The only mainline game I didn't finish was black/white (didn't touch 2) because I just... Didn't give a shit about any of it? None of the Pokemon were Neat, the story bored me and I kinda wanted to punt the other characters off a cliff. And the Bad Guys were very forgettable to me

My favorite is a tie between X/Y and Sun/Moon

I love the social commentary to Sun/Moon and Team Skull is such a good setup as fake Bad Guys

X/Y was just... Fun? And had a lot of Pokemon that became my favorites (talonflame my beloved)

Sword and shield has the same "ok I'm actually Invested in wtf is going on" and I really like that the NPC's actually do try to keep you out of the World Shattering Stakes because You're A Kid while still welcoming the smaller things you can do like give thoughts on historical revelations

Team Yell was... Fine? I guess?

I bounce of Black and White entirely because the Regional Dex is just...bad

Like I do love a lot of the concepts but it's very much not a set of Mons I vibe with.

I don't super love the raid nest thing system, mostly because I... prefer to play offline or am usually solo yolo and the high end ones are ridiculous to try with AI only

Black and White really does seem like one of those you either love it or forget it ones.

My biggest issue with scarlet and violet is.... A) the open world nature of it means that the gym/star/herb challenges don't scale with you

My biggest issue with scarlet and violet is.... A) the open world nature of it means that the gym/star/herb challenges don't scale with you

Pokémon doesn't need to be open world and if it was gonna be open world they're still in an awkward state where they didn't design around it.

Pokémon previously relied on gating challenges behind having X number of badges which you receive in a specific order

There's no reason they can't have things scale based on your badge count (beyond lack of development time) and I expect to see something like that in the next mainline games

Yeah! Like it's a great setup/proof of concept!

But I... Should not be able to curbstomp the first few gyms because I went out and did the Other Plotthread

Also team Star is just... Shitty Knockoff Team Skull

My other complaint is super petty: the uniforms are ugly AF

They backslid hard on character outfit choices

AT LEAST LET US MIX/MATCH THE PARTS

See, I like Team Star and wish we had more of them, although I'd class both them and Yell as "trying to re-bottle Team Skull's lightning"

Teak Star is "a group chat that got way out of hand" and I love them for that

If anything they're slightly more unique in that they're like, a dozen people being weirdos, although that in itself makes them less Team-ish.

I wish they'd leaned a little more in to it I think

... ngl. I like most of the main games with sun/moon being my least fav just because of the ulra beast annoyed me

They did capture lightning with Larry tho I will give them that

The Ultra Beast stuff was so... Delightfully Unhinged And Ridiculous to me it circled to funny

"welp guess we're fighting Eldritch Origami now!!!"

I have like... Thoughts on my dream Pokemon game plotline but they're... Lol yeah.

And involve the grass or bug gym being An Actual Threat

Honestly that just runs into Pokémon basic design philosophy, which involves some types being good defensively and some types being bad defensively

You need a pretty esoteric set of counters to make a Grass gym difficult (like in the HGSS postgame)

Also like... Geeta gives me Weird Vibes in the same way the crazy mom from Sun/Moon did. Like... Is this actually a human??

Oh for sure, I just... Like there to be a flip on some things sometimes that make things like that a "Awwwwww fuck" moment lol

"WHY AM I GETTING ROLLED BY THE GRASS GYM??"

Putting an Ice gym lategame usually makes it more of a challenge, maybe that'd work for Grass with the right dex

Yeah, mostly it's the Secondary Types that get you in my Dream Grass Gym lol

Goddamn Mudkip

Or lotad in this one lol

A Lileep/Cradily also has the potential for Hilarity

Negates Flying and Fire weaknesses

Yuuup

Just the lesson of "secondary typing will kick your ass"

Also the fire starter's secondary type is NOT FIGHTING OR DARK

everyone gets Dragon as their secondary I make the rules

Hey they only did Dark the once. I appreciate the non-Fire/Fighting starters we've gotten the last 4 gens

Another Thought I had on these fun gyms (or maybe just the Elite 4?): they reuse previous games "gimmicks"

Mega evolution and those