Generation 6 (X, Y, Omega Ruby, Alpha Sapphire)
Love

• New Graphics Engine Shines – The pseudo-3D sprites in Gen 5 were impressive, but Gen 6’s fully 3D models were definitely the direction that the series needed to head into going forward. It looks much cleaner and refined, and is so good that they’ve basically just gone and reused all of the models in Gen 7 and (I think) Pokemon Go as well. Oh and the new 3D models meant that shines could be made significantly more creative, with Gen 6 and 7’s shiny Pokemon being universally regarded as the best in the series. The engine itself is also much faster than the DS games were, with saves being basically instantaneous, and Kalos itself is quite beautifully and distinctly designed.
• Player Search System – The PSS is probably the smoothest and cleanest online integration in any Pokemon game, making trading and battling with friends and strangers an absolute snap. This also introduced the Wonder Trade feature, which is always a fun little roulette wheel to spin.
• Fairy Type – Similarly to the introduction of Dark and Steel Types in Gen 2, Gen 6 introduced the Fairy Type in order to make up for some of the typing imbalances that Gen 5 had created, while also giving an offensive boost to the Steel type and giving the underpowered Poison type a huge boost. This has gotten the balance of the typings back into a good place, although some might feel that the Fairy type itself is maybe a little too good.
• Player Customization – This was a feature I never really expected to get, but when we got the ability to customize our avatar’s look, this was basically the only thing I started spending my money on in these games.
• Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire‘s Gimmicks – The Gen 3 remakes brought in a few new features to the Gen 6 engine which are basically just small gimmicks, but they are so cool that they’re worth mentioning. The first is the 2 different bikes, which allow you to perform tricks and reach otherwise inaccessible areas (or just straight-up go faster). The second is the Eon Flute, which lets you freaking fly a Latios/Latias in real-time around Hoenn!!! This feature is just plain amazing and has the secondary benefit of making Fly no longer a basically-mandatory HM to navigate with.
• Friend Safari – I personally really liked this addition, which looks at your friend list and assigns them 3 Pokemon which can be caught in the friend safari (although they need to be online for you to get all 3 of them). It’s nowhere near as fleshed out as the old safari zones, but it was really cool adding friends to try to get ahold of these exclusive and Hidden Ability Pokemon.
• Mini-Games Are Actually Fun and Useful – The mini-games introduced in Gen 6 are actually quite fun. Pokemon Amie is like Nintendogs for Pokemon, and it’s adorable and amazing, while giving some boosts in battle if you want them. Meanwhile, Super Training makes EV training easier and more accessible than ever. Oh, but the returning Contests from the Gen 3 remakes still suck of course.

Hate

• Stupidly Easy – As anyone who played a Gen 6 game what stuck out the most to them and odds are that the first or second thing they’ll say is that these games are way too easy. The Exp Share gets a lot of flack for this, but even without it the game is just stupidly easy. Like, in Gen 4 I would often be 10-20 levels lower than my opponents, but in Gen 6 you have to go out of your way to not be overlevelled. Apparently the difficulty was scaled down because there were worries about casual gamers and mobile games at the time, but the difficulty of these games makes them boring to replay.
• I Don’t Like Mega Evolutions – This one is YMMV because I know some people really love their megas, but I really don’t like them. They’re definitely a flashy new feature and probably the most notable new addition to Gen 6, but I really dislike them because I feel like they limit your options. I mean, there are a very limited selection of Megas and if you want to run, say, a Charizard, Aerodactyl or a Lucario, then why wouldn’t you throw a mega stone onto them? You’re basically gimping yourself if you don’t. Plus if you see one of these Pokemon on the other team then you know that there’s a very good chance they’re running a mega evolution, limiting the potential variety. Or, for that matter, if you’re running a competitive team then you’re probably going to need a mega on your team (unless you’re running a very particular strategy) because they are so much stronger than any regular Pokemon, meaning that your pool of potential Pokemon is down to one of the 46 Pokemon which can mega evolve, and the Pokemon who missed out are just even more outclassed than ever. I get that some people will argue that megas make older Pokemon more viable by giving them these kinds of power boosts, but I feel like there are better ways to combat that kind of power creep than this. Plus it’s not like all megas are created equally, so we’re ultimately just continuing the same issue of having some Pokemon be significantly more viable than others.
• Lack of Identity – After the clear attempts to reboot the franchise in Gen 5, Gen 6 plays things much safer. X and Y feature a ton of nostalgia-baiting, bringing back lots of old Pokemon at the expense of new ones. In fact, this generation introduced the fewest new Pokemon, at 72 (which is likely down to resources going into the new graphics engine and all the new mega evolutions, which just highlighted the nostalgia-focus even further). On the one hand, this helped to bring back people like me who hadn’t played a Pokemon game since Gen 2 and get them up to speed on the games I’d missed. On the other hand, it just really makes Gen 6 itself fairly unmemorable. The fact that Pokemon Z never happened also probably affected this, as the traditional “third version” of each generation is almost always better.
• Weak Story – After the strong story of Gen 5 and the intimidating villains in Gen 4, you can’t help but feel that Gen 6’s story is a bit of a letdown. The story mostly feels like a “power of friendship” tale, juggling 4 different “rival” characters who are more akin to friends on a sightseeing trip. Team Flare are stylish, but much closer to the goofy incompetence of Team Aqua and Team Magma rather than a true threat. Lysandre is actually a pretty interesting primary villain with a cool motivation, but he doesn’t get enough to do and shows up a bit too late to make a major impression. Plus none of the gym leaders or elite four stand out either, which just further compounds how forgettable much of X and Y can be.
• HMs Are Still a Thing – Why, 6 generations in, are HMs still an element of these games!? I mean, in X and Y they at least scaled this back down to only 5 essential HMs, but the Gen 3 remakes are still chained to 7 HMs. It’s just so frustrating that these are still a thing, even when Game Freak clearly can see that they’re a problem and scale them back as much as they can.
• Origin Marking System – Starting in Gen 6, only Pokemon caught or bred in games released during or after Gen 6 could be used in battles using competitive rulesets (eg, most online battles or the battle spot). The result of this is that legacy Pokemon which you could have been using since Gen 3 were suddenly unusable in competitive play, meaning that you’d have to rebreed them (if possible). I wonder if this might have been introduced due to the rampant hacking in Gen 5, but the result is enough to make me hesitant to go back to earlier games because I know that I won’t be able to use any of the Pokemon that I use and get attached to again going forward.

Best Pokemon of Gen 6: Chesnaught, Delphox (I don’t understand the hate it gets), Greninja, Vivillon, Sylveon, Goodra
Shittiest Pokemon of Gen 6: Diggersby, Slurpuff, Barbaracle (the ugliest Pokemon in the entire franchise for me, I despise it)

Tune in soon for the next entry where I’ll cover the newest entries in the series, Generation 7.