>>49490416this brings up a very good point, even if objectively kanto was shit in gsc, at least in our kid brains it was a huge disappointment that rse felt completely disconnected from the previous two games.
RBY, GSC were a staple, everybody played them, by RSE a bunch of kids bought it, but a bunch never got it once they saw other kids playing it.
What I think was also frustrating for some was the art design change, the first two gens had a certain charm or mysterious quality because of the technological limitations. RSE was seen as more kiddy by a lot of my friends.
Another huge aspect is the difficulty of catching legendary pokemon. Of course you had Mew in gen 1 but that only fueled fans. Celebi and roaming monsters in gen 2 started to be a bit much. RSE coming in with multiple version locked legendaries, roaming legendaries, 2 unavailable legendaries and the regis was very frustrating. Especially if you did not live in a major city you essentially had no chance of getting jirachi or deoxys.
