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Where do you draw the line between the old school games and the modern games?

At this point, is it reasonable to split things into only two eras? Or would it make more sense to go from Gen 1-3 (no internet connectivity) => Gen 4-7 (addition of internet connectivity) => Gen 8 onwards (now playable on TV, focus on fully 3D environments with over the shoulder viewpoint instead of the traditional 2D style)
 
I like to divide pokemon into 4 distinct eras:

Gens 1 and 2 are the early gens.
Gens 3, 4 and 5 are peak Pokemon.
Gen 6 up to USUM is the 3D era
LGPE onward is Dexit era

The line between oldschool and modern pokemon can be drawn anywhere in between those eras, but i feel like you can't split these up when determining when the modern era of pokemon started. It's after either gen 2, gen 5 or USUM. Those are the moments when big shifts in design philosophy happened.
 
I think Gens V and VI, with about equal share, are a transitory era.
  • Devaluation but still presence of HMs
  • Last games to put effort into retaining all species
  • First games to have strictly cutesy modes of play
  • First games to have simple maps
    • First games where I have an unignorable feeling of being funneled down a line
  • Transition from lively sprite-based Pokémon to sterilized models
  • Experimentation with web services for the games
  • Quantitative decline of spinoff games
  • Qualitative decline of side series games
    • The storage apps (when they exist!) are bare
    • Battle simulation is gone (until the past few months)
    • Games which interact with the main games come to an end
  • Glitching becomes boring
Though too new to be an old/new split, I believe Legends: Arceus marks the beginning of an era of experimentation.

My bias: I started with Platinum.
 
I think this answer is gonna really depend on the person and the period of life they are currently in ngl.

For me, I see the line as being between 5 and 6, the big shift being from a sprite based game to full 3D models. and the introduction of Pokemon Bank and cloud based storage. (Also happened to be released in my senior year of high school so it was also a big transistionary period in my life!!)

However, we've already reached a point where we are receiving updates to gen 6 related media (with Z-A last year) and those games are old enough to be nostalgic for many fans... I think we're gonna draw these lines based more so on our personal expierences then anything (which is totally ok!!)
 
If I absolutely had to split into two I'd say gen 6 is the start of the modern era; shift to 3D, and also a noticeable shrinking of the games. But I'd split it into more eras than that (heck, I'd already put 1 and 2 separate from everything that came after).
 
I think at this point it's tricky to pinpoint the series into just old and modern. Like others here, I think there's several eras. You can split them in several categories, but I go by a general gameplay evolution.

  • Early era (1 - 2)
  • Latter 2D era (3 - 5)
  • 3D era (6 - 8)
  • Open world era (Arceus/9 - present(??))

there's a lot to point to the 3D era (6 - 8) as where a lot of the modernization starts at least wrt design philosophy especially with things like an emphasis on regions based on around the world, a big generational battle gimmick to promote the game, trainer customization and of course the jump to 3 dimensions, but in terms the actual gameplay structure of those games they're pretty similar to the previous games, general routes, grass encounters etc.

In terms of gameplay leaps, I'd argue the Open World era (Arceus/9 - present) is the biggest we've seen yet. Being on the Switch, lots of the structure of the games thus far have taken more cues on home console style experiences compared to the handheld level scale we've been used to. An open world focus, a large cinematic scope, and more imersion, even sacrificing series standards like general individual routes or random grass encounters. It's still early on, and we'll have to see what 10 has in store (though it already seems its following a lot in 9's footsteps, but I think we'll look back on this era as huge shift with regard to gameplay structure and scope compared to even the earlier 3d games

Tl;dr I'd say gen 6 was the modern starting point for design philosophy, and Arceus/9 are both the modern starting point wrt gameplay and scope. Hopefully I'm making sense here???
 
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In my head I think of it in three broad eras, with two major-ish shifts in design philosophy over the course of the series:

Original Recipe Pokemon:
  • I'm going to assume everyone knows what I mean by "the basic Pokemon formula" given where we are lol
  • Gens 1 + 2: Early Pokemon, very basics of "the Pokemon formula" coming together
  • Gens 3 + 4: That initial design philosophy becoming fleshed out and perfected

Gen 5 (not a broad era):
  • I kind of think of gen 5 in its own bubble because I see it as a weird transitional game where design-wise they're actually a lot more similar to the 3D games, they're just not 3D yet

The 3D Era:
  • I don't really think of this as being defined by being 3D so maybe I could just lump gen 5 in here. 3D is just an immediately noticeable thing the games have in common (that distinguishes them from their predecessors)
  • Yes, the move to 3D affected the vibe of the games, but design-wise this era is also defined to me by an increase in linearity, player customisation, higher focus on story and less on postgame, evergreen content, the build towards dexit, and the rise of competitive battling and QoL
  • Also, gimmicks
  • They also started experimenting a bit with the story formula here, playing with (at least nominally) replacing gyms, the E4, etc.
  • It takes a similar trajectory to the early games where you can see the foundations of a lot of it in gen 6 and by gen 8 it's fully come to fruition

Open World
  • Late gen 8 (PLA) onwards. The wild areas were kind of a precursor to this but I'd say for me it being game defining is less about the game having open world design and more about it not having a traditional map with named routes, so in that regard Galar still feels more in line with prior games to me
  • Defined by open world (or in PLA's case, pseudo-open world) maps
  • More linear and less postgame than ever, presumably due to the maps eating up devtime
  • Much greater focus on real-time multiplayer, both in terms of battling and also the Union Circle, which was an unprecedented level of connectivity
  • Obviously hard to say exactly what this one amounts to because we're still in it

Some disclaimers:
  • None of this is a comment on the quality or my enjoyment of any given gen. They all have their good and bad. The biggest thing that's changed over time (ever-increasing linearity) is something I personally don't care about at all because I've never cared about story playthroughs. I've just observed it as a big shift.
  • Remakes/side games/whatever else are largely exempted from how I think about this (the Legends games and LGPE are the only things outside of like, initial and third games of a gen I'd factor in). In considering "the evolution of Pokemon" it kind of only really makes sense to look at what fresh things are being added to the newest games in the series at any given time.
  • Regardless of my specific thoughts on any given aspect of any given shift in design philosophy, I think it's for sure a good thing that it does change gen-to-gen. I love Pokemon Emerald, but Pokemon Emerald still exists for me to play. I wouldn't be particularly interested in 20 more Pokemon Emeralds if Gamefreak had just spent the past 20 years making "Pokemon Emerald but more". There might be hits and misses but experimenting with the formula is how we get cool new stuff, and the old stuff we like isn't going anywhere (yes, they could definitely be better about making older games more accessible but that's a discussion for another thread).
 
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I like a lot of the reviews here, but I want to jump in here.

1st Age:
1st and 2nd Gen. The only ones that could talk to each other and to no other gens, to the point they needed remakes.

2nd Age:
3rd, 4th, & 5th Gen. This was the point where Pokemon found their footing. They were the Sprite Era, and the point where connectivity took off.

3rd Age:
6th & 7th Gens. The "Gimmicks" really began here and they were the first to experiment with 3-D. The HMs went away here as well.

4th Age:
8th, 9th, and Onward. True Open World experimentation, some successful and not. We will be in the 4th Age until something really dramatic happens.
 
For me, there are two main eras so far with the first (2d) era being split into two parts:

2D era:
Part 1 - Gens 1 and 2. They were the first and seemed to still have some connections with each other.

Part 2 - Gens 3, 4, and 5. These were the later parts of the 2D era where everything for the 2D era was used at its full potential.

3D era: Gens 6 and onwards (so far). This is the era where the mainline games became 3D. From Gen 6 on, each game has also had a gimmick of some sort from Mega Evolution, to Z-Moves, to Dynamax/Gigantamax, to Terrestalization, to a mixture of one or more gimmick.

It will be interesting to see what Gen 10 brings to the table, or if it will be the start of a whole new era.
 
If we're doing half and half, Blue Moon Falls makes a very convincing case for "I, II / the rest". Its "Why play classic Pokémon now?" article points out Red, Blue, Gold, and Silver are slow video games, in part because Red and Blue were indulgent JRPGs and Gold and Silver just wanted to be Red and Blue with a higher budget. Ruby and Sapphire, knowing that Pokémon was a hot ticket brand, ease off the more time consuming elements. Every game thereafter, one way or another, follows suit. Combined with the literal inability to connect Gen II to Gen III, there doesn't seem to be a cleaner place to place the cut off.
 
I agree that splitting into two is way more difficult than treating each era of its own, but I thought splitting into two eras would be more interesting because people would have more varied answers based on their own experiences in the franchise. So I was genuinely curious to see how everyone would think of it as!

I've been a Pokémon fan since Red and Blue days, so the oldest era has been genuinely the oldest era for me, and I thought FireRed and LeafGreen that I played on an emulator were phenomenal in early 2000s, thinking that would be the top tier Pokémon experience. Well... :v

Although I was a Pokémon fan, I wasn't that interested in Pokémon games through the years. Only after the release of XY, I bought a 3DS console and the games starting from the DS era, HeartGold was my first true Pokémon game experience on a console. So XY felt like the revolutionary change in the franchise the way it worked. It has always been these games for me that changed the Pokémon games from the core because transition from 2D to 3D was the most drastic change in the franchise, at least from my POV.

Had I become a Pokémon fan when XY games were released, I would probably think Switch era would be the beginning of modern era due to testing the waters with open world, Dexit, free camera angles and such. But for the reasons I've specified, I would probably think XY games are the beginning of the modern era for me.
 
If we have to split into modern and old, I think the transition occurred between gens 4 and 5. Some significant differences from before and after this shift are that…

  • There have been far fewer significant game mechanics added (I.e., breeding, abilities, physical special split). Instead we get generational gimmicks (which I think the gen 5 gems can be counted as).
  • Regions were no longer based solely on Japan.
  • Pokemon were far more closely tied to the irl region they come from in the world.
  • No more third versions (Unless you count sequel games as third versions).
  • No more battle sim games until recently.
  • Gen 5 was an attempt at a soft reboot by GF. Even if it didn’t really stick, it shows developer intentions of shifting the games in a new direction.

I can also see gen 6 being the start of the modern era, gen 4 still being the end, and gen 5 being a weird transitional phase. Some of the points above are far more apparent when you start with kalos, and you can include the shift from 2d to 3d.
 
For me, the Generation IV+ games are the modern ones, since there was no physical/special split before Diamond/Pearl.
 
I feel like there are multiple eras:
Retro: Gen 1-2
Later Sprite: Gen 3-5
Early 3D: Gen 6-7
Modern Day: Gen 8 onwards

The shift to modern day happened around Gen 5 such as gems being the prototype of generational gimmick, HMs being less important over time and having every Pokemon not being a priority. Gen 6 is the start of the modern era.
 
I pretty much consider Gen 1 through 5 as being the old school era even though I didn't enjoy B/W as much as the other core games by that point, and everything from Gen 6 until now is the modern era. I could split the eras into smaller ones based on which consoles the games were released on, in which case the Switch era is my least favorite ever, but that's a story for another time :tentacruel:
 
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