Top Ten Most Annoying Things About the Generation III Pokemon Games

There's a list about the games in general, but I'll focus this list on Generation III since the majority of hacks I play utilize Gen-3 and it's quite important to talk about things that aren't really the worst thing about the FR/LG and R/S/E games but what annoys players the most.
The Top Ten
1 Evolving Feebas into Milotic

This should be the biggest no-brainer of the list. Feebas nowadays evolves via trade with Prism Scale but before that you have to maximize its beauty condition and level it up afterwards. But the issue here has to be figuring out how to do that, get the right berries, plant and grow them, and use the berry blender doing the minigame to perfect its overall taste. Feeding Feebas seems easy but in the original R/S/E your Pokemon can get full and will never eat again after enough PokeBlocks have been fed. This then ties into the problem of differing natures and you have to actually make sure that Feebas has a nature where it likes the blue PokeBlocks in order to make it.

2 Finding Feebas

And then there's the issue of actually finding Feebas, having to fish it with a rod on Route 119, but there are six out of hundreds of water tiles to be able to fish at and you're not guaranteed a Feebas from just one water tile. It is possible to change which tiles Feebas can appear by modifying the trend in Dewford Town, but that's a long way away and probably makes things much worse.

3 Moves that only work in double battles

While there are quite a lot of beneficial moves introduced in double battles, like Helping Hand and such, the majority of battles in a Gen-3 playthrough are only single battles therefore these moves are quite useless in most situations. Competitively they are decent if your in the double battle format, but if you're not, the moves take up space.

4 Roaming legendaries with Roar

I'm talking specifically about Raikou and Entei in FR/LG, if you chose Bulbasaur or Squirtle as your starter, one of these beasts will be the roaming legendary in the Kanto region in the post-game. You'll probably develop a strategy for catching the roaming legendaries, but if they use Roar, they are permanently gone.

5 The Emerald Match Call feature

Me: *runs around trying to catch wild Pokemon*
PokeNav: *RINGS* (trainer I battled before): "Hi I just want to say I couldn't do something cool today, bye now!"
This is SO ANNOYING. It also technically isn't a new thing, as the PokeGear from Gen-2 had the same issue. However, the problem is more prevalent in Pokemon Emerald and only really wastes your time as trainers you battled before will call you when you really don't want them too. And god help you if you have a Pokemon with the Lightningrod ability as your lead, because they will call more often.

6 The Fire Red/Leaf Green evolution mechanic

This happens before you get a national Pokedex. If you have a Pokemon that is not Kanto-native or evolves into something not Kanto-native (Golbat to Crobat), the game automatically cancels the evolution. I know that they did this so that you have to play with only the Kanto Pokemon but in these Kanto remakes a lot of players probably wish that this rule could have slid under.

7 Getting paintings in the Lilycove Art Museum

Pokemon Contests are surprisingly difficult at the Master Rank. I only ever won once in those things and in order to get a painting in the Lilycove Art Museum you have to score 800 points AND win in order to get one painting in. The sad thing is, the game's reward for doing this isn't that exciting, just a Glass Ornament for secret bases. You have to go through A LOT of effort and with the contests, sometimes you just get unlucky with your opponent's appeals and won't get either a win or 800+ points.

8 Not being able to rematch the Kanto Elite Four until you finish the Sevii Islands postgame sidequests

Rematching the Elite Four can definitely help in strengthening teams for post-game stuff, but in FR/LG, Lorelei is absent after the league is won the first time, meaning you cannot access the Elite Four again until you do the lengthy post-game sidequests in the Sevii Islands. Having to find the Team Rocket grunts on Mt. Ember, helping Lorelei out in Icefall Cave, getting ambushed by the scientist in Dotted Hole, and finishing the Rocket Warehouse are all the things needed to do to get Lorelei to return to the Elite Four. I guess a good justification for this will be that the Elite Four and Champion will be much stronger and harder to battle, but having to do a sidequest to re-unlock the league is on the annoying side.

9 Cannot run indoors

The Running Shoes greatly helped with movement when introduced in Gen-3, able to get around many places much faster. However, you cannot run in indoor settings, which does include places like Pokemon Tower in Lavender Town. Many players like to go fast when moving around, so yeah, this can be annoying. Gen-4 allowed you to run indoors though.

10 Shiny Poochyena, Zigzagoon, and/or Ralts near the beginning of R/S/E

This specifically references that it is possible for the Poochyena/Zigzagoon that you first battle in R/S/E after picking your starter can be a shiny, as well as the Ralts (and the loaned Zigzagoon) during Wally's catching tutorial. In other words, shinies that you can never catch due to the circumstances. A major annoyance if you're going for catching shinies, a minor annoyance otherwise.

The Contenders
11 Not being able to skip the catching tutorial in FireRed and LeafGreen

This and the Wally tutorial in R/S/E. There should be a way to skip, but they didn't offer that. It also doesn't make that much sense. At least with the Wally tutorial, the loaned Zigzagoon was used to weaken the Ralts, but the catch is supposed to be surefire each time. With the old man tutorial in FR/LG, he encounters a Weedle, and catches it with a Poke Ball at full HP without battling it. It's also worth noting that the Teachy TV is an option in these games.

12 Not being able to explore the rest of the ocean

A big criticism of Gen-3 Hoenn is all the water so this is probably not the best item overall. A better way to word this is if you're going to have tons of water routes, give lots of diverse Pokemon there, in other words more surfing, fishing, or diving encounters. There's some, but ultimately there's not too much.

13 Not being able to get the Running Shoes until after beating Brock in FireRed and LeafGreen
14 Too many trainers on routes in Emerald

Emerald added a TON of stuff, which included lots and lots of trainers on many routes. Some routes have nearly 10 trainers, including some of the water ones. While there can be some variety, not all is set in stone for this game.

15 Not being able to trade Pokemon from Gen-2 or Gen-1

Not everyone would think this is an annoyance but considering just how rare some Pokemon are from those gens to get in the Gen-3 games, particularly Celebi, it feels like it's literally impossible to even get them in Generation 3 games, unless you use Colosseum or XD or something.

BAdd New Item