I hate myself for it, but I've bought every game at launch since the first generation.
I've not enjoyed any of them since Platinum. But I still keep buying and playing them. I could have easily skipped the last four generations and missed nothing of consequence, but I keep doing this to myself.
I loathed Black, but I thought Black 2 would be better...and to be fair I suppose it was, but it still had the same rubbish narrative, bad experience mechanic, and awful encounter rate. After the year-long hype I thought X would be better than Black/Black 2, and I thought it couldn't *possibly* get any worse than X when I bought Moon. Ultra Moon I thought "maybe they fixed the mistakes they made with Moon" for some reason. Shield I have no excuse I suppose - I had the full picture of just how bad it was going to be going in, but a part of me couldn't quite believe it'd be THAT bad. I mean, I'd played three generations of bad Pokemon games by this point. This wasn't going to be THAT much worse, surely? Right?
Maybe I'm "secretely" a masochist and like watching my childhood be repeatedly pummelled by bad Pokemon games. Maybe playing these awful games validates my nostalgia for older titles (as long as I don't play the older titles and realise how dated they feel now, anyway) and allows me to feel good about my advancing age, because at least my childhood was better than these poor kids now who are subjected to these awful games and don't know any better. Maybe I have nothing better to do with my time than play these awful games. Maybe I still really like Pokemon, under layers and layers of negativity. Maybe Shield will finally be enough to get me to stop. Maybe, maybe, maybe.