I don't think I have many controversial opinions, but the ones I do seem to have are:
- I found B/W to be some of the dullest games to date. The stories felt super boring to me and the region felt incredibly linear.
- I really liked Pokemon Lets Go Pikachu/Eevee and if the BDSP announcements turned out to be Lets Go Pichu/Togepi I probably would've been equally as happy, if not more.
- I'm not exhausted with Kanto. A lot of people seem to complain that GF continue to return to Kanto, but I think the issue is more that they come back to Gen 1 and not Kanto in general. I'd love to see Fr/Lg remake with fleshed out sevii isles.
- Generation IV was the last good generation. Sorry, but there it is. The core series started its decline with Black/White, and has only gotten worse with each generation...although a non-controversial opinion I share is that Gen VI had the best online features.
- Black/White do NOT have a better storyline. It's exactly the same narrative as Generation III, only with the events swapped around so that the villain takes the Legendary after you beat the Elite Four, rather than in the middle of the story. The characters are bland and one-dimensional due to their lack of significant time on-screen - you cannot have character development when characters barely ever appear - and juggling the order of events around does NOT constitute meaningful change. It's an evil team that wants to use a Legendary Pokemon to take over the world, and that is all it is.
- The EXP. Share mechanic changing in Gen VI didn't make Pokemon games any easier. Time consuming is not difficult.
- Mega Evolution is the same as Z-Moves and Dynamax/Gigantamax - a cheap gimmick introduced in place of a proper new gameplay mechanic. It isn't somehow any better for being the first rubbish gimmick that we had.
- The "too much water" complaint about Hoenn is perfectly valid (albeit badly explained and phrased, and coming from the least credible source possible) and is one of the main reasons Hoenn is the most badly designed region in the franchise to date.
- HMs really weren't all that bad and the games have suffered significantly with their departure, because the puzzle elements have been all but stripped out. All they needed was a re-design to be more like TMs, or the Pokemon Ride feature from the Gen VII titles.
- Asides from Buzzwole and Pheromosa, which are fighting types and therefore deserve to be squashed, the Ultra Beasts were a really cool concept that was executed perfectly from a design standpoint, and should have been expanded upon significantly more than they were.
- Vaporeon is not cute.
- Gen III's soundfont is bad.
- Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee are the only serviceable Pokemon games that we've had since Gen IV, being let down solely by their terrible control scheme, and we should have more games like them.
I think you win this thread because I disagree with almost everything you said haha.