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I really love it. Its nice to see others share the sentiment that its such a hit and miss selection. Like it or not, it’s hella varied, and has a decent selection of really out there mons like Reuniclis and siglyph. It was exactly what I needed after gen 4, which had the weakest dex until gen 8 imo. Not that it was god awful, just didn’t have many pokemon that felt like they were pushing any really interesting concepts. Only one I can think off of the top of my head to do so being Rotom. And as much as I like the cross evos, it also left you with a dex where a good 1/3rd of it wasn’t completely new ideas or monsters made fresh from the ground up.
I don’t think gen 5’s innate fan split stems only from the concept of having nothing but new mons for a new region. These guys are genuinely weird. But it does make the effort to find balance with more grounded pokemon such as Sawsbuck, who I appreciate for that reason.
Darmanitan, Scrafty, Cryogonal, I didn't know what to think the first time seeing them. But they’re so full of character. And even if I think some fine tuning could have been done, they still remain very memorable to me, and not in an infamous or bad way.
I think what really damns this dex is just how wide spread the dislike for the ever repeated ice cream and garbage really overshadows discussion regarding the dex as a whole. On top of that, the pokemon that count most for introducing a region really fell flat. Obviously talking about the starters and legendaries. Just so many throw away legendaries, and weird vauge box mascots. Dragons that represent morals? It doesn’t stick with you like gen 3's with their respective environment theme or the gen 4 legends and their, uh, really out there appearance. Now on their own I still think they’re quite fine, Zekrom in particular practically gets saved by his sprite animation. But even to this day, they still have a sense of not really feeling as impactful as they should.
