Pokemon Gen 3 - Underrated or Underappreciated?

[water dog]

Also the plot was cool at it's base but ended up being really dumb but w/e.

Emerald's plot is what got me back into Pokemon. I fell out of love with the little shits at the end of middle school but finally picked this game up (not even sure how) and started playing it nonstop for weeks. My team was Gardevoir, Manectric, and Breloom and I was very satisfied with all of them. This was before I had seen any of the new Pokemon and before I like any of the starters (felt uncomfortable with all of them). By the time it came to catch/meet Rayquaza in his tower, the game felt so epic for me.

That reminds me, actually, another thing I absolutely loved about Emerald is catching the legendaries. Catching Rayquaza in his epic tower in the middle of the ocean, deep sea diving to find a small cave with Kyogre in it, following the weather patterns to find the cave Groudon was in, solving the puzzle to unlock the 3 regis. All of it was bad ass, I wish they would have made more legendary encounters like this.

EDIT: I will admit it kind of throws out o a lot of the mysticism that the old games had, but shit, so did B/W (more so than R/S/E I think). I think D/P/P brought the mysticism that Koop was talking about but lost it 5th gen.