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Oldfag here, you may not care, but these are my thoughts on the franchise.
In 1999 my dad entered a Doritos contest to win a copy of Pokemon Gold, and somehow won. Prior to this, I had collected some cards and watched the anime in 6th grade. But now I had to buy a gameboy color to play Pokemon Gold. A friend of mine had Pokemon red I played a few times I borrowed it and loved it. Pokemon Gold was incredible. I played over 600 hours, fighting Cal in Viridian, the Elite 4, SS Anne, and Red on Mt Silver over and over. Then I got Pokemon Stadium 2 and that was a whole new opening to the franchise and things to do. What great luck he won the copy. I was 11 years old and it was a great experience.
When Ruby came out, I played through but it lost a lot of the charm of gen 1 and 2. I picked up a copy of red myself and picked up Pokemon Stadium 1 and it was a great time. I then skipped the game for many years after gen 3, until an old friend got me to pick up a 3ds and Pokemon Y.
Pokemon Y was my new reintroduction to Pokemon. It had the roller skates, cool cities, a punching bag to rest EVs, soccer, horde battles, double and triple battles, and the introduction of fairy type. Gen 6 gets a lot of hate but it was the last good Pokemon game in my opinion. After this, I picked up Moon, Ultra Sun, and Shield, but all were like dumbed down versions of X and Y. Like they were aiming for the little kid audience only, not the long time players. Nothing beat Satoshi's music, aesthetic, and independence of gen 1 and 2. The originals, not the remakes. Sure the graphics weren't there, but players of the original gameboy games didn't play for that. Now, endless unskippable cutscenes, and a lack of independent exploration dumbed down the games.
I will likely pick up gen 9, but I do still see that the games are to appeal exclusively to young audiences, rather than the old "kids to adult" rating the old games deserved.
