1) Black and White was actually better than the sequels.
Heresy, I know. BW2 has a great post game, but umm... i prefer actual game. I don't think anyone even argues that Zinzolin is better as the face of Team Plasma than N or Ghetsis. There's no more exploration of the morals of the Pokemon world. It does not even make sense why Team Plasma has members now, their goal does not make any friggin sense anymore and they literally have to suggest that Ghetsis has gone crazy to forward this plotline of bringing nuclear winter to Unova and surviving the ice age on an airship. They completely destroyed the calculating, charismatic motivational speaker and to add insult to injury nerfed his team. Even if I bought this, which I don't, there's not enough in it for these other characters. Nobody would help him with a motivation this silly.
You have fewer rivals, and the one you have Hugh is not memorable. You don't even see the pivotal characters from the original BW games like the N and Ghetsis until the end of the story. But hey screw plot in BW seems to be general opinion, these are the games where you get the nature preserve, battle tree, free shinies and world tournament, and strong pokemon at the beginning of the game like riolu, growlithe, mareep that aren't in the Unova Dex...all things that have no bearing on the plot whatsoever, whether you do pokestar studios has absolutely no impact on the actual story.
I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with any of the side material, just bringing up that that is what it is, these are cosmetic changes and the actual story content has gotten so much thinner. While its a good game in the franchise I'm not feeling the same love that I did for BW. Popular opinion is that it completely demolishes all memory of the original BW games, and I beg to differ.
2) Frlg are the worst remakes out there and a disservice
They changed 1% of the game. The sevii isles looks like beta content, they didn't even bother to name each island nor come up with individual themes, these are literally reused and remixed tracks. They did not enhance the gym layouts after all these years. Compare this with how dynamic Bugsy's gym became in HGSS, or even changes between follow-up games ike Elesa's BW gym vs BW2.
There were no dramatic contributions to the game mechanics from Ruby and Sapphire, whereas HGSS introduced the Pokeathalon and Pokemon walking with you and Oras brought the dexnav, new megas and soaring. HGSS and ORAS tried to come up with some exciting new features that not only were not in the original games but innovations from Platinum and XY respectively, FRLG did the opposite, it relied on Ruby and Sapphire mechanics without making valuable contributions of itd own to the third gen as a whole. Had FRLG introduced the battle frontier for instance then we might be having a different conversation, but that was Emerald that brought one of the definitive features of 3rd gen. Perhaps FRLG could have incorporated day and night since it did nor have to have the extensive over world weather like RSE, but no such luck.
I don't think frlg deserves to be held up as the definitive Kanto. There's just not enough here other than looking prettier. I would rather just play the originals. I will play Yellow, since those sprites are still pretty cute and frlg didn't incorporate any of the content from this game. I don't mind playing in bw if I get Jesse, James and Meowth appearances, talking starter pokemon to follow and play with me, I can adopt all of the starter Pokemon and even get to battle with Prof Oak if I glitch.
