In fact, I'm actually going to stop here because otherwise this is going to devolve into another several-page rant on how bad Scarlet and Violet are, but I think they are genuinely so much worse than Sword and Shield that it's hard to consider them in any way related to the rest of the series.
I don't think you will find many that will complain about a multipage rant about the state of Pokemon nowadays on this thread. As a matter a fact, it would probably be more entertaining to read than to engage with the actual game itself.
As for me, I have not been into the mainline Pokemon games in ages. I stopped playing regularly around Black and White, which while solid, was one hell of a slog to get through in terms of leveling my mons for the Elite Four. Perhaps my dumbass didn't try hard enough to locate more trainers to fight against, but most of the ones I knew back then provided paltry experience points for the amount of time you had to wait to rematch them. It didn't help the team I went with was inadequate to the task at tackling the Elite Four as a whole. In the end, I got bored before I managed to beat even one of them and moved on to other things. After that, I fell off the bandwagon for a little while as other things caught my interest, and it was not until around 2017/2018 did I get back into things in some manner right at the time my childhood Toys R Us was going under. I managed to snag myself a copy of Sun/Moon and X/Y plus some plushies to remember the store by, and made an effort to get into Pokemon Moon.
It was boring. It's probably more to do with me growing bored with the Pokemon formula and just aging out, but the game didn't engage with me as others did in the series. It didn't help that the starters and many of the mons didn't engage my fancy, something about them and their later successors being a bit too thematic for their own good, and the early game just got to the point where I didn't go beyond the first island. Seeing as how the Switch games turned out and how lackluster their own monster aesthetics and designs are, it seems I didn't miss out on much.
In comparison with most other Pokemon fans, it seems I am the contrarian in the room for not taking a shine to things like Mega Evolutions, dynamaxxing, handling of regional forms, and the like. The first due to personal preference and lore related reasons, seeming out of place in how they take a page out Digimon's playbook and regarding how most seem a bit to battle modeish instead of being a natural part of the environment. Which yes, I get was partly the point being the mega designs in the first place, but evolutions to me are something that should be a permanent fixture. In principle, evolutions are something to be as a sign of the growth between you and your mons.
That isn't to say I am entirely opposed to some concept of temporary forms, but I would instead have gone a different route such as in the form of type shifting. Take something like the evolution stones for instance, and make up some lore about human technology advancing to the point where you could manipulate a Pokemon's typing, and thus their physical form on the fly. That would have been to my preference, and it would allow you to make a much greater use of the existing stock of Pokemon without needing to worry about making entirely new mons. Admitably this was somewhat answered in the introduction of regional forms, but something about how the designs for those were handled rubs me the wrong way. It isn't as if it is entirely new concept, having been seen in fan creations/predictions even dating back to the late oughts. To contradict my early statement, it also means Gamefreak will probably be more likely to resort to a "lazy" rehash of an existing design than to create a new mon from scratch when appropriate. As far as the current lineup is concerned, it's a mixed bag. Alohan sandslash could be paletaable for me with a few more tweaks to its design, but something like whatever the hell they did to meowth in Paldea... Well, it was enough to jive me out any suspension of disbelief when it comes to consistency of Pokemon's world building and aesthetics.
Speaking of world building, I have quite a bit to say on that front.
For me, Pokemon as a world gradually became less and less mysterious and intriguing the longer the series went on. As I have discovered with many other franchises that I have participated in over the years, sometimes it is better to leave more than a little mystery and intrigue for the would audience to engage with and create their "own" lore and explanations for why things the way they are without stepping on anyone's toes so to speak. Back when I got into reading for what the next potential regions for Pokemon would be like, there were quite a few fanciful attempts at depicting a variety of countries, like those housed within the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, or any of the many states within the good old USA While not all of them hit the ball out of the park, I could appreciate the diversity in terms of ideas of what form those places could be like in the Pokemon world. Or hell, "our" world if you wanted to persist with the early generations technically taking place in the real world before Gamefreak shifted gears around the 3/4th generations. And with them, many a different fakemons that while not perfect, was fascinating to delve into at length. While it has been a while, one thing I appreciated about some of those attempts was the attempt to depict some measure of nuance dealing with IRL themes in a similar fashion to how Hoenn did with their environmental motif. That the Pokemon world, while fantastical, was not perfect. Like ourselves, they dealt with their own issues and problems that sometimes came to conflict. Not all solutions that were attempted in these little iterations of the Pokemon world came out perfectly, quite the opposite in fact.
Again, these attempts were not perfect. We're talking about passionate amateurs doing their best to make a solid attempt at depicts any number of places, be their own countries or others being in Pokemon. But that's the thing, they had
passion. They gave a damn about the places, people and pokemon they created, flawed as they may have been. Given a few rounds of refinement, iteration and drafting, you bet your ass I would more than happy to purchase a game based on the these honest attempts at creating another grounded but fantastical depiction of the Pokemon world. And that isn't getting into the unique little quirks, mechanics, ideas, concepts and other stuff they sometimes came with, such as their own attempt at what a regional form should look like, different evolutionary concepts, the works. Granted, you had to reach the diamond in the rough, and many of these project still needed more development. But that's the thing, they were self contained and isolated. If something in these projects didn't pan out, it was safely contained within their own little realm.
Contrast that with modern Pokemon, or hell any franchise of the current era that has met with a most unfortunate end. Whatever Gamefreak comes up with, we're stuck with. No matter how mediocre, no matter how lacking in execution, the great majority of Pokemon fans will consume whatever Gamefreak/Pokemon Company comes up with and attempt to incorporate such in their own creations, often to their detriment. One of the more notable being how slanted the Pokemon world leaning more towards the saccharine over time.
While the Pokemon world always had a slant more towards the positive side of things as far as depictions are concerned, the early generations had some grounding to it that made it more "real" for me. While fantastical, there was some measure of consistency with how Pokemon were depicted and designed, and the world itself was not overly slanted in being utopic, having their own problems and issues to deal with even in the modern era. That isn't to say the later lore of the games don't try to do this in some measure, and it has been a while since I got into Pokemon proper. But the execution from what I have seen leaves much to be desired.
Due to Pokemon's target audience and the fact that Gamefreak is beholden to the Pokemon Company's bottom line, it means they have litle wiggle room to handle more complex topics and the like with any degree of flexibilty or nuance. Added to the fact that Pokemon prints money for every release that they make, they don't have to try and innovate all that hard in order to bring in cold hard cash. If people keep buying your slop despite its questionable quality, why bother trying to iterate and improve on what you have?
Someone earlier a few pages ago made mention of how they liked how the Gamecube Coloseeum games handled their own worlds, being more rustic and filled with issues that were either hinted at or outright stated within the realm of those games. While nothing to write home about, I appreciated how these games attempted to be more nuanced in a good and grey approach when it came to their world building. The mons, the people, the struggles they went through, felt more alive to me than what I have seen through playthroughs and depictions of the mainline Pokemon games for the past few entries. When presented with such a world, I want to see more of what they had to offer. I could appreciate the attempt to depict an Arizona expy, even if it was not outright referenced as such. In contrast, Unova was more of a hodge podge of New York and some of the surrounding states as a whole. Don't get me wrong, I appreciated my journey through Unova during my time with it. But it seems around the start of this era that Gamefreak paid less attention to detail when it came to covering other countries besides their own. By that, I mean New York was more generalized in its depiction, whereas Japan got at least four mainline games depicting the various regions within the country. Perhaps it is just me, but I would not have been opposed to Gamefreak taking more time to depict more IRL countries in a similar manner like they did with Japan, even if not to the same extent. I would have like to have seen a couple more nods to the like of the Revolutionary War as an example, and exploration about other aspects of New York's history within the United States. But it seemed that was not in the cards.
Using Galar and Kalos as further examples, it seems they made a half hearted attempt to cram in as much as they could without giving a more nuanced look at the individual regions held within those countries. Which to be fair, is not entirely Gamefreak's fault seeing as their devs aren't native or savvy to the histories of these places. But I think it would have done Gamefreak, Pokemon, and those regions more justice if they took more time to explore them as a whole and devote a little more in terms of exploring the history, mythos, and the like that these places had to offer in terms of inspiration. It's wishful thinking, especially considering the time pressure and crunch Gamefreak was and continues to endure in getting their games out the gate in a timely matter. But after seeing the effort put into a many fan creation, I believe Gamefreak could have created something that better appreciated the little nuances of those places they based their games on, and come out better for it.
There's so much more I could rant on, but I believe I have more or less illustrated my point. Pokemon as a world has become more generic and sterile as time goes on. There's still magic to be had here and there, especially in the form of their side projects. But I ultimately find no desire to even attempt to look up what the mainline games will be like. Knowing Gamefreak's record, it's probably going to be more of the same and then some. At least there's some hope that Palworld might be one of those proper kicks up the ass to get Gamefreak in gear, but I am not holding my breath.
