9) Pokémon ultra sun and ultra moon
Starting off we have one of the seventh generation games and the worse of the two in my opinion. Ultra sun and moon suffer from having almost the same exact story as the original sun and moon and the new additions to the story are superficial at best plus they changed some scenes and made them worse, such as removing the talk in the rain you have with Lily and replacing it with some random fisherman and the games just suffer for it. Sure these games are slightly more difficult than the original and they have the ultra necrozma boss fight which is fun but you have to sit through a super long game that doesn't really add anything that wasn't in the original.
8) Pokémon soul silver and heart gold
Oop I can feel the negative energy coming my way. Personally I just don't like Jhoto and it's not because I'm not nostalgic about it, soul silver was my first ever Pokémon game and I loved it at the time, but more because it just feels boring when compared to the other games I played. Silver and his story is great but I don't find the evil team Intresting and I personally didn't like that you had to fight the Kanto elite four when you've been doing the jhoto gym challenge.
7) Pokémon alpha sapphire and omega ruby
Hoenn is another region I just find boring which surprised me because it introduced some of my favorite Pokémon, like Altaria, roselia, snorunt, and milotic, but the region itself just doesn't feel very unique which I think is a problem I associate with the first 3 generations of Pokémon. The games were also just super easy since it was generation 6 so I didn't really get much from these games
6) Pokémon X and Y
I mean I love kalos, it's probably my second favorite region and it was my favorite region for a long time but the games are pretty trash. The games are super easy to the point where you can probably clear them with just a dunsparce and be just fine, okay maybe that's a bit dramatic but still. The story is just bad all around, the rivals are all underdeveloped and the evil team takes itself too seriously to be the Saturday morning cartoon villains that the evil teams from gen 1-3 were but their plan is so bad that they don't strike the same chord as the evil team from gen 5 which was just one generation before this one. On top of that I don't like most of the Pokémon introduced this generation, I honestly thought greninja was kinda lame (bite me), and a lot of the other ones were just.... ugly. I did love sylveon, fenekin, and braxian but thats 3 Pokémon out of what 48? Mega evolution was cool and I liked it better than z moves and dynamax but it did make the main story way too easy. Really this game is only higher than the ones below it though because of my love for kalos and the fact that I replay it the most because it's the only 3D game that you can easily start a new game on and not have to watch hours and hours of cut scenes that you've already seen before.
5) Pokémon sun and moon
The original gen 7 games and definitely the superior of the two. Sun and moon has a very different feel from the other games which is what I think got me to put them this high but I still didn't enjoy the games as much as I thought I would. Trials were cool but I actually preferred gyms as the system for progression. Team skull could have been cut out completely and I don't think the games would have lost much. The aether foundation was cool in theory but was poorly executed, hau was an okay rival but he was just a tad boring. Lily is great but she doesn't do much and gladion could be cut and I don't think anyone would notice. The game just feels overinflated and like they wanted to do so many different things and failed to do most of them well. Honestly I wish they had just gone all in on the sight seeing aspect of things and made the aether foundation more mysterious so it felt more like they were an evil organization rather than just having a crazy leader if that makes sense. The games were decently challenging but not as much as other entries further up on the list (or further down for that matter).
4) Pokémon black 2 and white 2
From here on up all of the games I'm talking about are like my favorite Pokémon games ever. Black 2 and white 2 are arguably the only sequels in the series (it could be argued that gold, silver, and crystal were sequels to red and green but I don't really think so) and they do a really good job of both tying up the story from the previous game (Cheren becoming a gym leader, Bianca becoming a professor's assistant, N's whole plotline) while also having its own compelling story. Hugh is an okay rival but he's one of the only rivals to be like actively involved in the story in a non-coincidental way so bonus points for that. The one thing I never got about these games was Iris being champion and that was solely because she had been a gym leader in the previous games and I didn't really see the sense in making her a champion when they could have just had it be hilbert or hilda from the previous game and called it a day and I think that would have been better.
3) Pokémon black and white
These top three are all kind of interchangeable and I switch between then a lot so if black and white is your favorite then yeah I totally get that and if you read the number 1 and 2 spots and think "those aren't better than black and white" then yeah sometimes I agree with you. Black and white just does a lot of things right for me personally, it forces you to use unova only Pokémon for the main game which I really liked because it's what I do anyway on my first play through of a Pokémon game (up until gen 7 anyway after that there's always a Sylveon on my team) because I think it's the way regions should be built. The story was interesting and a lot deeper than the other stories, in fact I'd go as far as to say it has the best story out of all the games so far (closely followed by the number 2 spot and black 2 and white 2), the rivals had more depth to them then rivals from past games (Barry, and May/Brandon,specifically), and the Pokémon and region all feel so uniquely unova which I think is something that a lot of people discount about Pokémon. A lot of Pokémon from unova are Pokémon you look at and you just know it's from unova because the designs are a little more out of the box than those from previous and later generations, I don't know what happened with game freak after this but a lot of the Pokémon from kalos and Galar don't have this effect and even Alola suffers from this although not to the same degree. Hoenn, Kanto, sinnoh, and jhoto I can forgive since they were all based around Japan but everything after that really should have felt more like the design behind unova than gen 6-8's Pokémon did.
2) Pokémon sword and shield
Oop I feel more negative energy coming my way. Hear me out, a lot of sword and shield is just kinda bad. Paid dlc, not great, difficulty, fairly easy with challenge spikes, Pokémon variety, lacking (surprisingly), new Pokémon, of shockingly varying quality but there are still some things these games did great that I really appreciate. First, the story was better than a lot of people give it credit for, yes team yell is pointless and they suck, yes chairmen Rose is both a boring and obvious third act villain, and yes Bede is quite literally Cheren the sequel but that doesn't mean the story is bad. Hop plays an active role in the story and he is possibly the most likable and relatable rival for people who actually care to look. Eternatus may be over foreshadowed by Sonia but that doesn't mean that the climax isn't an enjoyable one, and most of the gym leaders have actual personality (with milo and Kabu being the exception to this rule). The dlc is pretty hit or miss however which is why it fell to number 2 for me. Personally the idea of isle of armor and the crown tundra appeals to me but The crown tundra being a glorified legendary hunt outside of the calyrex story didn't sit well with me and the isle of armor is just kind of boring, at least for me since I played shield, klara seems to make things pretty interesting for sword players.
1) Pokémon platinum
Yes I am in fact, basic. Pokémon platinum is just a great game to play, the story is pretty bad and I don't like Barry much but the Pokémon have a uniquely sinnoh vibe to them, the gym leaders all have personality (well most of them), the story while not great is always in the background so it isn't all that bad, the legendaries are great, the rival isn't offensively bad so it gets a pass but what really gets this game the top spot is it's difficulty, platinum is difficult in a way that feels fair and it's really the only game in the series that captures that for me personally and so that's why it beats out sword and shield despite failing in many of the aspects that sword and shield excelled in.
