Least favorite game AND something you like it for?

Pendraflare

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    Since there was another "favorite game" thread made recently, I figured i'd make the opposite.

    As the title says, what would be your least favorite main series Pokémon game? But to keep this from getting horribly negative and turning into a flame rocket, you have to mention at least one thing you like about it, unless god help you, you seriously think it has no redeeming qualities to its name. Because, I know there are some people who dislike certain generations for their gameplay and adventure but like them for the Pokémon they introduced, and likewise the opposite. In Pokémon, you're all but sure to find SOMETHING to like about every game.

    For me, it would have to be GSC. Most of the new Pokémon I thought were questionable for their time with a few exceptions, given their movesets and capabilities then. Additionally, things felt horribly inconvenient at times, especially considering how wild Pokémon are at such low levels that they're all but not worth using or catching. Even so, most of the opponents are way too easy. There is Kanto, but everything there is still underleveled, and I hardly ever felt accomplished. And don't even get me started on how boring training for Red is. I might not be giving them enough of a chance, but personally I just feel they're outdated and past their time, and not just because they have full-fledged DS remakes.

    But as for what I like about it? Admittedly, the game was innovative for the time. It introduced some new features which (most of) would be carried on to later games, like berries, held items, shinies, Dark and Steel-types and such. I won't say GSC is bad, definitely not. It's just there are so many nagging issues that drag down the adventure for me, and I could forgive them then, but would bother me nowadays. I may need to play them again maybe, however.

    So, all that said, discuss.
     
    Including every side game I can remember, I'd say I don't like the second generation games Gold and Silver the most. It just underwhelmed and it seemed very underdeveloped, as if all the time was spent adding new features but not really on fleshing out or polishing. Lots of strange coding errors, too.

    Subjectively speaking, I also don't like Johto as a whole, it's basically "Forest & Mountains: The Game" or as I love to put it, Japan Played Straight. There's barely any environmental variation and I feel it shows itself through the Pokemon as well. I know some people love to complain about trash bags or ice cream cones or whatever, but at least they stand out. I feel like the inspiration for Johto's Pokemon came after a year long sabbatical in the middle of the woods, and unless you're a big nature hiking fan, it's uninspired save for the fact that they haven't been done yet. Wow. A bear, a stag, a pinecone, an owl, some bugs and a fake tree. I can't contain my excitement.

    And I say all that having LIVED next to a forest. I was better off going outside and seeing the real thing, and I still thought that was a dull idea. I realize I'm a city person, though, and while I like a forested area trope in my games, I don't want the whole experience one big summer camp.

    For both reasons and more, I'm glad the series didn't conclude after Generation II. What a grand let down that would have been. Generation III more than made up for it in both interesting Pokemon designs and environental variation. At least the R/S/E didn't play the way the anime filler episodes look.

    What's good about it then? Well, of course the Pokemon are ok. After all I've just said, their worst sin is just being blander than distilled water. They aren't bad designs, though, but a lot of them are forgettable. Even my favorites I can barely vouch for, because they're still kind of yawn inducing, save for maybe Miltank who stands to be the cutest fictional cow creature I've ever seen.

    That's pretty faint praise, though. So then what, if anything, did I like about G/S? The fact that it started inside jokes between my friend and I and then ballooned into a comic series I sometimes still make additions to with a character who's usually in my avatar, and then said Poke-characters later got revived in my playthrough of X/Y? Nah...
     
    D/P remains as my least favourite of the Pokemon series. There is a lot of things about the game that I wasn't too fond of. The biggest thing was the rather limited Pokedex that was available. Honestly, when you can only get TWO fire types in all of the main game, being Infernape and Rapidash, we got a slight problem here.

    To expand more on the Pokedex problem, it just wasn't really a fantastic selection. A lot of the Pokemon themselves are rather boring, that I just went with Empoleon, Staraptor, Luxray, and Lucario just because I didn't really want to use the other Pokemon. Because of the awful Pokedex, the A.I themselves got shafted in team options. Like a Galactic Grunt with a level 34 Wurmple. Level 34. Wurmple. I don't even know where to begin with that. Or, how Flint the fire-type Elite Four member has only two fire-types in a team of five.

    Also, was pretty annoyed that most of the evolutions for past Pokemon were only available (without trade) during post-game.

    Thankfully, Platinum fixed all of these problems. And, despite what I said I enjoyed some of the other aspects the game introduced. Poketch was an interesting mechanic that had a variety of different uses. The Physical/Special split was first introduced in this game, which was a much needed change to the series. And Cynthia is cool
     
    I wasn't too overjoyed with HeartGold/SoulSilver. They just weren't very great story-wise. I mean, give me a break, "Rocket returns" is just not very original. I'm not saying the plots of any of the other games are, but this just seemed the most bland. I did like the upgraded graphics, though. :D
     
    I remember loving G/S but was considerably disappointed in Crystal. I think a large part of that had to do with the inability to catch Mareep, which back then was apparently a big issue for me haha.

    It wasn't a bad game, it was just exactly like G/S besides for the Suicune plot though (most of the third games are a bit more innovative). That being said, I did like the Suicune and Eusine side plot, along with being able to catch Lugia and Ho-oh.
     
    I never really liked generation 3. There were too many annoying things. After the really low levels within g/s/c I was kinda hoping to see higher levels within the game, but with a lv 58 Metagross as the highest Pokémon of the champ this hope definitely was spoiled. Of course, the games are meant to be played by children, nevertheless I think the difficulty of r/s/s is way too low, too.

    The next point is the design of the third generation Pokémon. Most of them are quite decent, but none of the is really outstanding. Just to give a few examples:
    Mightyena - in my eyes it isn't much more than a houndoom-replacement with a worse design. Plus, its rather decent base atk doesn't mean anything concidering the fact that any dark typed move was special back then. So no stab for it.
    The fossils - finally additional fossils! Since I really liked Kabutops and Aerodactyl I looked forward to see them, but they were quite disappointing. They looked weird and they weren't playable eather.
    The Legendaries - I can make myself accept Kyogre and Groudon as well as Rayquaza. If I have to, I can even ignore Deoxys and Jirachi. But in my opinion the Regis are the worst legendary trio Nintendo ever created. I'm sorry, but with Golruk Nintendo showed that in fat it would've been possible to make them look like something. But the Regis don't even have real bodies and I won't talk about the design...

    Next thing, the storyline. We already knew Team Rocket at this point, an evil organisation comparable to the mafia and trying to steal Pokémon to make profit. It wasn't innovative but if you'd ask me, I'd say it'd make sense. But Team Aqua and Magma...
    So Aqua basically wants to increase the sea level to make room for water Pokémon. To reach this questionable goal they try two things. First they want to inactivate a volcano in order to fill its crater with water. ... Where's the problem? Why sould it be of any interest to the player? It's nothing bad, noone would be hurt, we just have to stop them because they're supposed to be evil. They're second try is producing more rain in order to raise the sea-level. Well... Basically rain is nothing but water from the sea raining down again. So by increasing the amount of rain they'd reach absolutely nothing. Not even Kyogre is able to produce water out of thin air.
    So, Team Magma. They want to make the volcano erupt in order to procude more land. But wairt, how are they're planning to do that? The volcano is not even close to the see, it is surrounded by land - what difference would it make to produce lava? The land would be destroyed, not enlarged. They're second try consists of letting Kyogre increase the sunlight in order to... dry out the oceans, I guess? Well if more water evaporates from the sea, more water will rain down again.
    Neither Aqua nor Magma do have understandable or at least slightly logical goals. I know, we're talking about Pokémon, but Team Rocket was plausible, too, and the following teams had understandable goals, too, why did they make Aqua and Magma that weird? It's even kinda ridiculous...

    So, what are the positive things about r/s/s? Of course, they were the first advance games and just because of that they are innovative.
    As well, Nintendo changed the IV and EV systems to be much more understandable and elaborate. Not the best points until now?
    Well I kinda liked the contests in this generation, being much more fun than the ones in d/p/p. And the berry system was quite nice, too. The new berries are interesting, not only ingame but also doing CP. And there was the battlef rontier which definitely was interesting.
    So yes, not everything's bad, but the main annoying thing is the storyline that really kinda killed me.
     
    My least favorite games/gen by far are Diamond and Pearl. The games feel very laggy, introduced almost no new Pokemon and just werent that great over-all imo. But i do love Gen4 for introducing the physical/special split, which has to be one of the best improvements ever in Pokemon, and i also like most of the new evos for older Pokemon that were introduced in the games.
     
    Out of the older games, Sapphire to me was kind of...bleh. The pokedex wasn't very interesting to me, and all that water travel was a bit of a turn off when I had to basically turn my Water Pokémon into a HM slave.

    On the plus side, I did enjoy the evil organizations of that generation and the E4 battles
     
    AAACK! I've taken a huge liking to just about every game in the series!

    But my least favorite would have to be the Pokemon ranger side series as a whole. I love everything about them...except that fact that I have to shell out a ton of money just to get a good, comfortable stylus, as it causes hand cramps.

    So I guess I didn't really follow the exact premise of the thread, since there was only one glaring downside enough to push a game (series) into a "least favorite" status?
     
    I agree with the D/P references. The fact that you could only get 2 Fire Types in the main series was terrible, and that's normally my go-to type. The fact that I was forced to start with a weird Monkey or use a Gen I Pokemon to get it was kinda upsetting.
     
    I agree with anyone who said Diamond & Pearl. I did like the 4th Generation in general and Sinnoh was a nice region, but I wasn't happy with the Pokedex distribution in these specific games. Notably having only two Fire-type lines in the whole Sinnoh Dex led to some very stupid rosters for in-game opponents, and I basically had no choice but always take Chimchar as my starter. Thankfully it is my fave Sinnoh starter, but I'm glad Platinum fixed that issue.

    The positive side is that it did introduce the physical/special split which finally made some Pokemon now able to use their best attacking stat more effectively.
     
    That need's to be Gen 4 don't like the world map the design of the pokedex, the design of the pokemon's. not intresting story.
    I like the gym leader battle's though
     
    My least favorite generation is gen 5 but I like a lot of the new Pokemon, and I like Cheren, Bianca and N.
     
    My least favorite game is probably ruby, Half of the game felt like surfing which really turned me off. I did however love the secret bases in ruby and the rest of gen 3.
     
    D/P is what made me give up Pokemon cold turkey until BW2 came out. It felt boring, unoriginal, had mostly unappealing starters, and I just got tired of going through the same cycle as every other game. Years later, my friends got me into competitive gaming, and along with BW's storyline I finally got back into it. On the bright side, I like Gallade.
     
    Black and White. By far it is my least favorite generation, just barely in front of D/P/Pt. I mean at least D/P/Pt had some decent pokemon. B/W has no real good pokemon, then the new leveling system got me really butthurt, and the storyline couldn't even keep the game from being a total piece of feces.
     
    Since many people seem to agree with me on D/P being the worst game in the franchise, I'll just try to water down my arguments:

    Bad: Overall sluggish feeling, slow water movement, lack of fire types, "saving a lot of data,"
    Good: Platinum fixed a lot of the problems, introduction of physical-special split, OST.
     
    D/P for it's horrendous save delay, not just that but also the horrible movement speed in all concepts even with running shoes it still sluggish

    FR/LG, though I was happy of remakes, but I still frown just sevii island as part of expansion and just few of the island have few purpose
     
    Diamond and Pearl are way too slow, I hate them so much. It's too damn long from the second badge to the third, save times are ridiculous, battles have crazy 2 second delays scattered all over the place for no discernible reason, god!

    That said, I think that those games introduced a lot of cool Pokemon, some of which rate highly on my favorite Pokemon list. And a lot of Pokemon that needed an evolution got one, though some didn't like Pinsir which pisses me off but whatever he's a mega now.
     
    For me, it'd be the first pair of Black & White games.

    What I didn't like: Worst rivals in the series IMO, forgettable/repetitive music (most of it looped too quickly), had the least amount of new designs I liked (maybe ~10 out of all of them), Broken sleep mechanics, bad wifi/competitive experience (had to manually raise your mons to 100), too much reliance on owning a second DS system

    What I liked: Fun gameplay, animated sprites/attacks, good storyline aside from the aforementioned rivals, good enemy team, Sigilyph!!
     
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