5th Gen Why was Gen 5 hated so much?

JanicePlayground

JanicePlayground

Janice Playground
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    • Seen Aug 21, 2021
    Well... I ask this question and then I answer it myself. Kind of.

    It's a fact that Gen 5 is a generation that stands apart from the others for being extremely unique, and that reflected a lot on myself, since I've played them for the first time only in 2014, four years after its release. I remember feeling really odd and insecure about the next Gen. The Pokémon, the graphic style, it didn't quite speak that much to me - or rather, it spoke in a totally different language. And I played it up to Driftveil, got myself some Dream Pokémon, and called it a day. For some reason, I had dropped it. But in 2017, I came back to it with the wish of really playing it for real, and the story was another. The game was a masterpiece. For me... it felt complete. I still need to think why and where that change happened. I might even call it my favorite generation of Pokémon.

    But I've never hated it. I felt like it didn't connect with me, but I never hated it. But I hear people did, and in a big extense. Why did people hate Pokémon Black&White back in the day?
     
    I don't think I ever hated it, either... I do know that when the game came out, D/P/Pl had made such an impact with their release and all new features that maybe that contributed a little to why people felt odd with that generation? Maybe they weren't blown away/their expectations were not met how they hoped they would be. I don't think I was unimpressed with B/W, but I do remember not being as attached to the game/post-game tasks.
     
    I LOVE gen5, it was the first gen/Pokémon game I played and I loved it. Now others didn't like as much I think because it was a "soft-reboot" and that is clear with the choice no to include previous Pokémon before you beat the game. Another things is 156 Pokémon were added from that gen, and to simply put a LOT of people didn't like the designs of the Pokémon, and I think too this day the gen gets mocked for their designs. But to me their good if not better than gen 1, a common thing to hate on the game for is the object Pokémon like Vanillite, lampent, or Klink. People also hated the humanoid look of the Pokémon like, Timburr, Throh, Sawk. EVEN THOUGH gen 1 is not the best when it comes to a design either, Geodude a letteral rock with arms, voltorb is a haunted pokeball, the Ekans line are just snakes, Mankey is just an angry monkey etc. To me I think people were overly negative and blinded by nostalgia.
     
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    It's one of my least favorite generations. I don't hate it though.
    To me most of the new mons just felt like PokeDex filler tbh. Not that many good/interesting designs that appealed to me.

    The music was on another level though. Easily it's best selling point imo ^.^
     
    so, i can't really speak for how anyone else feels about gen 5, only myself. what i can say though is that i felt mixed about the generation as a whole. what i mean by this is: i... really didn't like BW, while B2W2 (again, to me) managed to be a noticeable improvement. but i know there are others who don't share that opinion, so that's ok.

    i suppose whether or not one likes BW depends on how attached you feel towards characters like N and Ghetsis. for me, though? i couldn't care less about both. that isn't to say i dislike them in particular, but i just.. didn't feel attached to either of them at all. and see, that's the thing: i feel like BW was more like N's story as you follow him on his journey to where eventually he'll have some sort of epiphany and then betray his father and he leaves and rides off into the sunset with his new legendary.

    okay, maybe that was an oversimplication missing quite a bit of detail. but still... that's kinda how i took it. i suppose in my eyes, the player isn't really the focus so much as it is N and Team Plasma. i didn't really care much for Team Plasma either, so there's that (that isn't specific to this team, i tend to feel rather neutral towards most evil teams in this game unless they've really made some sort of impression on me -- positive or negative). as the player, the two biggest characters that stood out to me is Cheren and Bianca, and those were the only two that i remotely cared about given they were my rivals. Cheren to me was ok, except i don't resonate much with the uptight, boring personality, so i preferred Bianca and her (from what i remember) ditzy/clumsy nature.

    what really turned me off from bw though is the Battle Subway. look, i'm not asking for a battle frontier every generation. i want a worthwhile battle facility and that just wasn't it. coming from the highs of HGSS where you just had SO much to do (i miss pokeathlon...), BW seemed rather lackluster in comparison and i just wasn't really enthralled by the story like most people were. i also was pretty meh on Dream World and i think that was pushed pretty hard back in the gen 5 days too.

    without making this too long, the tl;dr is that i have a lot of grievances with gen 5 that ended up with it being one of my least enjoyed generations even with BW2 being a slight improvement because Game Freak was like "yeah, we can actually make a worthwhile battle facility" and made the Pokemon World Tournament. story to me was slightly more engaging because Colress was pretty cool and interesting as a villain. i also liked iris, so there's that. and seeing Bianca/Cheren's growth over the years was very interesting and something that i liked.

    but i also understand that there are people that enjoy the heck out of gen 5! and that's fine, everyone will have their preferences and individual tastes. you'll find plenty of people here that probably swear by gen 5 being the peak of pokemon gaming ever and will carry that opinion to their grave, while there are others that don't care for it much. what matters is whether or not you enjoy it in the end. c:
     
    I mostly think it's because they kept none of the old pokémon in for the majority of the game. Thus, the whole thing was very alien compared to all previous titles, and although the story was unusually cool for a pokémon game (imo!), it was just so different - without even being on a new console like all the previous games had been - that it probably disappointed a lot of older fans. And anime fans ahah. I know that many love the Unova anime, but there's all this talk about Ash' skill level basically resetting after him actually having had decent growth in all previous seasons. Idk if that affected the game's popularity much though, but maybe?
     
    Came down to Pokemon designs, personally. Was let down hard by evolutions in the initial blind playthrough.
    - Happily caught Purrloin. Downgraded severely into Liepard (similar to Torracat into Incineroar, although for different reasons). Barely scratched everything. Dropped to a slight breeze. Dumped them, in the end. Hates doing that.
    - Nabbed a Roggenrola. Discovered it had to be traded to fully evolve. Sighs.
    - Ran across a shiny gold Tympole. Suggested a sound-based aesthetic from its Pokedex entry and its "headphones". Became an chunky toad with orange bulges everywhere.
    - Recognized the trend of bad evolutions. Reasoned ugly Pokemon might turn out well. Bet on Scraggy. Grew a comb. Dot dot dot.
    - Generally disliked human-like and object Pokemon. Contained several of those.

    Produced some good designs that generation. Missed most of them in that playthrough, though. Left a bad taste. Did not consider it the worst generation, however.
     
    I don't think Gen 5 was the issue, but Black & White specifically, more specifically its Pokémon.

    Personally, when playing a new Pokémon game, I want to see new faces, but I also want to see how those new faces interact and coexist with some other familiar creatures in the bigger world. It's fun to discover new species, but so it is to re-discover Pokémon from previous gens as their move sets get updated and get new tricks up their sleeves.

    Older Pokémon are generally more liked, while new Pokémon usually need time to grow on you, because obviously you're not going to love every new creature immediatly, sometimes you need time to get used to them. I oftenly found myself using and liking Pokémon that I wouldn't have considered using when they first came out, because I didn't find them interesting, or didn't understand their concept/purpose, or because they actually gained a better purpose as they got new stuff.

    BW forced everyone to use Gen 5 only Pokémon, like it or not, which I believe was a bad idea, and every gen would have been bashed more or less if they did the same. There should be a balance between old and new, which is something B2/W2 handled very well. You still have the Unova Pokémon if you want to use Unova Pokémon only, but if you don't, you have more alternatives.

    It didn't help that some of the Pokémon felt like copies trying to mimick/replace Pokémon from previous gens that weren't present in Unova, we had:
    -The muscular Fighting Pokémon that helps people building their homes with their incredible strength, and the Rock Pokémon that's a rock, that need to be traded to fully evolve. Just like Machop and Geodude respectively.
    -The Psychic Zubat.
    -The "Nurse" Pokémon replacing Chansey.
    -The heart shaped Pokémon that basically exists because of Heart Scales.
    -The Psychic Pokémon that eats dreams, just like Drowzee.
    -The Mushroom/Spore Pokémon replacing Paras, while also replacing Voltorb in the "Pokémon that look like a Pokéball" role.
    -Tauros 2.0
    -The Tadpole, Poliwag but Water/Ground
    -The lazy "add an extra head when it evolves" designs: Klingklang/Vanilluxe, somewhat resembling Dugtrio and Magneton, although a bit more inspired.

    Of course there were some unique Pokémon in Unova, with new and interesting concepts, but I personally find harder to like Pokémon that looked like they were created just to fill the gap of another removed Pokémon and tried so hard to be "the Unova version" of something that already existed instead of trying to be their own thing.
     
    Corveone said:
    -The Psychic Zubat.
    Click to expand...
    Other than being speedy Flying-type bats that frequent caves (Because bats live in caves), they share very little in common. Also, replacing Zubat is one of the things people had been begging for before Black and White. People hated Zubat before modern Pokemon games reduced the number of caves. Like, if you were to ask someone what their least favorite Pokemon was, Zubat and Tentacool (AKA aquatic Zubat) would dominate the conversation.

    There's a reason Woobat and Frillish don't learn Supersonic, Confuse Ray, Mean Look, or Wrap.
    Corveone said:
    -The heart shaped Pokémon that basically exists because of Heart Scales.
    Click to expand...
    Alomomola doesn't carry Heart Scales. Kinda weird because it's a heart-shaped fish, but you get Heart Scales in Gen 5 through other means, including Luvdisc in the post-game.

    Alomomola is more like the aquatic version of Audino. Both are the main Pokemon that spawns in shaking terrain, both are defensively oriented, both are pink, both are healers, etc. The major difference is that Alomomola doesn't give nearly as much free exp.
     
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    For me I hated it for a long time because there are so many terrible designs for Pokemon in this gen. This was amplified by the fact that you were forced to use only the new Pokemon in black and white. I hated so many of them that it was hard for me to enjoy the game itself. The second reason was the characters and story. Let me start off by saying I've never been a big proponent of having a story in Pokemon games. The story and characters weren't compelling to me, so I just didn't care at all about what was happening. I still to this day cannot stand N. Alder was a very unappealing champion, I often forget about him. And I always found Cheren incredibly annoying. Even now I really don't care for black and white. I enjoy black2 and white2 much more since you can use old Pokemon and the story shifts away from N.
     
    Wasn't a fan when it first came out and still not a fan of most of the pokemon designs granted there are some great ones like darmanitan and bravery just off the top of my head and the fact you had to only use the new pokemon til you completed the game but the story was one of the best they've come up with and b2w2 is actually a good game all round especially with the inclusion of previous gen pokemon from the start
     
    I couldn't even tell what games you were talking about at first from just mentioning gen 5. It's that unmemorable.
    But yeah Black and white, was an odd combination of things.

    Great mechanics, and rivals, but the story left a lot to be desired.
    But only because they clearly were trying something, but then didn't at all flesh it out.

    The opening cutscene hooks you in, making you wonder about the backstory of these characters,
    but we never get that.

    Ghestis and his group, are just cartoonishly evil, while N is just an annoyance,
    talking down at you all the time.

    And because there's no build up all his mysterious and vague speech just comes off pretentious.

    Honestly if they had taken them out entirely and put more emphasis on the
    rivals instead it probably would have been an automatic favorite for many imo.
     
    People likely hated it because it tried to "soft reboot" the franchise and had us use only the new Pokemon until we beat the game. I personally loved generation v, so I never understood the hate. No, I'm not one of those people who is jumping on that "GEN V WAS A GREAT GEN GUYS" bandwagon I always liked Gen V.
     
    I actually really enjoyed Black right from the start, helped by the fact that this was only the second game I was aware of before its release after HgSs and I was so psyched to get my Oshawott and turn it into a samurai! Not having any previous generations' Pokémon was cool, as even if the likes of Patrat and Pidove were obvious analogues for the same Pokémon that got remade every generation up until that point, it created some uncertainty in match-ups later on that barely happened for me once I completed Diamond a couple of times.
    Black 2 on the other hand...well, I got it as an afterthought, pre-owned, as I had other interests (stereotypical university student interests :P) and it glitches out a bit which is frustrating. But the most irritating thing was I felt like in order to include all the previous gens' Pokémon they made it impossible for me to play through just with Gen V 'mons. The time passing thing was neat - its why I love HgSs even though my first game was Emerald - but I would rather they made more of BW's late-game Pokémon available in their earlier stages than remove the rarity of Riolu and force a bunch of Gen I 'mons on me. Although I did enjoy finally getting to use a Zangoose, as it wasn't available in the ordinary story in any other game I owned!
     
    Well, it is different, that's for sure. In a sense it's GFs second attempt to reboot the series; the first one being gen 3 where story suddenly became an important factor, as well as the hardware changing substantially.

    I guess even GF noticed that at this point there were way too many Pokemon to collect. So they figured if they stuck with a more limited set of Pokemon available, things like balancing would be a lot simpler. And it worked, at least to an extend. But people weren't happy about that. So GF decided to not give a damn. And ever since this sort of regional locking hasn't happened again.

    I personally found the story to be ok. I don't play Pokemon for the story, though. That series is, and always will be, at least to me, a series about exploration and trying out new things; new team compositions, new strategies and different paths to travel. Gen 5 with its linearity kinda took away a lot of that. And I didn't quite appreciate it for that.

    I do still like the games, never hated them. But they do stick out to me for this particular reason.
     
    To be honest, I never got why gen 5 designs in particular got so much hate..they always point to the Vanillite and trubbish line
    But ignore all the fire designs gen 5 brought

    I admit I skipped most of gen 4 and all gen 5 when it was new, but that was because I got out of pokemon, but going back, there isnt much Gen 5 does better or worse than anyother gen
     
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