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Gen 2 wansn't bad but it didn't have a lot of variety. They played it safe but that was for the best. If a mon like Dunsparce was first introduced in Gen 8 then people would hate on it.
It's not really a matter of designs but art style, the earlier gens just had literal animals with maybe some weird paranormal stuff which isn't very creative but is much better that having overly designed garishly coloured fucks (pic unrelated).
Each gen had a different goal, earlier on it was about cutsey but also powerfull pocket monsters. That idea slowly changed into walking talking toys with Gen 3 but didn't come around fully until Gen 6.
But in terms of designs alone in my zoomer opinion (and ignoring art style) the best designed mons were in gens:
4>2>5>1>7>3>6>8
