Probably bait, but from a pure game design perspective, I would still rank the Gen 1 games pretty high up there. The single-player campaign has a lot going for it that later titles either fail to replicate or don't even try to because of a change in design philosophy. The small degree of non-linearity goes a long way towards making Kanto feel like a real place, which adds to the sort of Earthbound-esque feeling of a fantastical RPG set in a more grounded world. And then you've got stuff like the Pokemon Tower, which was made more unique because something like half the attacks in the game were Normal.
I also like the way balance was handled (again, disregarding competitive play), where some Pokemon were clearly intended from the get-go to be overpowered, but you had to jump through what were, at the time, some relatively challenging hoops to get your hands on them. Decisions like who to use your Ice Beam TM on were a lot more important, too, because resources were comparatively scarce.
It's definitely tough to rank RGBY objectively, because they were basically made obsolete by FRLG and were obviously surpassed immediately when it comes to QoL. But there's something unique about the first two generations that I don't think can be totally encapsulated by nostalgia.
>>41848580>unplayable90% of the bugs won't be encountered in normal play, and almost none of them matter for anyone but a competitive player.
