>Never played Gen 5 before
>Believed the 'unovabortion' meme for so long which kept me away from the games
>Jaded about the way the series is heading recently
>Decide to play it out of curiosity because surely it can't be worse than what we've been getting of late
>Left wondering why I chose to miss out on one of the best experiences I've had with the series in 5+ years
Yeah okay, a fair bit of the Pokemon designs suck. It does have some casualization starting to appear. But nowhere near the level of games like Sun and Moon. The route designs are still complex, there are still actual dungeons, the level curve is decent and Gym battles were challenging, and the story at least doesn't have you stopping every yard for pointless cutscenes which take ten minutes. The times that the game did pause for dialogue, I felt engaged with the story and characters. It was interesting and provoking unlike the brainlet sci-fi shit in S/M. My recent experience with Gen 5 left me feeling like Game Freak were actually trying to make these games the best they could do, and compared to today that makes me sadder than ever for the future of the series.