>>34277302No. Everything after Gen I was.
Not that Gen I was the very best, mind you. It's shit compared to what we've got now. But they never had a clear, concise direction on what direction and style they wanted Pokemon to have going forward, and it definitely shows. Mechanics and graphics have improved tenfold, but the games always have bland and predictable stories, competitive battling is completely unbalanced, new Pokemon meant to upset the metagame are crippled in some way to make them entirely useless, and still there are Pokemon locked behind arbitrary bullshit like version exclusivity and events.
The same problems Pokemon has had since generation 1 are still around today, but they're far more glaring now that the franchise is 20 years old and these problems have never been fully addressed. It's always been "Let's do the same thing we've done before, but add some new gimmick." As much as I enjoy USUM (there are a number of quality of life improvements that just make it more tolerable), the "same but with more tacky stuff" problem is far more glaring now than it was before.
