First of all, the obvious fact that there were old Pokémon findable and usable in the games, which was not a thing in Black and White. While it’s not THE biggest change, it does affect the gameplay, particularly to those that missed those Pokémon in BW. Having old Pokémon here is a thing, admittedly for better or for worse (depending on who you ask).
And let's look at the new locations that were present in B2W2 that we got for the Unova region here that were not in the first games. Aspertia City, Floccesy Town/Ranch, Virbank City/Complex, Pokéstar Studios, getting to ride a plane, Lentimas Town, Reversal Mountain, getting to go to Undella Town and the Giant Chasm before post-game, the Marine Tube, Humilau City, Routes 19-23, the newly designed Victory Road, and the post-game like the PWT and Black Tower/White Treehollow… Where were these locations in BW again? To add to that, you start off in a different opening town, and you don’t go to the southeastern part of Unova (from Pinwheel Forest to Nuvema Town) during the main story.
How is that copy/paste? No, seriously, how can you look at all of those things that were ADDED to the region and say that it’s the same region? In fact, you don’t even need to look beyond the VERY FIRST CITY OF THE GAME - Aspertia City, which has a Gym and a Pokémon Center - to see that the region is not copy/paste. And if you say because a lot of the cities and towns were the same, like Castelia, Nimbasa, etcetera… It’s not like this is the only game that’s done that, Emerald and Platinum have too. I’ll get back to that in a bit, but seriously, were people expecting a completely different region that had never been seen before?
Not to mention we had several other characters who were put in the game - Bianca becoming Professor Juniper’s assistant when she was stupid in the first games, Hugh is the rival, Colress was in Team Plasma, a few of the sages actually do something other than be idle for the game, and so do the Shadow Triad. As for Gym Leaders, there was Cheren, the first in the game who wasn’t such in BW, and he gets greater development here. And there was Roxie, who comes after him, and Marlon too who we get at the end. Neither of those two were in BW at all… How about the fact that every Gym had its own theme, a first for the main series? And let’s not forget how the new Pokédex additions changed their teams up, too. Once again, I ask…does that sound like the same to you?
And really, do I even need to mention the post-game? I already briefly mentioned the PWT and Black Tower/White Treehollow (the two biggest things), but there are the new formes that you can get, hunting legendaries, and lots of other strong trainers, most notably Colress, and Nishino as well. I don't feel a need to go on about that.
Now we come to something that may be a bigger point than such: third versions like Emerald and Platinum. You people call the region here copy/paste, yet how can you say that in the face of these aforementioned games? Did the very first location of the game in those two start you off in a city with a Pokémon Center AND a Gym? Did those games begin with new routes and new towns that weren’t present in RS and DP? ...Okay, i'll admit, Emerald had Juan, who actually played a part near the end of the story, but other than that the Gym Leaders were unchanged.
But I know what some of you are gonna say - you don’t want me to talk about the gameplay, because that’s boring and irrelevant. You want me to talk about the story. FINE! I’m not here to defend the story from people that call it the worst for simply being boring (which I can excuse), i’m here to say it’s not the same. With a specific character that had a backstory about having a Pokémon of his taken from them, along with (as I mentioned) other characters that are more developed such as Cheren and Bianca, those were not things we had previously.
And admittedly, Team Plasma’s goals were taking over the region, like most of the previous villainous teams except BW Team Plasma have let on, but here, at least it’s proven that they don’t have any moral objective anymore. And as for the Giant Chasm with the climax of the story, people get mad at the Kyurem fight because of how it fuses with N’s legendary for one battle and then they separate and then you fight Ghetsis like in BW. I ask…what does that have to do with anything? That’s like flacking Platinum (again) for the fact that you fight Cyrus after you go through the Distortion World, and then fight Giratina, when you battle Cyrus at the Spear Pillar in DP and then Dialga or Palkia.
Back in 2012, when these games first came out in Japan and Marriland got them for a blind Let’s Play, he said he would never accept another Platinum or Emerald version after this game, because it goes way beyond a simple remake. He thought it was something original for a change. See? He knows what this game is all about. And if this game was 100% copy/paste, do you think he would have put so much time into
a walkthrough that took many hours to write full of over 100 Pokémon Reviews? Not only that, but he said something about how he felt that Game Freak would have made RS remakes “if they were greedy”, and sure enough those were what we got two years later. And some people have called ORAS copy/paste, too, but those games didn’t have a ton of new areas other than like B2W2 did.
I should also state that a year ago, Marriland forums user HappyWaffles9000 said something about how he felt that part of what made these his favorite games (well, until ORAS) was that quite a few people he knew skipped them. And those people he knew said "it's simply BW with a 2". He called that perhaps the dumbest excuse possible. In fact, one video I saw of one person talking about his favorite Pokémon games, he had B2W2 at #1, and was very formal and descriptive of his reasoning behind it, even saying the region had plenty new and that the PWT was his favorite thing about the game. The video had an unusually high amount of dislikes (not drastically high, but more than your average YouTube video) and there were some comments that I swear to god I felt like I lost IQ points reading them. One comment in particular said that these games were the worst and that they "couldn't be more copy/paste if they took the boxes of BW and slapped a 2 in front of them".
I cannot even begin to put into words how infuriating it was reading that comment. And he said that the game insults your intelligence in trying to find out the differences between it and BW, which caused him to knock BW down a slot on his own favorite games list. I refuse to post the comments section of that video because I do not want to subject people to something that brain-dead. People like those just make me psyducking sick. Because once again, I do not see how anybody can make a claim as UNTRUE as that in the face of insurmountable evidence. That video did have a few comments that thanked the OP for putting B2W2 at #1, but the general reaction to it was disheartening.
But if there’s anything I will admit was extremely lazily carried over from the original BW, it would be the Battle Subway. That was completely recycled with no changes whatsoever, aside from Nate/Rosa instead of Hilbert/Hilda, to my recollection. They didn’t even give the Unova Pokémon new tutor moves. Yeah, i’ll give in and admit that is the same muk, at least. But at the same time, HGSS did the exact same thing with Platinum’s Battle Frontier, except for the music. And so did ORAS with XY’s Battle Maison. In fact, I have a feeling nowhere near as many people would be calling B2W2 copy/paste if it had a Battle Frontier.
And i’ll be brutally honest saying the Elite Four were pretty recycled too, they could’ve easily gave them five Pokémon on Normal Mode - they had four in BW, but that’s because of how small the Unova Pokédex was. Other than that, I think people’s expectations got pretty unrealistic here. There was plenty new added to the Unova region in B2W2, and i’m sick of people calling it the same region. Because it is by name, but not aesthetics and places. The claim is not psyducking true.