Quoted By:
>Bad
Removing player agency. Pokemon is appealing because you have many little choices that influence your play time. From the very beginning, everyone has their starter. They have their choice of who to add to their party. And, in the earliest games, you could even veer off, get lost, find rare monsters, and maybe do a few things out of sequence. All this works to grant the player their own little personal journey. But this starts to become lost as the games start to tell their own stories more. Unova has you becoming N's opposite, and adding Reshiram/Zekrom to your team. ORAS gives you a Mega Rayquaza before fighting Zinnia. Sun/Moon has its many unskippable cutscenes and early-game tutorials. BDSP enforced affection bonuses. Things like this make the game feel more automated, like your input matters less. The removal of the natdex also puts a limit to how a player can experience the game (and it costs more money now if you want to keep a full collection going forward...)
>Good
A world that just feels lived in, active. One of the other things that makes Pokemon appealing is simply the fantasy of inhabiting the setting. Having daily events, cities to hang out in, sidegames like Pokemon Amie, or Battle Tower/Facilities are all great, because it gives you something to do with Pokemon that you've trained outside of just doing the required plot. I think this is why something like Emerald stands out. Battle Frontier gives you a whole ton of challenges to take on with your team, difficult enough to last for a while. With Secret Bases you can create your own little corner of the world. Contests are another sidequest on their own, but don't require you to be a hardcore competitive battler. There's a little something for any type of player to try and accomplish. Once those things started to disappear is when the fans got up in arms. They are secondary features, but added a little bit of life to the game beyond the badges.