>>54671010I know this is a genwar thread however I'll give an honest answer
We had a small ripple of pokemania going on at the time, from 2013 to Go there was a bit of a renaissance with Pokemon going 3D it was also helped by the fuck huge install base of the DS and 3DS
Despite having little to no excuse of a postgame people enjoyed friend safari and playing with megas, people to incompetent to RNG manipulate in gen 5 enjoyed the introduction of destiny knot to breeding, people that disliked Ash in the anime got the mega evolution special and other forms of side content leading to ORAS, then you add the PSS the best system to talk and arrange games in the franchise and you can see why people loved battling or just chatting Inna Pokemon game, it's still a major disappointed that nothing has matched the PSS to this day
In general it was a great moment to be a Pokemon fan as some felt the franchise was improving(despite no postgame) people were hyped even those that disliked gen 5 had hopes of Z and the remakes including the battle frontier, people were hyping new Megas and engaging in speculation, game freak failed to deliver but that doesn't change how well received it was before the disappointment
