For me, it's not just the nostalgia and the warmth of hand drawn art. There's this sense of adventure and mystery that lingers even now that I'm an adult with a job and bills and crushed dreams. The whole pokemon world used to feel like magic, and I'm not sure what changed or when exactly but the current slop doesn't have that same spark. It's not because I'm older or because it's new, or the 3d/hd assets mean I can't fill in the gaps the way I could with pixels. There's actually something missing that I can't quite put my finger on besides calling it soul.

Even though I know there's nothing more to the Ruins of Alph than "solve these puzzles, the bit to trigger encounters with these unown forms flips, they're crazy week despite the lore so you'll never seriously use any of them unless you go out of your way as a challenge, and there's no story here beyond they're ancient pokemon that inspired writing" I still find myself drawn to it. Same with Team Rocket's experiments with cloning to create mewtwo, the regi trio in rse and Snowpoint temple/regigigas in dppt, the cave paintings in Celestic Town, even the weapon and the mass graveyard at Geosenge in xy feels like there's a weight to it worthy of respect and a reason to return even when there's nothing more to do there ingame.

The tapus almost felt like there was something there, but it just didn't land and felt like they were just generic area bosses rather than a part of the world. PLA failed to answer any existing questions or bring up any new ones, running around throwing balls and sneaking through the grass to catch pokemon was fun, but none of the events or locations felt like they meant anything beyond what happened on screen. Haven't played swsh and gave up on sv before I got a single badge but from what I've seen around the internet they're both just as surface level in their world building and all the good in the story is in the rival interactions. Nothing gives me that "I wish I was there" feeling.