>>53657589>>53657605If you're going to blame pandering on gen 5, go to where it actually started. BW2 were a direct response to criticism of BW1 and had Mareep and Riolu, 2 popular pokemon from past games, along with many others right at the start to appeal to fans of those games. That was the beginning, and XY were doubling down.
Now arguably it wasn't bad in BW2 because they still had the base of Unova to work with unlike Kalos being built around references from the beginning, but that's a seperate debate.
