Perfect, I made it back in time for X & Y's 10th anniversary. There's plenty of things I don't like about these games still, but I'd be a a fool to not bring up some of my oddly specific favorite parts of the new generation.
No freaking way, they actually did something unique with the regional bird for once!? I'm sure we all know about this classic trope by now, but excluding Staraptor's overwhelming influence on all things Generation 4, I never really had much of a reason to be interested in any of these Pokémon that up to this point had all been very similar to each other. Learning that Fletchling evolved into the Fire-Type Talonflame was a very nice change of pace, and- wait a second, I'm skipping someone... oh, yeah, that's right. I'm not sure how many of you remember this, but not only was Talonflame revealed to be a Fire-Type spin on the regional bird trope when it evolved, but it and Fletchling's official reveals actually happened
before Fletchinder's did. In practice, this meant there was a brief moment where it looked as if Fletchling would just straight-up evolve into Talonflame despite how extreme of an immediate change that would look like. Fletchinder being the one to both fill in that gap and be the one to introduce the Fire-Type to this family are the reasons why it's my favorite of those three. Corviknight could never.
Growing up with a game as oddly specific as Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs that changed my life as a Pokémon fan, one of the major takeaways I continue to enjoy from that game is that I just really enjoy riding around on Pokémon in the overworld. Nowadays we may take this feature for granted when several games including ORAS, the Alola games, Let's Go, Legends,
and SV all had different ways you could traverse the overworld with Pokémon, but in good faith I can't
not pay respect to the games that really started this trend for the core series, Surf HM in every game not withstanding. Out of the "choices" available in XY, I think Skiddo was probably my favorite, as most of the others just felt a bit sluggish at times.
Also notice how neither Sword & Shield or BDSP wasn't on that list, just another reason Generation 8 is cringe
I wasn't sure which Pokémon to add in for this one, so you can have the legendary birds because they're the last three Pokémon in the Coastal Kalos PokéDex. Case in point, I really like the idea of separating each of the regions into their own little segments. Admittedly it makes more than enough sense for them to do this for an island-based region like Alola, but for regions like Kalos and much more recently Hisui, it's not usually something one would immediately consider. What this change to the standard Pokémon formula also does is bring up a fun hypothetical question that sadly hasn't been explored yet- what if you could start in any of these sections of your choosing? You'd still explore all three parts of Kalos in this case, but you just wouldn't be forced to start/live in Vaniville Town every playthrough. In any case, I love how this change lets each part of the region have its own distinct identity when in previous regions, the world design could often feel a bit repetitive as time went on.