>>46166050I won't argue the GBA and DS or later games were the best the system could do even if I like them, though they're still strong titles in their own right. Technology had moved past Gamefreak at that point.
Gen 3 is where things start to slip because while they're not bad games and they look okay they never push the GBA. They also downgrade gen 2's impressive clock system which was a damn shame. Gamefreak clearly wanted to keep that simplistic aesthetic gen 1 and 2 use art-direction wise too since it's so recognizable but the GBA was capable of so much more than that. Still that would have been fine but they continued to cling to Pokemon's recognizable look even moving to the DS. A system that was closer to the n64 in terms of power than it was the Gameboy. Even going into gen 5 and 6 Pokemon had a very tight grid-based map design, the same battle aesthetic, the same everything. Things had changed mechanically but the direction never once took risks on presentation. At this point even many of Pokemon's spin-off titles had moved past it in terms of presentation.
I think Gamefreak's fear of failure is what really hurt games in the long run. Changing in gen 3 would have allowed them more flexibility moving forward but now every year we keep the same style of presentation is another year where changing it becomes more of a risk.
