Been clean since Sun/Moon.
I was disappointed with X/Y and gave them one last chance to change course.
The disappointing dungeons of X/Y had been replaced by nothing by straight lines with occasional fancy camera angles. The utter disgrace that was Z Cave as a super (only) dungeon was more than anything Sun/Moon offered.
For a game series meant to be about exploring and discovering monsters to collect, they’ve really let the exploration/discovery side down. Holding my console upside down is cool and all that, but gimmicks to sell strategy guides are no subsidy for actual explorable environments to lead to dynamic, emergent gameplay experiences.
Really want to make my take on a monster capture world explorer. I think there’s a lot of space for a spiritual successor to Pokémon.
I’ll respect the pokémon card game for demolishing reprint equity and making sure the meta cards are easily and cheaply available to players.
The card game gameplay, and high level competitive battling, while not M:tG good, are still both solid though. Closer to Magic than they are Yu-Gi-Oh.