As I've grown older, I've lost a lot of enjoyment from Gen III in general. The visuals aren't as big a leap between GB to GBA that it was between generations before and after, the lack of physical/special split still continues to hurt the balancing, the general copy/paste of Gen II back sprites for all prior generation Pokemon, how wonky the front sprites look for them too...
It's weird, FRLG updated a lot of visuals to make them much better, then Emerald comes and reverts them back again. I am grateful for the fan support Gen III has though, the modding scene for the games is immaculate and they fix all of my gripes above and then some.
As for ORAS, I do generally have much more positive things to say, even though the game balance leans too far into too easy, even when you disable the Exp Share. It arguably carries all of Gen VI, given XY were considerably under-baked (Z-A has redeemed it though) and the lore expansions were really cool (it hinted at multiple universe existing in parallel well before USUM properly established it, effectively meaning any retcons technically stand alongside the original continuities).
Oh, and Zinnia is peak.
