OOT is the second best Zelda game, gen five had Pearson or glaceon didn't it? And team plasma was probably the most amibitous team if anything.

Personally I think Gen 5 was the best play experience I had since Gen 2. I liked the scaling experience, I found the team to be believable instead of Saturday-morning-cartoon level of Snidely Whiplash evil, the environments were more interesting than they had been for a long while, and there were a lot of interesting new Pokémon (although there were an equal amount of horrible new Pokémon [I'm looking at you, Garbrador and Vanilluxe] and bad names [I'm looking at you, Garbrador and Vanilluxe]).

Wait what is this scaling EXP thing that Gen 5 had? Did I miss something?

For what it's worth I liked the majority of Gen 5's pokemon designs (and some of my favorites actually hail from the generation). My biggest problem was the fact you were finished with the thing half-way through the map - you get all badges, beat the bad guy and defeat the league and there's still like 6 routes left to check (with basically nothing of note of them). It's rather poor use of space is what I'm saying.

What's-his-face from White2/Black2 (your rival) was probably one of the worst characters in all pokemon games though. Screw that guy.

Still never played black 2 or white 2. Seemed superfluous.

I only picked it up because I got 1 and 2 in a pack for £15 back when I was on my 'getting back into pokemon' phase. It's okay. Got some decent features but also some kinda stupid ones.

OOT is my least favorite Zelda game ever, hands down, not competition (Though I should state "That's I've played" because there is one that it worse than it that I haven't played).

Scaling XP TL;DR: The implementation was horrible.
Personally, I liked the scaling XP, but it's because Pokemon never had that before, that it seemed too crippling. It was just out of place and given pokemon is a game of grinding, that scaling XP made grinding all the more grindy which I find unfun. If Pokemon was less grindy to begin with, I would've mind the scaling XP, but because they didn't do anything aobut eh grindiness, it's horrible. I like that it helped you focus on type advantages and whatnot, but even then my pokemon were still underleveled a lot.

I did like the locations much better, but Burgh's gym in paricular bugged me in both versions.

The team I couldn't stand because of their outfits. They were too over the top for me. It wasn't jjsut colors, or a suit, it was flipping chainmail. While that's cool, it's loses its charm very quickly. Team Rocket was my favorite team to-date. They also were enormous hypocrites, and that I just cant stand. They weren't ignorant, they were just idiots. "Let's use pokemon, to free pokemon!" The two teams I hate more than these guys was Team Galactic. They had NO IDEA what they were doing ever. And Team Flair (let's blow EVERYTHING up).

I realize that I should have stated earlier that I've only ever played White of Gen V. Actually, I may as well state what games I have played of each generation:

[Gen I] - Blue, Yellow
- friend had Red, saw some of it

[Gen II] - Silver, some of Gold (lost Gold in Cincinnati hockey arena)

[Gen III] - Ruby, Leaf Green
- friend had Sapphire, saw some of it
- friend had Emerald, didn't see any of it, friend gave me Emerald (after he got a 3ds), have never played
- friend had Fire Red, saw some of it

[Gen IV] - Pearl
- friend had Diamond, saw some of it
- friend had Platinum, saw very little of it
- friend had Soul Silver, saw some of it

[Gen V] - White
- friend had Black, saw very little of it

I only played the Gen 5 sequels, but I can't remember having to grind at any point. Maybe like, a little bit before the Elite 4.

I swear scaling EXP made grinding less grindy, but you never have to grind in any Pokemon game because they are easy

Altimis is dead to me.

Yeah I legitimately don't see how you can say OoT is bad but OoT isn't Pokemon.

OR IS IT???

I got some Pokemon experience in my belt. Though my last seriously long game was Diamond (over 600 hours including IV-breeding, raising competitive teams, playing online, etcetera).
After Diamond I just was satisfied with making sure I could complete the National Dex. Got almost everything the legal way (including buying and finishing a game I did not really like that much to secure Manaphy)

My game list as far as main Pokemon games is concerned:
Red, Blue, Yellow. (FireRed as remake)
Silver, Crystal (HeartGold as remake)
Emerald (AlphaSapphire as remake)
Diamond, Pearl
White, White2
Y

Also joined a Dutch forum in 2007 where I quickly rose to mod and later admin where I still do some stuff every now and then (over 7k members, but activity is dwindling).

Oh yeah, I forgot about the remakes. I edited in the fact I had Leaf Green and that a friend had Fire Red and Soul Silver.

I remember the scaling XP making EV training more fun, and definitely making training to Lv. 50 easier. I didn't have to face the Elite Four 5 times to level up an average Pokémon. Of course, I only ever put... I want to say about 2-300 hours into White, whereas I put... I think it was 600 hours on my last file of Pearl (with several resets, so I'm guessing well over 1000 hours total), and thousands of hours into Ruby with as many times as I reset. Point is, my memory of Gen V might be flawed considering it's been years since I played and I never put as much time into it as the other games.

For me it was frustrating that the higher level I got, the less XP I received per battle on top of needing more XP to level up. Like I need 1000 to level up and I get 100 per battle, then I need 1500 to level up and get 80 per battle, then I need 2000 to level up and get 50 per battle. It makes grinding far more grindy.

I can get that it makes leveling under-leveled pokemon less grindy, because that's exactly what it does, but in general, it's still frustrating seeing the amount of XP you gain per battle dwindle as you raise in level, even if it's still more than you would've gotten because you're underleveled. It's just a feel bad mechanic, even though it's beneficial in about 90% of cases.

@Lily: I don't 'actually' hate OOT, I hate how it ends. OOT was my favorite up until the last five minutes of the game when the story just says "Screw you Link, everyone you ever cared for is dead! And everyone you saved has no idea, and of the two people taht did have the idea, one abandoned you and one requests that you never see her again."

Link gave up so much and got pissed on for a reward. Now that I think of it, I really hate how Twilight Princess (my actual favorite) ends too. Little Midna was much MUCH better a character than Big Midna. But instead of story, I'm just mad Midna had to leave. She, Shiek (from OOT), and Zelda from Skyward Sword are my favorite Zelda characters.

Gen 5 was like that as well. I actually did like the innovations and sustenence behind it, but the story was really what killed it for me. Mostly because of the criminal teams have slowly become less relatable throughout the generations.

Link's Awakening is worse in that regard <_<

It's a harsh ending but the world is harsh and soemtimss even the hero who saves two timelines at once will get a sad ending in the third one. And sometimes you wake up to find nobody actually existed.

Is this the real life, or is this just fantasy?

It sounds to me like you were in the wrong areas and fighting the wrong battles. I had to actually grind* in Blue, Silver, multiple times in Ruby, and in Pearl, but I never had to grind in White. I felt that Gen V had finally managed to balance how you leveled up over the course of the story, and on top of that it helped to equalize levels if you picked up a new poke on the way and/or when leveling up after EV training.


*my definition of grinding: being forced to stay in an area repeating battles in order to level up because the next area is too highly leveled to get past without doing so

I dunno why, but I use the same definition of grind. And I never had to grind in any of the games except for in Gen V. I guess Gen VI I technically did, especially without using the EXP Share, but I was grinding for money (BUY ALL THE CLOTHES) and the levels were just a bonus.

I had to grind in Gen IV to get my leafeon to level 100, but that was post game and clearly optional.

But for some reason iin B2W2, I was always underleveled and couldn't win a battle so I had to go to preious routes to battle and thus leveled up more slowly and you know the rest.