Is it still OK to dislike gen 5?

[Reithe]

Just as a little disclaimer, I AM NOT some gen 1 fanboy who can't accept anything past the game boy games. I never even played gen 1. My favorites were gens 3 and 4, and every generation both before AND after gen 5 is alright in my eyes. I only dislike gen 5.

I think gen 5 just tried way too hard to be all new and different. I mean sure, I completely understand if you like how it introduced hidden abilities, and was really story driven, but those are pretty much the only good things I can really say about Black and White. Even though it did a few good things, it made a whole lot of mistakes as well. And not just because of the weird pokemon designs. Black and White had problems like how Unova was the first region that was super linear (and at the time had the least amount of routes). It had some permanent weather metagame for some reason. The dream world (which maybe could've been cool if they did it right) only let you use it for one hour every 24 hours because Nintendo doesn't know how to make good online features, AND the dream world was the only way you could ever plant berries in gen 5. And one of the weirdest problems was how in Black and White, they only let you catch new Unova pokemon until you beat the game. Yes, I know they didn't do that in Black and White 2 (which I didn't play because I lost my DS before they came out), but it was still a really controversial thing to do.

On the topic of only having Unova pokemon, that was probably one of the bigger mistakes they made. Because they only wanted new stuff in the main game, they felt the need to produce so many new pokemon that gen 5 ended up with a bit more pokemon than gen 1 had. I'll admit that I like some of the gen 5 pokemon (definitely not all), but when all these gen 5 dudes were all developed in as little as about a year tops, they went for the quantity-over-quality route with a lot of them. A lot of them were even like ripoffs of pokemon from other generations, and some of them looked almost like palette swaps of other pokemon from the same generation. And even a lot of the gen 5 pokemon that weren't either of those two things just kinda looked uglier than the other generations to me. I recently looked at the Bulbapedia pages for all the different pokedexes, and about a whopping 70-80% of pokemon in the Unova pokedex were pokemon I didn't really like, while the number of pokemon I didn't like from every other gen was always less than 10 per generation (Remember, that also means I liked the Kalos and Alola pokedexes, I only don't like Unova). I think making a whole bunch of quantity-over-quality pokemon just so Nintendo could say they made 156 in a year is one of the bigger mistakes, because after a generation is over, lots of people are mainly gonna remember the generation by the pokemon that came from it. Remember, small and linear regions and questionable gameplay choices only have to last for one generation (and it's eventual remakes), while pokemon introduced in a generation have to stay in the following games forever.

Gen 5 has a lot of flaws, and it doesn't even have as many excuses for them as the early gens because of how the DS's hardware is far superior than the GameBoy, and how gen 5 was late enough into the franchise for Nintendo to have enough experience to avoid these flaws. But despite these flaws, some people just practically defend gen 5 with their lives. Like if you criticize gen 5, they will get mad. Really mad. If you just calmly say you don't like the Unova pokemon designs (even the REALLY bad ones), they'll say something like "OMG IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE WALKING TRASH BAG AND THE FLYING ICE CREAM YOU'RE JUST A FILTHY GENWUNNER WHO CAN'T ACCEPT ANY KIND OF CHANGE! YOU'RE THE WORST KIND OF PERSON!" Even if they simply suspect people are gonna hate gen 5 in one of those "one gotta go" Twitter posts before anyone even says anything about gen 5, they say stuff like "If you talk badly about gen 5 I'm sending you hate mail" (no for real, someone said that). And despite being all defensive about gen 5 and saying all the newer generations are absolutely flawless, a lot of them just decide to redirect all the hate towards gen 6 instead like total hypocrites! I'd never get really offended like that, and I'm pretty sure not even the dudes who actually like gen 1 the best would, either (except maybe that one furry who clickbaits). I know that only accepting the first one or two gens isn't a good idea, but that's not even what most of us do. I and lots of other people ONLY dislike gen 5. Now, I can understand it if you like mainly like gen 5 for being all story driven, but there are some people who defend gen 5 to the point of unironically believing that trubbish and vanillite, the most cool to hate designs of the most cool to hate generation, are actually the best pokemon ever made. There was this one time I commented on a YouTube video and made just one little post saying that trubbish is stupid, and this one guy just straight up says that trubbish and garbodor are unironically better than freaking Lucario just because "popular doesn't necessarily mean good"! He didn't just compare trubbish to muk or something, he want the full 50 yards and said that the pokemon literally based on trash is better than a series fan favorite that's cool enough to have been in Smash for the past decade. I honestly think that maybe, a lot of these people just pretend to like the really weird gen 5 pokemon like trubbish and vanillite simply out of contrarianism or something against all those people they accuse of being genwunners, but in my opinion, these gen 5 defenders are even more annoying than most of the gen 1 guys now.

So I gotta ask you guys some things about this matter. Is it still OK to dislike gen 5, and its various flaws? How much of the Pokemon fanbase still doesn't like gen 5 that much, and how much of it actually thinks it's the best or something (like maybe even to the point where they think Black and White are better than HeartGold and SoulSilver)? And do the people who do think gen 5 is the best mainly just like it for the story, or legitimately think the actual trash bag and flying ice cream are great designs? Post your opinions and stuff in the comments. And remember, I'm not a genwunner if I only dislike gen 5, and I think that every other generation is at least good enough to be considered decent.

 

[Reithe]

By the way, I noticed that when you talk about how dumb trubbish and vanillite are, a lot of gen 5 defenders will automatically try comparing them to grimer and voltorb from gen 1. I still think the two dudes from gen 1 are better. You don't have to care much about voltorb, but you still have to understand it at least has a purpose that can kinda justify its existence. voltorb's purpose is to fill that old mimic trope where video game monsters pretend to be item boxes, but are actually monsters. voltorb and electrode are based on living poke balls because the item boxes were always modeled after poke balls, and if they had any more detail, they wouldn't make good mimics. Vanillite is just a flying ice cream cone for no reason, and the fact the pokemon is just food that other pokemon have probably tried to eat (I still don't know if that ever actually happened in the anime, though) is kinda weird. And while grimer is just a slime monster, I feel like it still looks better than trubbish and garbodor. I just like simpler designs better (which includes grimer's), and I feel like grimer's slime body anatomy just makes more sense, while garbodor's design is just all over the place, and the fact it has fingers made out of straws and little hair buns sticking out just makes it unnecessarily ugly. Plus, grimer and muk actually look pretty menacing and tough, and there are all sorts of other slime monsters from other games and TV shows that people actually kinda like. So if those slime monsters from other works can be likable, so can grimer and muk. You can't say that about trubbish and garbodor, when nothing (except for maybe one episode of the pokemon anime) has really made you want to sympathize with a trash bag, unless you're some kind of hoarder or something.

I discussed my reasoning on why these gen 1 pokemon are better than trubbish and vanillite with some other people, and they all agreed with me.

 

[sugar ovens]

Thats a lot of argumentation fouls stacked into one post :( Personally I haven't played any of the games because of the lack of money = electronic devices, but... Do you think this is really needed? Do we need arguments about what generation is better and what generation is worse, all the time?

 

[Zelen]

To be completely honest, it's fine to have divided and even strong opinions to provoke discussion. However, if you want to actually have real discussion, it's as important to elaborate those opinions in a subjective manner that respects both sides. If other side isn't ready for such, I'd rather move on. There is no way to force opinions to be changed, no matter what you do.

I think it's okay to hate generation 5. Still for me, it's my favorite generation of pokémon. Not design wise nor gameplay wise, I just had great time with dream world, RNG Abuse, following competitive scene in Smogon and such. Only thing I really did hate was Black City/White Forest because it was dependent on local wireless gameplay. My city ended up being empty because only other person that was playing pokémon was my husband.

 

[Yoshi]

I think it's fine to hate generation 5 for whatever reasons you choose, but I definitely disagree with a lot of what people say about the generation. I might be biased because it is my favorite, but perhaps such a viewpoint is needed to tilt the argument. When most people talk about why BW wasn't that good, they more than likely will refer to the Pokemon designs. Either that they're too similar to the gen 1 Pokemon, or that they're too unique (they don't say that exactly but it is what it boils down to).

Of course, there are the infamous Vanilluxe and Garbodor. Many people seem to present a unpleasant view of these Pokemon, mainly because of their base designs. Vanilluxe is ice cream and Garbodor is literal trash. It seems that people aren't too huge of inanimate objects being Pokemon, as I see people complain about Chandelure as well. However, this wasn't the first time Game Freak took inanimate objects and made them into Pokemon. Geodude, Graveler, & Golem, Voltorb & Electrode, Corsola, Nosepass, Aron, Lairon, & Aggron, Gulpin & Swalot, Lunatone & Solrock, etc. This list goes on into generation 4, of course. As shown, there are plenty of inanimate objects made into Pokemon. Most shown are just literal rocks. Therefore, I don't think it is fair to say that Game Freak was bad (and has been, really) at making Pokemon designs because they aren't based off of living organisms. Hell, most Pokemon designs are based off of some mythical creature. Although, it seems in this thread that people have bashed their designs itself, which is perfectly fair. I don't think that Garbodor was meant to look like a slime monster at all, I think it was just a different take on the Poison typing as a whole. I also don't understand the flying Ice Cream comparison either. It seems like people are trying to hate the designs in any way they can, and of course you can be entitled to your opinion, but I haven't seen any arguments that stand out to me that are against the designs of those two Pokemon.

Another argument I hear against the designs in generation 5 is that they're too similar to generation 1's designs. I won't try and deny that this is the case, as there are a few similarities (like Machop vs Timburr and Roggenrola vs Geodude, which aren't really similar in design but rather in concept, but that's an argument for another time). However, this was more than likely an intention move. Most people have come to the understanding that BW was a form of rebooting the series. No Pokemon from previous generations were able to be found in BW1 until the postgame, heavily changing certain mechanics, things like that. However, as Game Freak has always done, they aimed to appeal to some of the gen 1 fans as well in this game by including said concept similarities, alongside the uniqueness that Unova has to offer. It's a bold move for sure, and it is one that went over most people's heads. Unova as a whole is very reminiscent of the Kanto adventure, so it does come as a bit of a surprise to me that so many people got angry over the similar concepts (and designs in some cases, I guess).

Apart from the sprites, many people complain that Unova is too linear. As I usually say, this has been the case for every region since Hoenn (hell, BW2 was actually not-so linear compared to BW1). Hoenn itself looked open world but it really had a set path for you to follow up until Sootopolis city from which you could check out whatever there was out in the South West portion of the ocean. Sinnoh was extremely linear, too, even though the cities appeared to link up well on the map. Unova is mostly disliked for being linear because Game Freak never tried to hide it. I mean, it's a giant circle. But I don't think that's a bad thing, as it really adds to the uniqueness of Unova as a whole. It's not something that works against the generation because linearity has always been a huge part of Pokemon. While gens 1 and 2 gave you some options in terms of what gyms you wanted to challenge first, most games have always offered a set path for you to follow, but some generations make it more obvious than others.

Of course, as mentioned in this thread already, story is a huge part of the generation 5 games. In fact, I don't think many people disagree that it has the best story as of yet in the series. Characters with depth like Cheren, N, Hugh, Ghetsis, and Colress, etc. It was really the first game that breathed a lot of life in characters, perhaps not for the better with some (lol Bianca). Another thing that was a tossup from the other games is that you never actually get to fight the champion until the postgame. I think that it was a welcoming change that fit the narrative of the story, and breaks away from the mold that you fight the evil team after badge 7, then go get badge 8 and do the league. It adds another layer of depth to your journey, considering that it was never just about fighting the league, especially from the start when you meet Ghetsis in Accumula town, the same place where you first learn that N has a special connection with Pokemon. It is just little things like that about BW's story that make it so great. BW2's story wasn't as good, but I think it still led up to certain expectations, although it did lack the N we knew and loved.

I won't speak for those crazed gen 5 fans, but I hope I didn't come off as one of those. I really just love the generation overall, so I hope you at least agree with some of my opinions!