>>49101347Pokemon fans aren't able to register that most of the series is trash, and the mental gymnastics frequently lead to this
Say your goal is to say something good about a pokemon game, let's try some things.
>the combat is goodThis is, at best, true in multiplayer, if at all. In single-player, it's all a joke because these games are regularly beaten by 6 year olds.
>it may be easy, but there's build variety in terms of pokemon choice and moveset choiceSounds like a reasonable response, but the game is so devoid of depth that there's rarely any functional difference between two strategies. The primary difference between a Houndoom and a Kadabra is mostly "what parts of the game does this sweep". Even some games with static parties are better than pokemon in this regard.
>the story/charactersYou are a clown, you are just a comedian, and if you're not, you need to play more RPGs, or watch more movies, or read a fucking book even.
>explorationWe both know you're not talking about gen 5 onward, but I still think this is a really silly stance to take. HMs are just keys in an otherwise still linear world, the only structural difference between Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh is that sometimes you backtrack or open shortcuts. HMs never really change the way you explore outside of "now your party has to include a slave". It's rare (if it ever even happens) that you find an optional town, or a side quest.
Because it's really difficult to argue in favor of a less convenient version of a bad game, people usually resort to pretending more content = better content, mostly hoping that you already agree that the game is good. They also tend to erroneously consider the main game to be roughly the same length for every game, which isn't true.
It's really common for people to site volume/length when they don't know how to think critically about media.
