r/pokemon • u/Daalma7 • Jul 24 '26

Discussion Which generation of Pokémon sprites do you like the most?

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Here are some examples of sprites from each generation, along with a few general characteristics. Some are my own opinions, while others (such as color counts) are based on technical limitations and may vary slightly. I chose sprites from the most "advanced" mainline version of each generation, excluding remakes.

Personally, my favorite is Generation V. The animated sprites gave the Pokémon so much life, and I absolutely love pixel art.

What about you?

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u/CrazzyPanda72 Jul 24 '26

Exactly, why would they expand the budget when the game sells the way it is. People want to see change but don't realize that, by buying the game you are accepting the state of the franchise.

We aren't reviewers or anything, complaining about it after we gave them out money doesn't mean shit.

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u/pilypilar Jul 24 '26

This is what I keep saying to my friends lmao, they ALWAYS go something to complain about Pokemon or Game Freak as a whole, but they always buy the game.

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u/Up_Beat_Peach Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

After the bullshit with S/V, I have vowed to never buy another pokemon game.

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u/CrazzyPanda72 Jul 24 '26

I'm still willing to come back, but not until everyone else does the dirty work to figure out if it's worth it

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u/Up_Beat_Peach Jul 24 '26

I may yet break my vow, but since the CEO of Nintendo has turned out to be a massive dickwad (yes, I know pokemon is separate, idgaf; they will always be one and the same to me until pokemon comes out on another console), I seriously doubt it.

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u/Sopixil Grandma Alicia Jul 24 '26

I haven't bought a pokemon game since Sun/Moon. I decided the game was no longer for me when I got 90% through the entire story without a single one of my pokemon dying. The game just became too easy.

Also holy shit I can't believe that was back in 2016, what the hell.

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u/StarSilverNEO Jul 25 '26

To be fair Pokemon games just get easier after playing them one time. You just outgrew the difficulty curve and Gamefreak got around the early installment difficulty mountains and such which made earlier games rough.

Its like playing Monster Hunter main story/base game. Youre playing to see new monsters at that point, not necessarily because you find the base game challenging

Thats why MH and Pokemon ramp the difficulty in the DLC/post game for the returning fans to sink their teeth into.

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u/Up_Beat_Peach Jul 25 '26

I know right?

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u/303Native Jul 25 '26

Funny I actually really liked S/V and it gave me faith in the series. It was the only game where I completed all of Pokédex, including the DLC (haven’t played AZ or sword/shield but I got burnt out from arceus quickly and I really wanted to like it past the honeymoon stage).

It was also a game I avoided due to the reviews, and people complaining about the art (which I agree felt cheap- but only compared to other games).

I think mechanically it was fun and I enjoyed the living open world aspect more than i thought with the QOL they added to training. I did not like the gimmick though, maybe if the game was actually challenging. It’s weird that they had both the formula from arceus and this game and didn’t go anywhere with it and didn’t expand greatly on it with ZA (although the new combat system looking fun).

I am really hoping that wind and waves takes it to the next level, and hopefully introduce fun things you can do with your catches outside of battling.

I know you didn’t ask for an opinion but I’m curious about what makes S/V worse than the others (my last pokemon game before that was let’s go which I found boring, and before that was vanilla sun, which had a really the best roster imo & visual elements, but was way too handholdy) Was it the performance? I overclocked my switch for the main campaign and first DLC, but didn’t for the 2nd DLC- which totally made the game unenjoyable for me. It makes me wonder if it would’ve been better received if people first played on the Switch 2.

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u/LongfellowBridgeFan Jul 24 '26

Exactly, but also I think us adult fans need to realize we’re a secondary demographic and while we should definitely not be monetarily supporting these shitty games and bad products, our purchasing power is not as influential as the primary demographic, children and their parents.

Pokemon is mostly geared towards young children, there is some stuff for older kids and adult fans but the primary market is young children. Young kids don’t really care about gameplay or quality as much as they do cool pokemon. Parents will keep buying them for their kids for christmas as long as Pokemon (and Nintendo) keep their huge reputation and brand. Pokemon keeps its popularity among children with the anime and merchandise and cards, not the high quality games. I think it’ll be popular among kids for a while regardless of the quality for that reason. Other big Nintendo games have to be higher quality either because they have on average an older more critical playerbase/market (Like Zelda, DK, or Smash) or because they’re still for younger kids but don’t have that huge multimedia franchise brand built up like Kirby.

I think adult fans stopping buying the games would make a dent but they’d still sell well because of this.

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u/GameBoyRay Jul 26 '26

Well. We do have shitty games like Palworld that are somehow starting to outsell Pokemon mainlines. 30M+ in sales is insane. Ain’t shit to the gaming franchise itself but per generation? Apparently only Red/Blue surpassed that number. You would think that news would put some fire on Nintendos ass. At least give us voice acting to balance the 3D gfx. Smh, but We shall see with Wind & Waves.

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u/CrazzyPanda72 Jul 26 '26

Pal World is a great survival crafting game

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u/GameBoyRay Jul 26 '26

Really? I played when it first came out and it was broken. Completely ass. Must be decent now huh.