Your Least Favourite Generation

[KyogreThunder]

So, I decided to remake a 10-year old poll:

Your Least Favorite Gen?

So, I was curious to see what many of you consider your least favorite generation, after trying out many of the older games again since the release of X and Y... Now that X and Y has been out for a decent amount of time (with many people reaching the endgame of the endgame), I thought it'd be a...

forums.serebii.net

Which generation of main series Pokemon games do you happen to enjoy less than the rest? Please remember not to spam and explain your choice a bit.

 

[Pokegirl Fan~]

Generation 6. XY felt incomplete and were way too easy imo. I also didn't like how similar Team Flare was to Team Galactic and their storyline wasnt that good.
ORAS didn't have the Battle Frontier either and they felt like they were lacking something to me.
I think these games releasing right after gen 5 had something to do with my disappointment with gen 6 as well.

 

[PrinceOfFacade]

There is only one Pokémon game I ever took back to the store and requested a refund for, and that's Pokémon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon.

I would honestly play a Gen 1 game again before I play Gen 7.

 

[vondecayle]

Gen 9.

- The design choice for most of the pokemon ranges from bland to ugly with a few exceptions. The structure of the region is rather strange in how the places are just randomly scattered around the map rather than being interconnected in any logical way and most are not aesthetically pleasing either. Can’t even enter those skyscrapers in Levincia and almost no interesting places to explore outside of Area Zero. Paldea lacks noteworthy locations to find in the wild.
- A underwhelming and boring “evil team”. The player really has no business interfering with them at all, since they weren’t actually doing anything to threaten anyone.
- The rival is also nothing particularly special, not sure what makes her so liked in comparison to the previous ones, they’re almost always one note characters for the most part and Nemona is not an exception to this. Nothing that she has to say during the gym challenge is particularly interesting or insightful.
- The pokemon league looks like an ugly government office and it’s several steps down from Unova & Kalos which made me feel like I was getting to the conclusion of an epic story rather than taking a test for some lame ass school. On top of that I can’t challenge them twice.
- The NPC’s (minus the gym leaders and those who are important to the story) are the most generic I’ve ever seen for a pokemon game.
- Having to search for junk in order to craft TM’s is a no thank you from me. Gen 5 did it right.
- No post game battle facility.

 

[RedJirachi]

I don't dislike any generation I've played, but Gen 6 and 8 I found the least compelling. It felt like they were the awkward growing pains/transition period of their respective eras. That said, Gen 7 probably had my least favorite battle gimmick

 

[Ignition]

Gen 1 or 2 is probably my least favorite.

 

[Jesness]

Unpopular Opinion incoming! I get the feeling from the Pokemon community that RSE/ORAS is the general favorite. Gen 3 is arguably the most important in the franchise outside of the original RBY, it's when Pokemon became "Pokémon™", and everything about RSE is better than the two games that came before. Even so, I dislike Gen 3 so freaking much! It's not even a bad game, it's just not my cup of tea. I don't like most of the Pokemon designs, the music, or the environments, oh, and "too much water!" the story was interesting at least.

And then there's Gen 7. I have nothing nice to say about it since I never finished it. It's the only Pokemon game that I've ever failed to complete. I didn't even get past the second trial.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Gen I in retrospect. I don’t have anything against it and I do love the original games that started it all but it was a bit messy and now hard to play the games for more than two hours at most in one session. There are so many ways to corrupt you saved game, there’s that bug that caused Ghost type attacks to do absolutely nothing to Psychic types that it made them broken, and some of the sprites of the Pokémon look dreadful.

 

[Palamon]

Generation VI, full stop. Was incomplete, XY had a lazy story, Mega Evolution was stupid, etcetera. Second least favorite would probably be the first because of how broken they were, but I know they were the beginning, so I can't ever rank it last.

 

[Pokefan_1987]

Gen 5

-It has the least ammount of any great new pokemon added in a region IMO (The legendaries are great though)
- Even the added Black 2/White 2 still feel empty with any returning pokemon early on.
-The sequels it has the unskippable PokeStar Studio which is a annoying "forced" way of padding the game to show a side activity (the lines here are cringy)
-Many of the gym have some of my least favorite puzzles.
-Elesa backtrack padding; having to go through her old gym but sorry you just missed her after 7 battles and the slow rides take forever (the cars don't even wait when you exit)
-Trainers spamming Detect,Protect and Hypnosis or first turns Sucker Punch/Fake Out

 

[Yardas]

Generation VII.

Alola was a pretty boring region to me as I only cared for the first two islands: Melemele and Akala. Ula'ula and Poni, after getting past the cities of Malie and Seafolk, have nothing I enjoy.
Also, the amount of characters I care for in Alola is totally inferior compared to what I can find in the other regions. Only Mallow, Acerola and Matsurika in fact are characters who speak to me.
And to finish off, it is the region that introduced regional variants, something I'm definitely not a big fan of...

 

[Drake Pokétrainer]

It kinda depends on the context. Game-wise, I think gen 8 was the worst, with its only saving grace being Legends Arceus. Sword and Shield"s story was boring and basic, the wild area was a big empty nothing, there's no secrets or anything off the beaten path, the dex cut happened and gamefreak even lied about the reason of it.

Then we got BDSP during this gen which were arguably even worse, with the sole exception that they were based on good games. Riddled with glitches, almost no new mechanics, it somehow makes for a worse Sinnoh experience than Platinum, having omitted all extras Platinum added (while HG/SS added Crystal's and OR/AS had the Delta Episode), remade secret bases into something worse and the entire thing being an obviously rushed side project.

While Scarlet/Violet also have a lot of problems, I think the story and map are at least more enjoyable than gen 8's.

Pokémon-wise however, my least favorite gen is gen 5. Which used to be my least favorite overal until gen 8 came out. The Unova dex mostly wants to be the Kanto dex with a huge amount of it sorta being dex filler and just Unova's version of Kanto mons. The Roggenrola line is Geodude's, Timburr's is Machop's, Tympole is Poliwag's, Throh and Sawk are Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan, Audino is Chansey, etc...

 

[KyogreThunder]

Generations VII and VIII are my least favourites. I'll go with Generation VII, since it introduced too many changes that irked me, such as the removal of the National Dex (granted, Dexit is even worse, but still), Trainers' Pokemon awarding no more experience than the wild ones of the same level, which is dumb and makes no sense by Pokemon standards, and the replacement of the HMs is a slap in the face and an insult to the theme of the franchise (and yes, I do understand the complaints about HMs taking up moveslots, but they should have made the field moves like field abilities of the Pokemon you actually own and not just some random rentals, and without the ridiculous saddles and Riding Wear).

 

[Pokemon Power]

I'm gonna have to say Gen. 7, for getting rid of Triple Battles.

 

[The Admiral]

Pretty much every generation has some very serious problems going for it.

Spoiler

• Calling Generation I "balanced games" is the least funny joke in the world. The programming is janky as hell, but you have to remember, games were still surprisingly young in 1996. If any of you had to deal with some of what the 90s threw at you in a modern game, you'd melt like the Wicked Witch.
• Generation II is a beloved game, but the level scaling is, to put it politely, dog ****. Wait, no, let me try that again... ah, forget it. After you beat the Elite Four, there's a huge problem where every wild Pokemon is very low level compared to what you're at, making leveling to meet the challenges of Kanto and Red painful. Additionally, catching any new Pokemon in this period and seeking to use them for these postgame challenges is pretty rough, which sucks because Kanto has many new Pokemon available for you, including every Dark-type not named Umbreon.
• Generation III doesn't quite feature the worst-designed region, but Hoenn sucks to navigate. I am so glad they've finally done away with HMs because it reduces team-selection forcing and stops you from having to clutter up your team with bad moves. At least Surf is good. While all previous generations had a lot of Pokemon that existed solely for collection, Gen 3 feels like the period where they started to go a little wild with it. Also, let's not forget FR/LG hard-banning you from using Pokemon outside the originals until you got the National Pokedex. Imagine forgetting about Crobat. I hope someone lost a job for that and never got another one.
• Generation IV is probably the worst point in the series. Diamond and Pearl have the worst gamefeel of any main-line Pokemon game (I suppose that technically you can say Platinum is better, but if you polish a turd, it's still a turd.). The regional design of Sinnoh is of a very mixed quality - some areas are just too long (the path to Snowpoint most notably, but the route leading up to Victory Road feels too long as well) and the level scaling sometimes feels completely out-of-whack... which especially makes this feel like the most grueling Elite Four in the entire series, and playing catch-up feels un-fun. I think this is the point in the series where I started saying "screw it" and never changing my team after I caught my first six. Speaking of awful level curves, HeartGold and SoulSilver are still here, not fixing the problems of Gold and Silver while introducing new ones. Cool. Listen, I have a lot of nostalgia for GS too. Because I was ten. I played them when I was ten. Of course I have nostalgia for a happy childhood memory. I remember following the games while they were being fan translated and the edits were so bad that the item we now know as a "Bitter Berry" was rendered as a bunch of nonsense symbols and the five-letter character limit forced Cyndaquil to be called "HINOA." They were less understandable than the raw Japanese would have been, and it ruled. Because I was ten and it was probably the first real "event" I was a part of. When I played SoulSilver, though, I was old enough to notice the cracks in the foundation. Specifically, that there were more cracks than foundation.
• Generation V is peak. Okay okay fine Black and White have issues. Most notably in that this is the hardest Pokemon went on the "soft reboot" thing; before you beat the game, BW1 feature an all-new Pokedex that is very badly balanced; it has only 150-odd species, and if you thought things were bad in Gen 1, combine that with the fact that there are now two more types. Sometimes your options are just... nothing. Too many Pokemon also take forever to evolve - there is, legitimately, no reason why two mediocre baby birds you get at Victory Road take until level 54 to evolve. This is a recurring problem throughout the franchise after this point. Thankfully, Black 2 and White 2 fixed most of these issues, and their greatest sin is that people on Twitter won't shut up about how much they want remakes. No you don't. You don't want Gen 5 remakes. Because you don't want to go through anything to do with responding to Lenora again. Trust me on this one.
• In Generation VI, Game Freak finally learned their lesson about regional dex size - 457 species means you actually have choices (!!!) for each type and role. Finally! In exchange, X and Y feel like incomplete games. Also, the story. I don't talk about story in here a lot because most people probably don't think of Pokemon as being exactly a pinnacle of storytelling. It falls into the "media for children will never be well-written because writers don't think kids can deal with anything remotely complicated" issue a lot, but I think Pokemon actually cooked in the previous generation. In which case, XY overcooked and reduced everything to charcoal. Frankly, Lysandre actually killing people and the out-and-out genocidal goals of him and Team Flare were overkill after Ghetsis tried to murder the player character in B2W2. It's not shocking anymore for the villains to get actually violent; it just seems like edge for the sake of it. The Gen III remakes are Gen III remakes with some modernizing features that... half-fix the problems of RSE without cleaning up everything. Oh, right, Gen VI also marks the point where Pokemon starts introducing one-shot gimmicks every generation, I guess because they're afraid fans will get bored without that? Maybe listen to people who actually play the games instead of shareholders who only know what a video game is because they shove one in front of their screeching spawn to silence them for five minutes. (This advice applies to all video game companies period, by the way, but you knew that already.)
• Generation VII actually started out good - if B2W2 was mount Everest, SunMoon was K2. ("They were both peak" is the joke. Because they were both peak.) AND THEN ULTRA SUNMOON HAPPENED. It does no good to get pissed off at TPCI for making GF develop the same game and then sell it to you for full price a year later. This has been the MO since 1999, sorry not sorry. No, Ultra SunMoon's offensiveness comes from being the same game but less fun, and more importantly, for absolutely botching the plot change. I know they're trying to make it comparatively subtle, but it feels like they just decided to make the shift at the last minute. Remember how SunMoon were about the horrors of child abuse? How the problem was that Guzma, Lillie and Gladion were treated like dirt as children in various forms, and how the ultimate villain of the games was the one who abused the latter two and did some **** to Guzma too (although the really big part of Guzma's child abuse was his dad beating him with golf clubs; i.e. the idea that attempting to flee abusive homes doesn't always work)? Now Lusamine's just neglectful because she's overinvested in trying to save the world. Wow. Great ****ing work, guys. Seriously. Bang-up job. You could argue that SunMoon might have been a bit heavy (if you're a wimp). But that in no way justifies the change in direction. For a variety of reasons, this whole thing hit close to home in multiple different ways. I guess there were also the Let's Go! games, but I didn't play those. So uh,
• Generation VIII brought something new to my experience with the franchise: embarrassment. Not because of the quality of the game (SwSh were fine, I guess), but because I actually had the audacity to believe in the DLC. Look, the $60 price point was just an inevitability when they moved the games to a "console" (the Switch is just another handheld and needs to be developed for as such, otherwise you get games wildly overwhelming its capabilities - which SwSh had some of, but is most notably a ScarVi issue (which we'll get to)). I figured that a $30 expansion pass, although more susceptible to the inherent problems of DLC (comparative lack of future-proofing - hey, you guys enjoying that 3DS eShop?), would be a fine replacement for a "third version" - a game that's 90% the same anyway, but with a modicum of new content, which you pay full price for. So a DLC pass that costs half the price of a main game seems like a decent compromise. Unfortunately, the DLC of SwSh tended to feel very anemic. The story campaigns were not very satisfying at all, and the Wild Areas are... they're Wild Areas. An okay idea on paper, but highly repetitive in practice. On the other hand, they finally remembered to make evolution stones extremely available again in the base game and introduced Hatterene, which is probably my #1 favorite of all the Pokemon I can't say I like on Twitter without people immediately thinking I'm a weirdo. Don't tell anyone it's also in trans flag colors or my DMs will turn into even more of a festering dump. BDSP were absolutely pathetic. The fact that someone thought making a remake of Diamond/Pearl that was that raw is just... incredible. I have to assume whoever signed off on that has never played either game. However, this is also comfortably within the time period where I assume Nintendo was so scared of people forgetting what Pokemon was that they kept forcing Game Freak to churn out a main Pokemon game or adjunct every year, so they had to hire on another dev to take care of basically the whole thing and did as little with it as possible. I still haven't played Legends Arceus, which is a pity because it seems like a real game.
• Oh god, Generation IX. Finally, TPCi's "force units onto shelves because line needs go up" issues come home to roost in a way that has angered people - with suboptimal performance! Oh yeah, those graphics glitches were very funny, and as we all know, the only thing that matters about a game is a stable frame rate and good graphics! It was really starting to piss me off seeing people act like this game killed their dog over a little stutter, because, even if the released state of the game was embarrassing for the most financially successful media franchise of all times, it has much bigger issues. ScarVi are extremely incomplete, raids are a complete mess (just bring back how turns worked in Dynamax Raids you had a good idea and you threw it away you idiots), and the story mode doesn't kick in until you become champion, but I think these are actually good games. Mechanically, the game is an improvement over a lot of what they were starting to explore in SwSh, and they feature some of the best designs for creatures and humans alike that the franchise has seen in a while. Ryme and Iono are two of the most inspired gym leaders in a while (just don't ever do another Iono, please, GF - it only works once), and do I even need to mention how lovable Larry is? The Pokemon designs are pretty top-shelf, too -- not all zingers, but Espathra, Clodsire, and Tinkaton are some of the best they've ever done. Plus, as goofy as the Paradox Pokemon can get, there's still some real inspiration here and there - the two Volcaronas are smart (uhm ackshually Slither Wing is more like a Paradox Larvesta), that several of the past Paradoxes are based on not-fully-evolved Pokemon, have you seen Sandy Shocks' walk cycle?! Funniest thing in the game, I swear. Anyway Hitoshi Ariga is probably the best mon designer active right now, give him more work.

In short, it's Gen 4.

Sinnoh: So nice they screwed it up twice.

 

[Leonhart]

I dislike Gen VI in general. I thought Kalos was an incredibly bland region, and X/Y were the easiest games in the franchise so far, which negatively affects their replay value from my perspective. I also wasn't very fond of OR/AS, and the fact that there were only about 70 new Pokemon in Gen VI was another downside.

 

[Monster Guy]

Gen 1. I know I know sacrilege. Pokémon greatly improved as the series went on, that gen 1 feels so boring now. Judging by the results of the poll, people agree with me.

 

[Lechonky]

Gen 6 - I really couldn't get into for some reason. I basing this off what I played and not retrospective since if I go bay that either Gen 1-2 but since I played HG/SS and FR/LG which can count as Gen 1 and 2, I am still saying Gen 6. Gen 7 is close second. Unpopular opinion but SH/SW and S/V I really like. Something about better graphic, roaming Pokemon, camp/picnic, more openness give them edge of Gen 6 and 7.

 

[jaden767]

A tie between Gens 5 and 6. Black and White had a great plot but the fact that they took away all the old Pokemon during the main storyline (excluding events) never sat well with me and made Gen 5 and Unova seem almost alien to me even all these years later.

Gen 6 is just mediocre relatively speaking due to how easy X and Y were, the small amount of new mons available and how much of a letdown the plot was. Plus there's hardly anything to do in the post game.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

Gen 2 is the worst, because it can't even stand on its own without riding on the coattails of Gen 1 (and I'm not saying Gen 1 is the best Gen, though I will always have a fondness for it).