>>45503021Gonna preface this and say I'm speaking as someone who's been into Pokemon since 1998, with some gens being "cooldown" periods where I simply play through the games once and passively collect event Pokemon.
Gonna catch some shit for saying this, but gen V ended up being one of those gens. That doesn't make it a bad gen in any respect, and I'll admit I didn't appreciate it nearly enough in its heyday. Hell, I didn't buy Black 2 until months after its release, though thank god I did eventually.
Gen V, as an entire package, just felt DIFFERENT. It wasn't just the new Pokedex, that's something you always have to go through, letting new designs grow on you. It was the UI, the music, the local, the color pallet, even the gym symbols felt new and strange. UI and sound design especially, if it weren't for a handful of trademark Pokemon touches, it honestly felt more like a Digimon game, especially in the menus featuring grid patterns. I mean that in the nicest way possible given I'm also a longtime Digimon fan.
Just, unfortunately, thanks to all of these elements I had a bit of an emotional disconnect from these games starting off. It made it difficult to get as attached to the games, despite how much ambition obviously went into them. I legitimately think it would have helped if they'd dialed back just a bit to give the player something more familiar to lean on. Not to "let's shove Charizard down your throat for ten hours" levels, mind you.
Though, that's not the only thing that could have kept my attention. Admittedly I wasn't happy with the Battle Subway, coming off two helpings of the Battle Frontier from gen IV. And while I loved Battle Spot as a concept, I hated its execution. I wanted to fight with more than three Pokemon and use the mythicals I had accrued in gen IV, too.
The dive area in the postgame felt like a giant cocktease, too. Just sayin'.
