>>45771428The problem is that the concept was moving around in fan circles for a long time, and then when it became official it didn't live up to the hype that the fans had created. It's also a very loose concept that they did not really define well, like a lot of things in modern Pokemon. having regional variants in an island region makes a ton of fucking sense and quite a few of the regional variants are actually pretty clever: Exeggcutor unlocks its potential in the tropics, the invasive mice become hunted by an introduced predator so they become nocturnal and even harder to take care of, the imported cats become spoiled little shits, etc.
Some of the forms for a little bit of a stretch, like making the fire fox into an ice fox because there's a snowy mountain? Why couldn't it just stay a fiery fox? And I think that's where they got lost in the reeds, focusing on what seemed like attractive designs or gimmicky ideas rather than things that actually felt natural.
And so when Galarian forms were introduced, and the region was just based on another temperate European locale, it really didn't make sense for too many Pokemon to get regional variants without asking the player to make a lot of assumptions. I find it very strange that Britain happened to be the part of the world to give us an ice monkey or poison Slowbro/king. Some of the stuff they can rationalize, like saying an ancient dried up ocean gave us ghost coral or celtic runes led to a different evolutionary path for Yamask or even Farfetch'd becoming a knight kind of works. But then shit like having the tanooki Pokémon become a European badger or the fire horses become mystical unicorns, when they could have easily just either existed as is or created new species to fill that same role? Or why did Meowth have to have another regional form when there were plenty of other cat Pokemon, some being ignored for several games? And don't get me started on Weezing or Stunfisk who just feel like forced memes.
