I love the Gen 5 style, the pixel art was definitely the best choice they could’ve made. Though going from the creative and unique Gen 5 style to the chibi-3d style of Gen 6 always felt off to me. I would’ve loved if instead Pokemon used the 8 sided sprites of the Ranger games, along with the Pixel-animations of Gen 5 to transition to 3d. Would have felt much more transformative going into later 3d styles.
(For those that don’t know, Ranger uses 8 “sided” animated sprites that move in a 3d manner but still as 2d. I assume this would be how the overworld would have looked in this theoretical mainline game, where the battles transition to more traditional 2d but more detailed.)
by _Boodstain_