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Pokemon has always been shit and the only reason it's never been required to genuinely and meaningfully improve its formula is because its mediocrities were initially covered up by novelty at the time of Red and Green (151 unique monsters without palette swaps, multiplayer battling and trading on a handheld device) and then further masqueraded by Pokemon's very nature as an easily merchandisable concept, distracting everyone from the game's flaws with toys, trading cards, an anime and everything else, and all of it did such a good job that Pokemon, once it hit overseas, had no reason to give a fuck about criticism, because it had already cemented itself as a Forever Franchise due to the sheer marketing hype that built it up into a "sells 15 million units minimum guaranteed just because people saw the brand's extremely iconic logo on the box and associate that logo with fond childhood memories from simpler rose tinted times that weren't actually all that great".
