>>57385245It's my least favorite. I even tried replaying it again some years ago and dropped it by around the 2nd or 3rd gym. Too many of the mons are ugly and the nicer looking ones evolve really late. The overworld aesthetic was also a lot worse than HGSS/DS, with unflattering object and shape choices. I don't care much about having story in Pokemon but the one in Gen 5 was insulting by trying to build up someone nuanced as N with a PETA style conflict just to eyerollingly cop out anyway by having a caricature like Ghetsis to break message. Trying to start fresh in BW was a big mistake that B2W2 and XY had to severely walk back. When you have a bunch of new mons people don't like using, it's good to have old favorites or older mons you hadn't gotten a chance to use that you'd have the opportunity now to, but because of BW design, you winded up stuck with using what you didn't want to, and that dramatically brings down the experience. B2W2 had to not only introduce older mons back and virtually every famous old trainer, but also address the late evo problem by giving you early Volcarona and early Braviary. It was better to say the least, but the damage was already done (and these were just band-aid concessions anyway) and that could be seen by them continuing to apologize with nostalgia pandering taking over in XY. The thing that struck me the hardest though with Unova is that it had at that point the ugliest starters of all time, with Emboar leading the group as ugliest starter of all time. There had always been starters I didn't care for before that, but none until Unova that put me off from wanting to play. Gen 5 was the first gen where I distanced myself from Pokemon as a top recreational priority since it felt like it was hitting its 'yeah this is going on longer than it should if it's getting to this point' phase.
But to end on a positive note, Grimsley was the best thing to come out of it. There were some good things in there.
