>>40964978When RS came out, the "Gotta Catch'em all" slogan was absent from the box, and it was quickly obvious why: the dex was shrunk down to 200 PKMN. This was the same time around the internet got more active, so people quickly datamined and came to the conclusion that they are all there.
Still, considering you couldn't transfer your old ones over (which everyone accepted as a technical limitation, but still), this put you in the same situation as now with the SS release. What was to come in about a year didn't really matter, and at that point it was all speculation, anyways.
Also, legendaries were version-exclusive for the first time; silver/gold already gave you access to pretty much everything thanks to breeding and the fact that legendaries weren't edition-specific, but now you had to seriously consider buying both if you wanted an exclusive legendary and even characters. The differences really weren't that minor anymore.
Coll and XD, while great games, added to the frustration. Suddenly, you could indeed collect a few of the missing ones, but unless you were lucky enough to get a female version of them, you had no chances of breeding them. PKMN that used to be your buddies in Gen1/gen2 became weird DLC-esque special bonuses that did not even get a dex entry. It just felt off as we all grew up with "gotta catch'em all!"
Obviously, this appears in a different light now because FRLG basically replaced RS as the "next" editions, and you would rather fill those pokedexes than the then-unlocked national dex in RS. Still, FRLG weren't a straight upgrade from RS, so in the end, finally being able to collect all 386 suddenly felt like going to that one place you always wanted to visit as a kid, only to realize the time and place for that is gone.
