Pokémon Alpha Sapphire is simultaneously one of my favorite games and one of my least favorite games. I've spent so long playing the game that I've actually maxed out the ingame play time at 999:59, so I can't really give an accurate estimate of how long I've played the game for, but let's just say 1500 hours. But, as you'll find out, I don't really play this game like most people and have extracted exactly one fun aspect out of it that I enjoy, while ignoring or absolutely hating every other part of the game. For context, I've only played the older Pokémon games a bit in emulators, and I don't really like those games either (they're just generic, boring RPGs compared to any other RPG available); I also haven't played anything newer than ORAS.
The one part of the game that I think is fun. It appeals to my inner RuneScape grindy RPG player and there's a satisfying multiphase process to it to produce the highest quality pokémon possible, with perfect IVs, the right ability, the right nature, egg moves - plus there's techniques to increase your chance of breeding a shiny pokémon (potentially to the detriment of these other traits), such as the Masuda method.
Basically, you want to start out with any two opposite-gendered pokémon of the type that you want to breed, or one pokémon and a Ditto. Ditto can breed with any pokémon except for itself and certain pokémon that are incapable of breeding, such as almost all Legendary pokémon. If you find one or both of your starting pokémon with the tracker thing in the wild, you can find ones that start out with a few perfect IVs (the primary influencer on the pokémon's stats), otherwise it's a complete roll of the dice. You then breed the pokémon together at a daycare and keep hatching eggs until you get one with a trait you want to continue on to the offspring, such as a good nature or an extra IV over the ones you have in the daycare right now; when this happens, you swap out the pokémon for the new one and keep going.
There's more to it than that. For one thing, I believe a minimal amount of IVs are carried on through breeding if just doing normal breeding; by having one of the two pokémon hold a Destiny Knot (doesn't matter which), then 5 IVs (out of the 6 total) will be carried on to the child. This means with a Destiny Knot and two perfect 6 IV pokémon, you're guaranteed to always get either 5 or 6 IVs perfect IVs on the offspring, which is great. To carry on a nature to the pokémon's children, the one with the nature you want has to carry an Everstone, and then its nature will be given to all of its offspring. Using the two in tandem, and with some knowledge about how the system works, it's possible to breed a perfect, competitive pokémon of a certain species relatively quickly - from 0 IVs, maybe 20 or so hours until you get one.
Of course, Ditto can also pass on IVs and natures, and can be bred with any pokémon, so if you have a Ditto with IVs this will immensely increase your breeding speed for all other pokémon. The only problem is Ditto itself cannot be bred, so the only way to get a Ditto with IVs is through being astoundingly lucky catching them raw in the wild, or by using the radar to catch them in the wild (which only gives you up to 3 IVs, and even then it's very rare). This makes 3 IV Dittos one of the most valuable tools for a pokémon breeder, and they're naturally scarce and hard to acquire, which is a perfect system. (As a side note, it's even better to have someone else's 3 IV Ditto than one you catch yourself because of the Masuda method and because eggs are produced faster, both of which encourage trading! Great design.)
If I had a few nitpicks, it would be a) that IVs are not actually marked on your pokémon automatically, you have to get them rated by a guy at the Battle Resort, and then afterwards you have to mark them yourself using basically a hidden feature of the game where there's 6 shapes on the pokémon's stat screen that can be turned solid or transparent. The convention is that from left to right, they mark the stats from top to bottom on the stat page, and an opaque shape means that stat has a perfect IV. Also, b) there's an improved chance to get shiny pokémon from breeding if you somehow manage to complete the entire pokédex, but given how broken and stupid the trading is in this game, and the fact that completing the pokédex is outside of your control and requires multiple different games and multiple game consoles to do if you want to do it solo, this feature is practically worthless and may as well not even be in the game.
Ultimately I think breeding is really fun, and there's this feeling that the work you put into the pokémon generates value (especially with the shinies) which lends itself to a natural economy based around grinding. Except, that's not how the game works at all.
Trading is busted in this game. Remember all of those things I told you are important - in fact, crucial - to have in a pokémon to maximize its effectiveness in battle? Well, when you trade with someone else, you can't see any of those traits on the other person's pokémon. In a purely online trade where you cannot communicate with the other person besides showing your pokémon to them in the trade window, there's zero way for the other player to distinguish if you have a 6 IV perfect pokemon with egg moves and a hidden ability, or if it was just one you caught in the wild randomly. This means that all of the breeding that you do has no value in a trade with another player, besides shiny pokémon. And with the massive amount of hackers, you really need to check all of the traits of a pokémon including where it was born in order to verify if it's real or not, which is impossible to do.
Instead of directly trading, there's also the GTS, which is like an "auction house" or Grand Exchange kind of trade system online. But, you can only put up one pokémon at a time on the GTS, and you have absolutely no control over what pokémon the other person gives you besides the type - you can't even specify if it has to be shiny or not. This makes it even more worthless than the normal trade screen, because at least on that screen if you were to, say, trade a shiny pokémon for another shiny pokémon, you can see visually with your eyes that the pokémon you're being traded is shiny. Not so with the GTS. The GTS, therefore, is completely worthless. (Not to mention that, as it is now, the GTS has been hacked and destroyed so badly that you can trade a zigzagoon for any shiny hacked pokémon, and all the listings are just sketchy ads for discord channels or snapchats.)
My favorite way to trade in this game is to just skip all this nonsense and use Wonder Trade, which matches you up with a random other person doing Wonder Trade and you both trade your pokémon blindly without seeing what the other person will give you. 99% of the time you get junk, but it's a good place to dump the boxes of pokémon that you get while breeding and spread around good breeding material pokémon to other breeders, bypassing all the garbage aspects of the trading in the game.
The battling in this game is great, classic turn-based RPG combat, but has many aspects which make it unfair. By design, the battles are between any two possible teams of pokémon without any banned moves, allowing for techniques like prankster swagger and other nonsense. Also, since there's no tiers (like there is on other alternative pokémon simulators), people can (and will) use the best pokémon in the game every single time instead of experimenting with different teams.
And if that wasn't enough, the breeding is actually completely detrimental and counterproductive to the battling. It takes a long time to get a pokémon with perfect competitive stats to battle with, and when you do, if your opponent is just using randomly caught pokémon, you're just going to stomp them, taking out all the strategy. So, why would you even battle in the base pokémon game at all, when again there are battle simulators out there that allow you to actually experiment with different teams and have real tiers and rules?
This is really the final nail in the coffin. I have no problem with people modifying their game and generating OP pokémon on their own, or in emulators, but in the real game online people will hack and spread around hacked pokémon, plummeting the value of any of your valuable pokémon to zero. Because it's possible to make an exact clone of a legitimate pokémon using hacks, you can never be sure if the pokémon you have is valuable or worthless. Generally, as a breeder, it's usually not hard to tell what pokémon are hacked and what pokémon are not (for example, if you have a 6 IV shiny pokémon, there's a very, very high likelihood it is fake), but, again, if someone else with the level of expertise that I have were to make fake hacked pokémon, it would be literally impossible to tell. These hackers infest every part of the game, such as the GTS (I have no idea why), Wonder Trade, and battles, turning the entire game into a completely and utter joke. It's like playing RuneScape or any MMO where everybody had god powers and could dupe infinite items and money. What's the point of even playing at all?
I've focused almost entirely on the multiplayer aspects of the game, but the singleplayer is just as bad. Speaking from my experience with Alpha Sapphire and some earlier games like LeafGreen, Blue, and Crystal, the Pokémon games have been getting progressively easier and easier and more dumbed down over time. The singleplayer is not satisfying at all. In Alpha Sapphire, so many legendary pokémon, starters, and pseudo-legendaries get dumped on you during the story mode that it's impossible to lose a battle if you're even somewhat competent at turn-based RPG combat and buy some revives. Even if you somehow didn't do a single random encounter, you could probably beat the whole game just from experience from required battles, using the legendaries that are given to you. It's completely worthless.
As I've heard, Emerald had a great post-game full of different singleplayer content, however only a shadow of this endgame content is available in Alpha Sapphire; all there is is some duel thing where all pokemon are locked to level 50 and it's pretty boring. They also lock more crucial moves and items for battling behind this battling game which turns it into a horrible grind.
I pretty much hate this game. If it wasn't for my OCD and the fact that the breeding is pretty addictive and fun, I would have thrown this game out a long time ago. The real shame is that it's so close to being a great MMORPG; just tweak the trading system to be more transparent and make it harder to hack or ban hackers, and it really has the makings of a great game. But because Nintendo is so stuck on making the game dumber and appealing to babies, the game will never reach the potential that I see in it to be an excellent MMO.
Maybe some day, someone will make a good MMORPG clone of Pokémon, but I guess only time will tell. I know there was one attempt to make a rom hack for one of the Pokémon games to turn it into an MMO (I believe it was PokéMMO), but the breeding in it from what I know about it is not the same system and is not as good, so I don't really have interest in playing that one. Maybe I'll give it a shot eventually.
June 13, 2022