Handheld Wars #168 - Pokémon (Round 5) (Civil War)

Gen 5, along with Gen 4, 7, and 8, are the only gens I have no experience with whatsoever. However, I will still offer my speculation. Gen 5 in particular seems to be the quintessential love-it-or-hate-it pokemon gen. I say that because it wasn't as universally derided as gen 8 but at the same time was more polarizing than gens 6 & 7. I think the biggest factor to the highly subjective nature of gen V's reception were the new pokemon; not just their designs, but the "power creep" aspect of their stats, which made older gen pokemon far less relevant in battle, which undoubtedly angered a lot of longtime pokemon fans. I do agree with them that Gamefreak didn't do a good enough job monitoring the stat balancing when making the new pokemon for V (and also gens VI, VII, probably VIII too). And I also agree with many fans that some of the new pokemon designs in gen V were F U C K I N G     A W F U L !









This is when Gamefreak largely started moving away from taking inspiration from real life animals and cryptids when designing new pokemon and started basing their concepts on mundane man-made shit like food, garbage bags, and key rings, which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of pokemon if you ask me. Not to mention the fact that the color palette, level of detail and refinement in the new designs were noticeably toned down by this point, although I still think that, at its worst, gen V looks bad even in comparison to the later gens in that regard based on what I've seen. I think part of the reason these designs were so poorly received by fans is because Ken Sugimori had significantly less influence by this point based on what I've read.

Another part of the problem with V's visuals was the HORRIBLE new sprites + animations, which looked super-pixilated and didn't move all that gracefully, either. You know that old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Well, maybe Gamefreak should have looked at the previous two gens when making V and realized that there was nothing wrong with the sprite work in those games.

Overall I'd be more than willing to try Black or White version, since they did feature a ton of content by pokemon standards, but by this point there was as much stuff I disliked added to the games as there was stuff I enjoyed.