How does Gen 6 compare? (10 months later)

[Talon87]

Back when XY launched, I created a poll in which I asked you to rank Generation 6 relative to the other generations. I'm curious to see how people feel about XY now, some ten and a half months later. Try to respond to this new poll first. Then afterwards you can go back and see how you and your peers voted in the old poll. (I will provide a link below in a separate post.)

As with the first poll, the rules are pretty straightforward.

1. Don't vote if you haven't played any Gen 6 games for at least 10 hours.

2. Pick the option which best describes your current feelings about Gen 6.

3. Vote without reading what others have had to say. Please refrain from reading any of the posts in this thread before voting. (That includes my very own post which immediately follows this one!) Please refrain from re-reading older posts before voting, including your own. I'd like your vote to be as unbiased by others' opinions (including your past self) as possible. Thanks.

4. I'm going to set this particular poll to close on November 14, 2014. This provides ample time to get your votes in. At the same time, it ensures (or strives to ensure) minimal bias from the release of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, currently scheduled for November 21.

5. Plot-based spoilers for XY should go inside of spoiler tags, please. Anything else that you may feel belongs inside a spoiler tag can go there as well. But at a bare minimum, I ask that everyone respect that not every member of our community has gotten a chance to play the games yet, for one reason or another, and that they do wish to. Thank you for your cooperation.

[Talon87]

You can find the first poll here.

Spoiler: show

Last year, 32% of our community felt that Generation 6 was the best generation yet. 39% felt that, while perhaps not the very best generation ever, Gen 6 was perhaps the second best. And 22.6% felt that X and Y represented the third best generation of Pokémon games.

Only 6.46% of our community believed that Generation 6 was in the bottom half of all Pokémon generations. That's a pretty favorable report on the quality of the X and Y games. Whether it was the story, the graphics, the setting, the new creatures, or something else, over 93% of UPNers voted that Gen 6 was above average.

The atmosphere was not much different in chat rooms like Pokémon Showdown's or web forums like Bulbagarden's. At least, not from what I saw of them. It felt like the adolescents and young teens were toppling over one another in their frenzied excitement over this generation of games. It was all they could do to stop talking for just ten seconds about how awesome this one new creature was or how beautiful the graphics were. Everyone seemed to be quite pleased with X and Y.

Imagine my surprise, then, ten months later. I first noticed the trend on Pokémon Showdown. I later noticed in on Bulbagarden, which admittedly prompted this very poll. (And is why I've asked you to vote before checking out the old poll or reading on!) It feels like it only started a couple of weeks ago, and yet like most social trends, it has that entrenched air to it that makes it sound like it's been the status quo for at least three to four months. What is this development I'm talking about? It seems like quite a few people ... are alleging that X and Y were terrible games and that they are amongst the worst, if not in fact the worst, in the history of the franchise.

I know that this may come as a shock to you. I know it has done me! Pokémon Y was, and remains, one of my favorite if not my most favorite Pokémon games of all time. As I wrote early on in my Pokémon Y playthrough report, X and Y are in many ways the Pokémon game I dreamed of back in 1998 when I was just 13 years old. I wrote to Nintendo asking them to make a Pokémon main-series Pokémon game with Stadium-like graphics, a view from the side rather than top-down, gorgeous color, and character designs that stayed faithful to the anime. They smiled at me and encouraged me to purchase Red and Blue anyway. Well I did. As did every other Pokémaniac back then. But that didn't stop me from dreaming of a main series game with anime-faithful designs, Stadium-level graphics, and more. Well that's what Pokémon X and Y were! Are!

When I play my copy of Y, I find myself thinking, "Y'know, we don't even need a Stadium game anymore! The in-game graphics on the handheld are already so good that it's frankly pointless to make a 3-D battle simulator for the Wii U!" Don't get me wrong: it'd still be pretty cool to have a Stadium game on the Wii U if it meant that the graphics were even more phenomenal, if the creatures' attacks connected better and looked more realistic, etc. But since I doubt that this will happen, I am perfectly happy with them allocating their time and money to making the main series games look better than ever, effectively merging the main series project and the Stadium project into one super-project for all Pokémon fans to enjoy.

It's not just the graphics, of course. I enjoyed the story. (Perhaps not the franchise's best, but still good.) I enjoyed many of the new creatures. I adored the Tomogatchi module known as Pokémon-amie. (Can't tell you how many hours I've spent in there!) I loved that they finally, finally split Normal in half between "true Normal" and Fairies.

Were there things I disliked? Oh, sure. I'm still not keen on Mega Evolution. (I don't like its implications for creature design, competitive play, or the story!) I wish that X and Y supported WiFi co-op in the Battle Maison the same way that previous generations supported it with the Battle Tower. But where the positives come to me easily, the negatives I have to sit here and think hard of what they might be. (The two listed here came easily, but they're the two biggest ones for me. Anything else isn't even coming to mind right now. ^_^; )

Over the last ten and a half months, something has happened. I don't know if it's that the haters, cowed into silence back during launch, have finally decided to speak up or if it's that former XY enthusiasts have transformed into XY critics as the veneer of a shiny, brand-new generation has worn off. Whatever it is, there's a contingent of XY haters now that seems to be popping up all over the Pokéweb. Usually their criticisms of XY are vague, posts along the lines of "Anything is better than Gen 6 at this point" or "XY are the worst games ever," without specific mention of game elements which they disliked. And typically they don't have to specify what it is that they hated so much about XY: I find that the replies their posts garner tend to come from fellow haters agreeing with their views than from XY defenders telling them that they don't know shit about Pokémon.

One thing I have noticed though -- and I think that ORAS may have something to do with it -- is that there seems to be a weak correlation between Kalos hate and Hoenn love. On both Showdown and Bulbagarden, I've observed some of these Gen 6 bashfests quickly veer off into Hoenn lovefests. It makes me wonder ... are the haters of Gen 6 predominantly fans whose first generation was Gen 3? If so, that still doesn't explain why it is that Gen 3ers in particular dislike Gen 6 more than anyone else, but it would at least explain why they seem convinced that Gen 3 is better than Gen 6.

While I wouldn't say that Gen 3 was better than Gen 6, Gen 3 is one of my favorite generations. If I were to generally rank the generations, I think that 1, 3, and 6 would round out my top half while 2, 4, and 5 would round out my bottom half. (Which is funny considering that HGSS and BW2 are up there with XY as far as all-time favorite Pokémon titles go. ^^; ) But even if I liked Gen 3, I find myself really not being excited to go back to Hoenn just yet. I keep finding myself hoping that, after ORAS, there is going to be an XY2 or a Z that comes along and allows me to go back to playing in PokéFrance for another one to two years before we all have to migrate over to Gen 7. I really, really don't want to say good-bye to Kalos. I love Route 7. I love Parfum Palace. I love Laverre City. I love Lumiose City. I love it all. It's a beautiful region that perfectly melds fantasy and reality, the true sights and sounds of France with the biosphere-grade diversity of a Game Freak game's geography. Mountains, oceans, deserts, forests, swamps, cities, towns, plains, rivers, caves: it's all there. Sinnoh, Unova, and possibly even Hoenn failed to capture my heart as well as Kalos has.

So what are your thoughts? Has your opinion about XY changed since last year? How do you think most fans feel about Generation 6 today? Do you agree with them?

[Zelphon]

The story was short as heck & was far from the most intertaining but with that said Team Flare was pretty awesome for being so generally evil. All in all my rating of third best gen was given more for the features & 3D models that it introduced & refined rather than the actual storyline fun.

I also like that there was less dex fodder this gen with most pokemon introduced having some sort of niche.

[Heather]

Gen 6. I love you so. You didn't have the most Pokémon, which was odd, your evil team was weird and predictable, your story way too easy to smash though if you felt like it, even if you did t do the thing where you caught the gyms weakness beforehand every time thing. You created memes that I could not stand.

So why do I love you?

For one, your starters that aren't fore typed are amazing. Sorry Fenny-line but after seeing Delphox...just no.

For two, Megas were something new and cool that added another aspect to team building: Who gets to mega? Not to mention that lots of megas were really cool in Kalos. Not so sure about some of the Hoenn remake ones, but hey. Anyhow...

Your atmosphere had this unforgettable charm of getting really close to your Pokémon and making the journey personal every step of the way. The throwbacks to gen 1 were cool, the gyms had amazing designs to them, the OST was good on most every count, with some clear favorites of mine. While you didn't produce a character with a battle soundtrack on par with Miror B or Colress, you still impressed.

But one thing stands out above all. You finally opened me up to getting Into competitive battling. I had sworn several times that I wouldn't go that route, I wasn't that big of a jerking elitist nerd guy. Well, it's the one time I haven't really regretted going back on it in some ways, and in other ways it's one of the biggest. Because while this gen let me have a chance without being an elitist player of the snob tier, most of the community has flocked to Smogon which has singlehandedly wrecked my experience. I remember being able to run around doing most anything I pleased besides the obviously OP Megas like MegaLuke/Mom. And it was fun. I sucked all manners of balls at team building, but I still had fun
Then as I started playing to win more, my teammates that I'd grown attached to started to be seen in a negative light, Aegislash getting banned in the end. A good cog in my team, I knew the 13 or 1400s were a dream without Caladbolg. And so I jumped to Pokebattle where I was free to use my favorites as I pleased once more. It feels good to be free...

[RealMrGame10]

Gen VI has been interesting so far.

The world of Kalos and X and Y is not really about the story at all. It's not about the new Pokemon. It's about taking a time-tested formula and making it better.

The graphics were surprisingly amazing, the

Spoiler: show

post-game Looker side story, especially the part about the orphan whose name escapes me

, the Mega Evolutions were fascinating, and there were actually some cool new Pokemon. Fairy types are an interesting addition to the type chart, and Poison types have found use again. Each city had painstaking detail out into it, and after months of playing, I still haven't finished exploring Lumiose City.

Another great part about X and Y was how accessible it was. My little brother, who didn't even know what IVs were at the beginning of the gen, has now gotten totally immersed in competitive battling, and you can imagine what others who are more experienced are doing with this game. And it's still evolving. The Volcanion and Diancie dealio hasn't been released in America (or anywhere really) yet, and it's almost been a year.

Now, obviously, Gen VI hasn't been all roses. That embarrassing glitch in Lumiose is one such example, but there are other criticisms that I'm sure all of you are very familiar with. But, the point is the general game mechanics were awesome, it widened the demographic of competitive battling, and made interesting changes that I personally enjoyed. It's been good.

[Slash]

I ranked it third, but mostly because I've realised, in retrospect, Gen II was not as great as I had thought it was when it was new. Kanto (Gen I Kanto, or Gen III Kanto, I like them both, as well as Gen II and Gen IV revisited Kanto) takes the second-highest spot for me, only trumped by how excellent Unova is.

So for me Unova > Kanto > Kalos > Jhoto ~ Sinnoh > Hoenn

Are spoilers even spoilers anymore? It's been nearly a year. Are people going to be mad at me for spoiling that Giovanni, the leader of Team Rocket, is also secretly the Viridian Gym Leader, or that at the end of Origins, MegaZardX is revealed to be a thing that exists?

[Shuckle]

I took so many wrong turns in Lumiose, I now have a perfectly functioning mental map of the entire city.

[Slash]

I took so many wrong turns, I still don't know how to naviagte it

[Shuckle]

Clearly you didn't get lost enough!

As for me, I think my favorite is GenI. It's a really good game, even as stupid and broken as it is, with terrible graphics and obese sprites and only 151 of those pokemans. There's not much nostalgia factor involved, really. I just seriously enjoy playing RBY.

GenII was my childhood and Shuckle comes from it. I have renewed appreciation of it thanks to HGSS. The postgame was also the biggest of any gen. There was just so much to do; it felt like a fully functioning world with people who lived in it and had their own lives outside of what you were doing at the time. This was a lot stronger of a feeling in HGSS, but it was present in GSC as well.

Sadly Unova, Sinnoh, and Hoenn fall by the wayside. It's just personal preference. I simply didn't enjoy them as much as I did the others.

[Slash]

To be fair Hoenn was really just terrible, and Sinnoh tends to suck for replay value (D/P moves sooooo slooooooow, and GBA emulators are infinitely more accessible and usable than DS ones. There's also so much smaller a hacking community for Gen IV-V because the ease and accessibility of Gen III and GBA roms).

Also I would use my mad style to get cheap cab fare, or just find a gate and go out, or just Fly

[rotomotorz]

I loved Gen IV the most partially because I loved the story and also because it was my first game so.

It also has Rotom

[DaveTheFishGuy]

>1. Don't vote if you haven't played any Gen 6 games for at least 10 hours.

Not sure if typo, or really stringent voting requirements.

[Slash]

10 hours of game time isn't much.

[DaveTheFishGuy]

...ah, I thought he meant having not played Gen 6 within the last 10 hours. I was about to say 'I've been asleep for the last 10 hours, what do you think?'.

My bad.

[DaveTheFishGuy]

Right so having just quickly mentally tabulated all the Gens I've voted third. Gen IV is my all-time favourite for being generally awesome, followed by Gen I for nostalgia and rounded up by Gen VI, which just beats out Gen III (whose only plus are that it includes some of my favourite Pokémon). Gens II and V round things off.

[Red Panda]

Right. So I'm that one outlier (so far) that ranked XY as 5th best. Allow for me to explain!

In truth, I really did enjoy this generation. X was a lot of fun to play. I do like quite a few of the new pokemon, and the fairy typing is cool. The visuals were amazing, as was the soundtrack. But, while it does have a lot of great properties to me, and it is a great game, it falls behind everything but Gen II in a worst-of-the-best scenario. XY was in no way a bad game, but unfortunately I found that it was far too easy to just speed through and destroy, and the lack of new pokemon really hurt it in my eyes. So while I do love it, I love Gen I, III, IV, and V more. The rankings for me go:

IV > III = V > I > VI > II

XY is up there as one of my favorite games of all time, but I just love the other generations more.

[Chalis]

I was the one who voted fourth, with Gen 2 and 5 behind. Decent length, nice tunes, decent pokemon appearances, nothing as bad as Gen 5 IMO. But I don't dislike it, it's just that the other three above are superior IMO.

IV-I-III-VI-II-V.

[ZoraJolteon]

I think exactly the same as I used to think.

On the upside, this is the closest the first game of a gen has come to improving on the first game of the previous gen in every single way since Gen II.

But "Better than the worst games" isn't much of an achievement. There's so much more that should have been in here, and "They're saving it for Z" is never an excuse. At least we now know we're getting some of it in ORAS.

[RealMrGame10]

I'm an outlier who liked Gen V a lot, with Gen IV my absolute favorite, but yeah.

[Slash]

I don't think you're an outlier, but more of just the fact that there's a very vocal minority that absolutely hate it.

[ROFLMAO]

Gen VI was really good imo. Gen V was good too in that it was a big step up from the one that preceded it. It's graphics and music (outside of the terrible champion music) were good and the variety of 'mon (especially with the advent of wonder trade) was great.

It does have it's flaws though, the lack of post-quest stuff for example (The looker quests were really good though). I don't know why they refuse to give us back the VS. Seeker though, if that came back I'd be happy.

Overall, it's probably in the middle for me as far as Pokemon games go.

Gen 3>Gen 1>Gen 6>Gen 5>>>Gen 2>>>>Gen 4

[Talon87]

I never did end up officially voting in the last poll. At the time, I knew that Gen VI was one of my all-time favorites. I just didn't know where it placed amongst the others.

That's still how I feel even today. As time goes on and we get more and more generations, it's becoming harder for me to just say "I like Gen A better than Gen B" and leave it at that. For example, Gen IV is in my bottom half of generations now but it also gave me one of my favorite Pokémon games of all time. Gen V likewise ranks in my bottom half for a laundry list of reasons yet it gave me the best Story Mode experience I've ever enjoyed in a Pokémon game. This creates a really bizarre situation where I have to distinguish between the generation and the individual titles which belong to it. I don't like that. I miss the simpler times when I could just say "1 > 3 > 4 > 2." But those days are long since past.

I voted that Generation VI is the second best generation so far. It was a tough decision between voting for 1st or 2nd place. I even considered a 3rd place ranking, my fondness for Generation 3 being what it was and to some degrees continues to be. But in the end, I felt like the way the various pros and cons stacked up, it went like this:

1 > 6 > 3 > 4 ? 5 > 2

Spoiler: show

Gen 1: Nostalgia, the most believable story, a wonderful plot twist, and a number of other factors maintain Gen 1's place in my heart at 1st. I can understand why many would rank it anywhere from 2nd all the way down to 6th, but for me it continues to be "the original" in all that that entails. I'm sure there's similar bias for kids who vote Gen 2 as best who started with Gen 2, who vote Gen 3 as best who started with Gen 3, etc. The plot twist alone is one of the greatest moments in the history of Pokémon. I can only wonder as to how obvious or clever it would have seemed to me if I were playing Pokémon today for the very first time. But at the age of 14, it was as spectacular as Star Wars's. It's not even just because of the surprise. It's largely because, the identity of the Viridian City gym leader already revealed, the meaning behind this final contest between Red and Giovanni is unlike anything we've had since.

Gen 6: I've said it before, I'll say it again: Pokémon Y is in many ways the Pokémon game of my childhood dreams. So many things I'd been asking Game Freak for for years now were finally delivered in X and Y. True 3D graphics. Vivid colors. A game that looks and feels like "I am playing the anime in real time." (We've had anime-faithful character designs since Pokémon Yellow, but an anime-faithful graphics engine didn't happen until now.) The game is so breathtaking and so much fun to explore that while most players complained of its relatively short completion time (reporting 20 to 30 hours?), I took over 80 hours to beat the game, in absolutely no rush to clear it, enjoying my stay in Poké-France and lapping up every last droplet of every corner of the world. The game isn't perfect. It has its flaws, as do all the games in the Pokémon franchise. But it's the pinnacle of the series to date. If Gen 1 is subjectively rated my favorite generation, X and Y would be rated the best overall titles.

Gen 3: I won't lie. A lot of why I loved Gen 3 so much back in the day is probably owed to the disappointment that was Generation 2. Ruby and Sapphire addressed most of my disappointments with Gold and Silver, and as a result I enjoyed an emotional rebound in the progression from Gen 2 to Gen 3. But even today, looking back on Gen 3, I feel like it was one of the stronger generations in the franchise. The story was grandiose, which is both good and bad; insofar as it's bad, Generation 4 was even more grandiose and thus even worse in this regard. (Gen 3: TITANS! Gen 4: GOD THE CREATOR!) Hoenn was visually a very colorful region, perhaps the most satisfyingly colorful right on up until Kalos. Lots of bright greens and blues, lots of diverse biomes for the player to explore. I enjoyed some of the twists (if you can call them twists) in this game, like the fact that your father is a gym leader you'll have to defeat if you wish to make it to the League or the fact that the sickly boy you encourage to go on his own Pokémon journey ends up reappearing before you right as you're about to reach the League headquarters and provides the toughest fight you've experienced yet. Hoenn did a lot of little things right for me. I liked Metagross a whole bunch, and a great deal better than Dragonite or Tyranitar. I liked Flannery, brief though the glimpse into her life may be. Similarly I found Glacia intriguing (if admittedly the owner of the most boring team in the history of the Elite Four). I liked Steven Stone a lot, preferring him to both Gary and Lance as League Champions. (Or in Lance's case the stand-in for the League Champion.) I thought the braille side quest, while impossible to discover on your own without being a hardcore JRPG nut who clicks on every square on the map, was otherwise very fun and even a little exciting. I loved the Trick House. I enjoyed the addition of passive abilities. Just a whole lot of little things that Gen 3 did well that not only made it an improvement over its predecessors but also have helped to maintain its position in my heart against later, technically superior titles.

Gen 4: I enjoyed Diamond and Pearl, which is one reason I'm kind of sorry to have to lump them into the bottom half along with Gens 5 and 2. And I absolutely loved HeartGold and SoulSilver, which should leave you wondering how I could even rank Gen 4 this lowly. I guess I'd chalk it up to things like ... one, it didn't leave as big an impact on me as Gens 1, 3, or 6 did ... two, the improvement in graphics between Gens 3 and 4, while big in hindsight, was nothing at all like the improvement between Gens 2 and 3 or between Gens 5 and 6 ... three, the plot is ridiculously grandiose, giving me one of my favorite villains in the history of the franchise (Cyrus) but also giving me one of my biggest complaints in the history of the franchise (THAT GOD IS A CATCHABLE POKÉMON WHO TAKES ORDERS FROM A 10-YEAR OLD CHILD) ... four, Sinnoh as a region (geographically, visually) just isn't as memorable to me as other regions ...

A special note has to be made for HeartGold though. This has long been one of my favorite games in the history of the franchise. In fact, when it came out, it was my favorite in the history of the franchise. The only reason I have to call it one of my favorites now is because BW2 and XY complicate the picture. I really don't know how they did it, but when Game Freak made HGSS, they took my least favorite games of all (Gold and Silver) and somehow morphed them into one of my favorite Pokémon experiences ever. Maybe part of it was that Gen 2 now enjoyed a nostalgia boost that it had not enjoyed back in the early 2000s. Maybe part of it was the improved, Generation-4 graphics. I just really loved how HGSS (and of course this would apply to GSC as well) felt like this great sequel to RBY. At the time, GSC + HGSS were the only such sequel in the history of the games. Every other game had been its own independent adventure. Only GSC+HGSS said, "We're actually a sequel to RBY. We're a continuation of that tale, taking place three years later in a neighboring region." Another thing that HGSS did so well was that its bonus features were, for the time, among the series' best. It featured a solid Battle Frontier. (Though not quite as good as Emerald's.) It had the amazingly fun Pokéathlon into which I sunk so many hours. And of course it had the repurposed dojo in Saffron City which, after the player defeated Red, would serve as a meeting place for the various gym leaders across Johto and Kanto where they would re-challenge you to a match using solid teams with competitve movesets, hold items, and an intelligent A.I. Along these same lines, the second to last thing I'll note about HGSS is the cameos. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, the cameos! This was one of the things that made HGSS so much fun. I absolutely adored all of the conversations you got to have (or sometimes eavesdrop in on!) with the Kanto gym leaders, the Johto gym leaders, and even a small handful of visiting gym leaders from other regions. Erika's and Jasmine's conversation in Celadon City? Janine's and Faulkner's conversation in the department store? Priceless. Finally, let's not forget that HGSS featured overworld sprites for all 493 Pokémon. This was one of the best things about the game. Not only did it allow for the return of Pokémon Yellow's follow-the-trainer feature -- adorable -- but it also allowed the developers to have so, so many more trainers on the overworld map interacting with Pokémon. In previous games, you'd have maybe a Poliwhirl here or a Slowpoke there. In this game, the only limit on how many Pokémon the programmers were going to dot the map with was the number of available tiles. ;p While future games weren't quite so kind as HGSS in this regard, the feature of having many more overworld Pokémon than in previous games continued, with BW2 for example having the horde of Crustle that block your path on Route 4.

Gen 5: I've written much over the years about why I was disappointed by Gen 5. Not going to repeat it all here. Briefly I'll just say that I had a list of things I wanted to see Game Freak improve between Gens 4 and 5 and they improved almost none of them with BW1. As a result, I boycotted the games, the first time I'd ever done such a thing.

I've beaten Pokémon White. And it's an okay game. But my greatest problem with it is that it promises an excellent story and then fails to deliver as Game Freak childishly takes the piss out of one of the greatest accusations the franchise has ever suffered: that it promotes animal cruelty. I was excited to see Game Freak tackle this accusation. I was interested to see how Team Plasma would be demonstrated to be villains despite their well-meant goal, how the heroes would be shown to be heroes despite the fact that, undeniably, they are capturing animals from the wild and then having them partake in magical cockfights. I braced myself for disappointment, but that didn't keep me from being disappointed in the end when I saw what Game Freak's idea of a good answer was to the accusation.

I've also beaten Pokémon White 2. And it is a wonderful game. In fact, while it's tough for me to choose between White 2 and Y, I think I would have to go with White 2 when deciding on which game has the best story in the history of the franchise. Without a doubt, White 2 has the best rival in the history of the games. Hugh is incredible. They did everything right with this rival, so much so that what they gave us in XY felt to me a disappointing step in the wrong direction. I absolutely loved how his adventure didn't just coincidentally intersect with yours from time to time but how he journeyed alongside you as a traveling companion for various legs of the journey. When the two of you would separate, it was for completely believable reasons. And when the two of you co-adventured, it just felt so right, like the most natural thing in the world. Game Freak has struggled with the "buddy rival" archetype ever since its inception in Generation 3, but in Hugh they finally got it right. Brendan/May? Not the greatest. Wally? Not even really a rival. Beret Boy or Dawn? Meh. Jun? Annoying and meh. Even Bianca and Cheren in BW1, while better than most, were still missing something. But Hugh is just perfect. You give a damn about his story. His story is solid. And the climax of his story is one of the most ... (BW2 spoiler)

Spoiler: show

shockingly dark in the history of the franchise. "Life doesn't always give us perfect lil' happy endings. Here you go. Have Liepard back. Good luck getting her not to violently maul your sister." The story ends with Hugh reporting that his sister was happy to see that Hugh had retrieved Purrloin (now Liepard) but his sister reporting to you, when you pay her a visit in Aspertia City, that she still isn't allowed to see Liepard yet. She tells you how she can't wait to though! And then when you go in the bedroom and talk to Liepard, the creature does nothing but growl at you. And that's it. That's how the story of Hugh's sister's Liepard ends. Not with a picturesque "and they lived happily ever after ^-^" retrieval of the stolen cat, but with a Pokémon whose heart has been blackened by what it has experienced over the past two years. That's not to say that a happy ending is out of the picture! Just that the way the story ends, we don't get there. The story ends with Liepard still posing a risk to Hugh's sister's safety and his parents deciding that the cat needs to remain locked up in the bedroom until it's become friendlier around people. Gee. What a happy ending! ;p

And that's one reason I love BW2's story so much. It's no Shakespeare. It's no [insert your favorite author here]. But it's probably the best story we've gotten to date. And independent of that, it's a good story in its own right.

Gen 2: Finally we have Gen 2 in last place. I was disappointed by the graphics, which are marginally improved on Gen 1's. I was disappointed by the 100 new creatures, most of whom had shit designs, shit stats and movepools, or both. I was disappointed by the world map, in particular the clusterfuck north of Goldenrod and south of Ecruteak. Was not a huge fan of the soundtrack; while Gen 1 had some really catchy jingles (Pokémon Center and Celadon City come to mind), Gen 2 had nothing quite like that and instead had more than its fair share of raucous tunes. The new GLs weren't as cool as the old GLs. (And their gym badges just plain sucked.) A lot of little complaints.

As I've explained, I've since warmed up to Gen 2 a lot thanks to HGSS. I've also come at Gen 2 with an appreciation that I lacked as a 15-year old boy. For starters, Gen 2 has to be played raw. It simply must be. If you can speak Japanese, you owe it to yourself to play HGSS in Japanese instead of in English. There is so, so much that got lost in translation when the games went from Japan to America. All of the Kansai dialect. And many subtleties in character dialogue. Another reason I've warmed up to Generation 2 is that I suppose "time heals all wounds" and the disappointment I had with the generation back when it was fresh has given way to more loving feelings of nostalgia in the years since. Still, at the end of the day, if you were to leave me on a desert island and I had to choose one Pokémon game out of the six generations' available titles to take with me, Gold, Silver, and Crystal would most definitely not only not be it but would come in at last place.

Let's not forget the most obvious thing Gen 2 did right though, something we've all wanted to see happen again ever since: multiple regions on one save file. That was indeed one of the best surprises of Gold and Silver: going east of the Tohjo Falls and discovering a time-skip Kanto waiting for me. From seeing characters like Misty and Gary slightly more grown up to seeing the destruction that befell Cinnabar Island, that campaign was filled with so much emotion. If Gen 7 is set in a neighboring European nation like Germany and plans to further explore the backstory of the war that took place thousands of years ago, I would only to be too thrilled if, after you complete the German campaign, France unlocks and you get to visit Kalos again.

In conclusion, it's hard to know for certain if I voted correctly but for now at least, ten months in, I voted Generation VI as my second-favorite generation of all time. It'll be interesting to see how our opinions change or remain the same as time moves forward.

[dirkac]

Short version: IV>>> III>> VI>>>>> V> II>>>>>>>>> I
If anyone had payed any remark of semblance to my posts, it should be obvious I practically worship Gen IV by now.

Spoiler: show

Gen IV: I've spent over 200 posts at SPPF ranting about how great this is.
In short: Sinnoh is by far the most interesting and memorable Region, outside Chkmchar line, EVERY single Pokémon is in my favourite 200, I felt compelled and was interested jn the characters and their interactions, the story was grandiose, but a good grandiose; it was so over the top at parts it was just so pulling and tearing, all the amount of lore was incredible, and Platinum had the best fucking sound-track of any game I've ever played, outside PMD, whichnit is tied for (and in which EoS, which stands out, is part of Gen IV)

Gen III: It has Surskit.
Not enough? I adore Hoenn. I memorized what it all looks like, the towns, the Routes, the everything. Many Pokémon I absolutely adore. While many chsracters were lacking, Wally remains tied as my favourite Rival with Hugh and Cedric (Barry in fan-names). The plot was good, and made actual sense from some aspects.

Gen VI: Not much to say, I loced it, basically.

Gen V: If B2W2 was it's seperate Gen, B2W2 wouls be above oe tied with Kalos, and BW velow or tied with Johto.

B2W2 was just amazing, read Talon's post since I thought exactly what he did (except he'll be able to put it jnto words infijitly better than me).

BW was just all around... mediocre. I didn't care for the plot or characters, and Unova was just disinterestinf. When your saving grace is a total of 50 Pokémon you know you have problems.

Gen II: Bad. It's only better than Gen I. It did have gems like Silver, Chikorita, Hoppip, LANTURN, ans Slugma, thoufh.

Gen I: hahano
The most disinterestimg Region, overall the pool of my least favourite Pokémon, cardvoard characters, a basically non-existant plot, and TR was 100% disinterresting. About the thing J like most is Butterfree/Caterpie, which is bad.

[Cloneblazer12]

I put second. Simply put the games are amazing in almost every aspect. It's just that Hoenn was my childhood and I've played through the story dozens of times and never get bored. And Blaziken exists. And Swampert. And Metagross. Gardevoir. Swellow. Wailord. Latias. Groudon. Rayquaza. Mightyena. Linoone. And of course, Flannery and May.

It's kinda hard to top that, tho 4 had Garchomp, Yanmega, Magnezone, Infernape, dialga, Giratina, Darkrai, Lucario, and torterra.

Gen 6 has Greninja, Talonflame, Aegislash, megas, Yvetal, and that's about it.

1 has Eevee and 2 has Skarmory and Heracross.

5, despite being my least fave, has Conkeldurr, Hydreigon, Excadrill, terrakion, Volcarona and Bisharp

Basically 3 has pretty much all my faves. On top of Hoenn just being an epic region in general, it's REALLY hard to top that.

[Shuckle]

I think the pattern is very interesting to me as to what is important to people and how they rank the gens accordingly.