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I just stick to the manga for the most part.

Also, the spin-offs are more fun sometimes.

I'd say Pokemon still has merits over other Monster Collectors in terms of overall visual design and personality. Before I started playing Pokemon a year ago I already knew the names of over 300 Pokemon. That's just a testament to how memorable and distinct every Pokemon design is, and for a Monster Collector RPG, I think that's one of the strongest aspects one of those games can have. If I want to collect over 400 creatures, It's obviously going to be beneficial if those designs are interesting, distinct, and generally just good designs.
I think that's Pokemon's biggest strength over other RPGs, and personally is one of the defining aspects on whether I enjoy a game or not. That's why Donkey Kong, Banjo-Kazooie, and Pikmin are my favorite game franchises.

Outside of that I agree with you. There are tons of Monster Collectors and RPGs that do things better than Pokemon in every aspect other than visual design and personality IMO. So if there's any Pokemon game designers you should praise, it should be the artists.
Music might be debatable though, Pokemon has some pretty good music.

R O F L I STRONGLY disagree with that.

Pokemon's animations are so awful and stiff that they are extremely lacking in personality.

When you have games like Yo-Kai Watch where every monster has 5 unique customizable victory animations, a unique ultimate animation each as opposed to just the bland reused animations for Dynamaxing and Z-Moves and the fact every Yo-Kai has voice acting, Yo-Kai Watch easily does WAY more to show off personality and make themselves WAY more memorable

Monster design is ultimately a matter of subjective preference. Many Pokemon fans clearly do not like Pokemon like Jynx or Mr. Mime and certainly don't rush to those when trying to claim Pokemon has ""good"" monster designs. I like those guys tho.

Yes, DrCoeloCephalo , Pokemon sucks. You've made me very aware of that.

Janx_uwu Yeah, and it makes me sad that it is since I love it so much. It's not much different from the gripes you have with Sonic games, good or bad ones but you still love those and wish they were better, right?

I was mainly meaning to talk about the pre Gen-6 games. I guess I really should've clarified that. The earlier Gens did have quite a lot of personality filled quirks, especially Gen 5.
For the post Gen 6 games, Pokemon manages to make memorable characters full of personality purely just by their visual design and looking at them, which does compliment Pokemon's simplicity, but yeah is incredibly soulless outside of the initial designs themselves. I have no doubt that Yo-Kai Watch is much more filled to the brim with personality filled quirks and animations, it's just that the visual design on the monsters you collect in that game are incredibly weak compared to Pokemon IMO. Though, this topic is completely subjective and up to ones opinion, so any conclusion is fine. Just clearing up my argument.
Comparing Monster Collectors to the earlier Gens and with the available technology, I definitely do think Pokemon has the upper hand with personality. Plus, their strong visual designs add so much more personality to something that kind of couldn't go far past small moving sprites. All opinions though.

Also out of 890 Pokemon designs, some are going to end up hated on, especially some of the Gen 1-2 Pokemon. Mr. Mine, Jynx, Aipom, Volbeat, Vanilluxe, and the Gen 5 monkeys are pretty much all globally disliked. As far as I can tell however, at least 90% of the 890 Pokemon are generally loved.

R O F L

The thing is that with the sprites, those go back to my point about how anything that DID have merit is gone now.

The sprites are a has-been.

It's 3D now and those 3D models are treated like a joke now in and out of Pokemon with things like PomeDex 3D Pro, Stadium, Colosseum/XD and Battle Revolution for reference.

I'd argue that's more a culture gap thing.
Americans were raised on more European ideals and with it, more European mythology and ideas of monsters.

Japan, on the other hand, is more used to a culture and history where monsters are all kinds of bizarre.

One of Japan's monsters of classic myth is just a monster that spreads its butt cheeks to scare people with an eyeball in its anus.

In fact, you can see this very concept even with Pokemon. Americans tend to hate monsters even in Pokemon that are inanimate objects. In Japan, it's common folklore that inanimate objects abandoned long enough will come to life, so that kind of monster idea is normal to them.

Pokemon's homeland of Japan whom loves Pokemon more than any other country clearly thinks Yo-Kai Watch's monster designs are plenty strong if not stronger than Pokemon's since they can relate to them better and even moreso since they have far more personality.

Stuff like that further convinces me monster design is just preferential and subjective.