So do you think Emerald fixed Gen III to at least be playable for you?

Sure.

The Pokémon fandom can be odd in that sense. I've loved every version. Gen 3 was fun. My favorite Legendary comes from it. I still haven't finished Gen 5. But I'll move on to 6 anyway. I'll finish 5 later. Lol.

I don't think I really have a favorite or least favorite. At this point, if I had to choose, I'd say Gen 1 is my least favorite. Simply because they've made so many changes and added so many features and refined everything so well that Gen 1 is stupidly tedious. Walking only(until you get the bike way later). One Special stat, atrocious sprite art and SLOW battle animations. I can't play Gen 1 anymore unless it's on an emulator with a speed up feature.

I can't play Gen 1 period. It's so stupidly broken that it makes me remember why I value Gens 4 and 5.

I feel that the Special and Physical divide among individual moves instead of between elements in Gen IV is probably the most significant change since Gen I. It's a wonder it took so long to implement it.

The Physical Special split was so wonderful that I almost want to rank 4 as my favorite gen for that alone.

I know! That split alone made Gen IV and let me overlook its other flaws (like having only Ponyta as a Fire-type besides Chimchar).

Well the ONLY thing that I hate about the new games is that they are only playable on either: 3DS, 3DS XL, or the new 2DS & 1DS, other than that, I'm TOTALLY STOCKED for the games, just means that I has to buy a 2DS as I can't be bothered to try and afford either the 3DS or 3DS XL and the 1DS is better if you don't suffer from headaches *I deal with literal ones every day now* and if you don't mind using a TV to play a pokemon game xD.

I've never really given it much thought, and I'm a casual player at most, so I haven't got some deep thought out reasoning for this, but I'd say my favourite generation is the second.

Generation five for me is boring, there are WAY to many Pokémon and the way the game creates false difficulty with ridiculous level spikes from town to town makes progression slow and monotonous.

Generation three and four were the ones I skipped, I don't really know why, I just didn't own a DS and at that point I had zero interest in Pokémon. I barely care now. I did play FireRed at this point, if that counts, but obviously that was just a remake.

Generation One is obviously where it all started, I have a huge amount of love and nostalgia for these games. But let's be honest, fifteen years have not been kind to these games...like at all.

But the second generation? This shit was the bomb! When I was like...nine. The graphics were improved, we had an entirely new world to explore, a whole new set of a hundred Pokémon and by this point in the franchise tweaking a few things here and there and adding a couple of Pokémon was still a new and exciting concept, not something we'd roll our eyes at a decade later as they keep churning these games out. I still remember Pokémon Crystal being like the most exciting thing ever.

That isn't a thing.

But of course it's for the new hardware. That's the point. I don't really think anyone should be mad about that. :/

Until Gen IV, I didn't even know the Physical/Special split was based on types previously. It just wasn't anything I thought about. But after learning it would be changed, a whole lot finally made sense. And seriously that was a big and very much needed change.