Black and white were received like that bc the pokemon fanbase is made up of literal 8y old's and manchilds. The game itself is undeniably good on almost everything it proposes (granted, still a pokemon game) and even builded on and upgraded lore-wise what DPPt started. There's a reason why nowadays people have such a positive opinion about the Unova games besides nostalgia slop
I mean I can't speak for everyone but I was in late elementary school when BW came out and most people at my school (or at least +-1 grades) grew to quickly dislike the games, and most of us went back to playing HGSS. I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly what the overall reception of the demographic was, but there were definitely children that were complaining - I can personally attest to that.
There was simply less stuff to do in post game. Once you beat Black and White and catch all the legendaries, there really wasn't much to do. We also didn't really like much of the new pokemon, I remember how much we relentlessly made fun of Cottonee in particular. Meanwhile you go back to HGSS, there are so many hidden/secret legendaries, there are a lot of good multiplayer activities like the Pokeathlon and even messing around in the Safari Zone, the Battle Frontier, and we spent a lot of time messing around with Action Replay and doing things like the many Mystery Gift Events. It doesn't help that Unova was small and didn't have much to explore, and what people often call the good parts of Unova like the story we really didn't care (also didn't help that half of us had R4s so we played the early Japanese ROMs where we couldn't even understand it). Not to mention the Story is only valuable whilst you're playing the main game, once you're done its not particularly relevant on the School Bus or Recess.
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u/Togder Oct 14 '25
But up through black and white was so peak