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The first few gens were on extremely weak hardware that couldn't handle fully animated battle sprites, and those weren't super common in RPGs anyway. Gen 5 set an incredibly high standard and the transition to Gen 6 with its incredibly static models is absolutely a downgrade despite the leaps in hardware, especially compared to the Stadium models actually doing stuff. And don't get me started on the flying mons lol.
It's definitely gotten better, but trying to write off any criticism of the transition to 3D as being blinded by nostalgia is disingenuous.
Strictly speaking, I don’t think nostalgia would have even been a factor back at the time the models were introduced, because the animated sprites from Gen 5 would have been only 3 years old.
Speaking from the perspective of today, though, I think it certainly can be a factor, especially with the Pokéton window having shifted such that Gen 5 is now part of the “old days.” I remember when BW were seen as the point where the “rot” of “modern Pokémon” originated.
As for the Stadium models, part of the context that’s important there is that we’d be comparing a game with 151 Pokémon (or 251 in the case of Stadium 2) to a game with 721 Pokémon who all need a suite of not just attacking, idle, and fainting animations, but also various states of emoting for use in Pokémon-Amie. Though I’m actually not sure as to when Creatures became primarily responsible for the series’s 3D modeling needs, as there were always 3D console spin-offs prior to Gen 6. Colo/XD, Battle Revolution (which is probably the more significant comparison, since it’d hit the 493 mark), and even the PokéPark games to some extent.
As much as I am glad that we are now at the time of Galar Revisionism, I feel that it began a tad bit early. I always thought Legends Z-A and it's hype season would lead to the "3DS Era was peak actually" Revisionism, but I was shocked to see a shift towards SwSh Revisionism even though it hasn't even past the 7 Year milestone when the shift happened.
The whole "2D sprites were so much better than the 3D models" only survives in the year of our lord 2026 because people keep parroting YouTubers. It was sort of a valid complaint in SwSh but it is especially silly now that we're in a post-ZA world where the Pokémon are all moving and interacting in real time. Like yeah, a lot of the sprites (both official and fan-made) are really good! But you can't just put that next to a GIF of an unlit model and pretend it's a real argument!
It wasn't even particularly true in X/Y, because the models had multiple animations. Everyone just posted a low-res looping gif of the idle pose like that was all there was, ignoring all the personality they put into the other animations (something they've ramped up in the last few gens, where they've repeatedly made Pokemon with design aspects that only appear during certain animations: Clodsire's spikes, Gholdengo's surfboard, the future paradoxes powering down when they sleep, etc).
there are many Pokemon who's models are unflattering to them like Excadrill though and that's not due to '3D bad' but due to poor idle posing/lack of proper animations to show off the Pokemon's full concept(Excadrill never went into its drill mode in the games when using Drill Run until Z-A, and that's only in is mega!)
As much as I am glad that we are now at the time of Galar Revisionism, I feel that it began a tad bit early. I always thought Legends Z-A and it's hype season would lead to the "3DS Era was peak actually" Revisionism, but I was shocked to see a shift towards SwSh Revisionism even though it hasn't even past the 7 Year milestone when the shift happened.
A bit of an addendum to this after some thinking and looking back to past fandom behavior.
With SwSh Revisionism ongoing, I feel like one of two things will happen regarding how the fanbase views the newer titles:
Either
The fanbase will revert back to a similar state it was pre-dexit, since SwSh is being seen more favorably, it would possibly lead to people seeing most of the games as good because claiming that BDSP was the start of the decline would be... Pretty stupid considering subsequent games like both Legends Games and SV.
Or
Hisui Revisionism where people begin to bash Legends Arceus. Just like the first outcome, it would be because of people starting to see BDSP as the start of the decline.
A bit of an addendum to this after some thinking and looking back to past fandom behavior.
With SwSh Revisionism ongoing, I feel like one of two things will happen regarding how the fanbase views the newer titles:
Either
The fanbase will revert back to a similar state it was pre-dexit, since SwSh is being seen more favorably, it would possibly lead to people seeing most of the games as good because claiming that BDSP was the start of the decline would be... Pretty stupid considering subsequent games like both Legends Games and SV.
Or
Hisui Revisionism where people begin to bash Legends Arceus. Just like the first outcome, it would be because of people starting to see BDSP as the start of the decline.
Sprites and models both have their individual strengths and weaknesses. 2D sprites are, for the most part (barring Gen 5), not designed to be really animated, but are drawn and static, with stationary poses. You can have a Pokemon appear in a variety of poses and keep them in such, and that's how you express character: through still art. 3D models are designed to shine in animation. In a stationary setting, they're not impressive, but when fully animated, the life of the Pokemon shines through in full. The older games had Pokemon in a variety of poses, while the newer ones have a lot of animations both in battle and in settings like Pokemon Amie.
Pokemon introduced in older gens look better in sprites because they were designed to look good in stationary poses. Pokemon in newer gens however look better in models because they have a lot of design quirks that shine when the Pokemon is in motion and actually performing actions, making facial expressions, or moving around. Like Heliolisk's neck frill, Aurorus's sails and Sylveon's ribbons, and Goodra's facial expressions. Or how Alola's Pokemon look super clean when walking or running, as opposed to the likes of say, Tyranitar, who looks really good when in a stationary pose but looks stupid the moment it starts to move.
The Pokemon designs of each new generation have distinct design differences that highlight the technological capabilities of the hardware and generation at the time, and every Pokemon looks best in their debut game in a way. I went on a thorough deconstruction of that long ago that I will shamelessly plug in here, but nonetheless. Gen 10 is certainly going to have some identity itself with 3D models and its new Pokemon designs, and it'll be exciting to see how it takes advantage of the Switch 2 to do it.
But yeah, it's not an either or thing. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, and there are Pokemon designs that work best with the strength of sprites in mind, and there are other Pokemon designs that work best with the strength of models in mind.
Perhaps across several different games over a period of time, but within an individual game I would disagree that this was the case. Each Pokémon really only got one pose per game, and it was used for all possible instances (battles, contests, the summary screen, etc.). HGSS is a unique exception because it also has the walking sprites, though even those are just two frames apiece.
That’s not to say that the sprites or poses used were bad, but I don’t think they were really leaning into the full potential of the medium at any given time.
I would also quibble with this. Personally, other than a handful of cases like Typhlosion and Golem, I struggle to think of very many Pokémon from before X& Y that look actively worse in model form than in sprite form. (Unless we’re talking about color values, but while I appreciate that people prefer vibrancy, I’ve never had much of an issue with the decision to use the Sugimori art colors for the models.)
For example, consider Aipom. Here it is, designed in its original 2D format for Gold & Silver:
And here is its idling animation from X & Y:
These are essentially the same depiction. The sprite benefits in the moment from the heavy lifting done by the player's imagination, but there is nothing about Aipom's design that inherently fails to hold up when translated into 3D. It is, at worst, just the same thing but with an extra dimension. Even if we take some sprites from later 2D games that apply animations (though that feels ironic to invoke in this case) or more dynamic posing, like so:
... none of these expressions are things that could not be accomplished just as well, if not better, with 3D animation.
Similarly, with airborne Pokémon like Xatu, Tropius, and Skarmory, the reason why the 2D sprites typically look better isn't, in my opinion, because they were designed for 2D, but rather because of the fatal decision to have them be stuck in a static flying pose all the time. Recent games like Scarlet & Violet for Tropius and Legends: Z-A for Skarmory have been able to remedy that by allowing them to be seen more frequently in a wider variety of poses (fingers crossed for the Xatu redemption in Gen 10).
Furthermore, I think there are several 2D-era Pokémon that 3D is able to realize more effectively. Let's look at Hoothoot:
The Pokédex in Silver, Hoothoot's debut generation, tells us that "It has a perfect sense of time. Whatever happens, it keeps rhythm by precisely tilting its head in time." Which is something that its sprite is fundamentally unable to demonstrate, but which even its idling pose in 3D is able to capture quite seamlessly.
Spoink is another instance of a Pokémon that was conceptualized with a very kinetic concept that relies on either animated sprites or an animated model to properly present.
In fact, I think there are probably quite a lot of Pokémon from before X & Y that are more fully realized by animation (whether 2D or 3D), simply because Game Freak like to approach them as living, dynamic creatures. Bulbasaur's vines were never depicted in sprite form, but the anime showed them in use constantly, bringing a whole other element of Bulbasaur's design to life, which was then only ever really seen in 3D games.
Furthermore, I think fans also have a certain luxury in that we only tend to worry about the depiction of our favorites. A whole city power grid's worth of electricity has been spent lamenting the degradation of Typhlosion in the transition to 3D, but not nearly as much furor was whipped up over, say, Simiour, who, like Aipom, looks more-or-less the same in its sprite and in its model:
Game Freak, on the other hand, have to worry about capturing each and every single Pokémon in equal quality (again, regardless of whether they're working in 2D or 3D). And that's just, to be blunt, a tall fucking order. It's probably why it's taken them several years to gradually move away from depicting several Pokémon's mouths as simple 2D textures and toward having them fully modeled:
(Also, side-note: What the fuck is going on with this Aipom sprite:
this is a post that mostly just agrees with esserise but i do think that in general, pokemon is made best for animation which means either 2d or 3d animation. and Honestly i mean TRADITIONAL 2D animation, not tweening in here.
I think pivoting to 3d is actually a really good idea because it makes for much cleaner pipelines that allows you to animate all these creatures. you can be the richest place alive but the idea of animating 1k+ designs 2d traditional style and all their needed moves and extra interactions in the world and updating it for 400-800 creatures every gen when you make a new gimmick would make me want to kill myself. so 3d is the sane option here.
the fact pokemon hasnt capitalized well on 3d is not 3ds fault nor does it show that 2d is better, because they often didnt capitalize well on 2d either! they were often extremely behind compared to contemporaries
