Gen 2 didn't even have abilities, the battle system was still in very primitive form.
Revisiting Kanto was a massive disappointment. You come out in Vermillion city and they didn't even add a building where the machop was flattening the land last gen, which really sets the pace. Points of interest are mostly either simplified or removed entirely. It feels empty. I think making Kanto bigger would have been a better use of data space.
Gen 2 added the least number of new pokemon until gen VI, when they started outright recycling pokemon via mega evolution and formes.
And while it's subjective, I think a lot of them are lackluster, more so at the time because it wasn't until gens later that for example, shuckle gained the ability to deal the the highest possible damage in the game.
Most of the "features missing" next gen were either shallow and cosmetic or re-implemented in different (often better) ways.
It's not fair to compare how much better pokemon storage is, since that's a technology jump, but between that and how much better the color and sound was as well, I have a hard time seeing why there were so many people who claimed gen 2 was better given the quality of life changes alone.
I think they were just all butthurt about not being able to trade over all the pokemon they rare candied to lv 100 with the missingno glitch.
