While I do enjoy these games and they have a lot of neat features and there's certainly a lot of nostalgia for them...

While I do enjoy these games and they have a lot of neat features and there's certainly a lot of nostalgia for them, can we also acknowledge a lot of the downsides that came with the third generation of Pokemon?
>Removing or scaling back a considerable amount of features
No Day/Night cycle, removal of daily events. Base Ruby/Sapphire had minimal postgame content compared to Base Gold/Silver. Even with the lack of Battle Frontier, the playable world of Johto/Kanto felt way larger than Hoenn. The game was also made drastically more linear compared to the previous 2 titles.
Of course, this is not to mention this was the first game to cut Pokemon, with no way to transfer between the old games, several Pokemon were functionally locked out of use, locked behind literal paywalls requiring other games and add-ons.
>Design of Pokemon themselves to be explicitly busier and more humanlike
Mons like Gardevoir and Blaziken paved the way for "man-in-suit" jobmons like Incineroar and Rillaboom.
>Started the trend of legendaries being bighuge mcgod monsters and not just cool, rare Pokemon to be found
Also was the first game to let you catch these Pokemon in mandatory battles before the Elite Four
>Absolutely horrid wild Pokemon variety
Not as bad as sinnoh sure but its still pretty ass considered all the mons they had to work with. Same goes for trainer teams- Is there any reason why Glacia needs to have Sealeo instead of several other Ice-types that existed at this point?
>In general, not improving on the game's mechanics in the same way Gen 2 improved on Gen 1
We still have a considearble amount of HMs that required, and shit like the Physical/Special split still existed. Didn't particularly add that many new items and natures are poorly explained as an in-game mechanic and they continued the trend of mythicals only being obtainable by kids living in Japan or NYC.

Attached: pokemon-gen-3.jpg (1280x720, 143.54K)

I don't really blame them for the removal of day/night or crossgen trading. It just simply wasn't feasible at the time with the hardware available.

I think the biggest criticism is like you said, monetizing the dexcut through forcing you to buy multiple full price games in order to complete it. We accept it as the standard now, but they had real potential to incorporate it all in the base game, but they instead went back to the gen 1 status quo.

>>In general, not improving on the game's mechanics in the same way Gen 2 improved on Gen 1
Natures and abilities are a huge fucking improvement.
I agree natures are poorly-explained but the actual mechanic is great.

Yes, I remember DP being hyped as a return to form. But people who grew up with these games don't remember that, they didn't know what it felt like to go from gen 2 to 3.
Also consider that one region per gen wasn't a precedent when they launched. Gen 1 had Kanto, Gen 2 had Johto and Kanto, people legitimately expected Gen 3 to just add another region on top of that. This is only an unrealistic expectation in hindsight.

>you randomly get a chance to have a pokemon that is good
yes let me add "introduced breeding grinding nonsense" to OP's list

Whats great about it? Some natures are never good like the ones that lower (special)defense or speed. The other ones are neutral or only useful for either special or physical attackers, like timid/modest for Alakazam or jolly/adamant for Haxorus

DP didn't have two regions either. The Fight Area isn't a full region. Though it was a return to form in that it spammed Kanto mons everywhere just like RBY and GSC rather than focusing on the new Pokemon like RSE or BW.

Stat XP was much worse than EV's and DV's were functionally the same as IV's.

It's great because it allows for pokemon of the same species to be noticeably different from each other in terms of stats. It doesn't really matter if you have a shit nature outside of the Battle Frontier.
IV's do the same thing but in a much more obtuse way that makes it significantly harder to know if you have a shit pokemon or not.

Yeah of course, but Sinnoh was by far the largest region yet, arguably feels as big or even larger than Kanto + Johto, and they had the day/night cycle back, as well as like you said a higher focus on older Pokemon.
DP felt less "alien" than RSE.

>Sinnoh was by far the largest region yet
Strange premise.
>Scoring System
Towns/Cities: 1.2 points
Landmarks: 1 point
Routes: 0.8 points

>Kanto
Towns/Cities: 10
Landmarks: 14
Routes: 25

Score: 46

>Johto
Towns/Cities: 10
Landmarks: 19
Routes: 20

Score: 47

>Hoenn
Towns/Cities: 16
Landmarks: 27
Routes: 34

Score: 73.4

>Sinnoh
Towns/Cities: 14
Landmarks: 20
Routes: 30

Score: 60.8

>Unova
Towns/Cities: 19
Landmarks: 49
Routes: 23

Score: 90.2

>Kalos
Towns/Cities: 16
Landmarks: 17
Routes: 22

Score: 53.8

>Alola
Towns/Cities: 9
Landmarks: 59
Routes: 17

Score: 83.4

>Galar
Towns/Cities: 12
Landmarks: 11
Routes: 10

Score: 33.4

>Ranking (from largest to smallest)
1. Unova
2. Alola
3. Hoenn
4. Sinnoh
5. Kalos
6. Johto
7. Kanto
8. Galar