>>33240822The best way to sum it up is "hit or miss." Pokemon wants you to remember Gen 4 for those like Lucario, Gallade, Weavile, and Garchomp not Burmy, Combee, Lickilicky, and Bonsly. Every generation has hits and misses, but people feel Gen 4 is especially polarizing overall.
-The most blatant flaw is slow game speeds. It's like if there wasn't a "fast" text option.
-Great soundtrack's subjective. IMO, it's pretty forgettable at times. Again, hit or miss. Sinnoh's Piano certainly isn't as iconic as Hoenn's French Horns.
-They went overboard with the legendaries and Arceus alone is enough to bring down the rest with how poor of a "god" it is. This is without getting into things like Phione. The Box trio are alright, but not spectacular. When people complain that legendaries are too common to be legends anymore, it's pretty clear where they get the idea from.
-Cynthia's great, but she's only as loved as much as she is for ditching being a type-focused champion, many cameos, and Alder compounding the "like a gen 1 gen later" effect. Her involvement isn't anything special and spouting some lore+having a grandma doesn't put your character very far ahead.
-The villains' scale got too big and their plot was too generic RPG fare as a result. They give you the master ball and contradict themselves by having friendship pokemon on their team or speaking with exclamation points after denouncing emotion and spirit. The distortion world is also just a strength puzzle with some very pretty "look what the DS can do!" paint.
-Postgame was okay, but Looker was not good enough to milk as much as they do. Battle Frontier was good, though.
-Internet options are more to the DS' credit than pokemon's. It's like faulting an NES game for not having X and Y buttons like the SNES.
-New Battle Mechanics are the easily best part of gen 4. The physical special split was key and it introduced a lot of moves for helping types like Flash cannon helping Special Steel types fight.
