Current Events > Something each generation of Pokemon did "The best" in the series.

(+) Yeah! (+)

1st Gen: Suspense. Lavender town. Pokemon Labratory. Silph Co. all had really good mechanisms of building suspense. Most of the kids playing it were oblivious, but the music alone creates the best suspenseful vibe in the series.

2nd Gen: The Rival's arc. The kid of the boss(Silver) essentially raises himself into a somewhat respectable person by growing via his interactions with the outside world and his Pokemon. Still the best redemption arc the series has given players.

3rd Gen: The sense of exploration/discovery. Hell, I didn't even find the route to the left of Mount Pyre until my replay of the game. The whole Regi's quest line is insanely ambitious for a pokemon game and I remember downloading a brail alphabet on my dad's Blackberry as a wee lad to finishing deciphering the Regi's riddle

4th Gen: The Vibe. The vibe is fucking immaculate. Like a local Jazz station that you can only find on the radio between the hours of 1 to 4 AM. It also makes Cyrus' role as a "Vibe killer" fit a lot better. He's that meme of the dude in the corner of the party.

5th Gen: The Story. Between the two games, it's the only real attempt pokemon made at putting effort into it's story until gen 7 it feels like. It also kept the Gym leaders relevant outside of being arbitrary progress barometers and that was a huge step for the series(That was almost immediately undone.)

6th Gen: Youth. The game feels more like a coming of age story than the others. There's a distinction between the kids and adults highlighted by the frequent interactions with your group of "rivals" The game struggles in a lot of areas, but it does better than most in at least acknowledging that the main character is, in fact, a child setting out on a huge adventure.

7th Gen: Regional differentiation. Alola feels like a completely different region to everything that came before it. From Island hopping, to the frequency of "scenic shots" to the Alolan variants, it really felt like you were isolated from the rest of the world you had experienced in the other games as a result.

8th Gen: Encounters and catching in general. Dynamax raids suck without other players. But the wild area and the ease of catching what would previously be considered "Lategame mons" let people really go wild with their team building, in spite of there being fewer pokemon overall than previous generations. Having access to a larger pool of pokemon earlier in the story is just a good idea for a franchise that is based upon that same concept of differentiation of teambuilding among its playerbase.

And the overall ranking of the games(This includes the remakes or 4th gen would be higher)

5>3>2>4>7>8=1>6

They all suck after 3 (except for HGSS)

Late Gen 3 and Gen 4: The Vs. Seeker. That is all.

I only played gsc, might get into hgss eventually just to see what I'm missing out on

4th gen introducing the physical/special split was huge.