Quality of Life vs Uniqueness
I really do not like Pokemon XD Gale.
This is despite the fact that I really, really enjoyed Pokemon Colosseum, widely seen as an inferior game. Why so?
It's not really nostalgia. I played both as an adult, less than a month apart, so the logic-defying passion I have for Pokemon Emerald is not really there.
The snag (like. heh. the snag machine you use. heh) lies at the fact the game became objectively better and better designed.
Both games center around the creation of Shadow Pokemon, tortured, fucked up evil Pokémon, that the protagonist has to steal from the evil fucked up trainers. All for the purpose of rehabilitation and making them back into normal Pokémon. Shadow Pokemon in the original are barely better than your run out of the mill, bog standard not fucked up guys. They truly manifest this weird berserk like state, randomly deciding they simply aren't listening to you. All of them get measly Shadow Rush, which is powerful, but it is always physical, so making a Shadow physical Pokémon seems like a waste of time. Their purification is also non-trivial and the quest to Purify them All! involves a massive grind that largely depends on Pokémon personality, as the purification action's effectiveness depends on it pretty heavily. Notably, there is one nature, that only lowers by walking while the Pokémon is in a Day care. Other methods, such as battling does very little to assist. You just find one glitch spot where you can walk infinitely, put a wrench on your controller and go get a beer with pals.
The sequel, on the other hand, adds a plethora of Shadow Pokémon moves, makes them actually threatening to your non-Shadow Pokémon and adds a purifying method that works passively as you play. So you don't need to have the Shadow Pokémon in your party to have it slowly shedding corruption, shadowness, whatever, it just happens in the Purify Chamber. With the expanded amount of Shadow Pokémon, it makes sense as a game play pivot, letting you do far more battling and having fun.
Or, is it having fun? Because I wasn't really having any. I never even finished XD Gale, or cared, really, while I achieved 100% purification in the Colosseum. And I think this betterment really took me out of things in a non-trivial fashion.
Because a large portion of my memories and love for Colosseum comes specifically from this enormous grind of trying to purify each Pokémon, using it in battles, grinding and reloading areas, re-battling Trainers over and over, learning patterns, learning what a Pokémon can handle, seeing it grow. By largely outsourcing this work to the machine, I largely felt like I didn't even have a hand in the purification process anymore, like it was just a side of like, battling.
The act of making the game objectively better made it a worse experience for me.
This isn't an isolated case of the player specific mentality and attachment I know of - my friend once told me they are sad Elden Ring puts the re-spawn things right next to the bosses, cause the Dark Soul makes you walk on every retry. And that experience was valuable to them, a curious little quirk that emerged. I was also looking for maps online for super old CRPGs, and people online were VEHEMENT that map-making on paper is crucial for the enjoyment of these games. And it did bring out an interesting point of map-making being a part of the puzzle, as the map you make reveals answer to the clue (Might and Magic I has a thing where the map reveals the answer to the riddle to escape the dungeon).
However, my mom and dad played these old games with old shitty maps found online, or in magazines and their experiences are just as meaningful. They don't experience it as lesser, really. And neither do I. I unironically appreciate what I see, even if I do want the modern conveniences, because my sense of direction is terrible, and playing on a bed means I can't have a graph paper nearby just to trace the fucking city I will visit a grand total of Two times.
This creates an interesting point on how the modern discussion of game experience turned design consideration into a necessity. This game is created This Way, and if you didn't experience it The Way it was Designed, something must be wrong with you, or the experience being poorly produced in the first place. Discussions around difficult games, for example, constantly being up this feeling of euphoria after beating a difficult experience, or how they are designed to show you a proper way to beat the boss. In theory, this is as great and makes sense - you struggle, you win, you celebrate. But in my personal experience I don't get the ping of satisfaction. I just feel empty and bored. Oh cool more bosses after this? Awesome. As deeply interesting I find the world building decisions, the actual gameplay loop leaves me empty.
The actual experience of the game as a relationship has been replaced with the idea that this is a carefully designed roller-coaster ride, always meant to produce these expressions, these reactions, these chemical outbursts, that have to happen. It's almost like the old idea of Author as supreme declarer of what the text is, with the text not being allowed to be anything else, even if the text is a trifecta of Author, itself, and the Reader, being produced in a specific time of Reading. One can argue this is simply not even about the game itself, like, you don't actually like chocolate milk you miss not having responsibilities of adulthood, but no, sometimes you just really miss the taste of chocolate. The specific texture of the game chaffs in a way that produces the connection.
And this is largely not a real thing designers can keep in mind. When making carefully crafted experiences focused on a specific form of gameplay. It is however, just an observation of how a lot of gaming exists in the person's head, as external as it seems, and that the Gamer is essentially, one constructing the experience and its meaning. A genuine bug can, when patched turn the game numb for some players. It is a reminder that the thing itself is not the ultimate arbiter or holder of an experience and we can tweak it until it gives us the programmed Intended Gameplay, but we, the co-creators of the experience simply attach ourselves as we do.
Even if that attachment is making a shitty fucking Yanma fight Pokémon way above its weightclass to make it non-fucked up anymore.