With Pokemon Winds and Waves lurking in the not too distant future, I figured it was time to finally tackle one of the biggest subjects yet to be covered on this glorified blog fabulous website — which really is the best generation of Pokemon?

It’s a topic that has been argued exhaustively across a range of outlets, and though I can’t reasonably claim that my opinion would be any more valid, I will at least confirm that I’ve been onboard with this wacky world of pocket monsters from the very beginning. As such, I like to think I have a reasonable degree of authority on the matter.

I should mention that these rankings are relative, and proportionate to how well they delivered on the promise of their respective platforms. Someone playing through the whole series for the first time could reasonably prefer newer ones thanks to the improved technology, after all, whereas a proper ranking is much more nuanced than that.

Additionally, while this list does include iterative releases like Emerald, it does not take spinoffs or remakes into account. Sorry if that proves disappointing to both of the fans of Pokemon Channel.

With all that out of the way, a world of dreams and adventures with Pokemon awaits! Let’s go!

9. Generation 9

Scarlet & Violet

This may come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the narrative around generation 9 for a while, but holy shit these games are a mess.

The most obvious issues are the myriad of technical issues that plagued Scarlet and Violet on release, including visual glitches and sequence breaking exploits. While these are unfortunate, the bigger concern is that even if you ignore said factors, Paldea is a bland and unappealing chore to navigate.

I despise the open world more than most, as I feel as though it strips away all of the whimsy behind exploring every nook and cranny. There’s no sense of purpose as you dart between cities on your obnoxious lizard-bike, and in actuality, there’s a fairly clear order in which you have to achieve your tasks anyway. So what was the point in giving us these ugly, empty plains dotted with Pokemon ambling around aimlessly?

The three main missions (gym battles, Team Star and Titan Pokemon) aren’t too taxing in and of themselves, and the core battling mechanics are about as solid as they’ve ever been. Terastallizing might seem contrived on paper, but it actually proves to be one of the best one-off gimmicks in franchise history. For this reason, the actual battles themselves are pretty damn fun and strategic.

The caveat here, of course, is that the power creep has gotten out of control. Newer Pokemon are generally just better for the most part, boasting trademark attacks and abilities that put their predecessors to shame. Seriously, if I have to see one more Flutter Mane, I might just log off and never bother returning to online battling ever again.

To summate, this is a game that gets some things very right, but gets more things very wrong; and considering how the things it gets wrong impact the core gameplay loop, it’s a real catastrophe overall. I hope Game Freak never chases trends again, because open worlds and crafting mechanics do not work in Pokemon.

8. Generation 8

Sword & Shield

For folks who have been sensing diminishing trends in the Pokemon franchise, I present further evidence in the form of generation 8.

This is the series at perhaps its limpest from a narrative perspective, overflowing with genuinely dull and unlikeable characters. I hate the champion Leon. I hate his dipshit brother Hop. I hate how they keep resurfacing as if they are interesting in any sense of the word. I just thank the heavens that sometimes Bede pops his head in to be a rude prick as a palate cleanser.

While it’s not as bad as Paldea, Galar is still one of the less compelling regions we’ve come across. There are some standout locales like Ballonlea and the adjoining Glimwood Tangle, but for the most part, the routes are humdrum and anonymous. The vaunted Wild Area gives us an early insight into what open exploration might look like, and no, it’s not much better here, either.

Once again, this game is saved by its battling mechanics, though it served as our first example of the dreaded Dexit controversy. I’m all for rebalancing the metagame by removing some Pokemon and moves, but a few of the choices they made are somewhat dubious. Why did Beedrill and Fearow get the axe? I get that they’re not that popular, but shouldn’t we targeting the oppressive powerhouses at the top instead? Oh, and thanks for cursing us with Urshifu, who is pretty much a lock for every single competitive team nowadays. I love that for us.

Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing can be broken down into two areas: in-game, and online. In-game, it’s sensational, turning generic gym battles into pure spectacles of chaos. Online, it’s a disaster, hijacking the finely crafted battle mechanics for a series of turns in a way that feels downright arbitrary. This is especially true when you consider that online battles have a fucking 20 minute time limit now, and you can literally stall your way to victory by leaning on lengthy animations.

With the power of hindsight (aka Scarlet and Violet), the warts of Sword and Shield might not look quite so bad. But more broadly, you can look at the generations as two sides of the same coin, taking the Switch titles down an infuriating path that desperately needs course correction.

7. Generation 4

Diamond, Pearl & Platinum

Generation 4 is an interesting middle ground between the classic Pokemon formula and its later penchant for bloat. This is where the constant nattering and interruptions from NPCs began to really become an issue, whether it’s the ADHD poster child rival or the toothless evildoers of Team Galactic. With that being said, the Distortion World finale added to Platinum is pretty damn unique and exciting.

By now, the decade-old mechanics of Pokemon were in need of an update, but generation 4 didn’t seem to have any idea of how to rectify this properly. It’s a lot more of the same we’d seen multiple times by then, with several elements of generation 3 receiving particularly unwelcome modifications. The Battle Tower is back, but there are far too many challenges to overcome without investing an excessive amount of time. Pokemon Contests are back, but with weird new dancing and dress-up segments that quickly grow tiresome. Secret Bases are back, sort of, with the Sinnoh Underground. It’s just not any fun this time.

In all honesty, the best things generation 4 gave us are the things that would make the series better moving forward. The initial Global Trade System is so barebones it looks silly by today’s standards, but prior to this, the notion of swapping Pokemon around the world was little more than a fantasy. It’s just a shame that nearly 20 years later, online trading is still broken in many ways, but that’s not the fault of Diamond or Pearl.

The big winner, however, is the damage category retooling. Splitting individual moves into physical or special attack (as opposed to that being determined by the type of the move) offered newfound versatility and viability to Pokemon previously doomed by incompatible stat spreads. You want a physical attacking Fire type? You can finally pursue that dream.

Overall, this was the first time the franchise had really faltered, and it stands as one of the generations I least look forward to replaying — especially considering the base games’ limited, legendary-heavy PokeDex resulting in a lot of repetition. At least it has Skuntank going for it, I dig that smelly little fella.

6. Generation 1

Red, Blue & Yellow

Doubtless, the question on most people’s mind was going to be how the original games would fare, and in my opinion, sixth place isn’t too bad. As beloved and influential as they are, they are plagued with design flaws so glaring they’re practically unfathomable in 2026.

First off, let’s get the simple facts out of the way: these games were downright revolutionary for the time. They birthed a multimedia juggernaut that has generated over $100 billion in lifetime revenue, making it the highest-grossing media franchise of all time. I was never so deeply attuned to the world of Pokemon as I was when I first got my hands on that iconic blue packaging, adorned with Ken Sugimori’s indelible artwork. It’s like the Blastoise on the cover was a promise of what was in store if you trained hard enough.

The Game Boy hardware had long had a reputation of portability at the expense of quality, with stripped down versions of what was available on home consoles. But the world of Kanto stood toe-to-toe with even the best RPGs of the SNES era, with the breadth of catchable Pokemon making each adventure feel customised.

The groundwork laid down by the battling system was rock solid, with the elemental factors of the Pokemon and their moves creating endless levels of depth from skirmish to skirmish. With all of that being said, the harsh truth is that the implementation was so janky it borders on broken.

Some attacks don’t work in a way that seems fair; while the devastating Hyper Beam normally demands the Pokemon must recharge afterwards, if it successfully knocks out the opponent it can be abused without consequence. Other attacks just don’t work at all; Focus Energy, which is supposed to increase the user’s chance of landing a critical hit, does the exact opposite.

There are glitches and oversights abound, the most infamous being the rogue coding remnants of MISSINGNO. and its ability to magically duplicate your items and/or break your game permanently. The list is so extensive, the Bulbapedia page has separate articles for battle and overworld glitches, respectively. My personal favourite is the fact that Ghost-types — intended to be the major weakness for the mighty Psychic-types — actually have no effect on them whatsoever.

Perhaps because they hadn’t anticipated what a sensation the games would become, the metagame is an unbalanced mess where early game Pokemon are practically unusable. Yes, I understand that Raticate shouldn’t be as special as Dragonite, because they represent the growth you’ve made as a trainer, but the latter only has two weaknesses; one of them, its own Dragon-typing, has only one in-game attack that always does a set amount of damage.

For all these reasons, generation 1 serves more as a proof-of-concept than a complete experience. Treated solely as a single player adventure RPG, it’s fabulous. When factoring in its competitive battling (something it was very much marketed for), it falls flat on its face. Regardless, it’ll always be the chosen generation for a devout subset of the fandom, myself included.

5. Generation 7

Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon

I’m often at odds with how to rank generation 7, because at the time of its release I recall it leaving something of a sour taste in my mouth. Its main diversion away from the status quo is the way in which it eschews traditional gyms for island trials instead.

These consist of a silly bit of busywork, followed up with an encounter against a Totem Pokemon (a souped-up variant of the standard monsters) and at last, a showdown against the island kahuna. It’s… kind of the same as gyms, but in a much less gratifying form.

As the final culmination of everything introduced in previous generations before Sword/Shield’s eventual reset, the battling system is robust, if not a little iterative. Its insertions were comparatively minor, such as the introduction of terrains. To competitive players, they add a welcome wrinkle that have endured to this day, but to standard players they’re more niche and complicated than, say, generation 2’s weather mechanics.

The calling card of Sun and Moon is its Z-Moves, which I consider to be the weakest of all the generational gimmicks. Being able to use a one-time finishing manoeuvre, complete with a bombastic animation and potential side effects, is fun and all, but it requires the user to hold a specific item. In team preview formats, it strips away all of the mystery of if and when it’ll occur — when you see a Z-Crystal, you know that that’s the Pokemon to look out for.

The silliness of gen 7 aside, I love how Alola looks and feels. The island setting offers a range of different biomes, and for the first time, we got to meet regional forms of old favourites. The moment I first saw Alolan Vulpix and Ninetales, I fell in love. It’s the perfect example of adding something that makes sense in the context of the gameplay experience, instead of force feeding us, oh I don’t know… a lifeless open world. Superfluous, maybe, but not incongruous.

Lastly, Alola is an unlikely contender for one of the strongest batch of new Pokemon. For better or worse, Incineroar has made an indelible mark on the greater competitive landscape, and Mimikyu may well be my favourite Pikachu-adjacent critter. Poor little guy just wants to look cute, so if you end up murdered in your sleep, that’s your fault — not his!!

4. Generation 6

X & Y

The series’ transition to polygonal models hit the 3DS with a bang in 2013, whisking us off to the glitzy francophone region of Kalos. While I miss the lively charm of Pokemon sprites, the overworld absolutely benefitted from this perspective shift. The big city of Lumiose is stunning to behold, and combined with the experience-boosting O-Power, offers the quickest way to power level your Pokemon to 100 we’ve ever seen.

X and Y proved to be something of a swiss army knife, stuffed full of little features like roller skates, Horde Encounters and Pokemon-Amie (aka the function you will likely only ever use to acquire a Sylveon). Pound-for-pound, one of my favourite new flourishes was the introduction of Wonder Trades. The notion of randomly sending a Pokemon out into the world and receiving something in exchange made our once insular adventures feel truly interconnected. It still lives on today, most notably in Pokemon HOME’s Wonder Box, which allows us to ship off 10 monsters at a time. I just think that’s neat.

After years of stability, we were offered a completely new Pokemon type in Fairy, whose chief purpose was to bring the mighty Dragons to their knees. Overall I’m fond of their inclusion, however I’m of the opinion that they could use a debuff, boasting three resistances and one immunity, compared to only two weaknesses. Hot take: Grass should resist Fairy, because forests house fairies. How’s that logic sound to you?

But of course, this is all just preamble ahead of generation 6’s most noteworthy feature: Mega Evolutions. Taking some of our favourite Pokemon (and some of our least favourites) and beefing them up into powerful new forms is rather thrilling, giving them newfound utility or even the potential to dual-wield roles, should you delay the Mega Evolution process until a later turn.

Of all the gimmicks introduced throughout the series history, it’s perhaps not coincidental that this is the only one currently present in Pokemon Champions — though admittedly, the timing of Legends: Z-A’s release likely helps, as well. Long story short, anything that gives me a new Venusaur to play with is bound to be treated favourably in this ranking.

The reason, then, that these otherwise solid entries fall short of the podium is that the overall experience is somewhat forgettable. With 72 new Pokemon, it has by far the most limited Pokedex, and your progress is occasionally halted by your insufferable group of friends. Although rivals had shown signs of decline well before this, X and Y basically shelved the notion of antagonistic counterparts entirely. Anytime Tierno and company are onscreen, you know you’re in-store for a skippable interaction.

I consider this generation to be good, but not great — a threshold we are about to cross with the remaining entries.

3. Generation 2

Gold, Silver & Crystal

Perhaps it’s a byproduct of the era in which it released, back when the franchise was at its hottest, but generation 2 feels like the biggest and most important additions to the entire Pokemon series.

When stripped down to its barest fundamentals, Gold and Silver were actually much more modest than you may think. The core gameplay loop is nearly identical, and although the sprite work is leaps and bounds beyond its predecessor, the fact that it is still playable on the standard Game Boy reveals the limits of its technical prowess.

It’s kind of Red and Blue, done better. How special could that be? The answer is unfathomably so. Game Freak took to the mechanics with a blowtorch, correcting the many, many, many wrongs of generation 1 and bringing us a vastly improved meta. The aforementioned glitchiness was all but gone, with two new elements in Dark and Steel built in to bring balance to a system tilted in favour of Psychic-types.

…Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but I think Steel could use a debuff. But I digress.

Generation 2 added a bevy of features that have long since become standard: held items, special defence stats, genders, breeding, an in-game clock with day and night cycles, weather conditions, Apricorns, shiny Pokemon, the growth-influencing Pokerus and the Crystal-exclusive Battle Tower… It’s all so expansive and significant, in many ways this feels like the template that all games would follow, even more so than the entries that preceded it.

And yet, to a young boy obsessed with Pokemon at the time, all this paled in comparison to the special surprise that awaited me once I became a champion of the Johto region. There, before my very eyes, was a return to my beloved Kanto, complete with eight more gyms to challenge. I recognise nowadays the ways in which sections like Viridian Forest were scaled back to accommodate the inclusion of a second region, but the point still stands: having two worlds in one game is a flex unlike any other the franchise has ever seen.

2. Generation 3

Ruby, Sapphire & Emerald

As previously mentioned, generation 2’s release on the Game Boy Color meant that it wasn’t quite a full step forward from the original titles. That would come with Ruby and Sapphire, a pair of games that hold a special place in my heart.

The beefed up graphical capabilities of the Game Boy Advance allowed the Hoenn region to be more immersive than ever before, creating a vivid world boasting a wide range of unforgettable townships. Here we are more than 20 years later, and I attest that we still haven’t seen anything more unique and charming than the jungle high rises of Fortree City, the floating planks of Pacifidlog Town, or the ashy landscape surrounding Mt. Chimney.

At last, Ruby and Sapphire offered something more significant than version-exclusive Pokemon, with each telling the story of two rival teams from a unique perspective. Although Team Magma and Team Aqua are essentially trying to do the same thing by changing the landscape, the fact that you’d get to see the impact of their chicanery in different ways was a wonderful touch — and one that the franchise has been stubbornly resistant to recreating ever since.

Generation 3 was a dream come true for side quest enthusiasts, thanks to its newfound selection of ribbons. Between the Pokemon Contests and the Battle Tower, you really had your work cut out for you if you were a completionist. Record mixing made the world feel even more alive, and allowed you to visit your friends’ Secret Bases and battle their team —perhaps a precursor to what would later become StreetPass on the 3DS?

In-game battles would receive tweaks that have completely individualised team-building forevermore through two new features; the introduction of natures that buff one stat while debuffing another, and passive Pokemon abilities. Abilities are a real boon for the competitive scene, stripping away the rudimentary notion of “this Pokemon is weak to attacks of this type, so this will always work”. Think you can down that Haunter with an Earthquake? Sorry, it has Levitate, you’ll have to try something else.

All this is to say, no two Pokemon were ever the same again (though conventional strategies mean that they will often have deliberate similarities to ensure their competitive viability). And I haven’t even mentioned how gen 3’s new Double Battles have since become the tournament standard.

Really, there’s just not much to fault about Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. Well, aside from “too much water, 7.8 out of 10”.

1. Generation 5

Black, White, Black 2 & White 2

Generation 5’s claim to the top spot is perhaps as unlikely as any other. Whereas the previous few generations all received adulation upon their release, the reception to Black and White were perhaps more muted. What’s this? None of the original Pokemon make a return in Unova until the postgame? Flim-flam, what a disgrace to this storied franchise!!

To the casual fan, these gens are nothing special, but to anyone with a fondness for the competitive scene, the metagame had been all but perfected. Newly added Hidden Abilities gave dormant Pokemon significant new roles, such as the wider distribution of the weather-influencing Drizzle and Drought. And those battles looked simply spectacular, thanks to each and every creature now being fully animated. We had seen little wiggles and flourishes upon their arrival before, but nothing as substantial as this.

Constructing a gripping plot has never been one of Pokemon’s strong points, but the tale of N and Team Plasma is actually quite solid. Additionally, Black 2 and White 2 serving as actual sequels instead of enhancements in the vein of Crystal, Emerald or Platinum meant that we got to see the narrative develop across a period of several years.

I will confess that this gen failed to overhaul the metagame as substantially as its predecessors. Some of its gimmicks, such as triple battles and rotation battles, have since fallen to the wayside, while others like Pokemon Musicals and seasons throughout the year, failed to even make it to gen 6.

Long story short, this generation was potentially the least influential overall. But it is truly more than the sum of its parts, and proved to be a finely crafted entry into the series that you have to experience first hand to understand. Call it an evolution more than a revolution if you must, I’d just argue that being an ultra-attuned distillation of one of gaming’s most storied franchises is worth its weight in gold.