I've been seeing tons of posts online about how BDSP look awful and how they're going to be the worst remakes because they're just "faithful remakes" and not "everything I want and more". Because you know, the games are already out and we can fully judge them. On that note, I want to touch upon a pair of games lauded as the best in the series.
HGSS are the worst remakes.
Bring on the pitchforks.
The main problems with Gold and Silver were:
-the levelling was atrocious. You shouldn't be fighting level 25 Pokemon outside the gym that has a Pokemon with one almost nonexistent weakness in their 40s. Then in the postgame, the levels of gym leaders and wild encounters DROPS. Why?? If all gym leaders had raised levels, you maybe wouldn't have to grind to battle Red without getting one shot by his whole team.
-there are no Johto Pokemon in the Johto games. Seriously, the first few routes have Sentret, Hoothoot, Spinarak, Ledyba... and that's it until you beat the first gym where you get Mareep, Wooper, Hoppip..... and... uhhh.. yeah that's how the whole game goes. Those are the only Pokemon you can catch before beating the 3rd gym. Sorry I forgot the 1% Yanma and Dunsparce encounters because they are obviously too powerful to have regular spawn rates, and Sunkern. Not to mention, you can't even use a bunch in Johto because they aren't available until after you beat the league. And they aren't even good. Like why is Misdreavus only available after you get 16 badges??
-Gym leaders and Elite 4 don't even use Johto Pokemon. With all the gym leaders and elite 4 combined, you have: Miltank, Steelix, Piloswine, Kingdra, Xatu, Ariados, Crobat, Forretress, Hitmontop, Umbreon, Houndoom, Murkrow...... that's it. It'd be forgiving if there weren't Pokemon of their specialty type, but every gym leader and Elite 4 absolutely has options to fill out their teams with Johto-only Pokemon. Why doesn't Falkner have a Hoothoot and Noctowl? Why doesn't Bugsy have a Spinarak or Ledian? Why does Will have Slowbro and not Slowking?
-Barely a story, and the story events are just grinding Rocket Grunts... and not even a few at a time, you have to fight 20 Rocket Grunts that use the same Zubat, Rattata, Drowzee and Koffing and no Johto Pokemon, and fight the admins, who use Koffing and Weezing, and praise Helix they threw a Houndoom and Murkrow in there.
Now. What did HGSS fix? I'm talking specifically these remakes, not mechanics introduced in Diamond and Pearl (physical/special split for example). I do agree that area/location wise, they definitely improve upon what Gold and Silver lacked (mostly in Kanto), but this is stronger hardware and the games weren't being squished together last minute to fit in Kanto this time. This is purely from a gameplay experience perspective.
-well levels were raised by about 2 or 3 for some gym leaders, and the postgame gym leaders.... by like 5 or 6 levels, but some are still weaker than Lance, AND they raised Red's levels so what was even the point. You still HAVE to grind if you want to use a team of 6.
-you can get Mareep before the first gym now, so... there's that. Still can't use Houndour in the game though. Misdreavus is still apparently too broken to use before you've proven you're a god.
-there's actual story regarding the box legendaries this time, but it's really just forcing you to do something that was optional in the original games. Still a nice change. Team Rocket is still as snail-paced-boring as they were in the originals though (those Persian statues are the worst thing Pokemon has ever done), but at least they varied up the character designs.
And well... that's really it. I didn't add the Pokeathlon or the Battle Frontier as while they do add to the content, they don't help what the originals needed fixing. HGSS improved around the problems, but didn't actually solve any of them. Scale up the trainer and wild encounter levels, add some diversity to the Pokemon available and battled against, and either tone down or flesh out the Rocket fights more.. that's all they really needed.
I always see complaints about ORAS being awful for being too easy and... well that's subjective. "But the XP share and Megas!" Ok so.. turn the XP share off, and don't use the Megas.... tada. If anything, the addition of the Fairy type is the reason the games are so much easier (seriously, Fairy beats Brawly, Sidney and Drake, some of the original's harder Pokemon like Winona's Altaria and Phoebe's Sableye, as well as the Teams plethora of Mighteyna, Carvanha and Sharpedo. Basically if you used Gardevoir, you won). The games were deemed "bad" because the Battle Frontier wasn't in the game. But... ok? It wasn't in the original games, there was no basis for it to return. This was a remake of Ruby and Sapphire not Emerald. If anything the Battle Frontier would have been a nice extra, not an expected feature. Some people didn't like the artstyle and the fact that it was still grid based, but you can't have remakes of a grid-based game without scaling the entire games environment up and changing how it plays and being alienating to returning players. I just can't find any sound reasoning as to why ORAS is "bad".
All this can really be attributed to Generation 2 being the worst self-contained games and the remakes just had to work with what they had. FRLG and ORAS are just so much more replayable and entertaining, and so much easier to build a diverse team with. Not to mention both games add in extra story content and new characters postgame. HGSS just feels like nothing but grinding and padding. I'll ride a Rayquaza into space over being 20 levels below Red's Pikachu after beating every trainer in the game anyday.