Pokémon here, too. I used to be more attentive to the franchise as a fanwork creative, but the franchise went into decline starting with G6 (X and Y) in my opinion. It got so bad to the point that I basically left the games back in Gen 7 (Sun and Moon) and go by mostly by the side games and fanwork by this point. For my contemporary work I mostly ignore everything from the games that is not the Pokémon themselves, and for when that’s not enough I create my own Pokémon and also am working on adapting a few concepts from Palworld (Palworld will always be a nice, stingy reminder of what Pokémon can get back to).
Speaking of sidegames, the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games are real gems that Nintendon’t seem to remember anymore past getting us a “Kanto remake” of, and Pokken is a fun fighting game but rather restricted in roster and sad in retrospective in a “look at what we could have had if the franchise spun more in this direction” moment. Today Pokémon Close Combat exists which is a decent fangame in more or less the same direction.
Pokémon here, too. I used to be more attentive to the franchise as a fanwork creative, but the franchise went into decline starting with G6 (X and Y) in my opinion. It got so bad to the point that I basically left the games back in Gen 7 (Sun and Moon) and go by mostly by the side games and fanwork by this point. For my contemporary work I mostly ignore everything from the games that is not the Pokémon themselves, and for when that’s not enough I create my own Pokémon and also am working on adapting a few concepts from Palworld (Palworld will always be a nice, stingy reminder of what Pokémon can get back to).
Speaking of sidegames, the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games are real gems that Nintendon’t seem to remember anymore past getting us a “Kanto remake” of, and Pokken is a fun fighting game but rather restricted in roster and sad in retrospective in a “look at what we could have had if the franchise spun more in this direction” moment. Today Pokémon Close Combat exists which is a decent fangame in more or less the same direction.