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>How would you feel if the core games became more plot heavy and had deeper characterization?
Honestly? Negatively.
I find the attempts to have fleshed out evil teams are a bit silly, and the attempts at "characterisation" in X and Y were embarrassing.
Pokemon works best when your mentor is one person, your rival is one person, the E4 leader is unknown. B/W liked to flesh out your gym leader and involve them in a small sub-plot, which I actually liked because it was a bit of flavor and made battling with them more meaningful, instead of dragging along another re-occuring character to take the place. X and Y gave you re-occuring "friends" none of which seemed three dimensional or interesting and kept bringing them back and never improving them.
I like the teams and characters better when they were defined by clear visual cues, but otherwise got out of your way so you can continue actually battling and catching pokemon which is the point of the game. Most of what pokemon "says" and how it tells its story is through its designs and environments, and in Red/Blue, its difficult moments.
Having good gameplay is always more memorable than text on the bottom of the screen, modern games rob you of freedom and challenge to give you a bare bones saturday morning cartoon.
