I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
I stand firm in the belief that the only sorta good Pokemon games are gen 4 and the originals, and even then it is a ‘good for their time’ kinda deal. The originals are highly flawed and i would never recommend anyone actually play them, but they did at least attempt to design an actual game. Gen 4 was the first generation that could be considered actually good mechanically and aesthetically, imo. After gen 4 the games almost universally stagnated where they didn’t actively get worse.