>>51893762I wonder when did things went wrong.
The first generations of pokemon had some stinkers, mostly the literal animals, but it's crazy how badly it escalated after gen 4. Even if I agree that BW and BW2 remain the best games in the series, there's way too many fucking mascots and real life animals in gen 5. Gen 6 got somehow even worse, and the VERY few attempts in gen 7 to address this were rejected by the public.
It seems like people respond way too well to these shitty designs.
All I can think of is that Game Freak can give pokemon decently defined niches inside the game so a pokemon like Mudsdale, which is a literal cartoon work horse with zero monster characteristics, feels reliable, tough, and easy to use; like, well, a work horse.
All I can think of, really, because there's very little reason to be fine with booting up a game calle pocket monsters and being greeted by cartoon bird, cartoon donkey, cartoon muskrat, cartoon rabbit, and so on every time you enter the grass.
