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My assessment, which I think is the fairest you'll get, is that HGSS is painfully a gen 4 game with a lot of neat stuff crammed in. I think if they hadn't shit the bed in Gen 5 and instead polished much of what they introduced in Gen 4, HGSS would be ranked alongside titles like Gen 1. Solid ideas, okay execution, overall something you play to acknowledge how far things have come.
The issue is they didn't go anywhere after HGSS. So instead of being a stepping stone, it became a turning point for many, and therefore it's rating gets bloated just on the merit of being the "last" or the "peak" for so many fans.
Whenever I start a playthrough of these games, I beat the elite four, then I am done. They just feel weirdly unfinished, despite being a recreation of a previous game with the same issues.
I do love them, I just can't revisit them the way I can ever other game in the series. Too much lost potential in the following games, not enough realized potential in the games themselves.
