>>53280321They moved from having a preset trainer design to a customizable one, with male/female character as just one customization option along with things like hairstyle and eye color. Overall I consider that an improvement as you can make the character that's supposed to represent you look how you want it to look. Though the downside is that you no longer really have a canonical protagonist with defined look an personality. Technically the protag still has a canon name (i.e. gen 9 male protag is canonically named Florian) but that doesn't matter much when every player's version of the character is different and they never appear in the game like the player character design you didn't choose in earlier games.
I kind of miss the older games' "professor addresses the player" openings because they usually ended up pretty silly when you think of them from an in-universe point of view, like Oak apparently needing you to remind him what his own grandson's name is (and never questioning it if you say it's Faggot or something) and multiple professors being unable to tell whether you're a boy or a girl.
