5th Gen Fifth generation: Story vs. Characters

I've come across a lot of people who like to critique the later generations compared to the earlier ones. Now, I don't agree with generation bashing or anything like that so I'm not asking for that here. What I was thinking though, was this.

I found that the generation five characters were the most memorable. To me they seemed like real people within the games. They show a lot of different personality traits and such that were rarely present in older games, in my opinion. I can't say I disliked the story of the games either, but I didn't find that the games themselves had much going on until the very end for story-related events. Both the first and second versions of the games had great characters, as I said, but I found the story to have about one or two really immersive parts and the rest seemed to rely more on new Pokemon, new mechanics and those 1-2 strong events to hold the entire story together. So basically, the characters were very strong but I saw the story as kind of weak and not too easy to follow.

I'm not saying this is makes them a bad addition to the Pokemon franchise or anything, but I definitely wish that the story would've expanded more on characters like Colress or N. Either way, fifth gen is one of my favorites due to said new characters and mechanics.

What do you all think about it?

Idk, all the characters seemed a bit too real, almost as if their personalities were forced or something. Each character was so heavily portrayed in their individual pursuits and characteristics. i.e. Cheren always talked about power, Bianca was always talking about her journey and friendship and stuff. I just think the characters were displayed too enthusiastically in the 5th gen.

The story wasn't too bad. The idea of Plasma and liberating Pokemon was kind of a stretch, but of course it went back to world domination.

Not saying I didn't like the games, they are amazing, I just don't play Pokemon for the plot.

EJ Nero said:

Regarding the story, it was great as a whole. I loved the whole truth vs. ideals regarding Reshiram and Zekrom. Plasma was somewhat lame though. Their whole goal of pokemon liberation wasn't a bad idea so to speak, it just didn't move me as much as Rocket and Magma/Aqua did in the previous gens.

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Team Plasma, and specifically N, were the first villains in a pokemon game that actually made me reflect on pokemon. When the Nugget Bridge invited us to join Team Rocket in Kanto, sure many of us would actually consider it, but those who did could say it was explicitly because they wanted to join the "dark side." All they did was steal money and pokemon. But in Black/White, the villain's mission isn't (pardon the cliché) black and white, because they brought up and addressed points in which people today still criticize pokemon on.

In response to the OP, I think Colress should have been expanded on, but N was already one of the most expanded characters in both Black/White 1 and 2.

In terms of storyline and characters gen fifth is the best by far.
hugh, bianca and cheren were great rivals and interesting characters, and see some of them growning up in bw2 was great.
Also team Plasma really made me think-does catching pokemon is okay? and the truth vs. ideals concept was interesting. Its a big shame that in BW2 gamefreak made the villians a generic ones that say all the time:"I keep beating up this pokemon, why doesn't he getting stronger?"...

I don't believe that the Pokémon franchise will ever create a everlasting story or a story to remember. In the end it all comes down to beating the Elite Four and becoming the Champion. I don't mean that the stories in the games are useless or doesn't hold any meaning behind it, but it just doesn't hit me due the overall shortage of the game, I believe the main games of Pokémon are not capable of greating a memorable story because the gameplay's time are/is to short - If they make a spin-off series with a day-by-day feature (Such feature what the Persona games possess) then the story and plot would be of the essence.

A little off topic here, now I think about it a Pokémon game in Persona's style wouldn't be that bad of a idea overall.