>>51586268Fair warning, what I'm about to say is based on literally zero experience playing anything past B2W2.
I will say that I don't think Gens 6 and 7 dropped the production quality of the series. From what I've seen, X and Y were actually much higher-effort from a technical perspective than any of the games before. It's only come Sword and Shield that the production quality itself started to fall off a bit.
The problem is that the games didn't seem like Pokémon games to me, if that makes sense. Sure, the Kanto mons are all there (as GF will not let you forget) but the stories are dry, the new designs ranging from okay (Trevenant) to very poor (Ultra Beasts I think they're called, the big fucker legendaries from Gen 7). I've seen enough footage of the unskippable cutscenes that make Gen 5 feel fast that I get disappointed by games I didn't even play.
I might play X/Y, S/M and OR/AS someday, but I won't touch Gen 8. They're gonna cut out half of the Pokémon? What happened to "Gotta catch 'em all"?
The Fairy Type I also get quite aggravated by. Dragons were *supposed* to be the best of the best. That was the whole point, and now they're bested by a Cleffa. Did they really have to leave Ice Types high and dry, while instead creating a Mary-Sue Type that only has literally-who weaknesses to third-rate moves like Steel Wing and Sludge?
In short, I think they're okay games in their own right, but they're not Pokémon, and also not my cup of tea, so to speak. Nu-Pokémon is to Classic Pokémon (and Gen 5) what Final Fantasy is to Classic Pokémon, a well made, but clearly different JRPG.