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Regardless how good or bad you think it is, I genuinely find Gen 5’s attempt to have a more meaningful story and cast involvement to have been an admirable effort. I think it showed an internal recognition for the franchise that the established formulas were only going to grow more stale after gen 4 hit the logical extreme of incorporating vague elements such as time and space into its legendries, and that upping the ante in a way that wasn’t just arbitrary scale was a must in keeping the series feeling fresh. And this desire was only embellished even further with the infamous decision to use only new monsters for the region. I felt it was more about reworking how the core of these games were approached, without ditching every tradition like gym leaders and gyms.
I personally can’t speak to the actual quality since it’s been years since my last full playthrough. And I’m not trying to suggest that intention guaranteed success either, only that the fact they genuinely felt like they were trying here is appreciated. I myself don’t really agree that this sort of more heavy handed narrative approach plays into pokemon’s strengths, but I’d much rather these games worked harder to become more meaningful individually even if it means less catering to my personal preference.
I often refer to B/W as the RE4 of Pokemon, where at the time what was once an attempt to revitalize itself has been tarnished. Since future installments only further exacerbated these drastic changes, and made them worse and worse instead of fine tuning a sort of balance with the old and new appeal. So it’s now seen less as the much needed shake up Pokemon needed, and is more commonly viewed as just the “beginning of the end.” Which while not entirely untrue, muddies the conversation and misleads people into thinking all we need is just the same but better. Instead of wanting the approach to be, “how do we better handle making things feel fresh?”
