I didn't dislike this as much as I did when I was younger, but the parts that are bad seemed even worse.
Really what saves this game for me is the Battle Frontier and the music, both of which are excellent.
Visually this is a pretty notable step down from gen 3 visually, which is pretty sad considering the gen 3 games do not look good for GBA games. So many Pokemon sprites just look off, the 3D and scaling look awful on such a low-resolution screen, making the sprites jitter around when they move, and this generation has the weakest set of new Pokemon designs of any generation in my opinion. There are a handful of good designs, but it is very highly outweighed by some of the all-time worst Pokemon designs like Acreus, Heatran and the lake trio.
I can excuse the visuals much more than I can excuse the atrocious, repetitive dialogue from the NPCs in this game. Gen 3 already was pushing how much I could tolerate the dialogue with the Team Magma/Aqua stuff, but this is way too much. I like games with a lot of dialogue, some of them like Summon Night Swordcraft Story 2 are among my favorite games, but the difference there is that the dialogue is actually good. This generation represents the point at which Pokemon lore was irreparably damaged, and my feelings toward it are very similar to my feelings about what Dark Souls 3 did to Dark Souls 1. Fleshing out a world to the point where absolutely every mysterious facet has been explored and explained robs players of the ability to engage with the world with theories or their imaginations. It's restrictive, it's boring, and Pokemon quite frankly didn't have that much going on to begin with. Trying to compensate for ironing out the mystery by adding like 14 new legendary Pokemon just feels like a slap in the face. When nearly 15% of the new Pokemon are legendaries, it makes the concept of legendary Pokemon a lot less special.
This was where I stopped playing Pokemon for over a decade because of how much I disliked it, but I am on a mission to play every mainline Pokemon game, and if this game is beloved by newer generation Pokemon fans, I am dreading what is coming next.
Really what saves this game for me is the Battle Frontier and the music, both of which are excellent.
Visually this is a pretty notable step down from gen 3 visually, which is pretty sad considering the gen 3 games do not look good for GBA games. So many Pokemon sprites just look off, the 3D and scaling look awful on such a low-resolution screen, making the sprites jitter around when they move, and this generation has the weakest set of new Pokemon designs of any generation in my opinion. There are a handful of good designs, but it is very highly outweighed by some of the all-time worst Pokemon designs like Acreus, Heatran and the lake trio.
I can excuse the visuals much more than I can excuse the atrocious, repetitive dialogue from the NPCs in this game. Gen 3 already was pushing how much I could tolerate the dialogue with the Team Magma/Aqua stuff, but this is way too much. I like games with a lot of dialogue, some of them like Summon Night Swordcraft Story 2 are among my favorite games, but the difference there is that the dialogue is actually good. This generation represents the point at which Pokemon lore was irreparably damaged, and my feelings toward it are very similar to my feelings about what Dark Souls 3 did to Dark Souls 1. Fleshing out a world to the point where absolutely every mysterious facet has been explored and explained robs players of the ability to engage with the world with theories or their imaginations. It's restrictive, it's boring, and Pokemon quite frankly didn't have that much going on to begin with. Trying to compensate for ironing out the mystery by adding like 14 new legendary Pokemon just feels like a slap in the face. When nearly 15% of the new Pokemon are legendaries, it makes the concept of legendary Pokemon a lot less special.
This was where I stopped playing Pokemon for over a decade because of how much I disliked it, but I am on a mission to play every mainline Pokemon game, and if this game is beloved by newer generation Pokemon fans, I am dreading what is coming next.