I want to go back to gen 4
>2005-2009 Before facebook and reddit centralized all discussion of the games into heavily moderated shitholes
>platinum, hgss, shadows of almia, explorers of sky, all these great games come out
>The last time Pokemon was set in Japan
>The last time Sugimori did most of the art
>The last time the story had large scale stakes
>The last time there were multiple smaller ways to play the entire game (contests, underground, poffins, etc)
>The last time those short single keyframe animations were used
>The last time the maps were primarily 2D
>The last time they cared
>the last Stadium-esque game
>the last Ranger game
>the last gen with Game Corners
>the last gen to be localized by Treehouse and not TPCi

Each generation since there's not only been less quality in the games but less side games as well. Gen 7 didn't even have a PMD game. I could give way less of a shit about Gamefreaks games being trash if there was at least something else to play?