>>717532792 (OP)
Put simply, yes.
Gen 1 has a clear idea of what it wanted to do, and it did a lot of things right on the first go, even if some other things were clumsy like the PC or psychic's whole deal. Pokemon were developed with a purpose in mind, with consideration to how these pokemon might find themselves in the region (i.e. some being locked to the safari zone, trades, or game corner as they are not native), and it adhered to the idea of a kid going on an adventure and some of the difficulties and detours that may come with. There was also a more grounded idea of the reality, set in modern society (at the time) where the villains were just gangsters who abused pokemon, some of them dying in the case of marowak. Legendaries were just that, rare pokemon that were thought to be legends, and you'd have to purposefully seek them out yourself. A strong vision.
Gen 2 was similar, just patched up a few things and I felt the region wasn't as well designed.
Gen 3 is when Masuda stepped in, and he brought his own brand of ideas, but he still pretty much got the core idea, so his first games were good even if the gameplay didn't evolve much. The direction changed a bit with gen 5 and 6, more linear and story driven, but it wasn't necessarily bad. XY just really needed Z.
And then we get to ORAS/gen 7, when Ohmori came in. Now the direction has changed completely from an adventure to a theme park. You're led around hallways from the nose by NPCs telling you about their various personal issues that have nothing to do with you, mostly some form of family trauma. The protag and pokemon themselves are left as an afterthought. They're just cute marketable little accessories to the characters. Consequently, the gameplay actually devolved, seemingly no longer caring about the actual experience of the gameplay and just lazily copying what came before it without any consideration as to why those things are they way they are.
As deep as my thoughts get within 2000 characters.
