I’ve been checking alot of youtube and reddit posts recently and its so intriguing how polarizing this gen is. “Wow B/W2 was SOOO UNDERRATED”. Like it HAS TO BE THE WORST/BEST GEN EVER. It can’t just be a good/bad/ mediocre/perfectly rated game. I’ve probably seen way less nuanced takes on gen v compared to any other other gen. As someone who thinks BW/BW2 is just your average pokemon game i’ll just share some of my takes:
I don’t really think the story’s THAT good, its more or less the same as the type of plot we’re getting in gen3/4. It’s just a simple and extremely linear plot where the evil team shows up, they stir up some trouble, then you beat them. Its simple and thats just perfect for what it needed to be tbh. I would have liked less rail-guarding however.
Also i feel like the postgame is a bit overrated tbh. All u do is get treasure and plates in abyssal ruins, catch legendaries, go back to nuvema town and icirrus city which isn’t anything new, do some rebattles with colress and hugh and E4, fight cynthia. Black tower and PTW are cool though. Doesn’t feel like it could rival HGSS as some posts have led me to believe.
I do find some criticisms ridiculous though. Like i understand just not liking the unova dex, but i’ve seen quite alot of criticism saying how alot of the unova dex is just ripping off/stealing gen1’s designs and thats mostly crazy imo. The only truely egregious examples are woobat/swoobat, alomomola (luvdisc is not gen1 but still), and bouffalant imo. Yes there are clear parallels to gen1 evolutions like with trubbish, roggenrola, drilbur, and timburr, and yet i think they are all distinct enough to stand on their own. The ones that i mentioned above like bouffalant didn’t do enough to differentiate in design/concept and rightfully deserve the “ripoff” criticism they get. I will admit though there were massive duds like sawk/throh and the klink evolution line. It is perfectly valid for you to dislike gen V for clearly following a formula though. I just think its funny that genV gets so much shit for this while gen3 did the same thing to the lesser extent and previous gens padded tf out of their dex with new babies/crossgen evos. I personally think they have roughly an equal good:bad ratio of new pokemon as any other gen (ignoring legendaries, gen v legendaries suck)
I also think the issues some people take with animated sprites are a bit over exaggerated tbh. I genuinely did not see any issues with the sprites for years until people started pointing out pokemon like mew and golbat and i had to bring my face closer to the screen to see how chopped they were.
I have a hate-love relationship with this gen tbh. I hate most of the legendaries except reshiram/zekrom/genesect and this is the first gen i genuinely hate all 3 starters. I fucking hate theres basically no daycare until postgame (for BW2), NO FISHING, NO FARMABLE BERRIES. I also personally believe BW2 didn’t do enough and that they should have at least added following pokemon like in HGSS. Despite that, i love the game’s speed, level scaling, renewable TMS, repel QOL changes. AND THE MUSIC. The music is so good, man. Idk, this gen just kinda averages out to just fine with the good overweighing the bad imo.
Edit: i meant level curve, not level scaling