I've been messing around with Emerald quite a bit lately and it's been pretty fun. As someone who played the original duo of games that launched in the US and not much else, it's been cool to see and use some of the Pokemon that I'm not very familiar with.

Abilities and natures are also a pretty cool aspect of Pokemon that I wasn't really familiar with until getting deeper into this game. Pickup is very helpful as both an rng item finder and cash generator, both things that are great quality of life improvements over the original games.

Repeat/scaled trainer battles are also a great improvement over the original system. Grinding doesn't feel anywhere near as tedious since I can selectively power level with type advantages pretty easily.

TLDR - It's a fun game that I wish I would've tried sooner.