People try to hold up gen 5 as a shining example of what Pokemon should be but that conveniently ignores it STARTED a lot of the trends people hate in the new games. Gen 5 is where the series became story focused. It's where the best friend rivals started. Gen 5 is when the games started to become extremely linear (because of the story focus). The entire pokedex was essentially regional variants ripped entirely off of Kanto. The world design became much more basic and uninteresting.

How can people seriously complain about the new games while calling gen 5 the best? It CREATED the new games.