>>44379601Find me a game ANYWHERE that doesn't cut corners somewhere, the reality is everything has a budget and a deadline and you work with what you've got. But in these games we got:
>trainers with strategies and themes beyond just a monotype team - some competitive like protect+earthquake others fun like the performer with pokemon using dancing moves like petal dance, dragon dance, swords dance, ect>a story that wasn't "new trainer takes the league challenge while fighting bad guys and their friend/rival">the whole shadow pokemon/purification mechanic, one of the few instances of bonding with your pokemon making them stronger in a series that's always saying that's how its world works but rarely showing it with gameplay especially back then>great soundtracks>consistent level design throughout the region>you get right to the action without having 20 minutes of dialogue before your first battle>level curve doesn't end at 50-60>The names that aren't random are pretty clever - Kloak and Dagur busting the spy in the Under, an early grass type user named Bota short for Botanic, Dash running around the fountain, the kid's grid kids all borrowing names from computing wand ending with a double sylable like Nett, Bitt, Megg, ect>went out of their way to provide pokemon not legitimately available in the main series at the time due to hardware incompatibility between gb/gbc and gba>games can take 30-40 hours to complete even without purifying everything or doing the mt battle challenge>all those animations yet the battles are still pretty snappy>made improvements between games ranging from save anytime to overhauling the way shadow pokemon worked despite the relatively short dev cycleAre they the greatest games of all time? Obviously not, but don't pretend they didn't have plenty of effort, and considering team sizes easily more effort than any 3d pokemon game since and debatably most of the 2d ones.
