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Gen 6 was the turning point of the decline. Gen 5 was a huge flop, normies hated it because not enough KANTOOOOOOOO and DS piracy was so easy and available that everyone did it, you could buy flashcarts at retail stores. It's clear that this moment broke Masuda at the very least because attempting to improve went down the drain. XY introduced us to the new generational gimmick thing, megas, z-moves, dyna/giga, the games are linear and very handholdy, cutscenes everywhere, and they showed a general lack of polish. The transition to 3D seemed to really fuck with GF, a lot of their ability to design interesting places and routes was decinated by the limitations of the system it was on. It also began the KANTOOOOO shit full force with most megas being kanto and getting a kanto starter before your starter is even fully evolved. People let it slide for being GF's first steps into 3D but ORAS had a lot of the same issues and even more. SMUSUM also have the same issues, but in different places, and seeing GF abandon megas was a sign that they lacked faith in their own design but also that they cared more about having a new gimmick to market than expanding on ideas. XY have nice designs, and some other minor stuff going for them, but it just feels like pokemon started sliding backwards at that point and hasn't and probably won't recover.
