Hot Take: Pokémon is slowly becoming Call of Duty

I’ve played Pokémon since I was a little kid and before I get into this want to say I LOVE it. But, nostalgia aside, there’s a reason people point to the older games as the hay day of Pokémon. And why so many people turn to emulators with fresh takes on the classics over some of the new games. The first several generations almost all the Pokémon seemed very inspired and unique, with designs that made sense etc. you were a kid on an epic adventure to gather all the gym badges in your region, but the more they copy and paste the same ideas onto new Pokémon (a normal flying bird at the start, 2 variants of bugs with cocoon mid evolutions, etc.)and force new ideas to exist (Pokémon keychains and ice creams 🙄) the more cheesy and less inspired it feels. I am nervous the whole “print a new game every 18 months” recipe is pushing closer and closer to call of duty territory. Not every Pokémon is going to be a home run but having your legendary Pokémon be a bike didn’t feel good. Maybe I’m in the minority on this but I would love to see Pokémon take on a bigger project. I understand these are mainly targeted at kids but their demographic clearly hits people all the way up in their 30s / 40s. I think a much larger game allowing you to travel cross region and take on all the existing Pokémon regions would be awesome even if it was a dlc format where they could drop new regions every hand full of months and charge for it. They could mix some Pokémon from each region locationally so it seems more natural to slowly encounter more of each new region’s Pokémon as you approach that regions boarders etc. this would also allow new party mixes in the regions you wouldn’t have previously. Also Put in level caps at each gym so you can’t just carry your OG party and stomp every gym in a new region. Slow down some XP rates to make the games last a bit longer. It forces you to use that regions Pokémon or ones you caught earlier and haven’t used. I know this sounds like an ambitious project but a dlc format for each region makes it cost effective and stops the 18 months cycle of what cool new starters and 50 Slop mons are getting dropped. Also “legendaries” aren’t legends if there’s 250 of them because we get like 8 every new game. Rant over! Hoping ZA was an indication of some fresh life yet to come 🥰