>>34937111It had that color pallete from the GBC that made most things comfy, by being colorful but using negative space well too(GBA was pretty, but soe games acted like EVERYTHING had to be vibrant colors all the time)... try playing any gbc jrpg or zelda OOS and you'll see.
It's not only that though, the scenery was highly bucolic when compared to RBY, the only johto place with a very urban appearance was goldenrod, everything else was like a trip to the countryside (and when you did get to kanto you only spent a small ammount of time curbstoping people in each town). There's the whole japanese ythology/folklore involved too. Since japan took it's time to develop and adopt western technology it's mythos are usually about nature and it's tradition is usually linked to old-fashioned clohing and customs. Add to it that they don't represent medieval japan as brown and grey like europe is usually represented and you have a region where you're a kid running around forests filled with potential animal buddies, seeing people dressed in colorful folk clothing and having fun. It's like "vacation: the game".
Also, Team rocket is WAAAY less present than any criminal team in other games, which takes from the annoyance without dimishing the heroism when they do appear. The pokegear system was also new at the time, and cellphones weren't that omnipresent either, so you had a heartwarming feeling when your friends called you since it wasn't that much commonplace as ringing up someone is today. Also, even though you had phonebuddies, there was a nice sense of isolation that came from many places being away from the central hub of the map, which could have been ruined by excessively boring backtracking but somehow they dosed it well. The sequence breaking also adds to it by giving you a sense of freedom (at least as uch as you can get in a pokemon game).
