The only reason people like Pokemon is because it's popular, if not because it makes them feel nostalgic. The games themselves have not been good in over 10 years. The core gameplay is fun, sure, but there have since been loads of Pokemon-like monster tamers that take Pokemon's good core formula and do so much more with the genre.

If someone tells me their favorite video game ever is a Pokemon game that just tells me they literally do not play anything else or that they're huffing on massive amounts of nostalgia. Unless it's a Mystery Dungeon game then I'll allow it since they're pretty good dungeon crawlers/rogue lites, but I am specifically talking about the main series here.