The way battlea looked was just hideous too. I still think overall gen 5 wasnt that bad, they just tried a lot of new shit and a lot didnt work out. A lot of the mon designs are good, but most of them suck because they felt the need to make 150 or whatever new mons instead of using older archetypes, and they seem uncreative or like rehashes. It was ambitious and I like that, it just didnt work. Same thing with the battles. It was cool to see animated sprites, but the way they did it ended up looking like shit with the population and the zooming, as well as the awkward constant moving and swaying they would do, like someone having a fit or your grandpa trying to dance. Once again ambitious but not successful. Its the same with the story and characters, ambitious in they actually tried to make it more story driven and have more dialogue and interruptions, but they proved that theyre writing wasnt very good and the increase in dialogue and interruptions was often irritating and unnecessary, especially on subsequent playthroughs.
Ambitious as all hell, you can tell they tried very hard, yet the reception of these games was lukewarm at best. I think this caused them to stop putting as much effort and polish into games after that point. I never find myself really itching to go replay these games for some reason but I dont hate them. Some of my favorite designs are from this gen. Idk
