Trying to Quantify Why I'm a Genwunner (Gentooer?)

I played my first Pokemon game in 1997, when I was 6 years old.  I had a friend from school named Gaku who had immigrated to the US from Japan, and brought with him Japanese copies of Pokemon's Red and Green.  I didn't know Japanese, so he always had to explain to me what was happening, but I was enchanted, and became an instant fan of the franchise.  I started collecting the cards and other memorabilia, but it wasn't until October 24th, 1999, my 9th birthday, that I got my own Lime Green GameBoy Color and Pokemon game.  It's one of the first complete days that I vividly remember.  I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my presents. I remember reaching to open the game first, and my mom stopping me to open the GameBoy instead, and my parents bickering about letting me open the presents in the order I wanted to open them.  I remember being ecstatic to have gotten Yellow version, because that was the one in the commercials at the time.  I remember it was a Sunday, because I remember my drastic shift in mood when Mom told me to get ready for church, and I realized I wouldn't get to play any Pokemon until after.  I remember going and watching the Green Bay Packer game at a sports bar after church, because I remember being at the bar when I encountered the Pidgeotto in Viridian Forest that would be my most powerful Pokemon for that play-through.  I remember crying that night when I blacked out for the first time in Mt. Moon, my final Pokemon being a Metapod that only knew Harden.  I got both Red and Blue for Christmas that year (one from each set of grandparents), and with that Blue version, I would go on to be the star Pokemon battler of my school.  I managed to fill the entire Pokedex without cheating and, to this day, that cartridge is undefeated.  That's not for lack of trying, either.  The way I filled out that Dex was by battling with other kids in matches where the winner got to have one the loser's Pokemon.  It's only thanks to my older sister's accomplished amateur softball career bringing in a steady stream of new kids for me to beat up on that I was able to finally catch 'em all.

I continued playing every Pokemon game through Generation 4.  Heart Gold and Soul Silver came out my freshman year of college, but by the time Black and White were coming out, my DS was starting to go, and I didn't have as many friends around to play with, so I ended up missing Gen 5, entirely.  After graduating college in 2014, I bought myself a New 3DS, with copies of Pokemons Y and Omega Ruby, hoping to get invested in the series, again.

I couldn't do it.  I started playing Pokemon Y, only to find that I just didn't care enough to learn all these new Pokemon and new mechanics, anymore.  Everything just seemed like it was more complicated, without actually being more interesting.  I put it down after beating a couple gyms, and tried to play Omega Ruby, instead.  I had an easier time with it, largely on the back of my already knowing all the Pokemon.  While I was never a huge fan of RSE, relative to the other games, I still played them enough to make getting through the story a breeze.  I was hoping that the meta game would be the thing to get me back into it, since that was the main appeal for me as a teenager.  I battled my roommate a few times, and played a little on Pokemon Showdown, but just didn't find it interesting enough to warrant the time investment to actually learn everything I'd need to compete at the level that did in Gens 3 and 4.  And so, my Gen 6 games have been relegated to an extra drawer that I have in my dresser, while my old copy of Soul Silver has a near-permanent position in my 3DS.

So the question is, why?  I still play Soul Silver all the time.  I have Leaf Green emulated on my phone.  I enjoy Pokemon Go.  I played through Platinum again last year and had an alright time.  Clearly, I haven't just outgrown the brand.  So what is it about the newer games in the series that is such a turnoff for me?

Any old vs new Pokemon discussion is always going to start with the Pokemon designs, with the standard criticism from the old folks being "look at this shitty garbage bag", and the young folks rebut "not any shittier than Muk", and nothing is gained by anyone involved.  I don't think Pokemon designs are the real crux of the matter, though.  There have always been bad Pokemon designs. To this day, I cite Mr. Mime as the worst Pokemon ever, with Jinx and Hitmonchan not too far behind (I hate Pokemon that are just people, and I hate Pokemon that wear clothes).  I do think the trend has been downwards with the designs, but my beef is mostly just that the number of legendaries has gotten out of control, and the legendary designs over the last few gens have been universally terrible, reminiscent of the worst Square Enix designs, where there's so much going on that they just turn into piles of angles and colors with nothing distinguishable.

Pictured: A wolf centaur, wearing a purple cloak, who also
has five front wolf limbs,but also has two human arms.
Also, it has five white wolf heads, which are all wearing blue
glowing masks.  Also, it's carrying a staff, so it's maybe a wizard?
Also, it has some phat tits.
Alternatively: A Gen 8 legendary??????

But, like I said, I don't think the designs are the crux of the issue.  They may be a contributing factor but, if anything, they're just symptomatic of a larger issue where something about the general charm of the world has been lost.

I remember the first Pokemon game that I was disappointed in.  It was Pokemon Sapphire.  I got it maybe a year after it came out.  I bought a Gameboy Advance from a kid who rode my school bus, and one of the kids from my neighborhood who owned both Ruby and Sapphire gave me his Sapphire so that he would have somebody to battle against.  I remember being initially enchanted by the improved graphics and litany of quality of life improvements relative to Crystal.  As I played through it, I became progressively less enthused, however.   So, what changed?  Some of it was Pokemon designs.  I particularly remember thinking the Regis weren't nearly as cool as the birds or dogs, and that the Torchic line was really stupid.  But again, if you don't pick Torchic you never have to interact with it more that a few times, and the Regis are all one time encounters, and only if you put particular effort into encountering them.  They're not major parts of the game.

So, what really made me not like Sapphire as much as the prior entries in the series?  One thing I remember being really frustrated with was how much of a pain it was to navigate parts of that map.   I remember Route 119, in particular, being a huge nuisance between the extra tall grass, the bike switching, the HM requirements, and the number of trainers.  Of course, the amount of surfing and diving required in that game is something that is consistently criticized, as well.  I can't really think of anything in the older games that would be analogous to those types of routes, where they're just a pain in the ass to the point where I don't want to do them.  The closest thing I can think of would be the Whirl Islands in Gold & Silver, where you need to use a bunch of different HMs and reenter the caves multiple times from different entrances to clear the entire area.  The big difference there being that most of the Whirl Islands are optional.  Once you know how to get to Lugia, there really is no reason to go through the rest of the system other than to get all the items, none of which are essential, or even really noteworthy.  Also, they're a cave system.  Caves are a preexisting mechanic in the game where you expect to have to go down multiple paths to find your end goal.  I remember dreading going into Mt. Moon and Rock Tunnel as a kid, not because they weren't fun, but because I knew that if I wasn't prepared, I could get in real trouble.  They're difficult, but they're not frustrating, because you've been warned ahead of time of what you can expect, so you can prepare.

The other big thing that changed with Gen 3 is that they are the first generation of games where they really try to have a story.  It's the first time where the character really spends a lot of time fighting with the regional bad guy team, and the first time where they try to sell the team as being wrong strictly on moral grounds.  I had Maxie chirping in my ear the entire game about how what Team Aqua was doing was wrong, and how I needed to help Team Magma stop Team Aqua because of how wrong and bad they were.  My character had a moral obligation to stop Team Aqua, and that moral obligation is a major part of what drives him forward on his adventure.  There's someone out there trying to destroy the world, and the responsibility is on me to stop them.

The end goal of Pokemons Red, Blue, and Yellow.
Really. This is all you get for finishing the Pokedex.
It took me hundreds of hours to get this as a kid.
I don't regret a single second of it.

Gens 1 and 2, of course, also featured a group of ne'er-do-wells in the form of Team Rocket.  The way the player interacts with Team Rocket is very different than the way they interact with Teams Aqua and Magma, however.  Every time the player character is in conflict with Team Rocket in Gen 1, it is because their goals and his goals are at odds with one another.  He goes and fights them in the Game Corner in Celadon City, not because they're bad guys that need to be stopped, but because they have something he needs to progress in his journey.  He needs the Silph Scope, so that he can put the ghost of Cubone's mother to rest, so that Mr. Fuji will give him the PokeFlute, so that he can wake up the Snorlaxes that are blocking the roads to Fuchsia City, so that he can challenge the Gym there, so that he can collect all the gym badges, so that he can challenge the Elite 4, so that he can become the Pokemon League Champion and prove himself as the very best, so that he can get access to Cerulean Cave, so that he can catch Mewtwo, so that he can catch 'em all.  He has no ideological beef with Team Rocket, he's not hunting them down to stamp out their criminal activities.  He's just a boy with a goal, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal.  

The Gen 2 games dip their toes into the water as far as giving the player character a moral code starting at Lake of Rage.  You agree to help Lance stop Team Rocket on the grounds that you agree with him that forcing Pokemon to evolve before they are ready is a bad idea.  You're given a very tangible example of how this is a problem in the form of the red Gyarados in Lake of Rage, who has apparently been rampaging for days because "OH MY GOD MY BODY IS SUDDENLY GIANT AND POWERFUL WHAT DO I DO?!".  They show you that what Team Rocket is doing is directly hurting Pokemon, and then have you act.  The Goldenrod radio tower is another instance of the player character fighting team rocket based on moral obligation.  I think the difference between Ruby/Sapphire and Gold/Silver is that in Gold/Silver the conflict with Team Rocket feels like a secondary part of the game, whereas the conflict with Team Magma/Aqua in Ruby/Sapphire feels like it is the main plot.  Team Rocket also had very real-world, tangible goals.  They were believable as an organization, because all they were working for was money and power, whereas almost everyone since has been trying to harness actual gods.  Again, it feels more Final Fantasy than Pokemon.

I hear a lot of people in the Pokefandom applaud Nintendo for putting deeper stories into the Pokemon games, but honestly, I think they do more harm than good.  If you're someone who wants to play through the game multiple times, listening to Cyrus ramble on about space and time and creating a new reality just turns into a chore after the first time, even if you are someone who thinks that's a good plot line.  Personally, I've yet to encounter a Pokemon story that I really have enjoyed, so even the first time isn't fun.  Archie's plan is insane, and not in an interesting way.  It's just entirely stupid.  He wants to reawaken this ancient demigod, so that it can bring with it heavy rains that will fill the crater of a volcano with water, so that he can turn it into a nature preserve.  What?  How did this guy get the followers and money to create a large scale criminal organization?  Who hears that message and says "Yeah, that seems like a guy I want to follow"?  Even as a 13 year old kid I was mad that Nintendo made me participate in that story.  It's patently ridiculous.

Ultimately, I think this is the main beef I have with newer Pokemon games. At some point, they decided that "monsters are real, you can catch them, and use them to fight other monsters, including those owned by your friends" wasn't a good enough hook, anymore.  I don't need world building in a Pokemon game.  I don't need lore.  I just need a believable ecosystem.  I don't care about Lysandre's ancient doomsday device.  Where did that even come from?  Don't answer that, I actively don't care, because it is dumb.  The King of Kalos is dumb.  The superweapon being a thousands of year old piece of technology is dumb.  Team Flare's plan is dumb.

*ADDENDUM*
I wrote most of this piece before I had had a chance to play Pokemon Sun & Moon, so it kind of just ignores my experience with that gen.  I got Moon, and most of  my issues are still very relevant.  The story immediately is entirely stupid and they really doubled down on how intrusive it is to the general gameplay.  I've never felt less like I was on my own adventure.  It still features too many legendaries.  Some of the Pokemon designs are awful (looking at you Incineroar).  I don't hate having the challenges instead of the traditional gyms. I like that the Pokemon designs feel very unique to the region.  Assuming they don't make a weird turn at the end, Team Skull is the best bad guy team since Team Rocket.  I uninstalled it from my 3DS a couple weeks ago, I don't expect I'll ever go back to it.