Rank the Pokemon Games

[Yuunagi]

S: Legends, Crystal, Emerald, Moon, HGSS
A: ORAS, Platinum, B2W2, USUM, GS, Sun
B: RS, XY, BW
C: BDSP, LGPE, FRLG, RGBY
D: SwSh

I ordered them roughly based on ranking within the tiers, too.

All the games I selected for S tier connected with me on a deeper level and get replayed often. It’s probably because I was so young when it came out, but I can’t imagine my relationship with literally any media without the lens of Pokémon Crystal influencing how I view things. Legends was the first game since then to make me feel like I was experiencing that same feeling all over again. Emerald is a world of infinite wonder, Moon had a deeply resonant story (on top of being beautiful for the 3DS), and HGSS were just plain fantastic remakes of the Johto experience.

Anything from A to C is varying levels of good to great - I won’t delve too deep into those. D tier belongs solely to SwSh for now, about which I have nothing positive to say besides that the DLC makes them less bad, but still not worth even one replay. For me they weren’t really even worth one full play through.

 

[Pasio]

The 3DS titles had a mechanically perfect system that allowed me to make the most out of experiencing Pokemon. I tend to hold a different set of values to what makes a Pokemon game great than most other people. Most people just care about the regular single-player experience, the straightforward postgame content, and what they could do with old, familiar characters they've connected with. For me, I think collecting, competing, and connecting is what makes Pokemon, Pokemon. It's what made the series spark during Generations 1 and 2, and it's what the 3DS games mastered for its time.

Spoiler: Brief rambling (yes this is still a tl;dr LOL)

Gen 6
Pokemon XY + ORAS allowed you to complete the entire Gen 6 National Pokedex, all the way up to 721 (after mythical events). The competitive scenes were absolutely revolutionary for their time. Gen 6 featured a bigger Smogon than ever and the two most recognizable VGC tours to this date. The Vs. Recorder was a sandbox that allowed you to create matches against AIs in any way you wanted. This worked especially if you had 2 consoles with 2 compatible games. Gen 6 had the best online system to this date with the PSS having extremely convenient interface. Gen 6 introduced 3D models and advanced interaction with your Pokemon, allowing you to connect with them more. The 3DS games had some of the deepest lore in the series to talk about with other people. Super Secret Bases in ORAS ensured the Hoenn region was kept alive with something new and refreshing potentially coming every day. The introduction of megas were amazing and they gave the series so much life. This mechanic aimed to focus more on connecting the player to the Pokemon they have, unlike Dynamax and Terastallization. Gen 6 also expanded on shinies to make them more feasible to obtain, which gave rise to a dedicated shiny hunting community. Gen 6 was a time where the entire Pokemon community was at its most united since Gen 1, all because it mastered the fundamentals of what made Pokemon stand out while also leaving a lot to play with and discuss. You could really catch them all and aim to be the very best, like no one ever was.

Gen 7
Gen 7's biggest strength was taking much of what Gen 6 had and forming its own twist to it. They kept the Poke Amie (Pokemon Refresh) and the Vs. Recorder changes. They also kept all the megas. For what's added, you were able to simply add all the Alola Pokemon to the National Dex (now moved to Bank), making your way to having all 807 of the 3DS era (after mythical events), and Z-Moves were a little much perhaps but complimented megas real smoothly and ended up being in an environment where they turned out sustainable. Additionally there was now a Poke Pelago, where you can check up on your Pokemon. The Battle Tree and Battle Agency are my two favorite battle facilities in the series and there was even more cool lore added to the series. Speaking of which, Gen 7 also seemed to expand on Gen 6 a lot to the point where they're surefire to be connected.

Personally, I really love the trial system and totems. They felt like real Pokemon boss fights instead of glorified trainers. This also helped give Pokemon a little more personality and were proven to be more of a challenge than gym leaders ever were on average. Ultra Necrozma set a grand precedent for the series moving forward and became my favorite boss fight in the series. The whole idea of expanding on the multiverse and letting you travel through it was super cool. They even brought back successful villains with legendary box arts to battle you from it. These villains had teams I wished trainers had when I played Pokemon in 2012. Last but not least, I love how they used these games as a means to celebrate everything Pokemon has gone through in the 20 years before them and am glad that of all games to be the last to hold the entire National Dex for its time, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were it. 6v6 competitive surprisingly remained one of the most stable even through Anything Goes and Pure Hackmons, and everything seemed to be marked complete by this point. USUM really had everything and tried to represent the whole series for its time...

As all generations, this one has its fair share of positives and negatives alongside Gen 7, but these are genuinely the games I was able to make the most out of for the full Pokemon experience. There's a lot more I can say about both 6 and 7, including stuff about the Delta Episode, how cool it is to get to build your own legendary, and how it's cool we get to have legendary Pokemon to raise from pre-evo to full evo, but to keep it condensed, this should be enough. Main adventure + postgame-wise I enjoyed the Alola games, Legends Arceus, and (post-Norman) ORAS most out of the mainline games, but the extra features the 3DS games had really kicked things in.

 

[Snowy.ninetales]

Ok here’s mine:

Spoiler: Rankings

Spoiler: Explanations

S: Games that I had a good time playing and overall enjoyed every part of the game.
A: Games that were fun but it did have its boring times and made it a small bit worse.
B: Games that i have not gotten to play yet.
C: Games that I didn’t have a good time playing and got boring really easily.