>>39986699I'm sorry to say this anon, but Gens 4,5,6,7, etc. are not the ones to blame. Pokemon has always been one of the worst RPG's. The only thing that changed was You. You experienced more and better games and you came-of-age. This meant that you actually started to notice the chinks in one of your favorite hobbies. But since nostalgia is a hell of a drug, you naively assumed that it wasn't a fault in the entire series, no. IT MUST BE THE NEWER GAMES!
You struggle to think about what they actually do that is exponentially worse than previous entries, and to avoid finding evidence of failure on all those previous entries you enjoyed, you find filler motives to assign onto the newer games like SOUL among other bullshit buzzwords.
Think about it: Around the same time R/S/G released, we had already gotten Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy VI/VII among many other RPG's that were actually fantastic. Pokemon was in many ways a huge step back in RPG standards in every department and its only main draw was the collecting aspect. And the series "progressed" at a glacial pace, always staying miles behind other contemporary RPGs in every way, something that remains to this day. Xenoblade Chronicles came out almost 8 years ago on outdated toaster hardware and it still looks better than the upcoming game in the highest grossing media franchise of all time. They never cared, anon. Even when they had a modicum of interest, they were incredibly untalented and inexperienced and couldn't even achieve 10% of what they had in mind. Even the SMT/Persona franchise does the monster collecting shtick better.
You're free to continue enjoying the franchise for the monster collecting aspect or to fap to the mediocre girls (or the Pokemon, if you're a faggot), but don't be a hypocryte crying for the state of Pokemon nowadays: It's always been in the gutter and you just realized it.
