Let's say nice things about gen 4

[Murkrow]

A lot of people including myself seem to dislike gen 4 so I thought I'd try to be positive!

I think by gen 4, people generally mean DPPt and don't include HGSS, but if you don't like HGSS either I guess you could post things you do like about them here, too!

• I like the Galactic admins more than the Rocket, Magma and Aqua admins.
• As much as they're made fun of, I think the Galactic uniforms are pretty good
• They introduced Cynthia who ties with Lance as my favourite champion
• There are more cities in Sinnoh that I spend a lot of time in. For instance in Johto I always end up going back to Goldenrod and in Hoenn I'm always around Mauville. In Sinnoh I go to Hearthome, Veilstone, Jubilife, Sunnyshore all the time.
• The gym leaders that I do remember easily, I like
• The secret bases weren't as good as in gen 3, but I did like the idea of the underground. Too bad I didn't have any friends.
• Not counting mirage island, it introduced baby Pokémon being found in the wild which I think was a good thing.

 

[Dar]

Crasher Wake.

 

[Spoon]

• Snow! I love that diamond dust is a thing. I also like Snowpoint as a town, even if it's a pain to get there! The actual town is really cute and the music is really mellow.
• The Underground is silly, but I really liked the fossil hunting minigame.
• Memorable Gym Leaders! I really liked that they had Gym Leaders do things outside of the Gym. Like Gardenia and her ghost phobia and Volkner and his battling people is boring thing.
• The Villa in Platinum was oddly fun. I don't understand why I spent my hard earned Pokédollars on furniture and a few lines of flavor text, but I did.
• Level 100 Magikarp.
• I really liked the Gen IV Pokémon that were completely new lines. And Roserade was pretty cool too.
• Rowan was a pretty cool professor guy. His response to not accepting the whole Pokédex quest is also pretty great.
• PokéRadar!
• Barry's probably my favorite rival, so there's that!
• Decent postgame!
• Looker, Cynthia, and Bertha!

 

[ultraviolet]

the underground was really good and should be added into a newer game so you can play online :c

 

[sv_01]

Shouldn't this be in General Pokémon Discussion?

Torterra looks cool. Big old trees... If it was supposed to resemble the World Turtle, is the tree a Norse Mythology reference?
Time and space legendaries. And Giratina! Weird dimensional stuff!
It introduced gender differences.
Cynthia... Having no type alignments, you could think of her as an ascended Ace Trainer. And before? A Lass could have a Shellos and a Budew. And now she's awesome.
Eterna City is all... ancient. That's cool.
Nicely split region. Makes sense that the Champion is from the East. And those Shellos. Same colours as their lake guardians. North Sea Shellos would be yellow, but slugs don't like cold areas.
Yeah, Sinnoh. Sinnoh is sweet.

 

[hopeandjoy]

The Underground was the first time I could get multiple evolution stones without spending all of my money so there's that.

I like Luxray, Lucario, and Roserade a lot.

In fact, Gen IV made the Roselia line useable in general.

They look good and had a much better blend of sprites and 3D models than Gen V.

Looker now exists. Cyrus was more interesting than leaders that came before. First attempt for a slightly more plot heavy game came with Platinum.

 

[Momo(th)]

They have some of the best legendaries in the series.

Gold/Silver/Crystal are my second favorite games in the series, so by proxy ao are Heart Gold and Soul Silver.

 

[Connoiseusse Burgundy]

Good music. The gen IV games' soundtrack is seriously underrated.

Also, Barry is my favorite rival. yeah, that's right, you can keep your generic jerk Gary and your 2edgey Silver. Barry managed to strike a sweet balance between being a likable character and a respectable rival (ususaly with rivals you get one or the other). He got some pretty decent character development, for a Pokemon character not in B/W. Not to mention he has the second-strongest Pokemon in all of the Pokemon games (and in the gap between Platinum and HG/SS, before Red's team got updated, the strongest!).

 

[Murkrow]

I worried that any new eeveelutions would be terrible, but Leafeon's quite good and Glaceon might even be my favourite of all of them.

 

[Tailsy]

Platinum fixed 90% of the issues with gen IV. Looker. Torterra is the best. The legendaries are rad. The Underground is actually really fun. Team Galactic were amusing villains. Barry is a muffin...

I mean, I don't know why you WOULDN'T like gen IV. (But I like all the gens, so.)

 

[RespectTheBlade]

ok, um, let's see here. Gen IV introduced my favorite pokemon of all time (gallade) so there's that, also there was looker who was not only a great and hilarious character but almost certainly a stand in for the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who. A couple other things:

Team galactic. The team was amazing, with the whole space theme. And of course, cyrus, a psychopath who essentially wanted to destroy the universe and make a new one. It was so gratifying to defeat this psychopath (and in platinum it was wonderfully dark with both encountering giratina and also cyrus getting lost in the distortion world) and save all of existence.

And while we're at it, let's talk about the main legendaries for a bit. physics/relativity trio? (dialga is time, palkia is space, and giratina is (arguably) dark matter) with a trio master that is essentially the creator of the entire universe? It was the most grandiose theme that game freak ever pulled, I think, and it was amazing.

And then there's the pokedex, specifically in platinum. It was so big! Bigger than any other game (I believe) at the time, and it led to the enormousness that would eventually be bw2 and xy.

And finally, this may be a bit minor, but it's always a selling point for me, and the music. There were so many amazing themes. Like for example:
Palkia and Dialga's battle music- fitting and grandiose
Giratina's- a chaotic frenzy
The champion music- also fitting and incredibly fast paced.
Or even the champion's intro music
and even some amazingly calming pieces, like the Pokemon League at Day or Night,and perhaps my favorite theme of the game, the ascent of Mt. Coronet's summit.

There was just so much in these games, and platinum has to have been my favorite by far, so there's a lot of nice things i have to say about gen IV.

 

[Superbird]

The biggest thing is probably the physical-special split, in terms of game mechanics. I really like that -- it makes much more sense.

And I like most of the music, even if I'm not crazy about the soundfont.

 

[Alxprit]

Gen 4 is probably my least favorite in terms of the reigon itself, but I really like a lot of the designs in it. Many of my favorites, such as Froslass, Rotom, Manaphy, and plenty of others were introduced. And I guess I liked the Berry plots and running around to them in a convinient manner. The underground was very useful too. I spent a lot of time in Platinum, but it really just threw Diamond and Pearl under the bus. The slow battle system killed it for me.

 

[DarkAura]

• Platinum was always fun to replay!
• And I think Barry's the best rival in any Pokemon game. He grew as a trainer and person, and his positive attitude was just so endearing!
• Looker, of course.
• The music was awfully pretty sounding, in all five games!
• HGSS having Pokemon walk with you was probably the best part of it all.

Really, this might actually be my favorite generation. c:

 

[Green]

nostalgia is a huge factor for me, but other than that:

- all three starters are equally matched, plus the first three since Gen1 where i've liked all three
- the legendaries felt legitimately powerful/threatening and like a cohesive trio
- the rival was really fun and a cool character
- lots of focus on playing with friends
- amazing designs for all the pokemon
- johto remakes always rule, and they felt like a good mix between the originals and the new
- that music, wow
- lots of world building

 

[Scootaloo]

I really liked the soundtrack and character designs, as well as the Pokemon designs and the underground was pretty fun!

and HG/SS were pretty great remakes of Gen II, my favourite gen.

 

[Ether's Bane]

Stealth Rock, Toxic Spikes, and the physical-special split were big pluses for me. Besides those, Sinnoh is my favorite region because of how large and expansive it is.

 

[Storm Earth and Fire]

Platinum is still my one of my favorite main series games. I always felt like that game did everything right short of introduce the Poke-athlon. They then gave us HG/SS, which I didn't like as much, but we're supposed to be saying nice things so I'll leave it.

I never played D/P, but that's what people keep complaining about so I'll never know why this generation was hated.

 

[Noctowl]

It had good Pokemon! I think most of the designs are better than those of gen 5 (which I was not particularly fond of).

I didn't like the plot as such, but I never do.

 

[Professor Wesker]

I liked Gen 4 just fine, my main problem is that Diamond and Pearl were a very rocky start (Ironically, Diamond is the Pokémon game I've spent the most time on). The games were laggy to the point where I felt like I was being suspended through a thick gel while I played, there was a noticeable lack of Pokémon as well as variety in typing especially with Fire and Electric types. And to top it off, the level gap between Volkner and Cynthia was ridiculous. Fortunately, Platinum fixed all those problems up, and HG/SS were fantastic remakes of older games (WHY can we not have our Pokémon follow us anymore? That was an awesome feature!)