Finally beat Emerald! Sceptile, Manectric, and Absol did most of the hard work. Glacia, why do you have to constantly spam Hail? Sceptile's Dragon Claw did prove itself useful against Drake's dragons (though Leaf Blade worked almost as well on Flygon and Kingdra). Then the Champ. By the time I get there I'm out of Revives and only have Swellow, Absol, Sceptile, and Manectric able to fight. Too bad for Linoone, but he did buy a few turns against Glacia (ditto for Shedinja, who could have been awesome if it weren't for all that damned Hail).
So the Champ battle kicks off, my Absol manages to get two Swords Dances off (thank heavens for no hail and Blizzard missing me, that gave me a free turn), then outright sweeps three of Wallace's Mons off the field. Good-bye Wailord, Tentacruel, Ludiculo, barely knew ya. Whiscash is tough enough on physical defense to survive and counter with an Earthquake (wish Shedinja could've seen this, apparently that fish is utterly powerless against Wonder Guard!), but Sceptile fills in and polishes him off. Milotic is a bit of trouble -- Leaf Blade versus Ice Beam and Sceptile goes down first, but Manectric finishes Milotic off with a good Thunderbolt. Wallace's last Mon ... a Gyarados, of all things? It all boils down to who is faster ... my Thunderbolt or his Earthquake. No other way to do it. Manectric hits first and massive damage wins. Beat the Champion with my six-party team of Hoenn-exclusive Mons.
Took me awhile but I did spot Latios, now I can track him, unfortunately no cities in Hoenn have guard stations to make the hunting any easier. And I tried challenging Groudon -- that Lv.70 Groudon, ahem. Altaria actually proved able to survive his Fire Blast (still took about 60% damage though), Solarbeam barely scratches her, immune to Fissure, the only problem is that Groudon has Rest and I can't damage him fast enough (even after a full salvo of Dragon Dances). Groudon went down in Struggles after about 50 turns. Oh well, time to reset and level-grind Altaria a bit before trying again.