>>56488242nta but I went through similar feelings to him at the time (disappointment at missing pokemon, the lack of day/night and schedule in general, the "building on" the old dex limited to a couple of babies).
Things that I was genuinely impressed by at the time is something that isn't really focused on enough I think. Contests had me cautiously excited, it was tinged with some disappointment as I thought they'd "unlock more" instead of just giving some ribbons but I really liked the alternate dimension to just battling. I never had Crystal as a kid (Red, then Yellow, then Silver) so I was genuinely really impressed with the Battle Tower. Berry Farming was also something that I remember enjoying at the time, along with checking TVs every day or so. I quite enjoyed diving for some reason, I mean I don't even really get it nowadays, but I remember really being impressed by it at the time (I think it was partially the feeling of finding "hidden places" to resurface and it changing the dimensionality of water routes). I also thought that overworld weather was really cool. Abilities fell oddly flat with me (I think it was just irritation at Static mostly, and then Poison Point hell in FRLG) and while I was always annoyed that I had to go and change bikes I did like both Mach and Acro bikes individually.
Hopefully that answers some of your questions anon, I will point out that I dropped the games in gen 4 because I just didn't make the move up to the DS. I played Gen 1 and 2 around the time that Gen 2 was current, played Gen 3 when it was current and then didn't come back until B2/W2 (finally bought a DS with my pizza delivery job). I was really impressed where the games had gone overall and excited for what was to come. I haven't touched a new Pokemon game since Gen 7, when I completed Moon (including updating my living dex), played about half an hour of Ultra Sun when it came out and lost heart. While I preferred Gen 2 to 3 I never had that feeling with RSE.
