I say this as someone whose first game was pokemon silver, who beat Pokemon Black, and only got just past the first Gym in Black 2 before putting the game down and not playing any other pokemon game again until I started renegade platinum a month ago, and Blaze Black 2 Redux when it came out.
When I first played Black, it felt like almost a soft reboot of the series, and when I beat it, I didn't feel bad at all about the fact that I had, for separate reasons, lost my SoulSilver cartridge which had pokemon that I had been transfering over from as far back as Ruby and Colosseum.
I wasn't the biggest fan of the overworld artstyle, IMO the character sprites are a bit *too* detailed and not chibi enough, and I liked Gen IV's overworld sprites better for that reason.
The pokemon were fine. Some people think they were a bit ugly, and too similar to Gen 1. There's some basis to this, but like I said, I started with Silver, and only played Firered once, so I wasn't fixated on the idea that there should never be another pokemon like Ponyta because it's just soooo special.
I will say that I had no real desire to replay pokemon black, nor do I remember the postgame much. Once I beat it, I think I trained for the E4 rematch, cleared it, then considered it done. I didn't even try to complete the pokedex, even though that was theoretically easier than ever because of how constrained the unova dex was. I barely remember the legendaries, don't think I went for them. Part of it was just that I was already an adult, and was getting burnt out on pokemon in general.
By the time Black 2 came out, I was definitely fully burnt out on pokemon, but going back to it, it seems to be a perfectly fine game.
From what I can tell, though, it seems to be the very last good generation. It's not the best. I think the series peaked at Platinum and Soulsilver, and I don't fault Gen V for not measuring up, but I do fault every generation after that for being bad.
