>>55654746i think it comes down to bw2 feeling really haphazard in a lot of ways bw didn't. the story seemed kind of slapped together and aimless, like it wasn't parricularly well thought out. bw has a really strong narrative, like they actually had an idea for what they wanted to do with it and built around that. i've always thought bw2 were considerably weaker in that regard. i also thought the limited pokédex of bw did a fantastic job of selling the idea that unova really was extremely far away from the other regions, and i think adding other pokémon to the dex in bw2 was a massive blow to the region's identity, even if the game was more fun for it. i liked bw2 but i never thought they were better than bw, and honestly seeing the hype around them over the last decade has been incredibly weird to me, because the general consensus seems to be that they were better than bw.
also hilda is so much better than rosa it's not even funny, even at the time i was like "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING???" 