The Pokemon series is nearly twenty years old, and it has had an incredibly high number of releases in that period. Amazingly enough, unlike just about every other franchise that has a release schedule that frequent, Pokemon has somehow not just managed to maintain a minimum standard of quality, but also constantly better itself and improve upon the foundation it laid down for itself all those years ago.
There are those who will argue that Pokemon never changes- they would be wrong. It changes, it changes a lot, not just mechanically, but also the flavor of each individual game. From the new region you are tasked with exploring with each new game, to the new Pokemon, to the new re-interpretation of the classic Pokemon story with each time, each Pokemon game is different.
The flipside of this being that with a series of games so distinct and diverse, but al high quality, it’s very hard to pin down one specific game that’s the very best of the franchise. Zelda fans will point to Ocarina of Time, Metroid fans to Super Metroid, Uncharted fans to Uncharted 2, but no one Pokemon game unites its fanbase the same way that those games do for theirs.
But we at GamingBolt are nothing if not exceedingly foolhardy, so we’ve decided to done what you would think is impossible. We have decided to go ahead and rank all the mainline Pokemon games ever released. Yes, all of them.
Whether it’s the main generation games, the remakes, the third version re-releases, we’ve ranked them all for you. When ranking these games, we have considered multiple factors- the quality of the games, and the amount of content they offered, of course, but things like context of the game upon release, within the series, and the scope of the larger market, were also considered.
Of course, it is important to remember, there is no such thing as a bad Pokemon game- even the lowest ranked game on this list is one I will recommend to everyone. Having said that, I still expect hordes of angry commenters telling me how I am wrong, and wishing all sorts of ill upon me. Don’t disappoint me, guys.
Okay, ready? Let’s go.
