#1: THE HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE SELECTION. I will not accept this as "fair". Not only can you only choose between only five pokemon to play as yourself and your partner (as opposed to 19 in Explorers of Sky; 21 as your partner), there are only 144 pokemon in the entire game to recruit onto your team (as opposed to pretty much every single pokemon ever, including almost every legendary, in Explorers of Sky). Out of a total of 649 pokemon as of the fifth generation, there is really no excuse to include so few. I don't care how good the graphics are; to me, it doesn't at ALL make up for the immensely poor selection of Pokemon to meet in Gates to Infinity. One of my favorite things in Explorers of Sky was seeing all my favorite adorable pokemon and finally recruiting them onto my team. It was so much fun. Of course, didn't feel any of that in Gates to Infinity.
#2: The story. Okay, I'll admit the story was alright. It had me smiling and crying at the end; but, so did the previous Mystery Dungeon games. The issue I had was how simple and short it was. And once it was over..... it was really over, there was almost nothing to do after defeating the main storyline, except expand your paradise, which to be honest is really boring, at least in my opinion. In Explorers of Sky, defeating the main storyline was just the beginning. There was still a LOT to do, and not just tiny little side quests, you still had huge things going on in terms of the story! That was amazing, I put SO many hours into Explorers of Sky and I hardly even finished it all in my last file. Don't even get me started with the "Side Quest" stories. Those were amazing and not only provided more unique gameplay as someone other than yourself, it provided a backstory for many characters. Which brings me to my next point...
#3: Lack of Closeness to the characters. In Gates to Infinity, I didn't feel close to the characters at all. You might be thinking "Well, so? It's just a video game. About Pokemon." Well yeah, I shouldn't expect anything special; but again, I was heavily spoiled by Explorers of Sky, because in that game, I really felt like I was part of a family. Living at the guild and being part of a system, with an organized job to do, made me feel so emotionally close to all of them. Not to mention those times when the other characters would really come through to save our behinds or just show genuine support... I love each and every one of them and even now, as I type this, I really miss them. Might sound silly, but I think it's a wonderful wonderful thing that a Pokemon game was able to make me feel so intimate with the other characters. Definitely did not feel this in Gates to Infinity. At all. u.u In fact the characters mostly feel very forgettable for me... blah.
#4: DLC. The fact that DLC was introduced this time around just really really bums me out. Luckily there wasn't too much that required DLC to unlock, but one beautiful thing about Explorers of Sky was that all I had to do to unlock EVERYTHING the game had to offer was to keep pushing on. I unlocked all the awesome dungeons from hard work and perseverance, not... taking money out of my bank account. That takes the fun out of it for me. WHICH REMINDS ME:
#5: Lack of awesome dungeons! There weren't even any cool dungeons to unlock anyways! There were hardly any new places to go after finishing up the storyline (none that were fun, anyway). In Explorers of Sky, you were still, even after completing the story, constantly unlocking new awesome dungeons, with new awesome pokemon, some even legendaries! That was really exciting by the way, recruiting the hidden legendaries. In Gates to Infinity, Keldeo and Virizion just kind of........ join you. They just ask and that's it. *sigh* Yet another thing that just takes the fun out of things.
#6: Just a bunch of other small annoying things. For whatever reason, Gates to Infinity also had a bunch of annoying little things, like the fact you don't recover HP by walking in any unusual weather (including harsh sunlight and rain... I mean seriously), not allowing you to take more than one job at a time (even in the same dungeon), S L O W T E X T S P E E D, not letting you play as a female, downgrading wondermail, and more. Of course, they also added a few small neat things, such as TMs being reusable (as per the new mainstream games) and cute minigames, but really in my opinion, they do NOT in any way make up for the negative. ]: The amount of bad heavily outweighed the good for me, for all reasons explained above.
Also, I have mixed feelings about the fact they got rid of hunger. I can take it or leave it. On one hand that's cool because it's one less thing to worry about, but on the other hand, Hunger really increased the difficulty of getting through dungeons in previous games; is it just me or did Gates to Infinity feel a heck of a lot easier? Maybe that's why they did questionable stuff like take away being able to naturally recover HP in unusual weather, I don't know, but it doesn't feel balanced at all to me.
I have mixed feelings about dropping the Personality Test in the beginning, too; While the personality test was a very charming touch, I always ended up manipulating my answers to get the character I wanted anyway, so getting rid of it honestly just saved time, for me.