YMMV / Pokémon Fire-Ash

• Catharsis Factor:
  • Regarding the Kanto Gyms, Ash earned half of their badges through acts of charity. Here, however, you not only can, but you must obtain the Badges the normal way (defeating the Gym Leader).
  • You can catch the Pokemon you believe Ash should have caught, and even live up to the anime's English motto, "Gotta Catch 'Em All".
  • If you have the luck to catch Ho-Oh before even entering the first Pokemon Center, you can have the Legendaries enact punishment on the villains (Team Rocket, Team Magma, Team Aqua, Team Galactic, Team Plasma, Team Flare, Faba and Chairman Rose). It's extremely hard to do so without editing the save file so you have infinite Master Balls and Max Repels, and even then, Ho-Oh's encounter rate is 1%, so a lot of luck is involved.
    • That aside, having all the Legendaries is this: for the whole ordeal of Ash being The Chosen One, this is only used in the movies, and usually goes nowhere. Here, you can actually prove to the world that you have the literal gods of the Pokemon World by your side. This crosses over with the abovementioned catharsis of catching Pokemon you believe Ash should have caught for Latias.
  • In version 3.5, you can rechallenge and legitimately win the Indigo League, meaning that Ash can get a fair rematch against Ritchie, whose fight is infamous in the anime for putting Ash into unfair circumstances that guarantee Ritchie's win, circumstances that, mind you, Ritchie himself didn't like, yet blames the loss on Ash and Ash alone (when really, it was Team Rocket's fault that Ash lost) with the only one who doesn't blame Ash being Ritchie himself. And after the match against the person who beat Ritchie, you also get a rematch against Harrison, the guy who beat Ash in the Johto League (he stated he wanted to challenge the Indigo League after the Johto League). Meaning that, in rechallenging the Indigo League, you get rematches against not one, but two of the Trainers that beat Ash in the League. And the final battle of the rechallenged League is Gary, who himself gets some catharsis by getting to the finals, and since the Final Boss of the Gen 1 games is Blue (Gary’s game counterpart) who faces Red for the Champion title, this battle between Ash and Gary feels like a True Final Boss (which is helped by the fact Gary’s Pokemon for that fight are the highest-leveled ones for the game).
    • On that note, you can actually beat all six of the trainers who knocked Ash out of a league. Sure, the game still treats it as if they won, but it’s still satisfying for most fans.
• Good Bad Bugs: The number of EXP your Pokémon receive after defeating another Pokemon is not divided by the number of Pokémon you used in that fight. This means that you can easily rotate all Pokémon in your party so all six of them will gain massive amounts of EXP when you beat the enemy Pokemon.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Obviously, completing the Pokedex, but it's worse than in the canon games; Pokemon Fire Ash has all Pokedexes from Kanto to Hisui, and the National Pokedex on top of it. This means you have no less than 905 Pokemon to catch. Worse, most Legendary Pokemon have their catch rates be as low as in canon, making them a hassle to catch even with Ultra Balls or suited Apricorn Balls. The exceptions are Mew, Regice, Regirock, Registeel, Regigigas, Phione, Meloetta, Diancie, Hoopa, Volcanion, Cosmog, Magearna, Marshadow, Zeraora and Eternatus, which are Gift Pokémon, Solgaleo and Meltan, who are Iconic Pokémon, and Kubfu which can be found at a Game Corner. And with the exception of Ho-Oh, all Legendaries that must be obtained by catching them can only be caught once. This means that the Pokedex cannot be completed without Save Scumming or editing the save file so you have infinite Master Balls. Version 3.5 starts fixing this by making the Indigo League rechallengable, which allows you to recatch Mewtwo and the Legendary Birds if you failed to do so the first time and for each of your failures, they respawn whenever you beat the Indigo League, although Mewtwo is on Route 4 rather than in the Viridian Gym, where he's encountered the first time. And it's stated further updates will make more Leagues rechallengable, so it will become easier to catch the Legendaries. Though the above problem seems to be the reason why, up until Version 3.5, you don't receive rewards for completing the Pokedex. And rechallenging the League is hard on itself since all Trainers have Pokemon with their levels in their 90s, and even if you have level 100 Pokemon, so does Gary.
  • Challenging Ash; not only his Pokemon are all level 85, the highest of all Pokemon in the game, which means you need to spend a good amount of time Level Grinding unless you edit your save file so you have infinite Rare Candies (though thankfully the post game has a lot of Trainers you can rechallenge endlessly, mainly Gym Leaders, Elite Four, Champions and Ash's traveling companions and rivals, so if you know this, it's less tedious since you'll likely rely on those Trainers to grind rather than on wild Pokémon, and becomes even less tedious if you know about the Good Bad Bug above), but unlike with everything else in the game, the enclosed walkthrough doesn't tell you where you can find him.