>>54617630Unironically Sinnoh.
I know it gets hate for being “slow”, and I do understand these complaints, the way most people play Pokémon doesn’t mesh well with the Sinnoh games for that reason, but personally I just really like the general design philosophy behind a lot of the slowness. Not the slowness in battle per say, or the slow movement speed (though I do think these things were meant to suit the “feel” of the games in general) but the slowness in how the games are designed to be played.
Time based mechanics like the Day-night cycle from gen 2 may be a little more divisive these days but I’ve personally always liked how it made playing the games FEEL different to play at different times of day. It’s just very immersive in a way that kid me appreciated a lot. And Sinnoh took these elements and expanded upon them in ways literally no other Pokémon game does. The music for example is already incredibly slow and jazzy, but the night-specific versions are a whole different level, and feel fine-tuned to compliment those times when you’re up late playing games in bed. Additionally, mechanics like the berry system and
the honey tree system also compliment the daily incremental progress type of play-style that the day-night mechanics (and general slowness) already encourage.
But why do I like this stuff? Well, I just play Pokémon that way already, so it suits me. I can’t really binge games in a week like I used to, I have a busy life and can usually only play Pokémon for like 1-2 hours every few days, so when I play Pokémon games I like to take my time and just make a bit of progress here and there, goofing off and enjoying the more repetitive elements like berry growing, the underground, contests, slowly training up new catches on trainer rematches and wild encounters, etc in my downtime. And the Sinnoh games just feel the most “comfy” to me in this regard.