Nah I agree that gen 2 is overrated but gen 5 didn't bring much to the table, had a lot of repeat Pokemon, didn't have as many great Pokemon as any of the other gens (in my opinion, anyway) and was just too by-the-numbers (how many times can we do that same ice gym puzzle?). I still like it a lot but maybe I need to play it again and see if I appreciate it more now.
Burnout hit me pretty hard in Black/White and I put the game down for quite a while before finishing it. I'm almost never on the "herp derp the new pkmn all suck" bandwagon but B/W just had far too many retreads for me to tolerate. On top of the same starter types again and the requisite Pidgey/Rattata clones, two fossil lines, and legendary Pokemon, we have the following:
- six Pokedex slots used up for the elemental monkeys
- Geodude and Zubat are finally eradicated from caves only to be replaced by the functionally equivalent Rogenrola and Woobat, right down to the respective trade and happiness evolution.
- Audino is new Chansey-type cleric with high EXP yield.
- Timburr is the new Machop, also complete with trade evolution.
- Dwebble gives off a big Paras vibe, as does...
- Sawk/Throh with Hitmonlee/Hitmonchan
- Litwick with the Ghastly line, complete with memorial tower
- Trubbish with Grimer
- Emolga with Pikachu, Plusle, Minun, and Pachirisu
- Alomomola with Luvdisc
- Bouffalant with Tauros
- and quite a few more if I wanted to stretch things a bit
I'm aware as well as anyone that these games are formulaic, and there are some diamonds in the rough, but B/W hit me with that "I've seen all of this before" feeling a lot harder than any of its predecessors, so much so that I often wondered what the point was with having a faraway region with all new pkmn in the main quest if they're just going to be the same things with a new paint job. 5th gen also brought the least significant changes to the battle system to date, but I don't really view that as a negative since I'm not keen on fixing things that aren't broken.
In the grand scheme of things, I'd still say B/W are currently the best games in the series, if only because I care more about the competitive possibilities than anything else, and like every mainline game before them, B/W add a lot of content and take away very little while polishing a lot of odds and ends. But goddamn does the quest fucking suck.