>>54841908It was already soulless during Johto because they had to hastily rewrite the entire thing around Azalea Town in order to scrap Celebi because executive meddling genuinely thought it'd be no big deal to completely axe the GS Ball payoff in favor of making Celebi a movie star instead.
It also didn't help they weren't really sure how to balance Ash and his team, so they slowly got rid of most of his staples resulting in this weird canyon of decreased challenge after Falkner that didn't fix itself until Whitney.
