I still think Gold/Silver/Crystal was the actual peak in terms of world design/mon design/storyline/characters, but I’m 100% willing to admit that could be my own particular age bracket of nostalgia talking.

I do like some of the additional/revised gameplay mechanics from later games… team battles, weather, held items, that kind of stuff makes the games meaningfully more complex, as well as more detail and structure given to how breeding and heritability actually work.

But a lot of the more… closer to current day stuff bssically just seems entirely like a gimmick that isn’t very well systemically thought out.