>>38106967>circle regionThe region's shape has nothing to do with how much exploration there is in the game. Unova may be circular, but it has a lot of routes that are more than simply linear and plenty of caves to explore.
>rehash gen 1 dex but uglierMost of the dex is great IMO, just a few are offensive. Every gen has shitters and good designs.
>N handholding your journeyN hardly held your hand, he just showed up a lot since he was the central character
>the fans that refuse to accept other opinions (oh, the irony)You are literally also doing this.
The fact is once all the genwunners moved on, BW was seen in retrospect to actually be pretty good. BW2 even more so as it has some of the highest replayability (large regional dex, lots of postgame, decent challenge for a pokemon game)
>the start of casualization (infinite TMs)Franchise has always been casual, you can beat every game using only your starter. Infinite TMs is just another thing that makes it not horrible to get into the endgame content (though I would prefer it being limited but you could buy all of them after the main story)
>the start of story taking priority over adventure and explorationSee first point. Plenty of exploration in the region. I never felt the story took away from that, especially since the "dialogue" was rather short.
