I wanted to try making a Pokemon thread but the board is getting flooded too fast with silksong threads to really bother

Pokemon BW2 was the "peak" of the series in the sense that it's when they got the formula for the games down perfectly. It's the culmination of 16 years of game design improvements. I still think Emerald is a better game than it, but BW2 has the best quality of life features and it's just a genuinely well made game.

XY aren't necessarily "bad" per se, but it's obvious it's when they took the series in a new direction. Transition to 3D, reliance on regional gimmicks, and they were trying out too many new things. The reason so many of the new games seem bad is cause they just can't get their shit together because each game just feels so much different from the last. Hell even now there's rumors gen X is gonna ditch the turn based gameplay. Of course none of the 3D games are gonna feel as complete as the old games when they're basically starting from scratch every new gen and they ditched the third version formula for DLC.

That being said there are still some good 3D games. I liked ORAS because it's a remake of a good 2D game, and SV tried new things that actually worked unlike say Alola or Galar.