Pokemon X and YFollow

Water Starter. (Froakie)

Grass Starter. (Chespin)

Fire Starter. (Fennekin)

Am I the only one who is more than a little disappointed with how they've been designing pokémon since generation 4?

I still think the pinnacle of the series was Gold and Silver. It's just seemed like they've been running out of ideas for a while now. Though, I felt like WoW had the same problem last expansion, and they seem to have pulled themselves out of that slump recently, so it's possible. It remains to be seen if Pokemon can do it too while still holding to their formula.

Has anything changed since Red/Blue other than the graphics and the names/appearances of the critters?

You can battle with three pokemon in certain battles! And they added rotation battles, but other than that (and online trading functionality, whichtbh is what got me hooked on the current generation) not a whole lot has changed.

I really didn't get into black/white but I picked up W2 and something just clicked for me. It really worked, the formula was perfect addiction (although a lot of it is from lag trades, I currenctly have more than 250 hours on my cart and I -still- need more than 100 pokes for my dex)

I am stoked about the next gen. As for the art, Eh, I think new pokes always seemed a little jarring. There are some pokes I think look stupid and so I won't use ever (timbur carrying that stupid beam for example). I didn't like the look of the starters in 5th gen other than snivy (which was passable) which really turned me off, falling in love with my starter has always been key to getting me hooked. Might be why I liked W2 better since I started with a genesect and got a whole bunch of dream radar pokemon I could use from the beginning. Having some familiar random pokemon tossed in to the wild also helped lots.

I think the fire-fennec looks awesome, so that alone has me stoked. I also really like the look of the frog (I love frogs), but I will definitely be starting with the fennec.

I am a collector at heart, so pokemon is great. It satisfies my desire to collect without adding to the clutter in my life. The formula is simple, but as someone who has never ever won a random wifi battle yet, I can attest to the fact that it is a stupid hardcore game. If I was stuck on a desert island (especially one with wifi, lol) and I could only have one game I'd have W2, because I could spend countless hours breeding a team with strong IVs and abilities and natures, EV training them, and then, even if I didn't have wifi I could try to get an epic long streak in the battle subway.

O pokemon, you are so grindy... But I love you.

I hope the dragon one has no flying type. There are too many flying (and psychic) legendaries. And I love pyschic type pokes but they need more dark/ghost/electric/steel/bug/normal type legends (although normal type sucks, I love many normal type pokes... Like Ursaring. I have a shiny ursaring and she is boss. Even though she sucks I still try to use her competitively... And I lose....

Ok, being a geek here...

Yeah but that magic was recreated in Gen 4 with Heart Gold and Soul Silver. There are still mechanics in that iteration that I want to see come back - for example expanding on Yellow's following pickachu, almost any Poke can follow you in the overworld. It was actually HG and SS that got me back into pokes, I absolutely loved Gold. It was actually the first game where I ever finished a main storyline (beating the elite four!) and beating lance and his trollish-dragonites was hard for me at the time. It was my initiation into the world of exp grinding, lol.

I would have never played B/W/1/2 if I hadn't gotten dragged back in by HG and SS

Nope, because if I wanted to play Dark Souls I would just do so (or Dead Space 2 Hard Core mode).

I'm attached to my pokemon so much that I don't delete the save file until years later. Those rules sound like they're for the players that get off on EV training (as opposed to Eevee training).

It's a common problem for games where optimizing winning makes the game less enjoyable.