Pokemon Alpha Sapphire: Finished Delta Episode!
My thoughts are pretty much the same as I said before. It's Hoenn with a Gen 6 paint job, so it's good stuff. Delta Episode was neat in that it was an actual extension of the Hoenn story rather than it's own self contained thing. Makes sense, since without his own game, Rayquaza being sort of deleted from the whole "Kyogre and Groudon don't like each other
" plot is wrong, so they found a way to keep his integration he has in Emerald, but do something unique with it. On top of that, the story is DIFFERENT for Pokemon standards. Rather than "Evil Organization, stop them! Then Collect badges!", there's now a completely different kind of threat, and some mysterious chick running around who seems to know something related to it. Add in some cool original themes and a Final Boss fight with an unexpected opponent
(Deoxys, for those wondering. Also the first time they took a promotional and put it into the main game without any sort of external requirements is something unprecedented. I'm hoping they do this more, at very least for Darkrai, Genesect and Keldeo, 3 Pokemon I feel shouldn't be promotionals, but instead just have special side quests dedicated to them)...well, ok, he was expected since Gamefreak kind of SPILLED THE BEANS before the game came out, but shh!
The only other time Pokemon really extended it's plot was in Black/White 2, which is where the end of N's character arc doesn't happen until the after game, but even that's more just one character rather than the plot coming to a close. Delta Episode wasn't WOMG AMAZING writing, but it was something actually DIFFERENT for Pokemon, a franchise people say is stagnant. It's kind of like why the BW1 plot was such a big deal; no it wasn't shakespearian writing, but it definitely had different theme and tone than other games. XY did go back to basics, but then a large part of XY did feel like it was attempting to marriage the classic stuff with the new things hence all the Gen 1 Fanservice and such.
Here in lies the question: WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY GOING TO DO WITH Z VERSION TO KEEP THINGS FRESH!?
Personally, I think they should do a prequel because Pokemon hasn't done that yet! It's not like Pokemon has such tight continuity and detailed backstory that it'd be hard to avoid retconning after all <_<
EDIT: Just remembered that technically, RSE were prequels to the Gen 2 games, but really this feels more like a Gaiden to the Kanto games than anything else, as the events in Hoenn have nothing to do with Kanto/Johto. The only thing keeping them prequels was the whole "we have contacted another region!" thing Emerald and FRLG did...and honestly, ORAS sort of retconned THAT so I should shut up about this before I hurt myself.