>>56189503Emerald - best overall. The pastel colours are pleasant. In the Sprites vs 3D debate, sprites win out for me: they tend to have more personality. I like the Gen III dex because of the of the "exploring the woods to catch bugs" vibe.
There's also something that is difficult to put words on about it. Gen III is just the most pleasant.
In terms of "feel" my only issue with Gen III is that it doesn't have some of the quality of life features of the later gens, but I don't see that as a legitimate complaint.
I have no real complaints about it, and it stands out as the best
OR/AS - almost as good. Some aspects are objectively just upgrades. The battle arenas are beautiful. Diving is a little cooler in a 3D environment. Since we're talking about "feel", using the dexnav and sneaking up on pokemon is one of the best features in any pokemon game and I'm sort of shocked it's not in newer games. Equally shocked that the Eon Flute ability to fly over the region as a 3D map and choose which route to land on didn't replace default Fly.
On the other hand, 3D pokemon lose a lot of personality compared to sprites. The updated trainer designs aren't all hits either even though the art is very clean. Story lost all teeth, characters have no ability to say anything remotely mean to the player, which feels disconcerting.
It almost surpasses Emerald, but lots of small issues hold it back.
S/M - Best UI. Great colour palette. Non-chibi overworld is nice. Great characters. In many ways they look and feel better than OR/AS, they're just a lot less challenging and there are a lot of cutscenes. Also some aesthetic weirdness, liek Poni Island feels very odd to me (midwest USA themed ... Hawaiian Island?), and Aether Foundation complex seeming like it's meant to be something like the Megafloat from Ace Combat 3, but not being hard sci-fi enough.
My ideal pokemon game would probably be very similar to OR/AS, minus the annoyances, plus the positives of S/M
