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>XY suffered because Masuda was pushed out halfway through
>ORAS and SM were only decent (Gens 6 - 7 weren't bad, but they weren't great) because Ohmori was still doing things the way Masuda would
>Gen 8 was where he became confident enough to take full control and rape the franchise forever
>PLA was a direct response to criticism of Gen 8
Of course, the question remains. If Masuda was the person keeping Pokemon from being shit, what happened to LGPE and BDSP?
With BDSP, it seems like Game Freak panicked halfway through making PLA and had Masuda "co-direct" a rushed remake of his game with the Pokemon Home devs. I really doubt that Masuda, the guy who directed FRLG, really wanted to make a soulless remaster with almost no extra content. How much control did he really have? Was it just a time issue? We may never know.
Now, LGPE is the real anomaly. Seemingly, Masuda had complete control over that one. It feels like instead of being on a real game, he was told to make Go-lite slop for toddlers (he never actually said it was because the old mechanics are too "difficult," that was a mistranslation) and did the best he could with what he was made to work with.
I really doubt that we'll get a tell-all book or something about all the workplace drama at Game Freak over the decades like there is in the comics industry, given how face-oriented Japanese work culture is, so all we can really do is speculate. On that, the Masuda situation really does remind me of Jim Shooter of Marvel -- a talented boss pushed out by seething underlings for being mean, only for everyone to realize far too late that he was actually just being a tard wrangler.
