The Flaws of Perceived Perfection: A fan that grew up with Modern Pokémon's issues with "The Golden Age" of Pokémon

[LPBvgc]

Gens 3-5 are considered by the Pokémon community to the the franchises Golden Age, or when the series peaked in pretty much everything. From graphics, to gameplay, to region design, to side content. However, most of the people that claim this (from what I've seen) are usually aged around their mid-20s to their mid-30s. Why does this matter? One word...

...Nostalgia...

...now I'm not gonna be that guy that says that the love for the classic games is exclusively rooted in nostalgia, but it's foolish to deny that there isn't a level of rose tinted glasses.

I'm a fan that grew up with the modern games. I was 5/6 when the jump to 3D happened, I was 11 when dexit happened, and the first new release that came out when I was an adult was Legends Z-A. So it's safe to say that I am more familiar with the modern titles more than the classics, so I decided to play most of the Golden Age (mostly without cheating (I had to cheat in HGSS to get Surf on one of my mons)) to experience these games without the rose tinted glasses older fans have for them to evaluate their flaws. I have beaten FRLG, Black and White (I'm ignoring 2 because I've replayed them alot before), and the Johto half of HGSS, while I am nearing Platinum's late game (at the part where I check on the last Lake near Snowpoint), and am in the midgame for Emerald (trying to reach Lavaridge).

But before I showcase the flaws of these games... I wanna share what I like about them first...

Route Design
I love how routes are designed in the classics. There's multiple paths you can take on a route with stuff like grass patches that you can use to avoid trainers, paths that lead to items or TMs. This design philosophy was carried all the way to USUM (or LGPE), before being ditched with more linear routes or just an open world.

Resource Magement
Self explanatory. Compared to SwSh or SV, you resources are pretty limited, which encourages planning stuff ahead. Just like route design, that carries into the 3DS Era and Let's Go.

Simplicity in the Early Game
Ever since Gen 5, the early games have infamously been slow to help guide newer players. The first 4 Gens cut the crap and let you go at your own pace instead of guiding you everywhere.

Now with that out of the way... Here are the issues I have with these games...

Variety in Wild Encounters
I might just be spoiled by the modern games (USUM's Route 1 houses nearly 12% of the regional Pokédex when accounting for evolution lines), but it feels like there's a variety problem with the wild encounters. There is no game that best illustrates this issues more than Platinum. Despite the improvements to the encounter pool, I still have a bone to pick with the variety here. There is a group of Pokémon that appear pretty much everywhere in Sinnoh I call "The Sinnoh Six". This consists of: Bidoof, Zubat, Ponyta, Machop, Starly, and the biggest offender of them all, Geodude. This also applies for their NFE evolutions.

Too Much Grinding
Recently, there has been revisionism regarding the first four gens' god awful EXP system, with claims that you're SUPPOSSED to be underleveled for major boss fights and that grinding is not that bad...to that I say, no. They wanted you to grind... My proof? Look at the levels of the wild Pokémon near Gyms 3-8 in any Pre-BW game and the issue is clear. The wild Pokémon are over 10 levels below where your team is at. So if you want a new team member in the mid-game, time to waste hours grinding that new team member so it's on par with your team. This heavily discourages using new Pokémon and makes saving the slot for the Legendaries so much more enticing. This is especially prevalent in FRLG where I often save three team slots for the bird simply because they are closer to my team's levels. And just grinding as a whole is slow pre-Gen 5 sans Platinum because of the Vs. Seeker (after recent replies edit: I did not know the Vs. Seeker was in FRLG when writing this). However, I attribute this problem to an issue that seems like a plus in theory...

Freedom of Exploration Hurts the Gameplay
One of the praises I see about these games is how much freedom you have to explore the region and go at your own pace. But now that I think about it, this actually hurts the gameplay. In HGSS, instead of going to Olivine after defeating Morty, I went to Mahogany Town first, which made me understand Johto's level curve issue even more... Each Route, wild encounter, and jobber trainers are mostly scaled with you having only beaten Morty. It's a much smaller scale in other games, but the freedom given actively makes the gameplay worse as it makes the routes scale everything around it being your first stop before facing a Gym, which leads to the grinding problem.

I will also mention HMs being really restrictive on movesets, but I feel like that's been beaten to death already so...

Emerald's Excruciating Gameplay
I think Emerald is overhyped. Just plain and simple. The gameplay has fatal flaws such as backtracking or just unfair RNG. I've missed so many 95 accurate moves, gotten fully paraed multiple turns in a row, hit myself in confusion so much. The only thing saving it for me is the side content, and even that is affected by this god awful RNG system.

So far, my ranking of these games from Best to Worst is:

1. B2W2 (My personal pick for 2nd Best game overall behind USUM as best overall)
2. Platinum (It's redeemed itself in my eyes)
3. BW (What happens when you iron out Gen 1-4's issues)
4. FRLG (A solid game but has issues)
5. HGSS (The grinding killed it for me)
6. Emerald (ORAS is better, and I haven't even played it at all yet)

 

[Altissimo]

the RNG is literally not different in emerald with regards to proc effects, confusion did get changed to 33% to self hit in gen 7 but that's after b2w2 which is at the top of your list, and paralysis has always been 25%, and I won't even bother mentioning the 95 accuracy thing

now maybe other points you've made are valid but it's really not fair to claim "everyone only likes these games because of nostalgia" (a subjective response) while simultaneously claiming something like this which is not backed in any understanding of the game's code

 

[crobatfan11]

Hmm yes, the VS Seeker only helps in Platinum and not the other two Sinnoh games, or more importantly, FRLG, the games where it actually debuted. Also, in what universe does Emerald have "unfair RNG"? It has broken seeding, but that affects absolutely no one aside from specifically abusing it or soft reset shiny hunts, both of which I doubt you were doing. Aside from always starting at the same point from power on, Emerald has no RNG issues, it's as random as every other Pokemon game as far as being played normally goes.

 

[LPBvgc]

the RNG is literally not different in emerald with regards to proc effects, confusion did get changed to 33% to self hit in gen 7 but that's after b2w2 which is at the top of your list, and paralysis has always been 25%, and I won't even bother mentioning the 95 accuracy thing

now maybe other points you've made are valid but it's really not fair to claim "everyone only likes these games because of nostalgia" (a subjective response) while simultaneously claiming something like this which is not backed in any understanding of the game's code

Fair enough for the RNG effects, I felt like I was more often getting screwed over by RNG in Emerald more often than in games like HGSS, Platinum, or even FRLG.

As for the second point, I wasn't claiming people only like the games because of nostalgia, I was claiming that rose tinted glasses might be playing a role in how these games are perceived, I probably poorly worded that.

However, most of the people that claim this (from what I've seen) are usually aged around their mid-20s to their mid-30s. Why does this matter? One word...

...Nostalgia...

...now I'm not gonna be that guy that says that the love for the classic games is exclusively rooted in nostalgia, but it's foolish to deny that there isn't a level of rose tinted glasses.

 

[Codraroll]

Another reason why these three generations are well appreciated by those who played them as they came out, is that each game surpassed the previous in terms of content, scope, stuff to do, and visual fidelity. Each game felt bigger, prettier, and overall more polished than the ones that came before it.

And then XY came out, and it featured a region that had an amazing variety of Pokémon and environments, but felt largely empty. So many locations looked great on screen, but served only as set dressing. There was also diddly squat to do in the postgame. It was followed by ORAS, that provided a great revisit to Hoenn ... but not the awe-striking Battle Frontier. Just a copy of the Battle Maison from XY, which felt rather cheap. Then SM came out, and it *looked* quite good, but one couldn't help but notice that the environments were small and very linear. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, except progressing along the set route. It also set off the trend of overly long and tedious cutscenes that constantly interrupted the gameplay. USUM followed suit with a bit more polish, but the same cutscene heaviness and lack of postgame areas. Then there was LGPE, a Kanto revisit devoid of any ambition to deliver more than the GameBoy games originally had. SwSh, the absolute low point of the series, with its hand-holdy, hallway-like gameplay in the smallest and least interesting region to date. And of course, Dexit, which kind of embodied the whole feeling that the games were being cut down more than they were progressing, as Game Freak struggled to keep up their ambitious game release schedule when working with modern hardware.

By the time SV rolled around, the expectation for each game to feel bigger and better than the last, was soundly replaced with cold, hard cynicism. The sentiment had gone over to "you gain some, you lose some". Instead of looking forward to new, prettier, and better games, fans had come to expect some boneheadedly stupid decisions and for beloved features to be trimmed away instead of expanded upon. I think SV did a quite fair job of not being too hand-holdy, and it had a quite pretty region, but it also failed completely to adapt the gameplay to reflect the open world, and the game was nearly devoid of indoor environments.

I also think the DS games were the last time that the Pokémon games kept up with the graphical capabilities of their consoles. RSE were undoubtedly among the prettiest GBA games. BW2 looked great on the DS. But we had Super Smash Bros. for 3DS that really proved what the console was capable of. And then when Switch rolled around, Breath of the Wild had become the yardstick of pretty graphics, which LGPE and SwSh were miles below. You can also try booting up Super Mario Odyssey and Scarlet/Violet and remind yourself that those were developed for the same console. The Pokémon games now have a widespread reputation for sub-par graphical quality, archaic game design decisions, and incompetent development, but held up by a very strong brand and a fun core gameplay loop. They used to be top tier for their consoles, but technology outran Game Freak's capabilities. No wonder many fans look fondly back on the simpler times.

 

[LPBvgc]

Another reason why these three generations are well appreciated by those who played them as they came out, is that each game surpassed the previous in terms of content, scope, stuff to do, and visual fidelity. Each game felt bigger, prettier, and overall more polished than the ones that came before it.

And then XY came out, and it featured a region that had an amazing variety of Pokémon and environments, but felt largely empty. So many locations looked great on screen, but served only as set dressing. There was also diddly squat to do in the postgame. It was followed by ORAS, that provided a great revisit to Hoenn ... but not the awe-striking Battle Frontier. Just a copy of the Battle Maison from XY, which felt rather cheap. Then SM came out, and it *looked* quite good, but one couldn't help but notice that the environments were small and very linear. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, except progressing along the set route. It also set off the trend of overly long and tedious cutscenes that constantly interrupted the gameplay. USUM followed suit with a bit more polish, but the same cutscene heaviness and lack of postgame areas. Then there was LGPE, a Kanto revisit devoid of any ambition to deliver more than the GameBoy games originally had. SwSh, the absolute low point of the series, with its hand-holdy, hallway-like gameplay in the smallest and least interesting region to date. And of course, Dexit, which kind of embodied the whole feeling that the games were being cut down more than they were progressing, as Game Freak struggled to keep up their ambitious game release schedule when working with modern hardware.

Fair enough with XY but ORAS at least makes up for the missing Frontier with stuff like the Delta Episode, Mirage Spots, and DexNav.

Gen 7's whole cutscene problem feels overblown, I can get through Melemele Island in like 2-3 hours (which comparing an island to the first 2 gyms is pretty on par with my usual pacing of games), and USUM pretty much is the 3DS' B2W2, adding a similarly sized postgame/side content. To be honest, Gen 7 does a lot of what Gen 5 did but just better (better written twist villain, difficult battles (at least in USUM, which unfortunately had a worse story than normal SM), the most innovation in the series).

I can accept the Switch Era being the start of the decline, they had to cut half of the rooster to at least get by with a yearly release schedule (which still failed as their games started coming out buggy as hell with BDSP), but the 3DS era is underrated, if not peak.

Honestly I think Platinum-USUM should be the true Golden Age now that I think about it. Best of made the old great, while having the modern game's changes to the formula.

 

[Altissimo]

Fair enough with XY but ORAS at least makes up for the missing Frontier with stuff like the Delta Episode, Mirage Spots, and DexNav.

It really doesn't.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

(I had to cheat in HGSS to get Surf on one of my mons)

Variety in Wild Encounters
I might just be spoiled by the modern games (USUM's Route 1 houses nearly 12% of the regional Pokédex when accounting for evolution lines), but it feels like there's a variety problem with the wild encounters. There is no game that best illustrates this issues more than Platinum. Despite the improvements to the encounter pool, I still have a bone to pick with the variety here. There is a group of Pokémon that appear pretty much everywhere in Sinnoh I call "The Sinnoh Six". This consists of: Bidoof, Zubat, Ponyta, Machop, Starly, and the biggest offender of them all, Geodude. This also applies for their NFE evolutions.

Here's the thing about this take. Consistency is good. It helps build a regional identity.

For example, if I say I got a team with Pidgeot, Nidoking, and Raichu, you'll immediately think of Kanto. If I mention Staraptor, Luxray, and Roserade, you'll think Sinnoh.

Does Alola have iconic cores like that? Galar? Not really. Because the early game got too diluted.

Now, don't get me wrong, you can absolutely avoid the canon event team in Sinnoh and have a cool team. Especially since pretty much every mon got substantial changes compared to previous iterations.

For example, Machop getting No Guard and turning into a high-risk, high-reward attacker, Geodude getting Rock Polish to bypass its speed issues, Ponyta being unprecedently early and boasting a rare type...

Too Much Grinding
Recently, there has been revisionism regarding the first four gens' god awful EXP system, with claims that you're SUPPOSSED to be underleveled for major boss fights and that grinding is not that bad...to that I say, no. They wanted you to grind...

Honestly, I don't see it. Platinum in particular is very much designed for you to be reasonably fine as long as you don't dodge too many trainers.

There are exactly two sore points in the first four gens.

The first Gym, because some dipshit decided that all of them should be Rock-type, except Falkner, and the Elite Four, which has a massive leap in all games anyway.

Also, if we're being honest here, the new exp. share is sucktastic at helping new mons catch up because it keeps feeding the whole team exp instead of just the mon lagging, so gaps take forever to close.

Freedom of Exploration Hurts the Gameplay
One of the praises I see about these games is how much freedom you have to explore the region and go at your own pace. But now that I think about it, this actually hurts the gameplay. In HGSS, instead of going to Olivine after defeating Morty, I went to Mahogany Town first, which made me understand Johto's level curve issue even more...

Pacing and level curves are entirely different things.

For example, Memelele has genuinely the worst pacing of any game I've ever seen. There's nothing to do with the level curve or even the gameplay. You're just on a hellish railway going from inane cutscene to inane cutscene. It's like trying to swim through concrete with an anchor tied to each of your ankles.

The old games just let you mess around as soon as you get your first mon. The catching tutorial in Johto is not even mandatory.

Paldea tried to make the game open-ended, and it was absolute chaos. Game Freak doesn't know how to do it to this day. Let's not act like Leon wasn't buggin with that level jump either.

Emerald's Excruciating Gameplay
I think Emerald is overhyped. Just plain and simple. The gameplay has fatal flaws such as backtracking or just unfair RNG. I've missed so many 95 accurate moves, gotten fully paraed multiple turns in a row, hit myself in confusion so much. The only thing saving it for me is the side content, and even that is affected by this god awful RNG system.

Backtracking in a region that opens up like a Metroidvania being a problem is already laughable, but the RNG part is just pathetic. People immediately blew you up on that, so I won't even address this.

This whole post misses the actual issues of the golden era so bad, I might as well call it Focus Blast.

 

[Karxrida]

RSE were undoubtedly among the prettiest GBA games.

Gen 3 Hoenn is my favorite region but tbh this isn't true. There are a lot of GBA titles that push the hardware to its limits and have incredibly gorgeous sprite art, with Minish Cap and the Metroid games immediately coming to mind. RSE feel like something that released during the early part of the SNES's life in terms of graphical fidelity with how simple the overworld tiles and characters can be.

 

[Esserise]

Another reason why these three generations are well appreciated by those who played them as they came out, is that each game surpassed the previous in terms of content, scope, stuff to do, and visual fidelity. Each game felt bigger, prettier, and overall more polished than the ones that came before it.

My younger Gen 5-loving self wishes this was how people talked about Gen 5 back then

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

Gen 3 Hoenn is my favorite region but tbh this isn't true. There are a lot of GBA titles that push the hardware to its limits and have incredibly gorgeous sprite art, with Minish Cap and the Metroid games immediately coming to mind. RSE feel like something that released during the early part of the SNES's life in terms of graphical fidelity with how simple the overworld tiles and characters can be.

In general Pokemon has always been really, really slow to be fully up to par with the hardware their games are on. They do sometimes get there, but only after multiple games over multiple years. BW2 for instance does look quite good, but that's after the attempts of DP, Platinum, HGSS, and BW1 in sequence to truly refine what they could do on the DS. USUM also pushes the 3DS to its limit after three previous iterations of a Pokemon game on 3DS. Unfortunately for the Switch era, not one of the games really got there.

If there's one point Gen 3 Hoenn gets in its favor, it's that it runs really well. The performance of it is very slick (iirc it's 60 FPS) and it feels super smooth to play. But otherwise in terms of hardware capabilities, Pokemon has almost always been behind in terms of graphics and performance even compared to contemporary games on the handhelds themselves. The Switch era for one is the case where the gap is wider than ever since Pokemon is now being compared to full scale console experiences like Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

My younger Gen 5-loving self wishes this was how people talked about Gen 5 back then

That was one of the big reasons people turned on it immediately.

Gens 1-4 were massive leaps upon themselves in many ways. There really was a sense of growth. Every game felt more complex and refined.

I don't actually fault Gen 5 for this because by Gen 4, they had an extremely solid foundation, all they needed was to build on it.

But a big part of Gen 5's marketing was the all-new mons and... Triple battles.

In general Pokemon has always been really, really slow to be fully up to par with the hardware their games are on. They do sometimes get there, but only after multiple games over multiple years. BW2 for instance does look quite good, but that's after the attempts of DP, Platinum, HGSS, and BW1 in sequence to truly refine what they could do on the DS. USUM also pushes the 3DS to its limit after three previous iterations of a Pokemon game on 3DS. Unfortunately for the Switch era, not one of the games really got there.

If there's one point Gen 3 Hoenn gets in its favor, it's that it runs really well. The performance of it is very slick (iirc it's 60 FPS) and it feels super smooth to play. But otherwise in terms of hardware capabilities, Pokemon has almost always been behind in terms of graphics and performance even compared to contemporary games on the handhelds themselves. The Switch era for one is the case where the gap is wider than ever since Pokemon is now being compared to full scale console experiences like Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild.

Gen 5 looks horrible, but never mind.

Pokémon used to be at least a good visual standard to be fair.

Comparing anything to Minish Cap on the GBA is pretty unfair, that game looks absolutely stunning. I don't think there's a better looking game on that console.

HGSS is definitely one of the best-looking games on the DS too.

I think a fair assessment would be that the Pokémon games are a good baseline in most consoles. (Obviously not the Switch lmaooooo)

 

[Esserise]

Gens 1-4 were massive leaps upon themselves in many ways. There really was a sense of growth. Every game felt more complex and refined.

As they were happening, I would agree with that (although I sat out Emerald and most of Gen 4). In hindsight though, I think it feels like a very prolonged gestation period — I don’t think the overall vision for the games actually feels fully formed until Platinum (I would say Diamond & Pearl, but they have enough of their own issues to still need work). Things like the Physical/Special split, and certain types having moves that are actually worth a damn, feel so scorchingly obvious and logical in hindsight that the games prior to those additions feel like they’re still in the process of cooking. And Gens 2-3 all added big, important developmental steps like that. Gen 5, in relation to its predecessors, feels to me like more of a refinement of the basic core structure that Gen 4 finalized.

That’s not to say those earlier games were incomplete, per se — in their native eras, they feel fine. Recently, I’ve been watching ji_mothy’s retrospective videos on the Pokémon series and, although his angle of approach for critiquing the games is merely one of many ways to skin the cat, one thing it’s given me is more of an appreciation for is how even in the early games, just because a Pokémon’s moves didn’t really match its statline, for example, or just because it didn’t learn any good STAB moves, they are still very eminently usable — you just have to play smarter.

Inherently, I think there’s something of a trade-off there, though. A question like “How they fuck do I make Ledian work?” is significantly easier to solve in more modern games, not just because they’re “easier” with the Exp. All and Gym Leaders only having three Pokémon, but because both the tools available to a Ledian user are much richer and more accessible. There’s certainly a balance to be struck there, but I think it’s inevitable that you are going to “lose” something in the process.

And I tend to think of the entire series along similar lines. I don’t really think of the series as having a clear point of “decline.” I think that for every aspect that goes down in quality, others seem to go up. There’s things I loved about the older games that aren’t really present anymore in the same way, but there are just as many things about the older games that I’m pretty happy to have left behind.

The aforementioned comment about ORAS’s features “making up” for the Battle Frontier is relevant to this. For anyone wanting the experience that the Battle Frontier provided (which was never really me, though I would have given it a shot with Gen 6 having made preparing competitive-level Pokémon much easier), things like the DexNav and Mirage Spots don’t in any way “make up” for that feature’s absence, because it is plain and simply not a comparable feature. Or, to use another example I am personally invested in, I do hate that ORAS used the Ruby & Sapphire version of the Tate & Liza battle rather than the superior version from Emerald.

… but I can’t be too mad about that, because I think that ORAS are more polished and feature-rich than RSE in a lot of other ways. Some things go up, some things go down.

Again, I feel that this scales with the series at large. I think they’re a lot more willing to experiment with Pokémon designs now than they were back then. The characters are significantly more diverse, and generally have more interiority due to the more involved level of storytelling and they ability to have bespoke expressions. I think their worldbuilding is also stronger. There’s a long, long list of QOL improvements that have come in more recent games. And that’s all stuff that I do think is important. But it’s true, we don’t get big, explorable post-game regions like we used to. Battle facilities are all… not quite dead, but certainly a lot harder to nail down in terms of the purpose that GF seem to want them to serve, and how willing they are to invest in them. And I do think the games are, broadly speaking, a fair bit easier and more frictionless in ways that go beyond just having better STAB options, in ways I don’t think they necessarily need to be.

For better or worse, I don’t think there’s a long list of components that GF consider sacred to the series. They’re always willing to tweak or remove things, which is a quality that can very much be a strength or a weakness.

 

[Karxrida]

Comparing anything to Minish Cap on the GBA is pretty unfair, that game looks absolutely stunning. I don't think there's a better looking game on that console.

I mean probably, but I still don't think RSE stacks up to the upper half of the good looking GBA games. You have stuff like the Mega Man Zero quadrilogy, the Castlevania trio (mostly Aria of Sorrow tbh – why does Soma have such a smooth walk cycle lol), Superstar Saga, Golden Sun... Even some of the SNES ports look better, and that's taking their color palette changes into account.

Like the Gen 3 games still look fine but seeing what the GBA was capable of really puts things into perspective.

 

[tentaghost]

Comparing anything to Minish Cap on the GBA is pretty unfair, that game looks absolutely stunning. I don't think there's a better looking game on that console.

not to say that minish cap doesnt look nice itself but..

-magical vacation
-astro boy omega factor
-mario and luigi superstar saga
-the sonic advance trilogy
-gruntys revenge
-scurge hive

Id say these games are about on par with minish cap.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

As they were happening, I would agree with that

For context, that's the context.

one thing it’s given me is more of an appreciation for is how even in the early games, just because a Pokémon’s moves didn’t really match its statline, for example, or just because it didn’t learn any good STAB moves, they are still very eminently usable — you just have to play smarter.

That's one thing I don't share to be honest. It really feels like some mons were playing with missing cards on their decks and that feels more like a problem than a challenge.

There's something to be said nowadays about how everything gets an absurd amount of tools and coverage, but to name names, asking Electivire to have a better physical STAB than Thunderpunch is just... common sense. The mon pretty much doesn't function as intended because of that.

And I tend to think of the entire series along similar lines. I don’t really think of the series as having a clear point of “decline.” I think that for every aspect that goes down in quality, others seem to go up.

That's something I definitely agree with.

The biggest flaw of playing the early gens nowadays is that there's no way to change things like Natures. There's just a LOT of QoL, both for hacking, and for playing, that's not available and shows the games' wrinkles.

 

[CryoGyro]

When you go into a game trying to prove people wrong, you are only robbing yourself of the opportunity to form your own experience and see where they might be coming from; the opportunity to grow. It's true that a lot of online fans are not thinking about this very deeply, with nostalgia being a deciding factor for favorites. That does not mean we need to get superficially snippy right back; to go "see!? see!? this sucks too!" the moment a game gets mildly inconvenient or inelegant. This forum has people a bit more reasonable, curious, and articulate than average. Try to start conversations rather than stumble over yourself in the process of firing shots, fighting a war that only exists in your head.

If you see good in newer games that most people don't, we would love to hear it. Pokemon is such a fascinating series to discuss because new or old, we've only scratched the surface of its design potential. Personally, my gripes with recent Pokemon has nothing to do with most people's, such as graphics; the drum that I've been beating is that the underlying battle system and balancing needs an overhaul. The world is better when you make your own painting, not spending all your energy raging against someone else's.

As for your critiques, my main feedback would be to step back and ask why things might be this way, giving the designers the benefit of the doubt:

• As others have said, a smaller regional dex can create a stronger sense of game identity. This is a strong suit of RBY Kanto, where almost every Pokemon serves a purpose as a tool or enemy, and BW1 Unova. I can agree that Hoenn and DP Sinnoh did not use legacy Pokemon particularly well.
• A lot of Pokemon grinding complaints come from questionable assumptions about how the games are 'meant' to be played. There is no rule that all of your Pokemon must be the same level. No rule that your levels should be close to bosses'. No rule that you must use a full team of six. These are decisions to be made, with tradeoffs between battle difficulty and time investment. That's the game design essence of an RPG right there. If the player isn't happy with their choice, it's on them to recognize that and act accordingly. Wild Pokemon suck to grind with because you should strongly consider other avenues to reach your goals. I'm not happy with all the details myself, mind, and the philosophy can fall apart with challenge runs.
• Pokemon's luck elements are pretty bad in a lot of contexts, but early generations are why they're the way they are. Ask yourself: of all the 5% misses, full paralysis, and confusion hits you suffered, how many of them truly mattered? And I'm not talking inconvenience, I'm talking huge stretches of progress undone. Arduous battles snatched from you. Not that time you lost a turn to a Zubat. Luck is one of the few ways the average AI Pokemon can fight back, can stir an emotion in you, can make you pay attention, can mean something. Why can such a weak move as Tackle miss? To add drama and uncertainty to even the most basic of battles, and to encourage the player to progress their movesets.

If these points don't move you, so be it; just be sure it's for thought-out reasons, and not because you have something to prove.

 

[bdt2002]

Since Super Mario Galaxy is fresh in my mind right now because of last night’s movie release, I’d like to take a moment to compare this era of the Pokémon franchise to what I’ve regularly started calling the “Super Mario Renaissance” era. The stretch of platformers from late 2004 to late 2015 reminds me a lot of what’s being discussed here, especially in the context of both of these having some noticeable time overlap.

Whereas the Super Mario Renaissance was largely focused on bringing the platformers back to their roots, the Junichi Masuda era of Pokémon was focused on reinventing the wheel and advancing (literally, “Advance”) a franchise many thought in the early 2000s was gradually growing out of its prime. Instead, what ended up happening was that the Masuda generations set the standard for many people on what a modern mainline Pokémon game should feel like. It’s not just the mainlines either- series like Colloseum, Ranger, Mystery Dungeon, PokéPark, and Rumble just to name the most recognizable names all made their debuts during this era, and while the GameCube didn’t have anywhere close to the broader public appeal of the PlayStation 2, the GBA, DS, and Wii were all huge successes in their own right for Nintendo and I think the popularity of these systems was what led so many of us into the franchise.

However, there is a problem with Generations 3 through 5, and to a lesser extent X & Y as well. That problem comes with how deceptively tedious some things can be in what’s many people’s first foray into jRPGs. Take the Battle Frontier, for example, something many people are nostalgic for. In both generations it was featured in, I vividly remember not wanting to try most of the facilities other than the Factory, not because it’s bad content but because the amount of grinding and in-depth knowledge required to fully enjoy the Frontiers’ offerings was a little too tedious for my liking. Level grinding in general isn’t something most people enjoy, which makes sense, but if it was just Pokémon’s battles and preparing for said battles that was repetitive and tedious, that would be one thing. There’s a lot of other factors, too, though. The Safari Zone is arguably unfair. Pokémon Contests are surprisingly complicated. The DS games run at 30 FPS for some God-forsaken reason when the GBA was able to run Pokémon at 60 FPS. It’s these little nitpicks that eventually stack up over time and create far less enjoyable gaming experiences as a young adult then when I was a kid.

On the casual side of things, Black & White’s probably the strongest set of games here in terms of story and presentation but knowing what I know now I definitely wouldn’t call these generations “good writing” for the most part. Something Pokémon’s always lacked in the mainline games that the spinoffs are better with is some form of story-driven incentive to not just try out Pokémon you normally wouldn’t use but to really form that extra special connection with your Pokémon. Players end up playing through repetitive feeling storylines with reused character tropes and gameplay loops. It wasn’t until Sun & Moon with Shigeru Ohmori at the helm where I felt like I actually felt some kind of interest in the human characters in these games, in large part because many of the Ohmori games’ characters feel much more grounded in reality while still very much feeling like a Pokémon character as opposed to the extreme opposite ends of the Masuda games where characters struggle to find that middle ground between over-the-top and unreasonably bland and boring. Even the actual world-building, one of the things I expected Pokémon to be good at because we know they’re capable of this, isn’t up to par with a lot of Pokémon’s competition in the genre. The top-down chibi graphics don’t exactly do 2D Pokémon any favors as far as making these environments feel like a lived-in world, but with the exceptions of Johto/Kanto, the Unova sequels, and the Legends games, this franchise rarely explores opportunities to expand the game world beyond what’s already there and elaborate on the rewards and consequences of the characters’ actions.

 

[Pale Rose Star]

yeah so a good friend of mine is someone who shares at least some viewpoints with you and prefers modern games to the golden era, so these are points I've processed and most of these are imho off the mark.

Platinum's issue isn't the lack of variety. You CAN get away with not using the famous six team. The issue is moreso that those are just that much better than the rest of the mons. And we can say this for a lot of this franchise's games, including SV. The older gens simply did not have as many mons in them. There are fundamentally less mons to work with per route. I actually preferred that. As others have noted, it gives a sense of identity and it feels far less overwhelming to me. No hate to those who like the newer approach! But, I will also say I'm not past Dexit. It's one thing to have them be unavailable to catch/find, but literally not coding them into the game is pretty inexcusable to me.

Talking about the freedom of exploration... there were ways this could've been handled better in Johto yes but the other games really don't have this issue as much. The grind I think comes more from evolving Pokemon, but as the base games stand? Just catch the new wild mons of the area, and beat the trainers, and you're honestly set.

Meanwhile, I'm willing to be on record as an old JRPGs junkie, yknow the genre notorious for terrible pacing, that Pokemon SM, and USM, is the worst paced game of all time, hands down. It is solely bc of how hand holdy the game is. It makes it borderline unplayable at times. SwSh and SV do fix this somewhat but not fully. Older games aren't fully open, even Johto isn't, but they're not so streamlined as to no longer feel like an adventure RPG. Frankly Saga Scarlet Grace felt more open than that, and that game is literally just a battle simulator with a thin plot overlay.

Finally on that end, I'd like to echo CryoGyro's points. Treat the games as they are, where they are, with context in mind but not dictating, and with the developer in mind as well. These games aren't made solely to be discussed online, in some vacuum with perfect 20/20 hindsight. They're, well, just games. If you don't like them, that's OK! If you prefer the modern games, that's also OK! This thread seems mostly pointless though, it's just not the way to open up the conversation about this. I only respond because I've had to have convos like this irl. This isn't Twitter (my friend who has had these arguments with me is an unfortunate Twitter addict), and I'd like to see this place not go down that route. This is a pretty flamewar inviting topic and I think we should try to keep a friendlier vibe.


now for the less hot button issues (i.e. not the golden age vs modern age)

the one thing i will agree is that im not huge on RSE, but that's i think more personal taste, im not adding to the rng thing bc everyone pointed that out already but that's not my issue with it. i don't really care for hoenn's design frankly, I find it a bit too linear and HM reliant, and I will die on the hill that it does indeed have too much water. i also rly do not like the ost, but again taste.

I will also say that while I do agree there are more technically advanced graphics on the GBA, I at least appreciate RSE/FRLG's art design and they are at least vibrant and detailed. To me that always matters more, and for a game's graphics to be truly bad in my eyes, it must both be really technically behind and also have an art direction that is lacking in character. I'm fine if the art direction is at least ambitious and shows effort. To me, Pokemon SV are huge offenders of this. They are both incredibly lacking technically (frankly, they barely would pass for a low end PS2 game), extremely buggy, and also have a very noticeable lack of personality in art direction. Even SwSh felt more stylized. Of the AAA games on the Switch, SV are some of the worst looking.

We are allowed to expect better. I get that these are made on tight deadlines but you have an entire separate company in Creatures INC for the modeling, and hell the ILCA kind-of-acquisition is only adding to that. I don't pretend 3D modeling is anything short of insanely hard, and it is more a time issue than anything, but this is the highest grossing franchise of all time. This is also why I'm still sore over Dexit. I get balancing 1k+ mons is hard, but literally not putting them in the game is asinine to me.