I just started playing video games after not playing any for a few years. I don't have a lot of money to spend on a gc controller atm. keep hearing "never buy a third party controller" is there one that would be fine for someone who is only playing things like pokemon xd and harvest moon? or are all of them just that crappy that they break within hours of use?

Well a third party controller is bad but it won't break within hours usually

Once I bought a third party controller for PS2 and it was such a disaster. The overall quality was just awful, although if someone didn't hold a real one wouldn't even notice things like loose triggers or extremely inaccurate sticks which made some racing games unplayable.