as I picked my Combusken (over Grovyle and Marshtomp) and entered my first battle with a Team Magma grunt, something clicked, and a lifetime of memories with the franchise flowed back to me. There’s just something about Pokémon – something indescribable – that makes every journey through its world so extremely enjoyable.

It’s interesting, because I wasn’t doing what would usually draw me to the games: I wasn’t catching Pokémon (there were no Pokéballs available here) and I wasn’t exploring the world. These things were what I thought made the games so endearing, but now it seems obvious that there’s something inherently enjoyable about it, but perhaps that’s just the nostalgia talking – present even though I don’t have the same connection to Ruby and Sapphire as I do the other titles in the series.

The demo does hint at several improvements in this latest instalment; although the visuals are very much same – framerate drops, lack of 3D when exploring and all – there’s more freedom in the movement than before, and it feels even more of a step towards a full world than X and Y did previously.

This is enhanced by the ability to literally soar above the world on the back of a Pokémon – in this demo, it was a Latias – and while this couldn’t be controlled, it did show the expansive, rendered world of Hoenn below. It’s nice to see those dreams of actually flying to your location come to life, but if this happens every time in the full title without being able to skip – and there’s nothing to suggest it will – then it might be a bit tedious.

After evolving my Combusken to a Blaziken on my way to foil the Team Magma plot, I was awarded with a Mega Stone which would allow the creature to Mega Evolve into an even more powerful beast. While it looked great, it’s the exact same trick that the previous games pulled but this time it suggests that there’s something more than this power-up coming, which is quite exciting indeed.

There’s actually a lot of content here for a demo version and you’ll get about an hour of playtime all-in, or even more if you want to see it through with all three Pokémon. That isn’t much compared to the wealth available in a full Pokémon release, mind, but it’s nice to get so much for nothing and it’s well measured to show the best parts in the game, ending in an exciting final battle and a prize which you’ll be able to transfer over to Omega Ruby or Alpha Sapphire when they release next month.

The true majesty of the demo is the fact that it reminded me of just how good Pokémon is and had me hooked once again within five minutes. It’s also a good way to introduce newcomers to the franchise, where the full game may be slow to start and not have anything as exciting as a Mega Evolution for quite some time. I may have never completed Ruby or Sapphire before, but I think I might just have to this time.