Do you prefer newer or older games?

[Inspirited]

My personal favorites will always be Colosseum and XD and I will always have fond memories of Yellow due to it being the first game I played. I suppose I like the older games more because of these two points. That being said, I have yet to play a 2nd gen game and I did like XY and B1W1 (I have never played B2W2). Gen 4 was almost unplayable to me after you break the 100 HP threshold with most of your mons(The slow hp drop becomes unbearable after that). I have no prefference when choosing between new and old it seems and I am sure I am not the only one like this.

 

[Hourai]

I like basically every generation but Gen 6, so older generations. I'm still pretty optimistic to how Sun/Moon will turn out though.

The funny thing is, my least favorite generation happened to contain my favorite Pokemon

 

[Primalpizza]

Generally older, although it's sort of a mix.
Here, I'll make a list. I like making lists and have nothing better to do right now:

MY TOP 6 FAVORITE GENERATIONS:

6: GENERATION IV
I hadn't played Gen IV until very recently, when I picked up Platinum and then played partway through Pearl on emulator. My main problem with Gen IV is that Diamond and Pearl are so freaking slow, mainly the battles and the Surfing speed. Platinum fixed those, but Sinnoh just seems sort of... bland. Don't get me wrong: I like every generation, I just like this one the least. HGSS were really good in my opinion, though. I've played a bit of it and seen some speedruns. However, DP just tainted Gen IV for me.

5: GENERATION VI
The models were too saturated, X and Y were too hand-holdy, and all the Gen VI games were painfully easy. Although without 6th gen, I probably would not be into competitive battling. ORAS were really good in my opinion, except the Battle Resort was crap compared to Emerald's Battle Frontier.

4: GENERATION I
Evil team was good, Pokemon were well-designed and diverse, but the games are incredibly buggy and have eight hundred sixty-seven billion glitches. But Gen I made a really good first impression on the world.

3: GENERATION V
Haven't played Black/White yet, but I have played Black 2. The 3D was good, I liked the music a lot, although the Pokemon designs were a bit lackluster. The lore was very deep, which I respect in a game.

2: GENERATION II
Loads of postgame. Exploring Kanto after beating the Elite Four was mindblowing for a Game Boy game. Some parts seemed unnecessarily long and drawn-out (Team Rocket Mahogany Hideout), but I enjoyed the games. Crystal even had little animations when a Pokemon came out of a ball.

1: GENERATION III
This may have to do a bit with nostalgia, since FireRed was my first Pokeymans game, but I have always liked Gen III the best. It overhauled the system, adding a new EV/IV system. It also added abilities, which I really liked. FireRed and LeafGreen were amazing remakes of the original Kanto adventure with a crapload of postgame, but Emerald is Generation III's crowing achievement. Its inclusion of both Team Aqua and Team Magma, along with the Rayquaza-centered storyline, blew me away. Not to mention the Battle Frontier and the expanded Safari Zone.

 

[Norne]

Generation 2 and lots of post-game in the same sentence... You mean 3 side quests 80 trainers and an experience drought with a severely crippled Kanto making the post Morty experience drought look decent + an anticlimactic boss fight despite the level drought?

Generation 2 actually has less post-game than most games bar gen RBY and RS, heck I could argue unova has 4 side quests and 2 optional content quests that bring more to the table than jotho-kanto post-game...

Seriously, extra areas are not directly proportional to the included content on them.

 

[Primalpizza]

The Kanto post-game brought lots of new Pokemon to the table, like Snorlax and many others that were simply uncatchable in Johto. And many people, including me, liked getting to fight the good old Kanto gym leaders again, after experiencing them for the first time in Gen 1 or 3. Kanto was not really in the best shape, but it is only a Game Boy Color game and GF could only fit so much on the cartridge. I do wish they included the Safari Zone, though (There's even an unused map, albeit very small, for it in the game)...

And as for Mt. Silver, there was the implication that something very, very powerful was at the top of that mountain. I mean, Prof. Oak won't even let you step foot in it until you have 16 badges, and he said there were crazy powerful Pokemon in there. It's like Generation II's version of Cerulean Cave. As soon as Oak lets you in there, you know something's waiting for you at the top. Almost every dungeon in GSC has something at the end to be waiting for (Sprout Tower has HM05, Mt. Mortar has Tyrogue, etc.). And when you finally reach the top, after hours of sweat and tears navigating Mt. Silver, you feel an adrenaline rush as you talk to the mysterious character at the top of the mountain and battle the protagonist from the previous games, who is the toughest, and last, boss in the game. While I do agree that most trainers in Kanto were total pushovers, I personally liked the nostalgia trip.

And about Unova: As I said earlier, I haven't played Black/White yet, but from what I have heard, BW2 has more postgame. I wouldn't know, though. BW2 had the PWT, which I really enjoyed also, battling all of the previous Gym leaders in a semi-competitive setting. BW2 also had a whole chunk of Unova to explore, although the only things that mattered there were Cresselia, the stone to summon Heatran, and the Day Care. There's also Icirrus City and all the Dragonspiral Tower stuff with Zekrom/Reshiram, and a bunch of other legendaries. But that's my point: Pretty much all the postgame in Unova (or at least BW2, except PWT and Black City/White Forest) revolves around legendaries, which really, when you think about it, defeats the purpose of being a legendary Pokemon in the first place. There's just so many of them in-game that they sort of lose their value. I feel that way about ORAS as well, what with having twenty-something legendaries to find across Hoenn.

So in summary, I think both Gen II and Gen V have a lot of postgame content, but I liked Gen II's better personally because it didn't all revolve around a bunch of unnecessary legendaries.

 

[Norne]

You embellished the lamest super boss battle in the franchise to a point is quite worth a laugh, also the 3 quests of Kanto aren't substantial at all. There really isn't much substance to it, the badge quest is ridiculously toned down due to the experience drought it ends up just being silly, fixing the electricity getting the ticket and snorlax is pretty much the entire Kanto plot all of them are solved in tandem. And all the new Pokémon? Basically the dark type you couldn't get outside of umbreon and a bunch of lv 20 or less lines among the Kanto mons...that was beyond poorly planned.

Sorry man but 3 side quests don't really mean GSC Kanto has post-game, it's quite sad considering the amount of walking tiles they gave us.

 

[Primalpizza]

The lamest super boss battle in the franchise? I mean, from what I know, in BW, the super boss battle is against Alder, the true champion, in the Elite Four Round 2. It's revealed that he's the Champion beforehand, which dampens the element of surprise. The Red battle, however, comes out of thin air, which I personally liked better.

Don't get me wrong. I liked Gen V's postgame content, it's just I liked Gen II's a little bit better.
I'm entitled to my opinion, and you're entitled to yours.

 

[Primalpizza]

My personal favorites will always be Colosseum and XD and I will always have fond memories of Yellow due to it being the first game I played. I suppose I like the older games more because of these two points. That being said, I have yet to play a 2nd gen game and I did like XY and B1W1 (I have never played B2W2). Gen 4 was almost unplayable to me after you break the 100 HP threshold with most of your mons(The slow hp drop becomes unbearable after that). I have no prefference when choosing between new and old it seems and I am sure I am not the only one like this.

If you don't like slow HP drops, you'll hate Gen II.

 

[Norne]

The lamest super boss battle in the franchise? I mean, from what I know, in BW, the super boss battle is against Alder, the true champion, in the Elite Four Round 2. It's revealed that he's the Champion beforehand, which dampens the element of surprise. The Red battle, however, comes out of thin air, which I personally liked better.

Don't get me wrong. I liked Gen V's postgame content, it's just I liked Gen II's a little bit better.
I'm entitled to my opinion, and you're entitled to yours.

Superboss, an optional boss not involved in the main story line and often unlocked before the final boss or in a post game.

Final Fantasy popularized the superboss including up to 2 of them per game that have absolutely no resemblance in the plot but are just as hard if not harder than the final boss.

In Pokémon the superbosses are, Red with a level spike, terrible moveset yet somehow has reached memetic status due to the fanservice involved with it, seriously the only memorable thing about this guy was Snorlax, Steven in Esmerald as a post league boss, Battle zone Barry, rematches where introduced in this generation but only Barry gets the superboss status despite silver being a trainer able to be rematched. Red again wich feel of his horse, a very small fall from a pony dipped in gold by the fans, as now fighting type coverage is a thing and Snorlax isn't what it once was and then gen V gave us the GF Battles, Cynthia, Alder in B2W2, Cheren and Bianca in BW, then Cheren and Bianca as B2W2 optional bosses with the memory link, N seasonal fights, Hugh rematch, Benga as post game especial feature boss and the shadow Triad.

Up to gen 5 these where the super bosses, Silver rematches barely count as part of that concept as Steven was the first true superboss by Pokémon standards despite being a 1 time only fight.

Unova gave us Calem and The Orphan... ORAS gave us...Zinnia I guess...this thing is still considered part of a forced history line so it's hard to call her one time fight a superboss fight... Well you get the picture.

Out of all these Red takes the cake as the lamest one outside of role-playing or fanservice memetic status.

Opinions aside the fact that gen 2 post game has been inflated by fans to memetic levels despite being the third worst in the franchise content wise is a fact, Red is no different, as a superboss is mediocre but somehow he is protected by a nostalgia coat and a huge respect among roleplayers that don't see the difficulty curve it is tied to.

 

[Siggu]

The lamest super boss battle in the franchise? I mean, from what I know, in BW, the super boss battle is against Alder, the true champion, in the Elite Four Round 2. It's revealed that he's the Champion beforehand, which dampens the element of surprise. The Red
battle, however, comes out of thin air, which I personally liked better.

The element of surprise is basically the only good thing Red has as a boss, because it almost completely fails at being a boss-worthy opponent.

He is a little better in Gen II because there weren't many effective ways of breaking through that Snorlax, but he is simply the easiest final boss in the entire series. At least you had to prepare for those other bosses that can be really easy. Red? You don't even need to.

 

[Primalpizza]

Not having to prepare for Red, who has Pokemon 20 levels higher than any previous foe you have fought? Red leads with his Pikachu, who being at level 81, is most likely way faster than any of your Pokemon and can severely hamper you with Thunder and TBolt. His Espeon can then set up Reflect, which helps his Snorlax set up with Amnesia and stall with Rest, and maybe even paralyze you with STAB Body Slam. He then goes into his Fire/Water/Grass core, which has been one of the single best cores ever in the competitive scene, and wrecks. Venusaur has Sunny day to support Charizard, and also to give itself 2/3 heal from Synthesis and 1-turn Solarbeam. His Blastoise is a bit underwhelming, though, as it doesn't support anyone on the team and it doesn't get supported by anyone.

In HGSS, Red actually got better. His Pikachu holds a Light Ball, which gives it insanely high offenses, and 120 power STAB Light Ball-boosted Volt Tackle hurts. A lot. And if you survive, it can finish you off with Quick Attack. All of Red's other Pokemon have strictly better movesets, with updated Gen IV moves to make up for Whirlpool and Fire Spin shenanigans. GF even took out Red's Espeon and replaced it with an infinitely better Lapras.

The whole subject's just my opinion, though. Take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Theorymon]

Not gonna lie, I far prefer gen 6 to everything else because they have great ingame ladders. Ignoring that, HGSS and Emerald are my favorite games to play ingame, because I found Battle Frontier to be extremely addictive post-game content, and I really wish they'd bring it back for Pokemon Sun and Moon! I don't mind replaying the old games every once and a while for nostalgia, but fact is, the heart and soul of mainline Pokemon to me is teambuilding and battling, so just crushing the Elite 4 doesn't really leave me that satisfied!

Spinoffs however, are a very different story for me. I've found that most of my favorite Pokemon spinoffs tend to predate Gen 4. Like most people, I thought Pokemon Snap was a brilliant spinoff that made great use of Pokemon as wildlife, and I really wish they'd put it in the Wii U Virtual Console in North America! Pokemon Puzzle League is basically Tetris Attack 2, and for those of you who have never played it: I'd give it a try, since its one of the best puzzle games around on both the single player and mutliplayer front! The Pokemon Pinball games also rank among my favorite portable pinball games to play, and I still play them from time to time while on the go.

I'm even starting to enjoy Pokemon Colosseum again. Since I'm starting to doubt that we're gonna get Pokemon Gold and Silver for VC in time for Pokemon Sun and Moon's release, I've decided to give that game another go so I can complete the Johto Pokemon in my living Pokedex, and I guess I'm really enjoying that all the battles are doubles unlike the last time I played it (which was probably about a decade ago now lol). I even sorta like Hey You Pikachu, which is one of the few games I'd call "so bad its good" (in fact I'm damn near tempted to make a thread about that game lol).

Meanwhile, post 4th gen, I don't find nearly as many spinoffs that I really like. I will admit that Pokemon Battle Revolution holds a lot of dear memories for me, since its random match up was my first real exposure to online Pokemon battles, and its also how I met Jibaku and got into Smogon eventually! However, outside of the first taste of online battling, PBR was pretty dreadful for everything else, and paled in comparison to the other console Pokemon games from previous gens content wise. Pokemon Rumble World got me hooked for a bit, but I felt that it was too simple and mindless to really spend a lot of money on, so I can't imagine I would have been satisfied with playing the non F2P ones. Also, I never really got into the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, which I know a LOT of people enjoy, so maybe that might have a lot to do with my general apathy when it comes to newer Pokemon spinoffs.

That being said, I found Pokken to be a surprise hit for me this year, so maybe TPC and Nintendo are starting to get smarter when it comes to Pokemon spinoffs. I feel like most recent Pokemon spinoffs seem to feel... sorta like cheap cash-ins, but Pokken shows that when effort is put into them, they can still be great! And like I said, I never really got into the PMD games, so maybe I should give the new one a shot later...

 

[computeraddict9]

Pokemon oras GRIPPED MY soul and touched my heart.

 

[Coronis]

Not sure how you'd classify me, but Gen 2 and Gen 4 lead the way for me, by a fair way. Then come Gen 6, 1, 3 and last and most certainly least, 5. I loved the sidegames in Gen 4 as well, the Ranger and PMD series are just ridiculously entertaining. Never got to play Colosseum or XD, maybe one day.

 

[PumpedAaron]

Going back and playing old gens on Showdown, I feel like Third Gen has one of the most clean and balanced meta, and its pretty pitiable that I only learned how to EV train and IV breed when 3rd gen was at its last leg. I particularly want to play Double battles in 3rd gen and 4th gen more. I've really taken a shine to Double battles and their very enhanced efficiency compared to Singles in RBY and GSC. So at this point, I like RSE and DPPt a lot.

As for my actual temporal standing, I got into Pokemon right on the first generation!

 

[Monsoon]

*Grumble*Hate the new look to Pokemon they introduced in X and Y. 3D, no; Pokemon will always be top down, grid like, with pixel art, 2D. Not this new crap*Grumble*

 

[Lady Vader]

*Grumble*Hate the new look to Pokemon they introduced in X and Y. 3D, no; Pokemon will always be top down, grid like, with pixel art, 2D. Not this new crap*Grumble*

"You kids these days..."

 

[Monsoon]

"You kids these days..."

*Grumble*Damn straight. Kids these days with their 3D graphics and wifi. Back in my day we had more pokemon than pixels on the screen.*Grumble*

 

[LightningLord2]

Guess I'll go ahead and drop my favourite generations from bottom to top. I'm splitting Gen 3,4 and 6 as the game remakes warrant a seperate view in my opinion.

-4th Gen (Sinnoh)
Sinnoh has always been very forgettable to me. Sure, it introduced a bunch of cool Pokémon (particularly the Steel-Types) and Cyrus and Cynthia are kinda cool, but the region had a whole lot of nothing going on, the progression is kinda confusing, there's way too many Galactic Grunt battles and pretty much any remotely rare Pokémon needs you to go into a side area or use a GBA cartridge. Not even Gen 1 was this bad with distribution. Also, the Pokétch is probably the worst device ever so far.

-6th Gen (Kalos)
It's mostly too easy and the pacing jumps all over the place. At least it's got the mega evolutions and unlike in Sinnoh, you don't have to go into far-off side dungeons just to get something more unique than Starly or Bidoof.

-3rd Gen (Kanto)
Polishing up Kanto's graphics and making the AI actually remotely challenging was pretty neat - still, I miss abusing every little fault in Gen 1. It doesn't actually add any substantial extras to the game besides a tedious island-hopping questline (that is mandatory in order to trade with RSE) either.

-1st Gen
Glitching out the game to make it bend over backwards for me is really fun, as is having gift Pokémon get boxed if you have no room for them. Not actually a good pick for a serious Pokémon experience imo, though. Praise Helix

-5th Gen
Pretty good writing, mainly due to N being a very interesting character. Furthermore, having to play with only the new Pokémon at first was a pretty nice idea. Lastly, the game made version differences more interesting (though I would have appreciated making more environmental differences). However, the postgame is pretty weak, as there's very little to explore plotwise, especially with the sequels, who only really offer the E4 rematch and the new Black Tower/White Treehollow.

-2nd Gen
I honestly really like the Johto region a lot - the music is great, the environments are varied, the lore is somewhat interesting and you even get radio channels to listen to. Problem is, not only is the level curve pretty weak (both the Johto and Kanto portions), the game is really bad at actually showing off its new Pokémon and mechanics - Umbreon is the only pre-Kanto Dark-Type available (Crystal also has Sneasel, who sucks), hold items other than Leftovers are generally bad and there's only four Gen 2 Pokémon in the Gym Leader lineups (the Elite 4 is a little better with it).

-3rd Gen (Hoenn)
Great music, nice environments (there is an abudance of water areas, but you don't spend that much time on the ocean in the lategame), secret bases and contests make a great region. It also learned from the mistakes of Gen 2 and made sure there's proper representation of the new Pokémon in gyms and on the villain teams. I also really enjoyed the Battle Frontier of that generation (though I think stuff like the Battle Pike and the Battle Palace are silly).

-6th Gen (Hoenn)
Not much to say here, most of the points from RSE also apply to ORAS. The game is still quite easy to beat, though, with all the Exp. Share and jazz, but the rest of the features really shine. There's also Soaring in the Sky and the Delta Episode which are nothing short of amazing.

-4th Gen (Johto)
Yes, Gen 4 is both bottom and top on that list. HGSS has a much better Pokémon distribution, doesn't restrict out-of-gen evolutions (it even adds radio channels for Hoenn and Sinnoh, giving you another Dark-Type in Absol) and comes with a ton of additional features like the Pokéwalker, the Berry Planter, the Gym Leader rematches, the (unfortunately event locked) battle with Giovanni and several more. It's not only a massive upgrade from Gen 2, but also gives the 4th gen mechanics a much better surface.

 

[ERFN]

[...]


Opinions aside the fact that gen 2 post game has been inflated by fans to memetic levels despite being the third worst in the franchise content wise is a fact, [...]

Interesting fact. What did you base that one on?

There are objective issues with the postgame in Gen 2, agreed - but I find it baffling how you can be this vocal about 'facts' and 'people nostalgia coating it to memetic levels'. Even if we're talking about hindsight, the Gen 2 was well received at the time and still is. And the issue at hand isn't whether the game was objectively great at what it did, but how people perceived it then, how they perceive it now.

For some reason, you can't stand people actually liking the Gen 2 postgame?

 

[Norne]

Interesting fact. What did you base that one on?

There are objective issues with the postgame in Gen 2, agreed - but I find it baffling how you can be this vocal about 'facts' and 'people nostalgia coating it to memetic levels'. Even if we're talking about hindsight, the Gen 2 was well received at the time and still is. And the issue at hand isn't whether the game was objectively great at what it did, but how people perceived it then, how they perceive it now.

For some reason, you can't stand people actually liking the Gen 2 postgame?

The fact is that we have had better post game content ever since emerald came around, yet people over inflate the content of Kanto and Mt silver to make the Johto games look better.

It's kind of a memetic thing, a phenomena where a bunch of people sing ad nauseum about a whole new region, without even realizing how little stuff there was to do there.

It's Nostalgia coated when people forget that the post game of PT had 60% more trainer battles than hgss had counting the remaches, nor the fact that most of Kanto content wasn't revisited at all.

Seriously, objectively the original and "remastered" post game of the Johto games was mediocre when compared to what followed it, yet people always blow it out of proportion, always.

 

[Siggu]

The idea of a post-game in Kanto in GS was a nice idea on paper, but since it was "Hey, we now have a lot of free space, let's fill it with Kanto!", it suffers greatly from the fact it's literally filler.

It's better in HGSS (Especially in terms of not being laughably easy) but not enough to compensate.

 

[Taistelu]

Newer or older games? This is weird for me to say because my favourite generation order goes 5>3>2>1>6>4. I suppose looking at it, I prefer older games despite Gen 5 being my favourite. I don't think that a game being "old" or "new" has anything to do with how good it is, since one game might be terrible, and the next great (as is for me for Gen 5 and 4). At least that's main games. Older side games tend to be better than newer ones imo.

Also noticing the discussion on Johto -> Kanto, Kanto was basically fanservice only.

 

[Breloom]

My top 3 personal favorite generations:

1. First generation was my favorite because they were the first pokemon games I played and got me interested in pokemon in the first place. I put hundreds of hours into red and yellow.

2. Third generation got me interested in battling. The new pokemon were great. I ended up spending more time playing netbattle than I did any third gen games. The physical/special change in 4th gen really turned me off from any of the 4th gen cartridge games/playing shoddy. I ended up playing netbattle till it felt like it died.

3. Sixth gen is there not because of the new pokemon or gameplay, but simply for PSS. I think PSS was a great addition to the game and a step in the right direction for the game going forward.

 

[Xen]

The idea of a post-game in Kanto in GS was a nice idea on paper, but since it was "Hey, we now have a lot of free space, let's fill it with Kanto!", it suffers greatly from the fact it's literally filler.

It's better in HGSS (Especially in terms of not being laughably easy) but not enough to compensate.

Kanto in GSC wasn't free space; if it wasn't for Satoru Iwata helping with compressing the size of the game, Kanto wouldn't have even existed in GSC. Still sucks that a lot of Kanto was stripped though, but blame that on limited memory space.

As for me, I don't really prefer one game over another due to age. Each generation has its own set of advantages and charms over the others, so it mostly depends on what day of the week you ask me. I tend to replay the older games more since I don't have to worry about losing my current collection of competitive Pokemon as much, so I've played the first 3 generations more than DPPt and BW. Thankfully that isn't much of an issue anymore, thanks to Pokemon Bank and being able to backup/restore saves with Powersaves, so I've had a couple of playthroughs with Y and AS now (Y especially, thanks to the large quantity of available Pokemon).