The Positives of your Least Favorite Pokemon Game and the Negatives of your Most Favorite

[Yung Dramps]

What the title sez. Sometimes people get carried away praising what games they like the most and bashing what they dislike the most without taking a step back to give criticism/praise where deserved respectively. I'll go first as an example!

Favorite
Sun

• I really dislike how underutilized the Aether Foundation goons are. Their Pokemon variety is on the level of Cipher, and yet you only ever get to face them off in one relatively brief section of the entire game.
• For some reason the freely purchasable Shiny/Dusk Stones at Malie City are version exclusive with the Dusk Stone in Moon! I really wanted to use Island Scan Litwick in my last playthrough or Honedge in a potential future one but when I found this out I gave up. It's especially dumb since there are no Pokemon in Sun you can obtain in the main game that can evolve via Shiny Stone.

Least Favorites
Pearl

• As a region, Sinnoh is one of my favorites and eventually became kinda fun to traverse in Platinum.
• I still firmly believe the overworld music has no equal aside from maybe Sun.
• While these can also be applied to Platinum, this game as the Version 1 so to speak did it first!

 

[Imperial Magala]

Favorite: B2W2
-The triple whammy of difficulties being unlockable, post-game only without 2 DSs, and being version exclusives really just suck.
Least Favorite: HGSS
-Pokeathlon is an underrated addition that is my favorite non-battling feature in the series.

 

[Bull Of Heaven]

Emerald
Too much water As much as we all mostly love the Battle Frontier, the Battle Palace specifically is trash. I could at least have some fun with my in-game team in each of the other facilities, but I doubt that this one is even fun with a team built for it (never tried). Also, Brendan/May is a lame rival, and I'm not satisfied with that whole "Wally is the true rival" thing.

Diamond/Pearl
The Underground is a good source of useful items, and it was fun to use the traps on my brothers back when we all played. Also, the addition of WiFi battles (as well as things like the physical/special split and more competitive items) made competitive battling really take off, and while I never really became a competitive player, the idea that I could did a lot to keep me playing Pokemon back in those awkward teen years.

 

[Random Passerby]

Favorite: BW2
- Locking a lot of content behind the now unusable Dream World and Memory Link means you can't really replay it.

Least Favorite: DP
- It introduces the Physical / Special split and makes a lot of moves for types that need them (U-turn, Stone Edge, Close Combat, etc)

 

[King Feraligatr]

Favorite: HGSS

• As people have stated elsewhere, the level curve isn't good. Nor is the game's Pokemon distribution the best.
• Difficulty is not as well conceived as the previous main series release: Platinum.

Least Favorites:
SwiSh

• Nature Mints. Why wasn't this a thing in the past?
• Can evolve level 100 Mons with a Rare Candy. Again, why wasn't this a thing in the past?
• Nothing really else. I'd maybe say the TR system due to it being closer to my ideal TM system, but I haven't played the game to comment.

XY:

• A bigger start into letting players getting more competitively viable Pokemon. Long overdue.

 

[Its_A_Random]

Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon: Has an admittedly steep learning curve, the partner character is really obnoxious (even by JRPG kid character standards), the epilogue plot is a thing that exists and the main story has notable pacing issues (especially in the first act), and although I like the connection orb system, it does feel like a checklist that also disincentivises evolution (outside of starters).

Pokémon Dash: It ends It was a fairly neat short game that utilises the DS gimmicks in an okay way, which you would expect for a launch title.

Hey someone has to bring up the spinoffs

 

[JourneybyTrain]

Favorite: BW2
-I seriously can't think of a worse implemented feature in a praised game by a praised company than the difficulty options. Having a hard mode being locked behind clearing the normal mode is fine, a standard new game plus feature, but having it be only available for you to trade to other people so that they can restart their game with it is the most bewildering decision I've ever seen in any game. The fact that they also bothered developing an easy mode that no one can play until someone else has beaten the game further adds to this confusion, like the thought that there are developers at Gamefreak who thought this was a good idea really made me worry about the future of the franchise (sadly past tense post-SwiSH). The only scenario I can imagine them thinking of is an older sibling beats the game then sends his younger sibling a copy of the easy version. But for that to happen they both had to have coincidentally chosen the right versions of the game to play without knowing about this feature and then either played it at separate times or the kid had to get destroyed by the game before being eventually given the locked option of lowering the difficulty. I've seen people complain about this a lot but usually with anger, where I'm more just completely baffled that this could actually make it into the refined fifth edition of best-selling video game.
-The terribly executed difficulty options and abandoning them in the next game kind of brings me to my next point as I feel it's indicative of what's wrong with Gamefreak as a company, which is that they are constantly throwing things at the wall not even to see what sticks but just to obscure the fact that they have been iterating on the same basic formula sense the first game came out. Which circles around to a more specific point about BW, it doesn't really add much new to the franchise, despite the fact that the 3DS entries showed there were plenty of updates to improve the franchise while remaining very conservative to the basic formula of the series. At the time I wrote this off as a mix of hardware limitations and a bit of an exchange, i.e. yeah they didn't add anything new but look how many side quests are in the game! Looking back that's just a false equivalency though and I think it's a noticeable flaw of the game.
-A more understandable but annoying flaw is the achievement system having the same problem as 360 achievement systems despite those being mandatory where this was purely added by the developers, which is that there are a lot of useless achievements. Giving me a shiny medal for saving ten times just feels kind of condescending, like you're trying to manipulate dopamine in my brain instead of actually giving me incentive to partake in interesting challenges. Alternatively stuff like fighting 1,000 trainers in Black Tower/White Treehallow alone just feels like actively asking me to waste my time, the opposite spectrum of shitty achievements. Also having so many of them based around online play when the servers didn't even last two years is unfortunate.

Least Favorite: HGSS
-This was a hard one, I'm pretty sure SwiSH would be my answer but I just didn't buy them for the same reason. After that I thought of the original games for being buggy messes but that seems kind of unfair not to mention the positives for that are mostly just "why I like Pokemon". The next obvious choice was XY which I remember thinking were kind of forgettable disappointments after playing the game but six years on I have indeed literally forgotten almost everything about them. I skipped the original DP and just went straight to Platinum so that just leaves it a toss up between HGSS and SM and I have to go with HGSS there because I feel a level curve is far too important to an RPG to get wrong.
-That said, Johto is one of my favorite regions despite it being way too small in order to fit Kanto on the GBC cartridge. I really love the mysterious ruins of Unown or the quaint Buddhist atmosphere of the Bellsprout Tower, the whole region just gives off this amazing historical rural vibe and I think it (along with RB) executes the mythology of legends way better than places like Sinnoh, which is far too heavy handed and literal with it's mythology. Mystery is essential to capturing the actual feeling of myth and legends (I remembered after typing this that HGSS actually forces you to catch Lugia and Ho-Oh with some "chosen one" garbage which...*sigh* I'm just going on with my point) so having legends tucked away in secret with only rumors of their powers and importance is so much better than the "this thing is a literal god, we're going to capture it and destroy the world, also it actively wants to be in your PokeBall because you're the greatest child to ever walk the face of the earth" crap every Pokemon game sense gen 2 has been doing.
-When trying to write up HGSS I actually accidentally just started bitching about them and had to delete it sense it wasn't the point of the thread at all. It's not that I hate the games or anything though, on the contrary I find them so charming that I'm often eager to revisit them when remembering all the good points about them...it's just that upon playing them I very rarely have the patience to get beyond the random difficulty spikes due to the laughably bad level curve.

 

[ChrystalFalchion]

Favourites: HGSS / USUM

The Level curve in HGSS is really bad and there's nowhere to grind your Pokemon post game.
The blocks in the safari zone were so badly implemented.
The handholding in USUM was obnoxious.
While most Pokemon games are linear, USUM took it to extremes.

Least favourites: XY

Had a great soundtrack
Huge regional dex

 

[Siggu]

Negatives of my favourite game (BW2):
- The so-called difficulty settings are wrong on a lot of levels. First, there's the fact that you need ANOTHER game to unlock the other difficulty modes, unless you want to erase your current save. Then, there's the fact that the supposed Challenge Mode is "trainers are 4-5 levels higher; major trainers have 1 more Pokémon and maybe an adjusted moveset or two", and barely anything else - it just requires a little more grinding (which is bad) and then it becomes as easy as the normal mode (which is also bad). Frankly, if this is what they mean by "harder", then don't add difficulty settings at all.
- The Medal System was a pretty fine idea, but the execution was questionable. You need to look for an NPC to check your achievements, and then you're getting them one at a time, which depending on how long it's been you've checked your medals, you might be stuck for a long time. It's pretty much the same issue as with Super Mario Odyssey's achievement system.
- Resolute Forme Keldeo is possibly the most pointless form difference in the entire series.

Positives of my least favourite game (Yellow):
- You can get all starters without trading, something that has not been done ever again (not counting its pseudo-remake, Let's Go).

I can't think of another positive of Yellow that doesn't apply to the other Gen I games though.

 

[Codraroll]

Ooh, fun thread idea!

Favourites:

BW2:

• Why oh whyyy the difficulty options. This is literally the stupidest way to implement difficulty settings I've ever heard about. Requiring you to beat the game on normal difficulty to unlock the easy difficulty? Fortunately, the difficulty options could be transferred, but you had to know somebody who had already beaten the right version of the game. And all things considered, Challenge Mode wasn't that challenging or well thought out.
• A lot of content required Internet access, and the servers died quickly.
• Like BW1, the games are still very linear with few if any branching paths. But at least the region opens up a ton of shortcuts later.
• Move Tutors based on Shards was a good idea (introduced in Platinum, I think?), but actually obtaining the Shards was a fairly tedious affair.

Platinum:

• It is just as terrible with HMs as Diamond and Pearl, so traversing the region is still as tedious as ever. This is exacerbated somewhat by the fact that most of the interesting locations in Sinnoh, post-game-wise (Day Care, that transfer facility, the Battle Frontier, your Villa, possibly the Game Corner) tend to lie very far from each other, so when you travel between any two of them you're likely to just Fly, rather than going by land (as was possible in Kanto and Hoenn). Sinnoh is flyover territory, and Routes rarely feel worth visiting a second time.
• Sinnoh Underground has its neat moments, but overall feels kinda samey and boring. Secret Bases were fun when you could claim a corner of the overworld as your own, not so much when you've got a hole in the wall in a nondescript corridor in a maze of completely identical corridors. Farming Shards for Move Tutors down here is excruciating too. The Mining minigame is fun the first few times you do it, but when you need eight Shards of one specific colour...

Emerald:

• Too Samey Water. I don't mind the amount of water in Hoenn per se, the problem is that there's nothing but Tentacool and Wingull and their evolutions there - anywhere. Treating the entire sea as one biome is a risky maneuver when there's so much sea in the game, but it's made even worse by not having any more variety to its encounter tables than the common route-side pond.
• The Battle Frontier is awesome, but training up Pokémon for participation there is a massive chore. For one, there are no good training facilities anywhere in Hoenn. Have fun grinding against the Elite Four in perpetuity, or beating up the same random trainers on Route 110.

Least favourite:

Sword/Shield

• There is a kernel of a good game hidden somewhere in the midst of all this crap. The Wild Area is an attempt to bring some exploration back to the world of Pokémon. Finally being able to walk around in 3D with a free camera, seeing Pokémon roam wild, feels kind of sweet. Most locations have a pretty good-looking visual identity too. The feel of the areas is always pretty much on-point. Too bad the areas are all too small. Something similar goes for Gym Battles, which feel very epic while they last.
• XP Candies are, as I've outlined in a recent post in the Little Things You Like thread, possibly the greatest consumable reward Game Freak has ever conceived. They are always useful to have, and so always pleasing to find. It doesn't matter whether you spend them immediately or save them up, you're getting the same value out of them anyway. You can go the entire game without using them, but using them cuts down on tedium when you need to bring a team mate up to par. SwSh only gives these out for Raids, but I could see future games giving them out for other things. They'd be excellent rewards for exploration or talking to random NPCs, for instance. Knowing Game Freak, they'll probably be removed entirely without explanation, though.

Diamond/Pearl

• The Physical/Special split was the best decision ever taken about Pokémon mechanics. So many Pokémon had complete changes to how they worked from one game to the next. While there were quite a few nerfs, the new system made so much more sense and gave so many more opportunities for most Pokémon.
• The Sinnoh region feels really big. Sure, this is partially because it's such a slog to traverse, but you can't deny the sense of wilderness you get when walking between cities. Right at the beginning of the game you get a large city to explore, you have to go through caves even to get to the first Gym, there are deep forests, narrow mountain passes, and a remote, snowy wilderness to explore. It's a region you never quite feel like you can conquer.
• There's a surprising amount of postgame for a pair of base games. There's the entire Battle Zone to the north to explore, with a bog-standard Battle Tower, but also Routes, towns, and dungeons. The Sinnoh Underground, bland though it may be, also offers a surprising amount of replay value. True, these games are made completely obsolete by Platinum in every single way, but that's not to say they are entirely without value. I rank them above SwSh, at least.

Sun/Moon

• The games manage to have a relaxed, wholesome atmosphere to them throughout the entire adventure. Alola has the feel of a nice place! Granted, the variety of locations is so-so, and the region isn't all that inviting to traverse on foot, but what you get definitely has a charm to it.
• There is a competently written story in these games. Lillie and Gladion are fleshed-out characters that go through actual arcs. Perhaps Gladion could have been a tad less edgy, and Lillie could have talked less about not being a Pokémon trainer, but those are minor gripes. It's better than USUM in this respect.
• The lack of an evil team (well, at least one adhering to the classic formula of goofy costumes and ambitions of world domination) is very refreshing too. Team Skull is a bunch of troublemakers, but they aren't seeking out a legendary Pokémon to destroy the world or anything. The Aether Foundation has some questionable elements, but most of their members are in it for the Pokémon conservation and not the UB research.

 

[BP]

Favorite

Fire Red & Leaf Green

• Can't evolve Golbat because of the dumb natddex rule this also applies to Onix, Slowpoke, Eevee and Gloom. They should have made this different so that the items were available and the Natdex rule was nonexistant.
• You get Sludge Bomb post game
• The post Game doesn't let you catch that many new Pokemon

Least Favorite

Gen 7 in its Entirety
It hurts me emotionally to say good things about this generation but here goes. Don't let me saying these things change your mind about gen 7 though. Its still the most awful game in the series.

• It looked pretty
• The Pokemon for the most part were all really neat.
• Team Skull was actually a good addition to the series. I was extremely sceptical that they would be a good team as they seemed kind of just like punks but they turned outt cool.
• They kept Megas. Nice work Gamefreak
• Ultra Beasts were an interesting take on things and I appreciate the backstory of the UBs and what they represent just not really the UBs themselves.

 

[Ryota Mitarai]

BW1 / HGSS / FRLG / USUM (favorites, I don't know which one I like the most tbh):

HGSS:

• Horrible Exp. curve
• Many Pokemon being (borderline) unviable

BW1:

• Too much story makes this game not so enjoyable when replaying it. When replaying a game, I like just getting straight to the gameplay rather than listen to the same story over and over again.
• Post-game is very meh in my opinion

FRLG:

• It's very easy to "break the game", in the sense that the top tier mons simply trash the game without much efforts, which speaks for the difficulty levels.
• Abrupt surge in levels. Erika's ace is level 29 and Koga is suddenly level 43. Giovanni's Ace is 50 ad Blue is 63.

USUM:

• Other than the obvious cutscene issues, a lot of the Pokemon is really slow. Having something reasonably fast is sort of a miracle and god-sent.
• Lillie
• Rotom-Dex

Least favorite is likely DPPt. I cannot really say much about it, as I am not a huge fan in particular, but perhaps the team rosters being actually interesting? Like, at least I can see more diversity in there than in FRLG (No Koga, having 3 Pokemon from the same line IS NOT DIVERSITY).

 

[pokemon4eva]

BW2 (my absolute fav):
- Who in their right mind thought Breeders infinitely challenging you was a great idea?!
- Your love interests can call you in random spots and kill the pace, they're basically Joey 2.0
- Having to complete the main campaign to unlock Challenge Mode in Black 2, and why is Easy Mode a thing?
- The story isn't as interesting as BW, although it's more justified since it is giving closure to what BW started.

Let's Go (least favorite by far):
- The walking Pokemon are better than ever, whether it's your following Pokemon or the wild Pokemon.
- MELTAN AND MELMETAL
- That cutscene with the Cubone and Marowak was cute and sad.
-....I dunno, free G Max Pikachu in SwSh? I think I'm stretching it...

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

My favorite games are B/W and B2/W2, followed by X/Y and OR/AS.

Least favorite things about:

B/W and B2/W2
- I was never a huge fan of the way diving worked in these games. It was limited to just one area, there were no wild Pokémon to encounter while diving, and there was a step limit, meaning you could never explore the entire area in one trip there. It also required other HMs to explore the entire area, and it seems like you can't reach the second floor if you take too many steps on the first floor. For these reasons, I didn't get around to explore the Abyssal ruins in my Gen 5 games until 2015. That said, it was sort of okay in the end. I used an external map while exploring it and marked all the items I had found, making it feel like a treasure hunt. And after replaying R/S/E and playing OR/AS, diving isn't that great in those games either. It is better than in Gen 5 for sure, but far from perfect. I think the idea of diving to the Abyssal Ruins in Gen 5 and exploring that area was a cool concept, but the execution should have been better.
- Many others have complained about the Key System and that Easy/Challenge Mode is post-game only. I partly agree, but I think another issue is that the Key System (apart from Memory Link) could only be used through local wireless. It would have been better if it had been possible to use it through both local wireless and Wi-Fi, this would have given more players a chance to utilize it.
- Not really something about the games, but about the circumstances surrounding them. The closing of Dream World and Wi-Fi. I really liked Dream World, and having access to Wi-Fi was great too (I used online a lot in Gen 5, much more than in Gen 4), so it is sad that it no longer exists. I understand why it had to be shut down, but it is still a negative.

X/Y
- The lack of content. These games have amazing gameplay but sadly not that much to do. In terms of content and post-game for first pairs, they are a step down from the greatness of B/W and D/P (but they are at least better than R/B, G/S and R/S). What they do have is mostly really fun and well executed though, so that's good.
- Bad story/characters/lore. A pretty big step down from the greatness of Gen 5, though it was still not the worst in the series. But story isn't super important to me, and I thought the post-game Looker Missions were great.
- The lowest amount of new Pokémon to date. Previous generations (especially Gen 5) had both quality and quantity, but Gen 6 had only quality.

OR/AS
- A small regional dex compared to B2/W2 and the other 3DS games. There were also a few types that were underrepresented, such as Ghost, Ice and Fairy.
- Too much water, not enough variation. The water routes and areas should have been more varied when it comes to wild Pokémon and environments. Now most of them look and feel the same and have the same Pokémon on them. The DexNav exclusives help a little but not that much, sadly. And they only start to appear after you have beaten the Cave of Origin.
- These games were not that impressive in terms of new features and content (but again, they are remakes, so what else should I have expected?). Most of the content and features they have to offer already existed in either R/S/E or X/Y, there were a few new things such as the DexNav, but not that many.

My least favorite games are HG/SS. Apart from them, I guess there's also R/B/Y and G/S/C? Though I'd feel wrong for being too negative towards them. That said, I'd rank R/B and Crystal higher than Yellow and G/S, so I'll do the latter two as well.

Favorite things about:

HG/SS
- The Dowsing Machine. By far the best feature of these games, and one of the few good ones. It was amazingly useful, I always used it to look for items while playing these games. Second best one in the series on the whole.
- The breeding improvements. In theory, at least. Traditional breeding for IVs is easier than in D/P/P since the Power Items now pass down IVs, and Male Pokémon can now pass down their Nature as well. RNG breeding is also said to be easier than in D/P/P. I can't really do a fair comparison here though since I have never done any traditional breeding for IVs in HG/SS, nor any RNG breeding in D/P/P. But I'll still stand for it based on theory and what other players have said.
- Many legendaries to catch. This is something I always like, no matter the games. HG/SS are the third best in the series along with Platinum and B2/W2, so that's really good.
- The ability to mark things on the Town Map. I found it very useful to use as a reminder if there was something I wanted to do/explore on a route later but didn't have the ability to do so on my first visit.

Yellow
- Better front sprites than R/B.
- The ability to get all starters during the main game, without trade or doing anything special.
- Like all third versions, Yellow did some very fun and interesting changes to the Pokémon distribution.
- While I didn't like Yellow as much as R/B, I still thought it was pretty fun. I had a lot of fun with it back in the day when it was new.

G/S
- They improved upon R/B/Y in terms of graphics and game mechanics, they also had a way better bag and PC system (the latter was still far from perfect, but an improvement nonetheless).
- They added several new features that became standards in the series, such as breeding, hold items, genders, a time system and shinies.
- The Johto Pokémon.
- These games do (along with Crystal) give a certain feeling of mystery which I never felt that the remakes managed to give me. That was actually really cool now that I think back to it (this might just be nostalgia speaking though).
- Same as with Yellow; while I didn't like G/S as much as Crystal, they were still fun to play and good for their time at least.

Move Tutors based on Shards was a good idea (introduced in Platinum, I think?), but actually obtaining the Shards was a fairly tedious affair.

Don't know if you are aware, but there is a Funfest Mission named "Find Shards" which is self-explanatory as it let's you find large amounts of Shards very easily. I always used it to find Shards and I always had a ton of Shards in B2/W2. It is only available after beating the main story though, so it doesn't really help that much during the main game.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

tfw you want to contribute to the discussion but the only pokemon video games you own are emerald and channel and you havent played them in years

No least favorites, but time for some weird favorites.

Learn with Pokemon: Typing Adventure

• In an attempt to ease the player into the game, the first like ten or so standard levels only ask you to type the first X letters of the Pokemon's names. What this actually does is lead the player to make mistakes as their muscle memory causes them to continue typing the Pokemon's name. If the devs were concerned about long Pokemon names being too difficult, maybe don't put Misdreavus and Roggenrola before the point you think the player is ready.
• The two shift levels are stupid, as they discard the Pokemon or otherwise game-y flavor that made the rest of the game work and just ask you to type random real-world cities and phrases.
• The wireless keyboard made specifically for this game is tiny and uncomfortable for anyone who isn't a small kid to use. I don't know if you can get around this by using a standard bluetooth keyboard.

Pokeball parties in Super Smash Bros Brawl (haven't had Pokeball parties in any other Smash game)

• Why does Munchlax exist? Like, I'm mostly fine with Pokemon that don't really do anything. Goldeen is a good meme, the pixie legendaries drop nice goodies and are at least cool rare events in the games they don't drop anything. But Munchlax just struts around the place and takes way too long to leave. And if you're playing with items other than Pokeballs, he rushes at them and eats them. While it's technically doing something, that something is "you can't use items right now" when you specifically want to play with items right now because you turned items on. Munchlax is that elitist scrub who shits on others for using items and calls them "casual trash" even though he plays on New Pork City (or worse, scoffs at competitively legal stages that aren't Final Destination) and thinks Kirby down-b is good.

Pokemon Battle Trainer with THINKChip+ (not sure if I genuinely like this or if I just like owning an obscure electronic game)

• This game gives so little information that I'm not entirely convinced that most of your choices aren't meaningless.
  • Every attack seems capable of not dealing any damage, OHKOing, and dealing any amount of damage in between.
    • It might be that different attacks have different probabilities to do these things, but the game doesn't tell you anything. No base power or accuracy. I have no idea if things like type effectiveness or STAB exist, and I don't even remember if move type is even stated to exist or is just implied through name and animation.
  • You can use different Pokemon figurines, but the only definite differences between them are type (which might be meaningless), HP (which might as well be meaningless due to attack power being seemingly arbitrary) and movepool (which might be meaningless due to everything I said earlier).
    • You can level them up, but the only stat that seems to impact is HP. Hell, they might not even have any other stat. Though seeing as it's not easy to get more usable Pokemon (catching Pokemon only fills the Pokedex; you need figurines) maybe it's a good thing that leveling up doesn't make your attacks stronger. Catching weak Pokemon would be hell if you could only OHKO them.
  • The only choices you can make that definitely matter are using a move with a non-damaging effect like confusion or sleep (though neither of my Pokemon know such moves, and I don't know if any of the other figurines do either, so this might just be an NPC thing), using a healing item like a potion or antidote (which you get randomly), and switching.
• Thinking about it, this might actually be my least favorite Pokemon game. In that case, my positive is that I really like the Pikachu and Groudon figurines my version came with, and the few figurines with images on Bulbapedia look great as well.

Smogon

• Tier shifts based on usage rises are stupid.
• Never mind, this is Orange Islands.

 

[Maxance]

HGSS (favorite)
- After the first Indigo Plateau, the game is linear. All your pokemons are fully evolved and don't seem to have improvements, just more levels.
- I did not like the phone which was unnecessary.
- Some champions were too easy.

Let's Go (least favorite)
- Being able to see pokemons in the nature is so cool.
- Not having to keep pokemons with moves like cut or surf makes the game better imo.
- It's nice to have the opportunity to make a team with the 3 starters.
- Nostalgic

 

[DrumstickGaming]

Most Favorite:
BW1: Why in the holy heck does Brycen exist as the seventh gym leader? Even a remotely decent team can beat him, even when you send Dragon types against him most of time the games are like "ACID ARMOR VANILLISH." Skyla and the 8th gym suffer similar issues; why are the earlier gyms harder than the later ones? Also, Rufflet and Vullaby existing with their terrible evolution levels at 54.
BW2: That huge gap between Gyms 6 and 7 where absolutely nothing interesting happens. I get they wanted to show off originally postgame areas in BW1, but that was just too much.
XD: Gale of Darkness-Similar to BW2, that weird bit of midgame filler post-Phenac City. Yeah, you fight three minibosses in that time, but it kills the otherwise stellar pacing the game had to that point, and for what, some box pushing and lame crane riding puzzles?

Least Favorite:
HGSS: Running Shoes Toggle. That is about it. And the games look nice I guess.

 

[Bull Of Heaven]

• The Sinnoh region feels really big. Sure, this is partially because it's such a slog to traverse, but you can't deny the sense of wilderness you get when walking between cities. Right at the beginning of the game you get a large city to explore, you have to go through caves even to get to the first Gym, there are deep forests, narrow mountain passes, and a remote, snowy wilderness to explore. It's a region you never quite feel like you can conquer.

Just popping back in to say that this is a great answer, and I wish I'd thought of it. The "sense of wilderness" is something I've missed in every new region since Kalos. A small related detail that I miss is the early gens having dungeons with no other people in them, which gave the feeling that you were really exploring off the beaten path.

 

[RocketSurgery]

I'll define favorite/least favorite by how much I enjoyed/disliked playing through with my in-game team.

Favorite - USUM
USUM is a favorite because it was my mono-ghost run, for which I had saved a level 50 Marshadow to add to my team on the final island as part of the pre-league run, and I really really enjoyed it. However, I was definitely disappointed that the story barely diverged from SM's, and the fact that the ultra recon squad turned out to have a Solgaleo/Lunala after all seemed like a major plothole; I don't remember if any other games has this big of a plothole in their stories that made me go "so what was the point of everything we just did?" after it.


Least favorite - DP
For all the complaining about the direction the series has been going lately, I have to say the quality-of-life updates have kept improving generation upon generation, and the reason DP is on the bottom here is that my in-game team was just utter filler mons because TMs/evolution stones were 1 use, 1 per game and I didn't want to waste them on the in-game team or spend all my team breeding to try and get good mons instead of playing (in the days when breeding was much more of a hassle). I don't even remember my team for this game because of this. That said, the mons gen 4 introduced were great designs and there were so many that I would have liked to use on my play-through, and I was especially stoked that it introduced a ghost legendary. Echoing Codraroll, the special/physical split was a great change. I guess I'll give the generation some points for introducing built-in wifi-connectivity, even though it was inevitable to be introduced eventually. All this said, I am definitely looking forward to the possibility of remakes (assuming they're not Let's go style...) so I could play through it again with all the QoL changes that have been introduced.

 

[DreamPrince]

Not going to comment on Gens 1-3 because I have not played them, or I consider them mostly obsolete by the remakes.

Favorites:

Platinum: For all the increased Speed of surfing, they didn’t bother to fix the saving speed. I also did not like how the DP Regional Dex exclusives were unavailable in Platinum at all while most other games they were third versions had one line missing, while the other counterpart was still in the game. The handling of the Regis was terrible as well. “ You make it hard for us to get a Regigigas, whose purpose was to get another Regigigas, while you already have a Lv.100 Regigigas to do this event!” -Chuggaconroy

B2W2: The key system has already been discussed, but I was disappointed that Hidden Grottos have obnoxiously low encounter rates for Pokémon, not to mention you can get items as well, so if you want a HA Pokémon, be prepared to grind a lot of steps.

Least Favorite:

SwSh: SwSh that pretty much the game that killed my interest in Pokémon, at least everywhere else except the competitive scene. Speaking of that, the Exp. Candy, Nature Mints, Hyper Training, and new Breeding mechanics make Competitive Pokémon building the easiest in any console game. Honestly if it wasn’t for these QOL changes skip SwSh entirely and play any other game.

XY: Suspicious Derivative has mentioned several things that has made me reconsider my opinion on XY, I feel most of those are for multiplayer/competive players, so I am going over some of the single player aspects. The music on the routes feel really grand. Route 18 and Route 7 really does make you like you are on an adventure. I also like routes have their own names instead of generic numbers. I think that the mascots are designed incredibly, Xerneas and Yveltal incorporates the XY shape without it being to centralizing you the Pokémon’s Design, specifically when you look at it, you can tell that they are XY shaped, but it looks so natural. I also feel that Xerneas expresses life very well by being so graceful, while Yveltal symbolizes death well by looking so intimidating.

EDIT: Some other thoughts that have occurred to me since time passed.
Favorite: Gen 5. Gen 5 is my least favorite in terms of Pokemon Designs. It feels like wherever you look, there is some allusion to a previous Pokemon, whether it be typing, evolution, stats, or heck even minor things like how the Swords of Justice Senior members share their heights with the Legendary Beasts. Don't get me wrong, I think there are some designs like Cryogonal, Volcarona, and Mandibuzz to name a few which are orginal concepts without an allusion, but I feel too many Unova Pokemon are designed to replace the previous Pokemon from other generations.

Least Favorite: XY: XY introduced customization, which was sorely lacking. I never liked how previous Pokemon games never had customization because I always found it weird that you always fight someone who looks like you in multiplayer. Customization is unfortunately favored towards girls more, which sucks, but it was still one of my most hyped features from XY. At least in XY, they show you how you look before purchasing. They don't do that for you in SwSh and SM.

SwSh: I like how you can customize your league card and there are so many options for numbers, poses, expressions, backgrounds, and effects. Even better, they show up when you battle with someone on multiplayer so you can see how people choose to express themselves.

Neutral: SM/USM: Z-Moves were handled significantly better than Megas. The majority are obtainable in the Pre-Ending, so you are able to take advantage of them for the majority of the game. In constrast, Mega Stones for the majority could only be obtained in the post game, which only has the looker side quest as single player content. Not to mention that important trainers like Kahunas, Rivals, and even generic NPCs use them, so they aren't as "broken" as Megas in XY.

 

[Moulin Rouge!]

Favorite- Platinum

• the amount on HMs needed to play through Sinnoh <<<<<<<<<<<<<. I usually have to waste moveslots on my pokes, replace a member of my team for an hm slave which sucks bc I run a team of 6 usually and like to have my entire team with me for the Galactic showdown at mount coroner//spear pillar/ distortion world, or run a team of five and 1 hm slave
• Saving speed is not the tea

Least Favorite: SM USUM

• Unlike the generation that preceded it, Gen 7 seems to have some actual heart put into it
• Changed up the formula a bit even tho I hated most of the changes
• Trials were surprisingly difficult. Very welcome change after the breeze that was Gen 6
• Gave us GODmarina. Literally the best starter tied with Infernallah.

 

[greentyphlosion]

Nice idea for a thread!

Favourites

• B2W2 - as literally everyone else has said, the godawful difficulty modes. Thankfully I have Black 2 as my main game so whenever I replay White 2 I can use the Hard Mode or whatever it's called. Beyond that, I don't like that they scrapped Route 10 and the Challenger's Cave - I hate when areas are removed - and the way in which all the new areas seemingly pop out of nowhere with no explanation (beyond Humilau being referred to as a "little-known resort"). The route between Undella Bay and Humilau City is particularly dull and includes a large empty area for no reason other than that the Plasma Frigate docks there at one point. Lame. Also I loathe the Pokestar Studios.
  
  
• Emerald - the godawful breeding system. Breeding in Emerald now, or indeed any game before B2W2, feels so primitive after all the years of improvements we've gotten since. When you consider that in 2005 we were all reacting to the minor improvements Emerald introduced with glee, it's like we were celebrating getting scraps from the table. The mechanism for passing IVs is hellishly complex and might as well be random and even with the Nature-passing trick you're still likely to wind up getting the wrong nature half the time.
  
  
• HGSS - not fixing GSC's abysmal level curve, or making tweaks to the story/Trainer rosters where it was needed. Why the fuck was Claire the only Gym Leader to have her team changed? I would have been fine with no changes to any of the Gym Leaders if only Morty got a Misdreavus. Come the fuck on. Someday I'll post my thoughts on how Johto's level curve could be very, very easily tweaked to make the game vastly more satisfying. But not today.
  
  (Also Karen needed to have a Tyranitar and no-one can change my mind)
  
  
• Colosseum - how un-challenging the Deep Colosseum is. It's built up as this legendary, elite area and it's full of Trainers who're still using unevolved Pokemon. Deeply lame.
  
  
• XD - the abandonment of the Colosseum system in the main story mode. Colosseums still exist in XD, but they're pretty much exclusively a sidequest that gets you TMs and extra cash. Citadark Isle was initially meant to have a "Dark Colosseum" on it that would have served as the setting for the game's climax, but this element didn't make it to the final game. Instead we have a long, long, long dungeon with about 40 Shadow Pokemon stuffed into it. It's a cool area but playing through it is a drag and if we have to do dozens of fights in a row it'd be more interesting to do it in tournament format like Colosseum did. I guess they cut it because they figured it would make the Orre Colosseum feel repetitive.
  
  
• Crystal - the generally improved, but still vastly underwritten story. What, exactly, is the link between Suicune and the Unown? What were Suicune, Entei, and Raikou before they were reincarnated? What legendary Dragon-type Pokemon was the Dragon's Den built to honour? Why do we never get any sort of closure with Silver? Crystal was my first game and made me fall in love with the lore and mysteries of the Johto region. But so much of what we know/believe is fanon and filling in the blanks. Will we ever get any concrete answers?

Unfavourites

• XY - including all the Pokemon in fully rendered 3D. Okay so this is a cheap shot at SwSh but it's true. People justified the small amount of new Pokemon in Gen VI by saying "come on, GF had to create brand new 3D sprites for all 649 old Pokemon!" and... yeah, in hindsight that's actually really valid. When you consider that XY's postgame is actually fairly decent considering they're the first games of their generation (Friend Safari, Battle Maison, Battle Chateau, Inverse Battles, the Looker quest) and that the plot is pretty decent albeit underwritten, they start to look much better than the fandom initially gave them credit for. I also really liked the split Pokedex as a concept even if the execution wasn't great.
  
  
• LGPE - Getting inventive with Trainer rosters since it's limited to the original 151. Things like Bruno getting a Poliwrath, Lance using Seadra and Alolan Exeggutor, Koga using Tentacruel, and Agatha using Weezing. What do we want? More diversity in boss lineups!
  
  
• RS - the Sky Pillar being completely absent from the map pre-Elite 4. If you try and go there before beating the game, it's simply not there - instead there's just a big mass of dark water blocked off by rocks. They could have done like in Emerald and just had a door you can't open, but instead they did this. I don't know why that tickles me so much, but it does.

 

[Siggu]

I'm going to do a second take on this thread given most people here are listing multiple games, or even spin-offs

Adding on to my previous list...

Negatives of favourites

• Super Mystery Dungeon: The Unavailable Pokémon mechanic has two major issues: First of all, there's the fact this mechanic never disappears, even if you complete the game. Then, there's the fact there is no filter or sorting mechanic to know which Pokémon ARE actually available, making it doubly annoying.
• Conquest: Many of the battlefields are rather annoying or slow in terms of movement. There's also the fact that the AI is very predictable, considering the massive length the game has. By the third or fourth story (out of around 20), you are running circles around the AI, with no difficulty whatsoever.
• Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon: While they are an all-around improvement from Sun/Moon, and in terms of content/QoL among the top Pokémon games, it still does not fix the major issues from Sun/Moon. The story is only marginally better and it still has a very punchable Lillie taking over the spotlight, Bottle Caps are still rather inconvenient to use outside of a few slow, repetitive and boring Festival Plaza tricks, and the issue that there isn't banjo music playing when in Ultra Space.
• Platinum: Beyond the "saving is still slow" issue that has already been mentioned, there's the fact that the Battle Frontier... isn't really much better than the one in Emerald. Beyond the standard Battle Tower and rental facility, the other facilities are still too gimmicky to me.

Positives of unfavourites

• Red/Blue: I unironically enjoy the glitchfest these games are. It actually has more variety in types of playthrough than in other generations because of the ways you can screw the game with. I lost two Virtual Console savegames due to pressing A on the wrong glitch item and I still kept trying to reach the same spot.
• Ruby/Sapphire: These two "positives" apply to Emerald as well, but...
  • Here I also unironically like the plans Team Magma and Aqua have. They are constantly bashed by some fans because their plans are stupid and are obviously not going to work... even though the games are constantly telling you exactly that. When Archie tells you his plan in the Slateport Museum, there are boards in the wall that give you an idea of what would happen if he succeeds; when you save the scientists in the Weather Institute, they tell you that Team Magma does not realize their plans are going to backfire spectatularly. That's precisely the point - their plans are stupid, the game wastes no time lampshading that, but the problem is that they are idiots with a lot of resources.
  • The presentation Groudon and Kyogre have. Between their music, the depictions, and the actual effects they have on the region (something that was only done again with Ultra Necrozma), you really get the picture that they are ancient beasts that you won't be able to reason with. They are not, like legendaries of past and future, rare and mystical creatures that are often revered, representations of metaphysical concepts, or powerful aliens. I think Groudon and Kyogre are the scariest legendaries in the setting.

 

[Millky95]

Negatives about favourites:
GSC:
- Level curve is a bit blah after Morty and again in Kanto.
- Wish it had more evolution stones

HGSS:
- Not fixing these issues with GSC

FRLG:
- Blocked National Dex evolutions
- Would have liked more Johto and Hoenn Pokemon in the post game

DPP:
- Lack of Fire types

Positives about least favourites
All of Gen 5
- I enjoyed the competitive scene

All of Gen 7
- Team Skull were a great addition wish we got more of them
- Rainbow Rocket looked really fun

 

[superstrike66]

Favorites:

1. B2/W2

• Good mons of a certain type (such as waters) are very limited
• Challenge mode is a good idea, just horribly executed like everyone above me said
• Many good TMs (like earthquake) are only available in the postgame

2. B/W

• Many gen 5 mons evolve super late (this is less of a problem in b/w2, since there you can use non-gen 5 mons in the main story).
• Many good TMs are only available in the post-game

3. Emerald

• Encounter tables are terrible (Tentacool and Wingull on every water route, WOOOT!)
• May/Brendan is a lackluster rival
• Fighting two evil teams is cool, but that doesn't make up for Magma and Aqua's dumb plan. Granted, the goal of most evil teams is pretty stupid: awaking a god and nearly causing armageddon

Least Favorites:

1. X/Y

• Mega Evo is a good feature, just horribly executed in X/Y
• Small number of new mons, but many have great designs
• MASSIVE pokedex
• Viola is a great 1st gym leader (and the only good fight in the game)

2. G/S/C

• Two regions and you can battle all 16 gyms
• Red fight
• Goldenrod City theme

3.US/UM

• These themes
• Lots of content (unfortunately, many of these features butcher the plot, one of s/m's best points).