Literally the only reason these games caught on outside of Japan is because the anime existed and so people were able to fill in the gaps about the world, the characters, and how Pokemon battles worked based on it. It brought the world to life, so people played the games with that in mind.

Take that away though, and Pokemon is pretty much a nothing "game". The world is vaguely defined, most of the NPCs are non-entities that don't do anything, and battles are just you staring at a screen and pretending that the Pokemon are actually fighting each other.