3rd Gen You can't "catch 'em all" anymore.

[Palamon]

In generation 3, it's impossible to to get a complete National Pokedex without trading from all the games that came out that generation. This is due to the fact you cannot bring Pokemon from generations I and II into generation III. There are 184 Pokemon that are not in the Hoenn Pokedex that are really difficult to obtain in the Hoenn games.

FireRed/Leafgreen made it possible so many of the missing Kanto Pokemon in the Hoenn Pokedex could be traded to R/S (and later Emerald). However, being able to trade between the Kanto and Hoenn games is tedious, as you need to do a sidequest to get key items in order to do so. Meanwhile, Emerald added maybe a dozen Johto Pokemon after you get the national Pokedex to catch.

Even then, it's not possible to get a complete national dex in the generation III games, as you need two other particular Pokemon games to do so: Colosseum and XD.

You also cannot see all the Pokemon in the Hoenn Pokedex without trading, either. Especially in the original Hoenn games. For one thing, the final starter evolution of your rival's Pokemon will never be seen, and neither will the starter that never got picked. Most of the trade evolution Pokemon will also be missing, too. While it is like this in a lot of the Pokemon games, I think it's particularly bad in Generation III.

What did you think of this? I've always been annoyed, seeing as it's possible to see all the Pokemon in the Pokedex w/out trading the generation directly after this. I know that you can't see the entire Pokedex in Gen I or II either, but.

It also annoys me you have to go do so many sidesteps to even complete the Hoenn/National Pokedex in Generation III. You need to have seven different games to complete the entire Pokedex: Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, FireRed/LeafGreen, Colosseum and XD are all necessary if you want to do so. If I had a Game Boy Advanced back in the day, I definitely wouldn't want to bother with completing the national Pokedex in the Hoenn games, considering the ridiculous amount of sidesteps you have to do.

I'm glad the remakes made it much easier to complete the national Pokedex w/Wonder Trade and Dex Nav, but yeah.

 

[Illyasviel]

Before Sw/Sh I always got the main series games at launch and kept up with events, so I always was able to finish my dex in the games easily, especially later since I just kept porting up my Pokémon from Gen III onwards. However, I found out from my friends that have started only recently that filling a dex is very tedious and difficult if you do not have all these advantages. It really opened my eyes to how convoluted it all was.

In Gen III, for example, to get all the Johto starters, you needed to complete the ENTIRE regional dex in Hoenn just to receive one unless you have a Colosseum disc, a Gamecube, and a GBA-GCN link cable to get them as purified Shadow Pokémon. You also have to beat all of Colosseum to trade at all.

That's not even taking into account that some Pokemon like Mew were from events that no longer exist anymore. To add insult to injury, there is a Mew-exclusive tutor in XD that will teach some moves you can't get it anywhere else, like Fake Out. (You can bet I shamelessly took full advantage of this, though.)

I took all of these things like equipment and event Pokémon for granted because I never had to think twice about things I already have, but it is definitely a pretty ridiculous task if you start from scratch. It also helped that at the time, my friends and I bred and traded Pokémon like starters and did touch trades for legendaries via link cable a lot, but these days? I'd be amazed to happen across someone playing GBA and toting around a link cable at the same exact time as me.

 

[ShyRayq]

I've personally completed the 3rd Gen pokedex with and without the Gamecube games.

Without Gamecube is such a drag. Rather than spend hours catching ~200 pokemon and trading over ~200 pokemon 3 times in order to get all 3 Johto starters, I'd only trade over some hard to get pokemon and actually catch everything else 3 times. Other than the Johto starters, everything else was pretty standard. But still, catching everything in the Hoenn dex 3 times is still a pain. The Beasts weren't that bad since Kanto is pretty easy to speedrun.

With Gamecube is so much easier and less tedious. I luckily have a Wii so I can play Gamecube games, but it was expensive getting everything. The Gamecube games are annoying in they're own ways, but at least you don't have to complete the Hoenn dex 3 times. I somehow managed to catch all the Shadow Pokemon in their first encounters. The final battle in XD was a massive pain but I somehow pulled through. The only really annoying part was Mt. Battle. I was actually crazy enough to do XD's Mt. Battle 3 times in order to get each of the basic Johto starters, just because I could.

 

[Lunar]

This is a great point and really takes me back! When I was a bit younger I really tried to complete the Hoenn Pokedex, it's probably the only time I ever properly attempted to complete a dex ingame. My save had almost 700 hours on it, I got to around the 180-190 mark before giving up, it's really tough to even complete the Hoenn Pokedex let alone the national dex. It does annoy me how difficult it is, but back then it really was the emphasis of the series to 'catch them all'. Just wanted those Johto starters in Emerald tbh lmao.

 

[NikolaP]

I started on Ruby (emulated, even!), so not being able to catch them all was a normal thing for me, and kept being so in gens 4 and 5. I never even thought of catching them all - I just liked to have all starters and many legendaries.