Pokemon fans love to bicker over the relative quality of the generational games, their enhanced versions, and certainly their remakes. Adding our own thoughts into the mix will hardly settle long-standing rivalries betweens fans of the various gens, and we're sure at least a few readers will side-eye portions of our perspective. But that's how these lists always go, right?
Yet it's oh so fun to partake in the Pokemon ranking fun. Are you a bigger fan of the older take on one of the world's most successful gaming franchises? Are you keener on its newer fare? It won't be long before you'll ascertain our own broad thoughts on such wide questions, but we hope you'll enjoy our musings whether you agree in full or think we're smoking too much Slowpoke Tail!
21 ꩵ Let’s Go Pikachu & Let&rsquo🌼;s Go Eevee
Pokemon on the Nintendo Switch sounded like a dream come true. Finally, fans could easily play new installments not just in handheld mode, but o🉐n a big TV via home console. Alas, Game Freak’s fiꦓrst pass at the approach is less than enthralling.
Let’s Go does have a handful of charms. Riding Charizard is rad. The further we’ve gotten with the Switch, the more Gam♚e Freak’s pushed its graphical limitations, and frankly, the uglier things have become. Say what you will for the simplicity of Let’s Go’s environments and character models, but they manage to hold up better than more recent titles. Weird, 🍸that.
But the catching system from Pokemon Go never quite feels as sharp as it should, the difficulty is negligible even by Pokemon campaign standards, and the weird rewarmed pseudo-sequel story lacks any semblance of punch. Combined with perhaps the worst postgame in the series, it's not a good look.
20 🍃 Diamond & Pearl
Diamond & Pearl brought the Pokemon series from the era of Game Boy Advance into the future called Nintendo DS, and the visual enhancements were comparably swell. Sinnoh’s a nice region to get a little lost in, even if Mount Coronet’s central position makes the game too reliant on its ✅frequent cave-trotting. We remember some nice things said about Diamond & Pearl’s uptick in musical capability as well.
Two big things stopped the games short from anything close to greatness. The first is their aforementioned dreadful Pokedex; you’ll have access to only 150 Pokemon prior to postgame, and while yes, that certainl🍒y sounds familiar, it’s achieved quite poorly here, with a Regional Dex that lacks the proper diversity, and shafts several elemental types to a ridiculous degree.
Arguably worse, battling in Diamond &🧔 Pearl is downright glacial. For whatever reason, Game Freak hadn’t cracked the code on that score yet, leading to the slowest fights in the franchise.
19 Brilliant Diamond &a♉mp; Shining Pearl 𓄧
Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl had fans anxious from the first; their announcement came with the worrying news that they would be ‘faithful remakes of the original✅ Diamond & Pearl’, which weren’t actually that good! It’s Platinum, the enhanced version, that made Sinnoh shine.
Concerns ringed true. BDSP barely touch the plethora of improvements brought by Platinum, leaving us with the underwhelming amount of co🐟ntent we were happy to leave behind. There are ways to get new Pokemon unavaila🐭ble in Diamond & Pearl’s paltry Pokedex, and the new postgame legendary-catching content isn’t terrible, but factor in the weird, out-of-place chibified designs, and the whole thing just feels low rent.
The increased battle speed relꦑative to Diamond and Pearl is enough for us to give it a slight edge, even if the art style ꦰhere feels far less unified.
18 X & Y
It’s kind of become the norm, hasn’t it? The first entries on new hardware tend to lack the length and depth of🥀 what comes next. In the case of Pokemon X & Y, Kalos comes across as a test run for a Pokemon Z that never came to fruition. It’s strangely blatant, with locations that can’t be accessed but exist nonetheless, leading players at the꧋ time to assume they’d be asked to fork out more cash the following year.
Instead, X & Y, for all the hype that went into the series’ transition to 3D, has the unenviable sensation of a game that’s practically in Early Access. We like the ridiculous🐠 Team Flare villain plot more 🐲than most, but the badly-written ‘Scooby Gang’ of constantly chattering friends who go on their journey with you feels childish in ways even Pokemon games usually bypass.
17 🌸 Red & Blue ▨
There’s a tendency to rank original entries highly purely because they started it all. We get it. Pokemon Red & Blue😼, by proxy of being the series’ origin, introduced more mechanics at once than anything that came thereafter. Most of Pokemon’s core concepts (though not all) began right here in 1996.
These games simply do not hold up well. As anyone who’s returned to them anytime remotely recently can attest to, they’re filled with more bugs than Viridian Forest. The absurd differences in type🌺 efficiency are nearly as frustrating, with the Psychic-type Alakazam thus virtually guaranteeing a clean sweep through everything before big legendary Mewtwo itself.
Red & Blue should be commended for givಌing Pokemon a rough draft for future reference, but u💦ltimately, that’s what they are - rough.
16 🎶 💧 Sword & Shield
Let’s not mince words. Pokemon Sword & Shield wasn’t exactly a grand slam at launch. It was common for players early into the adventure to compliment the pacing, and admire the Wild Area. But the further into Sword & Shield one gets, the more it falls apart. The last three ൲gyms can be completed inside an hour and change, demonstrating the most rushed mainline titles in Pokemon history.
The plot’s barel𓆉y there, since most big events happen offscreen as NPCs tell you to just focus on your Le🔴ague Challenge. A reasonable thing to say to a kid in real life, really, but less so in an escapist RPG. Chairman Rose’s plan is also quite possibly the silliest in the series.
What helps Galar rise above its station is its significant post-release content. The Isl🌳e of Armor’s a fun time, but The Crown Tundra is pretty much Pokemon Sword & Shield at the level of quality they ought to have commenced with. Plus, we really dig how grandiose the championship feels in this England-inspired setting, and Crown Tundra smartly contributed moreﷺ content there as well.
15 🤡Ruby & Sapphire ꦰ
The Game Boy Advance never really took off in Japan, so we only got one generation of Pokemon games for it. Contrast this with Europe and especially North America, where 𝔉the hardware was more warmly received, and it’s easy to see why plenty of westerners wonder wꦡhat was up with that.
Ringing in the GBA, Ruby & Sapphire took us to Hoenn for the first time, a tropical region with an abundance of watery routes - too many,🔜 some have said💦, though we don’t mind too much.
Ruby & Sapphire ⭕had the novel idea of giving their versions exclusive villain teams in Team Magma and Team Aqua, respectively, but the result is a handful of disappointingly thinly-written chumps on both sides of the aisle.
Moving on from the Kanto/Johto 251 was a cool feeling, though. Practဣically revolutionary at th🐽e time.
14 Yellow
Pokemon Yellow is our first ‘third enhanced v🍨ersion’ to fall. Time was, it was expected that an updated (and fully-priced!) take on the initial pair of Pokemon games was an unwritten rule, and some even elected to wait until they popped up for a more complete debut experience. Red & Blue started the series; Yellow started the trend.
In Pokemon Yellow, you’re going through the same motionღs again, but this time everything’s flavored on those early days of the tie-in anime. Team Rocket’s Jessie and James attempt to thwart you several times - it was nice seeing them again in Let’s Go, by the way, even if those games just aren’t that good overall - and you’re given a very personality-driven Pikachu at the start of your journey.
You can also get Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle, and that’s sort of how things fall apart. Armed with the best of every possible starter world, you’l🌳l find Pokemon Yellow almost distressingly simple all the way to the end.
13 Scarlet🔜 & Violet
The newest additions to the long-running Pokemon series, Scarlet & Violet aimed to become the natural progression of what had begun with Sword & Shield’s Wild Area, and continued with Pokemo🅷n Legends: Arceus’ five wide zones. The time was upon us at last - Pokemon was going open world, whether you liked it or not, and the Paldea region would thus feel as seamless as it is vast.
Things... might have gone better. The overarching graphical quality of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet is terrible. We can point to certain stuff that looks better than ever, but on the whole, the move to open world clearly compromised the already-cracking visual quality Game Freak had been suffering from with the Switch. Setting aside the game’s looks, its performance is even worse despite multiple post-release patches. It's enough of a mess to permanently mar the reception.
On the flip side, Scarlet & Violet do feel bigger and more immersive than Sword & Shield did, and the eclectic trials before gym matches are entertaining enough. Splitting the story into three separate arcs is cool, and their shared fourth-route finale is fun, surprising, even heartfelt. And while we'd hardly call the game's focus on school life to be Persona-tier, at least Game Freak's willing to keep experimenting.
12 ꦺ Sun & Moon ❀
Alola! Launching in 2016 when the Pokemon franchise turned 20, and hot off💛 the trail of the summer gaming success story of Pokemon Go, Sun & Moon were poised to sell well. And they did. It had been a while since The Pokemon Company saw dollar signs quite this big. Pokemon had never left, but there was still a sense that it was, well, back.
Sun & Moon themselves are decent entries. There’s a surprisingly dark note to some of the story, for one. The Alola region feels more fleshed out than the preceding Kalos, even if it ཧstill doesn’t quite feel complete like earlier games had. The newness of the League here makes for some refreshing lore, and the Regional Dex successfully highlights the Alolan atmosphere.
These are also the most hand-holding games in the series. Some players are bound to give up by the✅ sixth scene in whic💛h friend Hau drones on about malasada, or the tenth time Nebbie leaves Lily’s bag. Be prepared for some woefully drawn-out moments.