>>49270525This is the reason the new games are shit, or at least the largest of a few reasons. I and every kid I knew that liked Pokémon played their games until the game clock maxed. We lived and breathed Pokémon, and the games were engaging enough for us to do so. Sure, as teenagers and adults, there is no way we could keep up that fervor, but the fact that those older games still demand attention and playthroughs from fans who grew up with them is testament to the soul and accessible complexity they had. Especially in the first two gens, the world pulled you in with mysteries to solve and knowledge to learn about that world and its creatures, especially your companions. They were a far cry from the very sterile, overly-formulaic corporate products that are churned out now.
Pokémon was never a masterpiece of gaming, but it was more than the sum of its parts because it was designed to suck a young person's mind in and give them a world to explore and friends to care about. When that core philosophy was abandoned in favor of printing money and becoming cheap, quickly-consumed popcorn media, the franchise's true spirit died.
