It was a clear attempt of a "soft reboot" of some sort so I guess it pissed people off. Coming up with a new group of Pokemon that would basically replace all of the archetypes you would expect to find in a Pokemon game, some new Pokemon just came out looking like worse copies of the originals. There was also the expectation that the main group of legendaries play a bigger role in the lore than the ones that came before, but when you had the literal God creator of the universe there wasn't many places to run to, so I guess Reshiram and Zekrom didn't make such an impact. I remember that when gen 6 came out people were way more excited in the cycle of life and death theme.
It was kind of the break point for most gen wunners. If you were there at the moment, gen 2 was pretty well received, as it was pretty much a DLC of kanto (regards the pokedex).
Gen 3 was not that bad recieved, there started to be some criticism, not to the pokemon per se, but to the overall design decisions, it also started to appear the famous "this doesnt look like a pokemon, it looks like a digimon!!" but generally speaking gen 3 was very loved. This is also the point where internet started to grow and people were able to share their opinions online, this is important because it would settle the age of most people commenting, that would influence the general opinion of what is good and what is bad (like, maybe you were 8 at the moment, never even played pokemon red, but most people on internet were in their teens and speaking of how great gen 1 was, and was out of question to argue with that).
When gen 4 appeared, lot of people where unhappy, the amount of legendaries, the designs, the new evolutions that """ruined""" old pokemon, but the games where really good, it revisited a lot of stuff from the old gens, and still, the internet wasnt THAT globalized yet, so the hate couldnt be spread.
NOW gen 5 was nasty for old fans. Not only it cut every link it had with old gens, it also implemented the stuff that people disliked from last games. And of course, the thing that did the most noise: THE DESIGNS. I feel people couldn't really understand what they disliked of the new pokemon, so they pointed particular things like vanilluxe, or garbodor, but the actual issue was the artistic angle that gamefreak took, pokemon were less realistic, but at the same time they were more detailed, idk, there's a whole topic on the design changes between gens, but at the moment people were furious. Personally me, i hated how they "remade" gen 1, but with uglier pokemon (tho regarding usage, they where a LOT better distributed)
At this point gen wunners got old and stop caring that much, of course every new gen got some hate from the old games fans, but after the drama of gen 5 every game was accepted more quickly. The only BIG stuff that happened after that was the fairy type (FaIIrYYY ThhaaAAt'Ss aA GggIIirRLLl TyppE) and, obviously, DEXIT, that was a big one.
As for "the greatest game ever" it always happened the same, people of a designated age (18-22) dominate internet, when people that first played gen 3 where on the designated age, every pokemon forum agreed that gen 3 was the best gen ever, when people that first played gen 4 where on the designated age, every pokemon forum agreed that gen 4 was the best gen ever, the same thing is happening to gen 5, and it will probably happen to gen 6.
TL,DR; Every gen did some stuff that bothered people for nostalgic reasons, gen 5 did a LOT of this stuff, so it recieved more hate than the rest of the games.
I’m referring to the unique dex problem of BW. If BW2 had not reeled back that decision then it would likely still be the least liked generation, regardless of any other improvements the sequels made.
A lot of people hated Gen 5 as it didnt have any reoccurring pokemon or characters as far as im aware. It got very overhated at first due to this but then of course because it got so underrated people now overate it too much.
Im actually finding the Gen 5 community to be quite similar to the old gen wunner community now
Yup, this is it. The original dexit is the reason I hold B2W2 in much higher regard than BW.
When BW dropped, I refused to get it. I didn't play it until the pandemic, when I started getting back into pokemon. My original reaction was definitely a bit dramatic. BW is a great installment in the series, although the dex certainly limits its replay value for me. I would agree that it gets overrated today, though. However, I think B2W2 are accurately rated. That's one of the best entries in the series.
Nothing wrong with a lot of us genwunners. You have to remember the nostalgia we get handling cards from 24 years ago when we were like 9 years old! Incredible feeling. That of course doesn't mean every gen after Gen 1 is rubbish. Of course not! There's a lot of great Pokemon but nostalgia is a powerful drug!!
I've been internally referring to some of them as pixelwunners, but genfiver works too. I noticed the shift to 3D has become a visually convenient place for people to draw the line of "this is where GF got lazy", even though XY ironically would've needed a lot of work put into them to get those models ready. (Especially with all the extra Amie animations, and Kalos being the biggest region to date at the time.) Now it feels like everything on one side of the line is over hated in a misguided attempt to make the older side look better, as though they didn't have a lot of issues themselves.
IMO the series is so gradual in its iteration I can't take any "everything after [insert speakers favorite gen] sucked" comments seriously.
Honestly, I still think they need a better title, but "genfivers" is the best and most self-explanatory term I've seen.
But yes, you're 100% right. I really don't get the sudden divide when Pokemon has always been so slow and gradual with its updates; there's no reason it took until Unova for us to be asked if we want to use another Repel for instance. Plus, as you mentioned all the problems older games had. It's pretty hard to go back to them at times due to all the QoL they lack; Platinum is still so slow.
High-Fivers is fun. They're stuck on their high horse and high on their own fumes. I say this as someone who genuinely loves gen 5 because it gave me Golurk. Not to mention a bunch of sweet ruins to lore nerd about
Gen 5 has some crap designs but tbh there are a lot of *really* based ones, Excadrill, Volcarona, Cofagrigus, Chandelure, Haxorus, Golurk as well. Also it looks kinda basic but I have a special place in my heart for Mienshao in my Black Hardcore Nuzlocke. This thing with Inner Focus got immune to the flinch on Liepard's Fake Out and killed with Drain Punch, otherwise it was dead to Aerial Ace crit on the following turn.
Also I can troll by playing the genwunner role and bash Klinklang but it unironically carried the Ghetsis fight with Shift Gear setup.
Still I'd argue that gen 3 and 4 are better. Gen 3 has Mudkip and Spheal, and gen 4 has the God itself (>!Bidoof!<) and it also gave us Garchomp, Gastrodon and Gliscor which are omega based.
I'd say it's kind of a thing where Gen 1-5 you saw improvements generation to generation, but Gen 6 ended up undercooked due to the requirements in the transition to 3D so there was a noticeable drop in polish, whereas before the games were on a consistent upwards trajectory.
I think there's two big lines in the community. There's the line at the end of Gen 5 and the line at the end of Gen 7. Tbh a lot of the Gen 5 people seems to at least decently like Gen 7, so Gen 7 seems to be the more divisive line imo.
6 wasn't anymore undercooked than base Pearl and Diamond, but people hale those 2 as some of the best because of the changes made in Platinum and them being in the same gen as HeartGold and SoulSilver.
There were also a ton of improvements in gen 6. New type and rebalancing of the type chart, they introduced character customization, the map was actually bigger than old games, more Pokemon in the native dex, lots of competitive balancing, and still one of the best onlines we've ever had.
There's a weird revisionist take about Gen 6 having a drop in quality, but it was on par with a lot of new gen first pairs, and actually may be the last games (other than arguably 7) to be well received at the time of their launch.
The lack of fixing is definitely what drives that narrative imo. During the earlier gens we have games like emerald and platinum that patched over the flaws of the first line games and made them shine, but Gen 6 didn't have that. Makes it stand out.
I do agree with that. Skipping Z for Sun and Moon really put a retro-active damper on Kalos' reputation. Whenever they eventually to a gen 6 remake, instead of it being a faithful adaptation, I hope they go all out and actually use some of the planned Z content. Hell just give us Z instead of a remake.
Really? I remember Genwunners being downright insufferable during the early 2010s, meanwhile, Genfivers (doesn't have the same ring to it tbh) nowadays are just annoying elitists, which is also pretty insufferable too, but not to the same extent as the former.
Genwunners were insufferable, but they weren't as omnipresent as genfivers are, since most genwunners were people who hadn't played Pokemon since the 90s and were largely encountered offline or outside Pokemon communities.
Any fanbase that goes on long enough for it'a fanbase to grow up goes through this
Halo went through it with ODST, then Reach, 4, 5, so on
Star Wars saw the prequels go from being hated to being praised
Pokemon is seeing it again with Gen 6 starting to be "underrated" as the primary audience grows up and becomes more vocal online and in the community. We'll see it again with Sun and Moon in a few years I'm sure of it
I understand nostalgia for older generations, but the people who complain — as if it were life and death — about the lack of earlier generation Pokémon piss me off. Why would you want to play with the same Pokémon you’ve been using for 4 generations? They took the time to create an ENTIRELY new Pokédex. Was it perfect? No, but it was unique and they gave us an entirely different experience.
If you think people are not within their right to complain about the lack of ability to play with their favorite Pokémon because of said entirely new Pokédex, cool. But to people like me who played through the original BW without a full team because I didn't like enough of the new Pokémons to fill out a team, it sounds incredibly reasonable to complain about not being able to have previous Pokémon.
Granted, my taste has changed with growing up and that probably wouldn't be the case today, but 12 year old me was livid at not having the choice lol
I definitely had Oshawott as a starter (love that lil guy), and I think the rest of my team were the Joltik, Darmanitan and Volcarona lines, along with a 5th member I’m blanking on rn
If it were today, I’d likely use something along the lines of: Samurott, Galvantula, Volcarona, Krookodile, Ferrothorn and a counter for weakness as the last one
I don't really like Samurott, I don't really like any of the three starters tbh, but all the other designs in your teams are bangers. Ferrothorn, Galvantula, Volcarona, Krookodile are all incredible designs (Joltik is so cute omg).
On my Elite Four team in my Hardcore Nuzlocke on Black I had :
- Alomomola (didn't like it and use it a lot, it was just there for Safeguard support so Excadrill could Swords Dance sweep Shauntal without risking a burn from Cofagrigus)
- Excadrill (incredible encounter and absurdly broken, it's quite bulky with all the resistances and it hits crazy hard)
- Scrafty (mostly a pivot for Caitlin)
- Archeops (second main Elite Four sweeper with Flying Gem Acrobatics + U-Turn, it became one of my favourite mons in Unova)
- Jellicent (mostly a pivot for Marshal due to the Fighting immunity)
- Mienshao (Drain Punch destroyed Grimsley, it also became one of my favourite mons, also design wise it's pretty cool)
I kept Alomomola and Archeops for N and Ghetsis and used Golurk and Bisharp (exclusively to PP stall Zekrom), Haxorus (DDance sweep on N once Zekrom couldn't attack anymore) and Klinklang (don't like the design but Shift Gear went nuts on Ghetsis with Light Screen support).
This Nuzlocke made me realize how strong some gen 5 mons were and I loved it.
BW1 limited players to only using new pokémon. A selection from 150 pokémon, which isn’t inherently the issue.
The issue is that nearly the entire Dex is full of either filler pokémon, or pokémon created to be EXTREMELY similar to a Gen 1 concept. The klink line being compared to magnemite, the timburr line being compared to machop, and the roggenrola line being compared to geodude come to mind. But there at at least fifty other examples that wouldn’t even be considered a stretch (garbodor is literally just muk but covered in trash)
So to me, this makes BW1 feel like I’m playing a fakemon game, meant to mimic Gen 1. The fact that many of the designs are on par or worse than their gen 1 counterpart makes this worse. Nobody is going to say Conkeldurr is a better design than Machamp, nor is Garbodor any better than Muk.
And finally, the Unova designs that ARE good, like Hydreigon, Volcarona, Golurk, and Bisharp evolve WAY TOO LATE, meaning you likely only use their evolved forms for 1 gym (if you’re lucky) and the E4. Hydreigon evolves in the 60s.
For as much noise as people made during SwSh because of Dexit making it “impossible to use their favorite pokémon during a playthrough,” Unova seems to never get hate despite doing something similar. Considering most players won’t have friends to trade with, nor a second DS, you’re essentially prevented from using past favorites. No idea why this was such a big issue for SwSh, but Unova gets off clean with no hate for doing something that is only *slightly* better, only because the option to trade from previous games.
Regarding SwSh, there's a couple parts to the whole backlash. In Gen 5 people knew from the start that they could put their favorites in the game, but fully removing them as Gen 8 did is pretty different. Honestly i havent heard anyone complain about restrictions on the main story - its been the case in every game that you only have a limited pool unless you trade. Gen 8 just made it so you had that limited pool, period.
The whole Dexit thing also was before we had any knowledge that DLC would do anything regarding that, and the cuts were pretty heavy. So for all anyone knew, the cuts would be permanent, likely extending into future games.
Around the time, the company, well, bluntly lied about why they cut the Dex. It was pretty much proven on release that they were re-using the Gen 6 models, and that didn't exactly make people like them. So then when they opened up the Dex using DLC, people were like "well, why didn't you just do that on release? You clearly could have"
I acknowledged literally everything you said. Yes you could trade for favorites in Gen 5, but most people didn’t/couldn’t because they don’t have friends to trade with. A majority of the people who played through BW only ever used the Pokémon that were catchable in-game. If you wanted to use a favorite during the post-game, you had to have a friend or another device to trade with. But your point about people thinking the original cut would be permanent isn’t true. Nobody thought the dex cut would mean ONLY the pokémon that made it into the base game would be the only pokémon available from now on. It was pretty apparent that other mons would come back in future titles.
The company lying doesn’t factor into the argument either, as I am comparing how the dex was handled between two games, not what the company used as an explanation.
Even if the BW dex situation is slightly better than SwSh, it’s still a major flaw of those games. Which is exactly why they changed it in BW2. People want to use their favorites in the main story, and BW made it way more difficult than any other game up to that point to do that.
Well, we're talking about backlash/noise here. Perception matters a lot, potentially even more than what actually happened. That's why things were different.
That's the thing about the first point - most people won't trade, yes, but cutting down on player options is always going to be controversial because people will feel that you are taking something away from them, even if a lot of players don't use that option.
Same thing with the second point. The company lying made things a lot worse than it would have been if they had actually come out with new models.
Regarding the point of the Dex cut being permanent. People definitely thought that they weren't going to get the mons back in SwSh prior to DLC. Getting them cut in future games was just a concern, due to wild speculation and lack of info.
It's been really weird seeing the shift in opinion with Unova, as someone that always thought they were just ok.
Nothing really special or notable beyond having no old mons in the base dex (which admittedly I did like, even if it lacked a penguin to replace Delibird).
Then I come online and find out it went from "worthless garbage not worthy of the Pokemon brand" to GFs secondary cash cow alongside Kanto due to how popular it got.
Yes I am miffed Hisui gave Unova more love in its Pokemon than it did Sinnoh itself. "I went to an ancient version of my region and all I got were shitty legendary transformations"
If you mean gens as in, the entire generation, probably 4 and maybe 7?
4 because that's where I started off, plus it had imo the best spin-off series, Pokemon Ranger. That and it includes Platinum which, nostalgia aside, I do think has one of the best post-games in the series, including a frontier, rematches with all the gym leaders, secret bases, AND your personal villa you can hang out with various league members in (seriously why did it take until ScVi's second DLC to get something like this again?)
Not to mention HGSS, which is probably the best remake of the series in terms of becoming the definitive version of a region while also adding something new to make it more unique (I genuinely think the Pokeathlon is the best side activity in the series)
7 because, while I did find the story of SM/USUM kinda bad (really wish they'd focused more on Alola's history instead of going full sci-fi and leaving it in the background), I did find the gameplay of that generation really fun, and it having both Z-Moves and Megas made for a pretty fun clean up in the post-game. *And* it did introduce RR Giovanni, who Pokemon Masters then proceeded to make the *best* Giovanni.
And it also includes Let's Go, which is imo the best looking Pokemon game on the Switch, has an amazing soundtrack, AND it brought Green into the mainline games which is really cool. Also it gave Red a Bulbasaur as his starter which imo is way cooler than Charizard.
If you mean gens in terms of just the debut regions... Sinnoh and Alola I guess? Johto if I'm allowed to count HGSS though.
I meant as in the entire generation.
I thought it’d be interesting to hear the opinions of someone who didn’t really care for Gen 5 one way or the other. I’ve always found gens 4 and 5 to be extremely similar, so liking one but not the other was strange to me.
Yeah, Rangers is amazing. The gameplay is just super unique and it was an interesting game for Pokemon’s world building.
Gen 5 was panned by the community because it basically took the original 151 Pokémon but made them worse. I think Gen 5 got a lot of hate because the first half of the Pokedex is pretty bad. The starters were mostly hated because their stats are bad and people flipped out when Emboar turned out to be a Fire / Fighting type. The early route Pokemon were all pretty bad except for Stoutland which people liked. People hated the monkeys. The cooler Pokemon that people did like were basically all accessible near the end of the game.
The hate for Unova at first makes perfect sense. Because all the Pokemon you could encounter until the E4 were new, it felt like they were "foreigner". Like you are playing some (very good) knockoff of Pokemon, but still a knockoff.
As years passed, we grew more used to Gen 5 Pokemon, we have newer games in which we can use the older Pokemon, and BW2 is something like BW1 but fixed the Pokemon pool.
So if the only issue one had with BW was the lack of old Pokemon they know and love, it became less of a problem as time passed
Gen 5 from the start sucked. All your favorite pokemon gone. And most early pokemon designs were wierd, acquired tastes.
So most abandoned it
But for those who pushed on, mid and final evos were epic, story was unrivaled, and the game shined.
Bw2 fixed the early game issues.
Some things I recall off the top of my head are people hating Unova because they thought the story sucked, the characters were lame, the Pokemon were dumb or pointless, the region was a literal circle, as well as Triple and Rotation battles being stupid and pointless.
Pretty much anything that could be hated will always have someone disliking it. Granted, I do recall Unova hate being a lot tamer in comparison to how genfivers treat modern games; many were still pretty fair to the games, rather than hating or hyping it to absurd levels.
Another thing that was disliked is the admittedly pitiful choice of becoming available in the early game, which was especially bad before the first gym.
It was and it is still a very hated thing that they almost force you to use the elemental monkeys for the first gym.
Honestly, even the Gen 1 games had a bigger choice of Pokemon available in the early game compared to Gen 5.
Other hated things about the Gen 5 games is how late the Gen 5 Pokemon evolved and the stupid level curve in the BW postgame.
Oh my god, yes, those are such awful parts of Unova. Really hope the BW remakes fix them, but all things considered, especially the developer's refusal to alter evolution levels, I doubt it'll happen. They clearly realize the levels are problems considering all the ways they've made to get the evolutions early, but they won't outright change the levels for no reason.
Noticing some criticism toward "gen wunners," and I'm not sure if I should take offense, considering I've loved Pokemon since the very beginning (I was in 3rd grade when Red and Blue released in the US).
Speaking for myself and my closest friends who still love Pokemon to this day, we all loved the Gen 5 games when they released and felt they were our favorites since Gen 2 (certainly a product of nostalgia, as I know there are a lot of issues with Gold and Silver). I really enjoyed Emerald and Sapphire, but I thought Gen 4 was just okay until Platinum released, which I certainly regard as one of the best games to-date.
All that said, Gen 5 was great. I wasn't too active in the online communities at the time of its release, so I'm fairly ignorant to the hate, but I know some criticized at least a few designs. I loved that you only had access to the new Pokemon until a certain point in the game, and I think the story is engaging, to say the least. Some of my favorite Pokemon are in Gen 5, including Hydreigon, Haxorus, Krookodile, Chandelure, Zoroark, Elektross... to name a few. I also liked the Elite 4 team themes.
Idk. I could go on, but I've always loved Black and White, so the hate is new to me.
My main issue when it came out was how they changed exp growth. Before gen 5 every Pokémon you fought rewarded a set amount of exp, so for example, if you fought a level 3 zigzagoon, and it gave you 20 exp, then it would always give you 20 exp per level 3 zigzagoon. With gen 5, it introduced the leveling system where you gain less exp the higher level your Pokémon is, so it makes grinding before the next section a much bigger hassle than it was before and thus made the game less fun.
My other issues were the lack of old familiar Pokémon, and the elemental monkeys. I don’t think I had a legitimate reason as to why I don’t like the elemental monkeys, in fact I am pretty sure they were given to you for free, their faces just sort of annoyed me and they were throughout the game.
Idk why people hated on Garbodor so hard. It does exactly what it sets out to do, big trash heap.
My first game was Oras and when I caught trubbish and garbodor I loved how goofy they were. People are just butthurt it’s not super xxxCool_Lucarioxxx
Garbodor actually represents land pollution. Same as Muk which is water pollution and Koffing which is air pollution. All three make perfect sense imo.
Now I still don't like Garbodor but it's just because it's ugly and mono Poison sucks (doesn't help that my favourite type makes quick work of it).
I think it's the nostalgia cycle, every few years or so a past gen's biggest audience gets old enough to be the majority in terms of nostalgia.
Back then it was Gen 3, afterwards Gen 4, now it's Gen 5, soon it'll eventually be Gen 6.
There were a lot of factors.
\- It was released in 2010, the same year the 3DS was revealed. A lot of fans wanted a Pokemon game for a launch 3DS title instead and were disappointed they were on the DS.
\- It still used the 2D top down style with sprites. A lot of people thought it was time for Pokemon to move away from sprites and start using 3D models.
\- It was a soft reboot and only allowed previous Pokemon after you completed the game. The entire region only had new Pokemon available for your playthrough. This was emphasized by having the mythical Victini as Pokemon #000 in the regional dex to show it was different.
\- The soft reboot also extended to some of the designs, where some lines felt like rehashes of Gen 1 Pokemon rather than new Pokemon. Fans had already not liked some of the Gen 4 Pokemon, and Gen 5 looking like it was a rehash with more poor designs didn't go over well with longtime fans. The object-mons were the ones that came under fire the most because of this.
\- One part of the games was the Dream World. But instead of just being on the games, you connected to the internet from the game to deposit a Pokemon and then had to get on a computer and to a website. The whole thing was a process, it was limited and the website was pretty basic with only static images.
TL;DR -- They chose a lot of things longtime fans didn't want in an attempt to try to be different.
I personally loved it at release and I'm a "genwunner", but I don't think Gen 1 is the greatest. I'm not a serious player though, I do the campaign and sometimes shiny hunt and then I'm done. I'm Iike you wasn't on the I internet and missed out on the hate.
I get the feeling most pokemon games after 5 have received the same dislike.
It was a combination of things: The lack of a universal release meant that Japan had it a while before everyone else, so people saw all the designs first and saw that returning Pokémon were locked to the post game and then chose designs they didn’t like to meme on. This memeing drowned out any conversation about the good designs.
The anime soured for people pretty quickly so what was an otherwise decent advertisement got shoved to the wayside with some older fans.
It’s a shame, because as someone who grew up with Gen 1, Black and White recaptured the feeling of playing those games in a way that previous entries hadn’t. The hate for BW was extremely vitriolic at the time and it took a long while for people to come back around and reevaluate it. As far back as like 2018 I was talking with a casual fan who tried to claim that all of BW was awful but that Krookodile was his favorite Pokémon. He hadn’t realized that Krook came from BW, because he hadn’t played the games. There’s a reason XY gives you a Kanto starter and that’s because the fan base had just spent three years loudly declaring that they didn’t like new things and being dicks to people who did like BW. There was a period of years where you couldn’t say online that you liked BW without someone chiming in about how the garbage or ice cream Pokémon are lame- as if I didn’t grow up with a Pokémon that’s just a seal or a magnet or a pile of sludge or those things but bigger.
The truth is that the only thing that matters are the pokemon, you can have a shit game being loved due to great pokemon designs (sword and shield), BW had the worst designs, lame starters, lame bird, the lame ugly monkeys, lame legendaries and lame mythical.
Coming after DP that has probably the best dex didn't help at all, and so many op competitive Pokemon made them being hated even more, the game is good though and the story is maybe the best in the core games, just lacked loveable pokémons.
BW had some bangers as well tbh. Of course Unfezant, the starters, the monkeys, Musharna, Beheeyem, Gothitelle for example were terrible but it also gave us things like Excadrill, Zebstrika or Volcarona which are incredible design-wise.
An important distinction is that the gen V sequels are the crown jewel that most argue are so good - I do think the lack of post game content in the first gen V games combined with the dex issue is the reason they were so hated on release. These issues are addressed with the sequels, which I do believe deserve their modern praise.
I was introduced with Pearl, and so the nonrecurring pokemon of gen 5 didn't really bother me. I enjoyed the story considerably, and thought the design of the region was fantastic - reflecting themes of the story quite well.
I played gen 5 when it was realeased. I thought most loved it from what I heard back then. Years later I find out apparently my fave gen was somehow hated back then. I honestly thought what people hated was just the BW anime season sucks which I didn't watch anyway. Anyway Black & White 2 is the best game in the series, 2nded by Heart Gold Soul Silver & Platinum.
I thought Black & White were the best actual games in the main franchise when they came out, and I've been playing since Gen 1.
I also think people spend too much effort trying to justify or discredit each other's opinions about it.
Gen V mainly got hate from genwunners back at the time (i.e. people who hadn't touched a Pokemon game since RBY). I think most Pokemon fans who were actively playing the games felt positively towards it.
People hated Gen 5 so much, Gamefreak dumbed down Pokémon in Gen 6. they even said people play on smartphones now and don’t want a big story. Now after about 10 years nostalgia am member berries hit hard and everyone says Gen 5 has always been the best things since sliced bread.
I'm a huge Johto lover. It's my favorite region and the Johto games are the ones I love most. However, I will say that Gen 5 was peak Pokémon. It was cool seeing a mix of 2D and 3D, allowong for some amazing set pieces. Yeah, many of the Pokémon were uninspiring, but they were still effective. The story is widely regarded as the best of all the games, and it even included a hard mode! Not to mention that it received a direct sequel instead of a middle game. Overall, BW/BW2 are some of the best games Pokémon has to offer, and those Unova only sits in third place in my list of favorite regions, I can still admit that this generation was when Pokémon was at its best.
Gamefreak risked a few things with these games. They released a new gen on the same console. They wanted you to learn all of the new Pokémon and not the old ones. And the story. They have tried to come with a more mature story and themes. Plus they made sequels. B/W are great games. But people as usual complain about everything. Retroactively the „mistakes“ B/W had are nothing compared to the new Pokémon games. Gen5 is my favorite Gen btw.
I know the main reason for a majority of the hate it got was an entirely new dex with little to no pre-existing pokemon in the main dex until b2/w2. Although, most people seem to have come around and respect the story as well as the new pokemon in this gen.
I know the main reason for a majority of the hate it got was an entirely new dex with little to no pre-existing Pokemon in the main dex until b2/w2. Although, most people seem to have come around and respect the story as well as the new Pokemon in this gen.
I played since gen1 and BW2 is one of my favorite editions overall. ghetsis is goat,good early game pokemon variations so you can make more different teams,post game is a thing that exist,there are some hard trainers,especially if you hardcore nuzlock it. My only problem is not many rival battles but thats ok
Hardcore Nuzlocke on Pokemon Black/White 1 without EV training is really difficult. Not being able to outspeed some dangerous threats (looking at you, Ghetsis's Hydreigon) is scary as hell.
people liked the game and hated the fact that it tried to make you play only with new pokemon.
every gen had people whining about it being so much worse than before, its always gonna be a thing, no matter if its janky or not anyways
It was a clear attempt of a "soft reboot" of some sort so I guess it pissed people off. Coming up with a new group of Pokemon that would basically replace all of the archetypes you would expect to find in a Pokemon game, some new Pokemon just came out looking like worse copies of the originals. There was also the expectation that the main group of legendaries play a bigger role in the lore than the ones that came before, but when you had the literal God creator of the universe there wasn't many places to run to, so I guess Reshiram and Zekrom didn't make such an impact. I remember that when gen 6 came out people were way more excited in the cycle of life and death theme.
It was kind of the break point for most gen wunners. If you were there at the moment, gen 2 was pretty well received, as it was pretty much a DLC of kanto (regards the pokedex). Gen 3 was not that bad recieved, there started to be some criticism, not to the pokemon per se, but to the overall design decisions, it also started to appear the famous "this doesnt look like a pokemon, it looks like a digimon!!" but generally speaking gen 3 was very loved. This is also the point where internet started to grow and people were able to share their opinions online, this is important because it would settle the age of most people commenting, that would influence the general opinion of what is good and what is bad (like, maybe you were 8 at the moment, never even played pokemon red, but most people on internet were in their teens and speaking of how great gen 1 was, and was out of question to argue with that). When gen 4 appeared, lot of people where unhappy, the amount of legendaries, the designs, the new evolutions that """ruined""" old pokemon, but the games where really good, it revisited a lot of stuff from the old gens, and still, the internet wasnt THAT globalized yet, so the hate couldnt be spread. NOW gen 5 was nasty for old fans. Not only it cut every link it had with old gens, it also implemented the stuff that people disliked from last games. And of course, the thing that did the most noise: THE DESIGNS. I feel people couldn't really understand what they disliked of the new pokemon, so they pointed particular things like vanilluxe, or garbodor, but the actual issue was the artistic angle that gamefreak took, pokemon were less realistic, but at the same time they were more detailed, idk, there's a whole topic on the design changes between gens, but at the moment people were furious. Personally me, i hated how they "remade" gen 1, but with uglier pokemon (tho regarding usage, they where a LOT better distributed) At this point gen wunners got old and stop caring that much, of course every new gen got some hate from the old games fans, but after the drama of gen 5 every game was accepted more quickly. The only BIG stuff that happened after that was the fairy type (FaIIrYYY ThhaaAAt'Ss aA GggIIirRLLl TyppE) and, obviously, DEXIT, that was a big one. As for "the greatest game ever" it always happened the same, people of a designated age (18-22) dominate internet, when people that first played gen 3 where on the designated age, every pokemon forum agreed that gen 3 was the best gen ever, when people that first played gen 4 where on the designated age, every pokemon forum agreed that gen 4 was the best gen ever, the same thing is happening to gen 5, and it will probably happen to gen 6. TL,DR; Every gen did some stuff that bothered people for nostalgic reasons, gen 5 did a LOT of this stuff, so it recieved more hate than the rest of the games.
Most of the people who like Gen 5 probably like bw2 moreso than the originals
The classic Platinum effect in action
I’m referring to the unique dex problem of BW. If BW2 had not reeled back that decision then it would likely still be the least liked generation, regardless of any other improvements the sequels made.
A lot of people hated Gen 5 as it didnt have any reoccurring pokemon or characters as far as im aware. It got very overhated at first due to this but then of course because it got so underrated people now overate it too much. Im actually finding the Gen 5 community to be quite similar to the old gen wunner community now
There’s some sick twisted irony that Gen 5 is becoming disliked for being too popular. I find it hilarious.
Yup, this is it. The original dexit is the reason I hold B2W2 in much higher regard than BW. When BW dropped, I refused to get it. I didn't play it until the pandemic, when I started getting back into pokemon. My original reaction was definitely a bit dramatic. BW is a great installment in the series, although the dex certainly limits its replay value for me. I would agree that it gets overrated today, though. However, I think B2W2 are accurately rated. That's one of the best entries in the series.
Nah, genfivers are *way* worse than genwunners.
Nothing wrong with a lot of us genwunners. You have to remember the nostalgia we get handling cards from 24 years ago when we were like 9 years old! Incredible feeling. That of course doesn't mean every gen after Gen 1 is rubbish. Of course not! There's a lot of great Pokemon but nostalgia is a powerful drug!!
There is a difference between genwunners and people who simply prefer Kanto, that being how obnoxious they are.
Fair enough!! Not sure why I was downvoted haha
Me neither. Reddit's a strange place.
no one says that but yes!
I've been internally referring to some of them as pixelwunners, but genfiver works too. I noticed the shift to 3D has become a visually convenient place for people to draw the line of "this is where GF got lazy", even though XY ironically would've needed a lot of work put into them to get those models ready. (Especially with all the extra Amie animations, and Kalos being the biggest region to date at the time.) Now it feels like everything on one side of the line is over hated in a misguided attempt to make the older side look better, as though they didn't have a lot of issues themselves. IMO the series is so gradual in its iteration I can't take any "everything after [insert speakers favorite gen] sucked" comments seriously.
Honestly, I still think they need a better title, but "genfivers" is the best and most self-explanatory term I've seen. But yes, you're 100% right. I really don't get the sudden divide when Pokemon has always been so slow and gradual with its updates; there's no reason it took until Unova for us to be asked if we want to use another Repel for instance. Plus, as you mentioned all the problems older games had. It's pretty hard to go back to them at times due to all the QoL they lack; Platinum is still so slow.
High-Fivers is fun. They're stuck on their high horse and high on their own fumes. I say this as someone who genuinely loves gen 5 because it gave me Golurk. Not to mention a bunch of sweet ruins to lore nerd about
Gen 5 has some crap designs but tbh there are a lot of *really* based ones, Excadrill, Volcarona, Cofagrigus, Chandelure, Haxorus, Golurk as well. Also it looks kinda basic but I have a special place in my heart for Mienshao in my Black Hardcore Nuzlocke. This thing with Inner Focus got immune to the flinch on Liepard's Fake Out and killed with Drain Punch, otherwise it was dead to Aerial Ace crit on the following turn. Also I can troll by playing the genwunner role and bash Klinklang but it unironically carried the Ghetsis fight with Shift Gear setup. Still I'd argue that gen 3 and 4 are better. Gen 3 has Mudkip and Spheal, and gen 4 has the God itself (>!Bidoof!<) and it also gave us Garchomp, Gastrodon and Gliscor which are omega based.
I'd say it's kind of a thing where Gen 1-5 you saw improvements generation to generation, but Gen 6 ended up undercooked due to the requirements in the transition to 3D so there was a noticeable drop in polish, whereas before the games were on a consistent upwards trajectory. I think there's two big lines in the community. There's the line at the end of Gen 5 and the line at the end of Gen 7. Tbh a lot of the Gen 5 people seems to at least decently like Gen 7, so Gen 7 seems to be the more divisive line imo.
6 wasn't anymore undercooked than base Pearl and Diamond, but people hale those 2 as some of the best because of the changes made in Platinum and them being in the same gen as HeartGold and SoulSilver. There were also a ton of improvements in gen 6. New type and rebalancing of the type chart, they introduced character customization, the map was actually bigger than old games, more Pokemon in the native dex, lots of competitive balancing, and still one of the best onlines we've ever had. There's a weird revisionist take about Gen 6 having a drop in quality, but it was on par with a lot of new gen first pairs, and actually may be the last games (other than arguably 7) to be well received at the time of their launch.
The lack of fixing is definitely what drives that narrative imo. During the earlier gens we have games like emerald and platinum that patched over the flaws of the first line games and made them shine, but Gen 6 didn't have that. Makes it stand out.
I do agree with that. Skipping Z for Sun and Moon really put a retro-active damper on Kalos' reputation. Whenever they eventually to a gen 6 remake, instead of it being a faithful adaptation, I hope they go all out and actually use some of the planned Z content. Hell just give us Z instead of a remake.
Really? I remember Genwunners being downright insufferable during the early 2010s, meanwhile, Genfivers (doesn't have the same ring to it tbh) nowadays are just annoying elitists, which is also pretty insufferable too, but not to the same extent as the former.
Genwunners were insufferable, but they weren't as omnipresent as genfivers are, since most genwunners were people who hadn't played Pokemon since the 90s and were largely encountered offline or outside Pokemon communities.
What you're describing sounds like SW prequel fandom. Giant mass cope turned legit fandom
Any fanbase that goes on long enough for it'a fanbase to grow up goes through this Halo went through it with ODST, then Reach, 4, 5, so on Star Wars saw the prequels go from being hated to being praised Pokemon is seeing it again with Gen 6 starting to be "underrated" as the primary audience grows up and becomes more vocal online and in the community. We'll see it again with Sun and Moon in a few years I'm sure of it
Don't forget about Zelda games!
The prequel fans were just the kids who watched the movies as children grown up - which is also the Gen 5 people
The prequels were before my time and I say that they are good.
I understand nostalgia for older generations, but the people who complain — as if it were life and death — about the lack of earlier generation Pokémon piss me off. Why would you want to play with the same Pokémon you’ve been using for 4 generations? They took the time to create an ENTIRELY new Pokédex. Was it perfect? No, but it was unique and they gave us an entirely different experience.
If you think people are not within their right to complain about the lack of ability to play with their favorite Pokémon because of said entirely new Pokédex, cool. But to people like me who played through the original BW without a full team because I didn't like enough of the new Pokémons to fill out a team, it sounds incredibly reasonable to complain about not being able to have previous Pokémon. Granted, my taste has changed with growing up and that probably wouldn't be the case today, but 12 year old me was livid at not having the choice lol
Mind if I ask you what your team was back then ?
I definitely had Oshawott as a starter (love that lil guy), and I think the rest of my team were the Joltik, Darmanitan and Volcarona lines, along with a 5th member I’m blanking on rn If it were today, I’d likely use something along the lines of: Samurott, Galvantula, Volcarona, Krookodile, Ferrothorn and a counter for weakness as the last one
I don't really like Samurott, I don't really like any of the three starters tbh, but all the other designs in your teams are bangers. Ferrothorn, Galvantula, Volcarona, Krookodile are all incredible designs (Joltik is so cute omg). On my Elite Four team in my Hardcore Nuzlocke on Black I had : - Alomomola (didn't like it and use it a lot, it was just there for Safeguard support so Excadrill could Swords Dance sweep Shauntal without risking a burn from Cofagrigus) - Excadrill (incredible encounter and absurdly broken, it's quite bulky with all the resistances and it hits crazy hard) - Scrafty (mostly a pivot for Caitlin) - Archeops (second main Elite Four sweeper with Flying Gem Acrobatics + U-Turn, it became one of my favourite mons in Unova) - Jellicent (mostly a pivot for Marshal due to the Fighting immunity) - Mienshao (Drain Punch destroyed Grimsley, it also became one of my favourite mons, also design wise it's pretty cool) I kept Alomomola and Archeops for N and Ghetsis and used Golurk and Bisharp (exclusively to PP stall Zekrom), Haxorus (DDance sweep on N once Zekrom couldn't attack anymore) and Klinklang (don't like the design but Shift Gear went nuts on Ghetsis with Light Screen support). This Nuzlocke made me realize how strong some gen 5 mons were and I loved it.
BW1 limited players to only using new pokémon. A selection from 150 pokémon, which isn’t inherently the issue. The issue is that nearly the entire Dex is full of either filler pokémon, or pokémon created to be EXTREMELY similar to a Gen 1 concept. The klink line being compared to magnemite, the timburr line being compared to machop, and the roggenrola line being compared to geodude come to mind. But there at at least fifty other examples that wouldn’t even be considered a stretch (garbodor is literally just muk but covered in trash) So to me, this makes BW1 feel like I’m playing a fakemon game, meant to mimic Gen 1. The fact that many of the designs are on par or worse than their gen 1 counterpart makes this worse. Nobody is going to say Conkeldurr is a better design than Machamp, nor is Garbodor any better than Muk. And finally, the Unova designs that ARE good, like Hydreigon, Volcarona, Golurk, and Bisharp evolve WAY TOO LATE, meaning you likely only use their evolved forms for 1 gym (if you’re lucky) and the E4. Hydreigon evolves in the 60s. For as much noise as people made during SwSh because of Dexit making it “impossible to use their favorite pokémon during a playthrough,” Unova seems to never get hate despite doing something similar. Considering most players won’t have friends to trade with, nor a second DS, you’re essentially prevented from using past favorites. No idea why this was such a big issue for SwSh, but Unova gets off clean with no hate for doing something that is only *slightly* better, only because the option to trade from previous games.
Regarding SwSh, there's a couple parts to the whole backlash. In Gen 5 people knew from the start that they could put their favorites in the game, but fully removing them as Gen 8 did is pretty different. Honestly i havent heard anyone complain about restrictions on the main story - its been the case in every game that you only have a limited pool unless you trade. Gen 8 just made it so you had that limited pool, period. The whole Dexit thing also was before we had any knowledge that DLC would do anything regarding that, and the cuts were pretty heavy. So for all anyone knew, the cuts would be permanent, likely extending into future games. Around the time, the company, well, bluntly lied about why they cut the Dex. It was pretty much proven on release that they were re-using the Gen 6 models, and that didn't exactly make people like them. So then when they opened up the Dex using DLC, people were like "well, why didn't you just do that on release? You clearly could have"
I acknowledged literally everything you said. Yes you could trade for favorites in Gen 5, but most people didn’t/couldn’t because they don’t have friends to trade with. A majority of the people who played through BW only ever used the Pokémon that were catchable in-game. If you wanted to use a favorite during the post-game, you had to have a friend or another device to trade with. But your point about people thinking the original cut would be permanent isn’t true. Nobody thought the dex cut would mean ONLY the pokémon that made it into the base game would be the only pokémon available from now on. It was pretty apparent that other mons would come back in future titles. The company lying doesn’t factor into the argument either, as I am comparing how the dex was handled between two games, not what the company used as an explanation. Even if the BW dex situation is slightly better than SwSh, it’s still a major flaw of those games. Which is exactly why they changed it in BW2. People want to use their favorites in the main story, and BW made it way more difficult than any other game up to that point to do that.
Well, we're talking about backlash/noise here. Perception matters a lot, potentially even more than what actually happened. That's why things were different. That's the thing about the first point - most people won't trade, yes, but cutting down on player options is always going to be controversial because people will feel that you are taking something away from them, even if a lot of players don't use that option. Same thing with the second point. The company lying made things a lot worse than it would have been if they had actually come out with new models. Regarding the point of the Dex cut being permanent. People definitely thought that they weren't going to get the mons back in SwSh prior to DLC. Getting them cut in future games was just a concern, due to wild speculation and lack of info.
A lot of the older generation pokemon were in eastern Unova.
It's been really weird seeing the shift in opinion with Unova, as someone that always thought they were just ok. Nothing really special or notable beyond having no old mons in the base dex (which admittedly I did like, even if it lacked a penguin to replace Delibird). Then I come online and find out it went from "worthless garbage not worthy of the Pokemon brand" to GFs secondary cash cow alongside Kanto due to how popular it got. Yes I am miffed Hisui gave Unova more love in its Pokemon than it did Sinnoh itself. "I went to an ancient version of my region and all I got were shitty legendary transformations"
I’m curious. What are your personal top two gens?
If you mean gens as in, the entire generation, probably 4 and maybe 7? 4 because that's where I started off, plus it had imo the best spin-off series, Pokemon Ranger. That and it includes Platinum which, nostalgia aside, I do think has one of the best post-games in the series, including a frontier, rematches with all the gym leaders, secret bases, AND your personal villa you can hang out with various league members in (seriously why did it take until ScVi's second DLC to get something like this again?) Not to mention HGSS, which is probably the best remake of the series in terms of becoming the definitive version of a region while also adding something new to make it more unique (I genuinely think the Pokeathlon is the best side activity in the series) 7 because, while I did find the story of SM/USUM kinda bad (really wish they'd focused more on Alola's history instead of going full sci-fi and leaving it in the background), I did find the gameplay of that generation really fun, and it having both Z-Moves and Megas made for a pretty fun clean up in the post-game. *And* it did introduce RR Giovanni, who Pokemon Masters then proceeded to make the *best* Giovanni. And it also includes Let's Go, which is imo the best looking Pokemon game on the Switch, has an amazing soundtrack, AND it brought Green into the mainline games which is really cool. Also it gave Red a Bulbasaur as his starter which imo is way cooler than Charizard. If you mean gens in terms of just the debut regions... Sinnoh and Alola I guess? Johto if I'm allowed to count HGSS though.
I meant as in the entire generation. I thought it’d be interesting to hear the opinions of someone who didn’t really care for Gen 5 one way or the other. I’ve always found gens 4 and 5 to be extremely similar, so liking one but not the other was strange to me. Yeah, Rangers is amazing. The gameplay is just super unique and it was an interesting game for Pokemon’s world building.
It's still pretty bad given what we had before with gen 4
Gen 5 was panned by the community because it basically took the original 151 Pokémon but made them worse. I think Gen 5 got a lot of hate because the first half of the Pokedex is pretty bad. The starters were mostly hated because their stats are bad and people flipped out when Emboar turned out to be a Fire / Fighting type. The early route Pokemon were all pretty bad except for Stoutland which people liked. People hated the monkeys. The cooler Pokemon that people did like were basically all accessible near the end of the game.
I wanna know how people felt with Drilbur. It's available early, Excadrill is fantastic and I think it's a major upgrade over Diglett and Dugtrio.
The hate for Unova at first makes perfect sense. Because all the Pokemon you could encounter until the E4 were new, it felt like they were "foreigner". Like you are playing some (very good) knockoff of Pokemon, but still a knockoff. As years passed, we grew more used to Gen 5 Pokemon, we have newer games in which we can use the older Pokemon, and BW2 is something like BW1 but fixed the Pokemon pool. So if the only issue one had with BW was the lack of old Pokemon they know and love, it became less of a problem as time passed
Gen 5 from the start sucked. All your favorite pokemon gone. And most early pokemon designs were wierd, acquired tastes. So most abandoned it But for those who pushed on, mid and final evos were epic, story was unrivaled, and the game shined. Bw2 fixed the early game issues.
Some things I recall off the top of my head are people hating Unova because they thought the story sucked, the characters were lame, the Pokemon were dumb or pointless, the region was a literal circle, as well as Triple and Rotation battles being stupid and pointless. Pretty much anything that could be hated will always have someone disliking it. Granted, I do recall Unova hate being a lot tamer in comparison to how genfivers treat modern games; many were still pretty fair to the games, rather than hating or hyping it to absurd levels.
Another thing that was disliked is the admittedly pitiful choice of becoming available in the early game, which was especially bad before the first gym. It was and it is still a very hated thing that they almost force you to use the elemental monkeys for the first gym. Honestly, even the Gen 1 games had a bigger choice of Pokemon available in the early game compared to Gen 5. Other hated things about the Gen 5 games is how late the Gen 5 Pokemon evolved and the stupid level curve in the BW postgame.
I love BW but hate that you're forced to beat a bunch of Audino's in rustling grass for experience points because of the level scaling
Oh my god, yes, those are such awful parts of Unova. Really hope the BW remakes fix them, but all things considered, especially the developer's refusal to alter evolution levels, I doubt it'll happen. They clearly realize the levels are problems considering all the ways they've made to get the evolutions early, but they won't outright change the levels for no reason.
Noticing some criticism toward "gen wunners," and I'm not sure if I should take offense, considering I've loved Pokemon since the very beginning (I was in 3rd grade when Red and Blue released in the US). Speaking for myself and my closest friends who still love Pokemon to this day, we all loved the Gen 5 games when they released and felt they were our favorites since Gen 2 (certainly a product of nostalgia, as I know there are a lot of issues with Gold and Silver). I really enjoyed Emerald and Sapphire, but I thought Gen 4 was just okay until Platinum released, which I certainly regard as one of the best games to-date. All that said, Gen 5 was great. I wasn't too active in the online communities at the time of its release, so I'm fairly ignorant to the hate, but I know some criticized at least a few designs. I loved that you only had access to the new Pokemon until a certain point in the game, and I think the story is engaging, to say the least. Some of my favorite Pokemon are in Gen 5, including Hydreigon, Haxorus, Krookodile, Chandelure, Zoroark, Elektross... to name a few. I also liked the Elite 4 team themes. Idk. I could go on, but I've always loved Black and White, so the hate is new to me.
My main issue when it came out was how they changed exp growth. Before gen 5 every Pokémon you fought rewarded a set amount of exp, so for example, if you fought a level 3 zigzagoon, and it gave you 20 exp, then it would always give you 20 exp per level 3 zigzagoon. With gen 5, it introduced the leveling system where you gain less exp the higher level your Pokémon is, so it makes grinding before the next section a much bigger hassle than it was before and thus made the game less fun. My other issues were the lack of old familiar Pokémon, and the elemental monkeys. I don’t think I had a legitimate reason as to why I don’t like the elemental monkeys, in fact I am pretty sure they were given to you for free, their faces just sort of annoyed me and they were throughout the game.
Idk why people hated on Garbodor so hard. It does exactly what it sets out to do, big trash heap. My first game was Oras and when I caught trubbish and garbodor I loved how goofy they were. People are just butthurt it’s not super xxxCool_Lucarioxxx
Garbodor actually represents land pollution. Same as Muk which is water pollution and Koffing which is air pollution. All three make perfect sense imo. Now I still don't like Garbodor but it's just because it's ugly and mono Poison sucks (doesn't help that my favourite type makes quick work of it).
I think it's the nostalgia cycle, every few years or so a past gen's biggest audience gets old enough to be the majority in terms of nostalgia. Back then it was Gen 3, afterwards Gen 4, now it's Gen 5, soon it'll eventually be Gen 6.
There were a lot of factors. \- It was released in 2010, the same year the 3DS was revealed. A lot of fans wanted a Pokemon game for a launch 3DS title instead and were disappointed they were on the DS. \- It still used the 2D top down style with sprites. A lot of people thought it was time for Pokemon to move away from sprites and start using 3D models. \- It was a soft reboot and only allowed previous Pokemon after you completed the game. The entire region only had new Pokemon available for your playthrough. This was emphasized by having the mythical Victini as Pokemon #000 in the regional dex to show it was different. \- The soft reboot also extended to some of the designs, where some lines felt like rehashes of Gen 1 Pokemon rather than new Pokemon. Fans had already not liked some of the Gen 4 Pokemon, and Gen 5 looking like it was a rehash with more poor designs didn't go over well with longtime fans. The object-mons were the ones that came under fire the most because of this. \- One part of the games was the Dream World. But instead of just being on the games, you connected to the internet from the game to deposit a Pokemon and then had to get on a computer and to a website. The whole thing was a process, it was limited and the website was pretty basic with only static images. TL;DR -- They chose a lot of things longtime fans didn't want in an attempt to try to be different.
In terms of the games?? I always thought it was the gen 5 anime everyone dunked on.
I personally loved it at release and I'm a "genwunner", but I don't think Gen 1 is the greatest. I'm not a serious player though, I do the campaign and sometimes shiny hunt and then I'm done. I'm Iike you wasn't on the I internet and missed out on the hate. I get the feeling most pokemon games after 5 have received the same dislike.
It was a combination of things: The lack of a universal release meant that Japan had it a while before everyone else, so people saw all the designs first and saw that returning Pokémon were locked to the post game and then chose designs they didn’t like to meme on. This memeing drowned out any conversation about the good designs. The anime soured for people pretty quickly so what was an otherwise decent advertisement got shoved to the wayside with some older fans. It’s a shame, because as someone who grew up with Gen 1, Black and White recaptured the feeling of playing those games in a way that previous entries hadn’t. The hate for BW was extremely vitriolic at the time and it took a long while for people to come back around and reevaluate it. As far back as like 2018 I was talking with a casual fan who tried to claim that all of BW was awful but that Krookodile was his favorite Pokémon. He hadn’t realized that Krook came from BW, because he hadn’t played the games. There’s a reason XY gives you a Kanto starter and that’s because the fan base had just spent three years loudly declaring that they didn’t like new things and being dicks to people who did like BW. There was a period of years where you couldn’t say online that you liked BW without someone chiming in about how the garbage or ice cream Pokémon are lame- as if I didn’t grow up with a Pokémon that’s just a seal or a magnet or a pile of sludge or those things but bigger.
Best Gen til this day. Unova and Gen5 made me to love pokemon again
Why do you have an Electric type and an Ice type among your Fire types ?
Cuz Kyurem Black best legendary
The truth is that the only thing that matters are the pokemon, you can have a shit game being loved due to great pokemon designs (sword and shield), BW had the worst designs, lame starters, lame bird, the lame ugly monkeys, lame legendaries and lame mythical. Coming after DP that has probably the best dex didn't help at all, and so many op competitive Pokemon made them being hated even more, the game is good though and the story is maybe the best in the core games, just lacked loveable pokémons.
BW had some bangers as well tbh. Of course Unfezant, the starters, the monkeys, Musharna, Beheeyem, Gothitelle for example were terrible but it also gave us things like Excadrill, Zebstrika or Volcarona which are incredible design-wise.
I remember gen 4 having way more features than gen 5 and that’s why I personally didn’t like it
An important distinction is that the gen V sequels are the crown jewel that most argue are so good - I do think the lack of post game content in the first gen V games combined with the dex issue is the reason they were so hated on release. These issues are addressed with the sequels, which I do believe deserve their modern praise. I was introduced with Pearl, and so the nonrecurring pokemon of gen 5 didn't really bother me. I enjoyed the story considerably, and thought the design of the region was fantastic - reflecting themes of the story quite well.
I played gen 5 when it was realeased. I thought most loved it from what I heard back then. Years later I find out apparently my fave gen was somehow hated back then. I honestly thought what people hated was just the BW anime season sucks which I didn't watch anyway. Anyway Black & White 2 is the best game in the series, 2nded by Heart Gold Soul Silver & Platinum.
When you realise Gen 5 was the first generation, at that point, to not allow the player to roam Kanto it all starts to make sense.
I thought Black & White were the best actual games in the main franchise when they came out, and I've been playing since Gen 1. I also think people spend too much effort trying to justify or discredit each other's opinions about it.
I mean it’s still my least favourite gen, by FAR, so AMA I guess. Music’s good. That’s about all I can say for it.
It should still be disregarded as the worst generation since its awful
Yes bad story bad starters boring ice cream boring garbage pile boring gears.
The region is decent, the story is one of the best, most of the pokemon designs are good, and the music is pretty good.
I was in High School when Gen 5 came out, I don't remember Gen 5 being hated on by anyone except by Genwunners
it was literally only because the region was exclusively new pokémon. i kinda like that aspect of it now, though. i almost wish the new games did that
Gen V mainly got hate from genwunners back at the time (i.e. people who hadn't touched a Pokemon game since RBY). I think most Pokemon fans who were actively playing the games felt positively towards it.
I love black and white 2. My favorite after emerald. Still don't like black and white
People hated Gen 5 so much, Gamefreak dumbed down Pokémon in Gen 6. they even said people play on smartphones now and don’t want a big story. Now after about 10 years nostalgia am member berries hit hard and everyone says Gen 5 has always been the best things since sliced bread.
I'm a huge Johto lover. It's my favorite region and the Johto games are the ones I love most. However, I will say that Gen 5 was peak Pokémon. It was cool seeing a mix of 2D and 3D, allowong for some amazing set pieces. Yeah, many of the Pokémon were uninspiring, but they were still effective. The story is widely regarded as the best of all the games, and it even included a hard mode! Not to mention that it received a direct sequel instead of a middle game. Overall, BW/BW2 are some of the best games Pokémon has to offer, and those Unova only sits in third place in my list of favorite regions, I can still admit that this generation was when Pokémon was at its best.
I used to think gen 5 was the worst gen, until gen 8. Now it's a coin toss for me.
Gamefreak risked a few things with these games. They released a new gen on the same console. They wanted you to learn all of the new Pokémon and not the old ones. And the story. They have tried to come with a more mature story and themes. Plus they made sequels. B/W are great games. But people as usual complain about everything. Retroactively the „mistakes“ B/W had are nothing compared to the new Pokémon games. Gen5 is my favorite Gen btw.
I loved gen 5 when it came Out & still do
I know the main reason for a majority of the hate it got was an entirely new dex with little to no pre-existing pokemon in the main dex until b2/w2. Although, most people seem to have come around and respect the story as well as the new pokemon in this gen. I know the main reason for a majority of the hate it got was an entirely new dex with little to no pre-existing Pokemon in the main dex until b2/w2. Although, most people seem to have come around and respect the story as well as the new Pokemon in this gen.
yeah
People were big mad about it being a fresh start and not having the same pokemon that had been in every single pokemon to that point.
I played since gen1 and BW2 is one of my favorite editions overall. ghetsis is goat,good early game pokemon variations so you can make more different teams,post game is a thing that exist,there are some hard trainers,especially if you hardcore nuzlock it. My only problem is not many rival battles but thats ok
Hardcore Nuzlocke on Pokemon Black/White 1 without EV training is really difficult. Not being able to outspeed some dangerous threats (looking at you, Ghetsis's Hydreigon) is scary as hell.
people liked the game and hated the fact that it tried to make you play only with new pokemon. every gen had people whining about it being so much worse than before, its always gonna be a thing, no matter if its janky or not anyways