I remember playing Pokémon Gold as a kid and getting mindblown that I had an entire second region, a lot of exploration and tons of legendaries to find. For a 7 years old, that was like finding out the game had doubled in size. Then Pokémon Stadium 1 & 2 came out, which really were the realization of everything Pokémon could be, and both those games are 90+/100 without even being mainline games. They were state of the art, the type of games kids in middle-school can talk over for months finding out new things.

Then came Pokémon Ruby/Saphire, which broke me as a person. Literally no post-game, barely any exploration, creatively bankrupt, actually less content than the previous title, nothing to do. Then came Pokémon Diamond/Pearl, which were just Pokémon Ruby/Saphire again. The Gold/Silver remake aside, every generation was getting mediocre, so much I learned to expect less of videogames.

Then I grew up and discovered that Masuda himself wanted this. He did not want the games to be more complex or rich, he did not want to the anything besides the absolutely necessary 'because he can't compete with phone games and won't try'. He just pretended every game was going to be a new generation of fans' first Pokémon experience, and kept on making Red and Blue.

Masuda made me expect less of videogames and of life in general. Ruby and Saphire should have never been released, much less their remakes.

Anyways, I keep on buying, so can I even criticize him?