It's easy to blame Gamefreak for the declining quality of each game but I blame Nintendo. They turned Pokemon into an annual franchise. GF has an obligation to churn out a "new" game every year now. You don't see this happening to Zelda or Mario (mainline games that is) but they do it for Pokemon because they need that fucking money and its so easy to do because people keep buying them. They can't afford to put out a bad Zelda or Mario. These games sell 16 million units each gen (8 million for an "enhanced" version) and bring in hundreds of millions in revenue. Since Nintendo already released a new Zelda and Mario game in the first year of the Switch life cycle they are going to have to rely even more on the money that Pokemon brings in. The Pokemon franchise is Nintendo's bottom bitch.