>>48009088>Why are these games defended so heavily for getting rid of the most amount of things so far in Pokemon?Because it's Pokémon—the easiest series to deliver cheap dopamine hits without needing to go all out and improve on previous installments.
Ever since the series went 3D, and this isn't something I wouldn't expect anyone (especially myself) to have notice, but every Pokémon game that introduces a new generation seems to be roughly between 80-90% the "size" of the previous definitive Pokémon game that came before it. For example, X&Y is 80-90% of the game that B2W2 was, Sun/Moon was 80-90% of what ORAS was, and Sword/Shield 80-90% of what USUM was.
But now I can't exactly apply that formula to anything anymore because the continuation of dex cuts really just affects the ability for a game to "define" its generation. Like, BDSP is definitely not going to be the definitive gen 8 game—that will still (sadly) belong to Swish/Swoosh with its overpriced "DLC" expansion. So long as these dex cuts persist, I personally don't know what/where these Pokémon games will lie in comparison to the titles that came before it. But imagine being outshined by fucking Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon—that's embarrassing.
A paradigm shift has happened where enough people (kids/parents of those kids) are on board with believing that the current standard of these Pokémon games is the highest point that the series has ever achieved—those people outshine Pokémon's skeptics and detractors. As long as there's just enough people goating the current standard, criticism is negligible. There are endless debates about why the series fell off when everything went 3D, and it won't matter because the big Company will still be making mad cash at the end of the day.
