>>57358041>Why was Gen 5 so divisive when it came out Because it was really, really bad.
>and why is it suddenly beloved (even by people who used to hate it)?Because the children whose first games were on the DS got older (notably distinct from "grew up") and are now the majority on this board. Even though gen 5 was objectively the laziest generation and nearly killed the franchise you will see them make vague appeals to "sovl" that somehow disappeared when Game Freak started putting effort into the games, ex. finally making the jump to 3D models (present since Pokemon Stadium), character customization (present since Battle Revolution), pet sim elements (present since Yellow), etc, in the mainline.
For an example of how concerned with quality said generation is, the "rehabilitation" of the Flopus' image coincides with similarly-aged children attempting to rehabilitate Shadow the Hedgehog.
