Pokémon Generation 1 and 2. They story, gameplay, and mechanics are concise and not hand-hold-y, the designs are the ones I grew up with, they can easily be played on a phone emulator and have so many rom hacks that I never will totally experience everything they have to offer

Gen 1 is the only gen. The rest are bullshit. Get off my lawn

Gotta be Black/White. It was the first time the writing really took a step forward. The antagonist wasn’t just evil for no reason. They had a compelling story and their motivations made sense and you could sympathize with them.

My nostalgia goggles tinting things a bit here, but Gen 2 (GSC) felt like such a jump in quality compared to RBY; especially Crystal.

• Moved to full color
• Animated sprites
• Character selection
• RTC & the day-night cycle
• Both regions & 16 badges
• QOL mechanics (hold items, eggs/breeding, A to use HM, rematches, Mom bank, Move Deleter)
• Dark & Steel type additions

Johto gets a lot of flak for the level curve, but the game just felt so big at the time, seems like that should count for something. Also I just like its vibe.

I don’t think any other gens have felt like such a complete step up compared to previous ones for me. B&W came closest, probably, was bummed they didn’t keep seasons. Made the world feel more dynamic. The 3D stuff is fine, just feels more wooden. They lost a lot of the charm moving away from pixel art.

Generation three like you, except from the point of view of Pokémon Colosseum and its sequel. Those games were ahead of their time.

Gen 4 or Gen 5. so much post-elite-4 content, and it’s not just “grind this arena endlessly” post-game content. Actual adventures in the case of the Gen 2 remakes and Gen 5.

Gen 3 holds a special place in my heart (Emerald was my first pokemon game) but the creature comforts of gameplay in 4 and 5 hold up a lot better

I enjoyed the gen4 remake for switch but it seriously lacked the amount of content in Platinum. They had a chance to greatly expand the distortion world and just… skipped it entirely instead.

The OG 150, with special shout out to the weed smoking cat from one of the newer gens.

Gen 1 had a lot of design issues: The special stat is overpowered, too many pokemon were poison type, move diversity was so poor that some types were just useless, and there were a lot of glitches.

Recent generations also have design issues: The story holds your hand every step of the way, characters are more detailed but less expressive, each generation has a gimmick that gets abandoned in the very next game, and there’s somehow a lot of glitches again!

Personally, my sweet spot is gen 4, but gens 3 and 5 are pretty solid too.

I want to say 4 because that’s the one I started with but, realistically, gen 5 was the best. It had so many features:

• Animated sprites (they look better than the 3d models and I’ll never get over it)
• An actual story
• Used only the new pokemon for the regional dex
• Very cool abilities like Zoroarks

specifically the pokemon, or the games ins aid generation.

gen 5 is imo objectively the best generation in terms of game content (virtually every game after black 2/white 2 has less content)

aa for pokemon designs, slight edge to gen 3, with 4 and 7 not particularly far behind.

Gen two; the games were so damn good. Thank you Iwata

Five, because it was the only time the series innovated, and they got punished for it. Sequel games instead of re-releases of games I’ve already played, a brave story, and easily the series’ musical peak. It was the best Pokemon had ever looked, played and sounded.

We will never see it again.

Gen 2, Crystal. Was my favourite. I found the character selection and graphical upgrade was really nice. Gen 2 includes the previous game world. Collecting all the badges again was special.

But I played Gen 1, Blue the most. The missingno trick was a bunch of fun and it was my first gameboy game.

Edit: my friend said Soul Silver is peak and sun/moon is a close 2nd place.

Gen 2 was best, because of that miltank that they nerfed in later versions.

I haven’t played every generation but imo generation V (Pokemon Black/White) were the most interesting to me. It’s the sweet spot between the older clunkier games and the more modern ones.