>>43969339BW was the no return point. Sure, they had an amazing story, characters, difficulty was pretty good, and postgame was pretty solid, and seasons were pretty neat, but it was also the point where they began to give priority to competitive over most aspects. Exploration became more optional, they removed most minigames or replaced them with less interesting features, and got rid of the Battle Frontier for good. They also began some annoying trendings for the franchise such as prioritizing the story (which wored for BW but not for XY or SS), shiny-locking, fixed amount of Pokemon for important trainers (Gym Leaders, Elite 4), and other aspects. It was a mix of good and bad changes overall. BW2 added so many great things like Tower/Treehollow, PWT, Medal System, difficulty settings (in the worst way possible), connectivity with side games like in gen 4, better Pokemon variety than BW, an even more expanded postgame and other minor additions.
XY was a "modern RG": a first game with a new format, which makes some of its flaws passable, although things like difficulty, characters and story unforgivable, but they also added some amazing features like PSS, and Mega Evolution was a nice attempt to update the games a bit.
ORAS was when they fucked up because they showed that they don't care about innovation anymore, they missed a lot of content from Emerald (and even the original RS) compared to the other remakes, they began the "muh multiverse" theory, didn't fix XY's difficulty problems, and overall felt soulless.
SM had so many great things like characters, UBs, Totem Pokemon, better overworld graphics and regional forms, but most features felt either uncomplete or totally wasted potential. They also made worse everything good XY had like trainer customization or online interactions, removed battle formats, and made routes even more linear and story even more tedious, resulting in a guided tour more than an adventure and an interactive movie about Lillie.
