>>45838926The first few generations I think were designed knowing that the games were RPGs first so you had all sorts of monsters, not all of them good but they fleshed out that world. And it was cool that each region reused some of the same monsters, so it felt more like a legacy RPG franchise that did exactly that. Zubat would be the equivalent of a slime from Dragon quest for example. but now each region has to feel unique and every Pokemon has to have a gimmick, which just makes everything feel not special anymore. if the gimmick doesn't work or doesn't click, that Pokemon just gets forgotten and the ones that have good gimmicks pretty much take over the game. there's no breathing room for the games to feel lived in anymore, because all of the Pokemon have to be super specific and purposeful which just defeats the point of it being a monster battling RPG at its core. The games exist to sell merchandise and that's unfortunate. And I'm not saying all of the new Pokemon are good, but they all definitely have a gimmick even if that gimmick is just their design mocks something very specific to that game's world and lore.
A perfect example of this is that the first two generations just had meowth as the cat, and then the next 4 gens added their own cats but they all sort of filled a void that meowth didn't. plus many of them continued to appear even if they got "replaced." Now we just get regional forms of meowth and the other cats are mostly MIA. It's like they would rather focus on making each game feel NEW instead of building upon the foundations of the previous games.
