Which sister game improved the most on its original?

[Six Trails]

1. Yellow over Red/Blue
2. Crystal over Gold/Silver
3. Emerald over Ruby/Sapphire
4. Platinum over Diamond/Pearl

(not counting USUM since that's more of a "re-envisioning" rather than a copy with some tweaks)

Which of these four games do you think improved the most upon their predecessor?

I would probably go with Emerald over Ruby/Sapphire just for adding so much more to do post-game, like completing the Battle Frontier and re-battling gym leaders (double battling gym leaders is pretty cool too). I also like how they incorporated both evil teams into the story, something the other games didn't have to do since they all only had one evil team. Some other perks are being able to get both Kyogre and Groudon, adding animated Pokemon sprites, being able to get a Johto starter for completing the Hoenn dex, and having a choice between Latias/Latios. What do y'all think?

:mikey

 

[Captain Cadaver]

Definitely Platinum with how it implemented Giratina as the main Legendary, gave a lot more character to Cyrus, had cool visuals with the Distortion World and did what the other third instalments didn't by expanding the regional Pokedex along with adding new forms to pre-existing Pokemon such as Origin Forme Giratina and Rotom's appliance forms. I'd also say it's post-game was better than Emerald since whilst Emerald did have rematches with it's Gym Leaders, it wasn't post-game and couldn't be done more than once iirc.

 

[Kyo]

Platinum's additions to the Sinnoh Pokedex also made the game a hell of a lot less dull, since so many Sinnoh-exclusive Pokemon (generally new additions to the evolutionary chains and such) were inexplicably unavailable in the Diamond/Pearl Sinnoh Dex. The pacing was also massively improved in a number of ways, the most prominent in my mind being the increase in surf speed from walking to running speed. Battles were sped up as well I think, though still rather slow. Improvements to the post-game (both the addition of the Battle Frontier and the improved Battle Zone in general) were welcome. Platinum probably had the most positive changes compared to any sister game by a longshot, in my opinion. I actually think Pearl/Diamond are rather bad in comparison, for all the good they brought to the series e.g. physical/special split I'm still not keen on the idea of replaying them or anything, Platinum's pretty good though.

Emerald's gym leader rematches were post-game exclusive, btw, and they improved every time for up to 4 times. (I don't remember if you could continue to rematch them after the 4th.) I still found it mostly inferior to Platinum's rematches just because they were bound to the PokeNav so it was entirely random as to when you'd get a rematch, sometimes taking a really long time to get your first one. I also don't care for the double battle format for the rematches tbh.
Strangely enough, the E4 and Champion, while rematchable, never improve and are eventually surpassed by most of the gym leaders, so that's disappointing. This is odd since FRLG is the first game that implemented proper E4/Champion rematches, I believe.