Can we at least agree that the sprites were objectively better than the 3d models? The artists were forced to tell you everything about the pokemon, character wise, in 1-3 frames of movement, which usually had the pokemon in epic poses. Nowadays, the Pokemon are either in neutral poses or cool action poses, but the best 3d model/animation still cannot hold a candle to the best sprite drawing.

A professional drawing of spiderman will always look better than a CGI or whatever the IRL spiderman can do.