HGSS, hell, GSC in general were the last pokemon games that were actually imerssive/made consistently good decisions:
1) Following pokemon. an obvious upgrade from what was in DPPt. Not only unrestricted but every pokemon can follow you, it even took forms into account
2) no pokedex restrictions. Sure DP did it first, but from a remake standpoint it allowed more than the 251 by expanding to include the evolutions, it also made a lot of pokemon easy to get with combinations of the safari and the pokewalker
3) Swarm system expanded upon from DPPt, includes a ton of pokemon
4) 3/4 generations of starters available to you.
5) Day/night and days of the week actually mean something, keeping you coming back almost every day to play the game to do things.
6) Encounter rates actually drastically change depending on the time of day this is actually a good thing people, no matter how much you fight against it
7) Scenery takes a front seat in this gen. Sound effects and graphics are meant to put you further into the game
8) Mystery gift is actually mystery gift, and somehow gamefreak can do it better on the pokewalker than they can using streetpass. Battle house hasn't even made it back since HGSS
9) Full touchscreen controls. How the fuck has GF fucked this up so much, they removed the infinite running shoes, the entire touch based menu, and most importantly they removed Yes/No from the touchscreen.
It's the last good "perfect" game gamefreak has made from a technical standpoint alone. Sure games have better graphics and more variety, but they lack the polish HGSS have. I mean shit why do we even have day/night anymore if they don't do anything except evolve like 5 pokemon
