I loved the Johto and Hoenn leagues. both showcased the preliminaries very well and the 6 on 6 battles against Gary, Harrison, Katie, Morrison and Tyson were all excellent imo.
The teams felt strong and were decently evolved and the two leagues were just fun and enjoyable.
Sinnoh is second purely because it took a trainer with legends to defeat Ash. Ash vs. Paul is easily one of my all time favourite fights and the rest of the league was really good. His team were all at great levels and stages of evolution and it was team worthy of taking into a league.
Kanto is third, Despite the fact the final battle against richie was terrible, the four prelim rounds were great, yes two of them were partially skipped but what we saw from them was still great. Can never forget that Belsprout on the Grass Field and kingler soloing the water field.
Unova is such a disappointment. for the most part I did enjoy the battles but no one in their right mind would have taken that team into the league. I woulda been in the pokemon centre getting Infernape and Sceptile and Snorlax to strengthen it up. Ash's team just seemed so incredibly weak compared to the other leagues. the rivals seemed a lot weaker, the main rival battle we were all looking forward to was given a 1v1 instead of a 6v6 and that just incredibly stupid imo. Bianca and Vergil were skipped. Stephan battle was the best part.
Worst of all Ash lost to someone who only had 5 pokemon, even with a handicap he still lost.
the entire best wishes series feels like a big reboot rather than a sequal to D&P, Ash has returned to being a noob after all his development from AG and D&P. if this is what happens when they rush the badges and the league then please, please, please bring back all the cotd filler episodes. series started with such promise and then just seemed to to fall down a hole with the cancellation of the rocket vs plasma stuff and hast recovered since. gym battles were lackluster and seemed to be a lot weaker as well compared johto, sinnoh and hoenn.
by far Unova is my personal worst league and series overall.
gonna take a lot from this episode N to raise it's stock. they shoudla done this before the league imo. give Ash's teamtime to get stronger, learn some new moves or evolve some. there is still 10 months to go before they need to the xy anime there was no need to rush the league this badly