Frankly my opinion of the gen 5 sprites is as simple as "never bothered me back then so they weren't atrocious on principle" and in fact they felt like a breath of fresh air. Even replaying BW1 many years later didn't make me hate them or anything, I disliked them a lot more in the sequels, which could be because what ScraftyIsTheBest is saying, you can't convince me the Emboar sprite for example looks bad.
I think their main problem, as someone who used to do a lot of Fakemon reusing gen 5 sprites, is that most parts of the body were animated separately and that ended in some Pokemon moving too much, which is specially noticeable when they picked up older sprites and tried to give them unnatural puppet-like moves. A case-by-case custom animation for every Pokemon was probably too demanding so I get while only the newer ones look better, specially considering BW1's approach to the regional Pokedex.
It isn't really that different from a lot of pre-SV models looking pretty bad except on newer mons that were literally designed with them in mind (trough even then, I would argue a lot of them looked way worse because of these incredibly awkward flying stances, I will never understand why they made Xatu fly) or not having custom animations like Blastoise used to lack. I don't understand why people see them as either aberrations or the peak of Pokemon because I can't see how they are any of the two. It's the same as when someone tries to argue 2d is what Pokemon should have stayed like but someone else points out it looks pixelated out of the console.
I think their main problem, as someone who used to do a lot of Fakemon reusing gen 5 sprites, is that most parts of the body were animated separately and that ended in some Pokemon moving too much, which is specially noticeable when they picked up older sprites and tried to give them unnatural puppet-like moves. A case-by-case custom animation for every Pokemon was probably too demanding so I get while only the newer ones look better, specially considering BW1's approach to the regional Pokedex.
It isn't really that different from a lot of pre-SV models looking pretty bad except on newer mons that were literally designed with them in mind (trough even then, I would argue a lot of them looked way worse because of these incredibly awkward flying stances, I will never understand why they made Xatu fly) or not having custom animations like Blastoise used to lack. I don't understand why people see them as either aberrations or the peak of Pokemon because I can't see how they are any of the two. It's the same as when someone tries to argue 2d is what Pokemon should have stayed like but someone else points out it looks pixelated out of the console.
