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Absolute nostalgiafag thread. The GCN and Wii games had pretty bad graphics. A lot of models were N64 tier (and not just the Pokémon). All the attack effects were just loads of alpha particles with cheesy sound effects, and the lighting was very basic, with Battle Revolution adding shitloads of rim lighting and basic bloom to dazzle kids into forgetting that it's a Wii game.
I do agree that the animations had more 'punch' to them and the few Pokémon that had unique elements really made a difference. But you have to be realistic and consider the context. The first 251 Pokémon models are direct ports from Stadium, which is why they look so awful. But more importantly, that's a ton of work Genius Sonority didn't have to do. When Colosseum came around, they only had to model and animate 135 Pokémon, which is why they were able to make them more unique and tailor the battle animation system around them. For Battle Revolution, there were only 107 new Pokémon.
The point is, these older games had far fewer elements to accommodate than the current games and they could get away with far lower-quality graphics (and yes, they do look bad even for their time). When Gen 6 came around, they had to model and animate all 721 Pokémon, all of which need to be compatible with 728 move animations. That's fucking huge, and absolutely requires a homogenized animation system to accommodate them all, especially to stay under memory limitations for both low-powered (i.e. 3DS) and high-powered systems. Any game devs here should understand the gravity of this undertaking and why it is the way it is.
This is going to trigger a lot of spergs, but Let's Go actually has a very pretty and cohesive style, and the textures for all the Pokémon there were redone with really nice effect maps. Sword and Shield are going to look good and their style is good, even if the battle animations are ~soulless~.
