You owe it to yourself to get Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire, should you still have the Pokemon bug.
You start off in a moving van (you can either be a boy or girl). Then you stop at your new home in the town of Littleroot, when your mom tells you to meet your next door neighbour, Professor Birch. You go inside, and he is not home. But the person who eventually becomes your rival is upstairs. Then, you go north of the town, and find Professor Birch being attacked by Poochyena, a dog Pokemon. You then must take a Pokemon from Birch's backpack, and fight Poochyena. Then, you meet Birch, and he tells you to do some things. This is the start of Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire.
There is one thing that revolves around all of the Pokemon games, the Pokemon. Pokemon are little creatures that are all unique in their own way. They like to use special techniques to fight and defeat one another. It's like a rock/paper/scissors thing, one type defeats another, and another defeats it.
In these games, you must fight, collect and occasionally trade your Pokemon. You must level up your Pokemon to make them stronger and learn newer, more powerful moves. Your trainer is on a quest to become a Pokemon Master. You must fight others and do many different quests to reach this goal. To get to this, you must take the Pokemon League Challenge. To get to the Pokemon League, you must collect all 8 badges from the gym leaders around Hoenn.
Gym Leaders are specialized trainers that are far more smart and skilled than the average trainer. Each Leader has their own specialization when it comes to Pokemon types. One may master the Water type, while another uses their skills in Fire types. To get a badge, you must defeat all of the Gym Leader's Pokemon.
Once you defeat all 8 of the Gym Leaders, you must take part in the Pokemon League. There are five members of the Pokemon League. These five members are the most skilled trainers you will encounter in the game. They are like Gym Leaders, but more powerful. The last trainer is the game's strongest trainer. Defeat him, then you become the Pokemon Master.
There is indeed a lot of value in this game, because there is so much to do before you beat the game, and so much after. After the game is defeated, you now can do many new things, like go to new areas etc.
Though there is a lot of value in this game, it later becomes like many of the Pokemon games, it starts to gather dust. You may become bored of it as the Pokemon series has remained unchanged when it comes to their games. This is something that I have to complain about.
When Pokemon Red and Blue were released, there was just nothing like it before. That is what made Red and Blue popular. Not only was the TV show popular, but there was no game like it either. But now, there isn't much new when it comes to gameplay, except the obvious ones.
Going back to the game, I will now talk about the basics. I already covered the Gameplay, it is getting repetitive, but is still good, and I also discussed the value, it is often worth the money. So, I will talk about Graphics and Sound.
The game's graphics are definetely the series' best so far. The colour and metallic games were easily 2D. But in this, while still probably 2D, do look cleaner than before. They seem clearer, and a bit more realistic than before. Also during battles, the Pokemon models look better than ever before. They now look a lot more like the Pokemon found in the Pokemon television series.
The sound, is okay. There is indeed a lack of FX sounds in the game. Though there is some, there could've been a little more. Also, the in-game music is nice to listen to at first, but gets repetitive after a while. Though the game's sound isn't great, it is still pretty good.
When I saw my friend at school play this way back in 2003(this was in late grade 5, early grade 6) I really wanted to get this game. I'd often go home to my Game Boy Colour, play Pokemon Crystal, wishing to get Pokemon Sapphire, and a Game Boy Advance. So, during the Christmas, I unwrapped my last gift, and it was an SP. I got Pokemon Sapphire (this review is primarily for Sapphire, but I still have this for Ruby as well). For short, this game was the very reason I got the SP. And I am proud of that. During the early months of 2004, I spent hours playing this game, sometimes the only times I put it down were during the times to eat, shower, and go to bed. That is how addicted I got to the game.
Overall, this game is definetely worth the money if your still into Pokemon. Though I have to admit, Pokemon is definitely over for me, I still give this game the mark it deserves, not what I think of it today. So, you owe it to yourself to get Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire, should you still have the Pokemon bug.