>>39962069Having played RS and DP both on release, I disagree. I consider RS to be the franchise's first example of rushed games, but I still think that even if I'm putting them in fifth place out of seven entries (DP > GS > BW > RG > RS > XY > SM), they still had at least felt like games where you were on YOUR journey and that you had agency in your actions. I consider that to he one of the most important aspects of a good Pokémon game (along with a sizable amount of meaningful content, but I think RS are lacking in this department). You have already bought the game. That is telling Game Freak "I am going to play this game". You don't need someone holding your hand and pulling you through the entire game and telling you where to go next or where not to go and sticking a literal map with a destination marker on your bottom screen at all times. They fear children getting confused and giving up, and these same feeble-minded sickly amoeba children without attention spans are being seen as the demographic the games need to be designed towards.
I think DP gets a shocking amount of dislike considering how impressive they were for the first games of a Generation. Yes, Platinum is better, but Platinum was only so good because of DP being such a solid foundation. They still had the same general amount of player agency as prior games barring maybe Gen I, but they had a huge amount of meaningful content, particularly with the post-game. Engine optimization was terrible, but I can get past that for the way the content was paced throughout and after the game. DP were even the first time that the first pair of a Gen had events already set up when you had to wait until later games (Crystal, FRLG) for events to be anything beyond distributions. The post-game, from the Poké Radar, swarms, Backlot Mansion, Snowpoint Temple, Fullmoon Island, Route 224, Victory Road part 2, Turnback Cave, Pal Park, Vs. Seeker rematches, Super Rod, dual slot mode, Old Chateau, and Battle Zone
