Because nostalgia is a driving force for this franchise and BW committed the sin to dare not to rely on that. Which is why even when they cut the National Dex in Sword and Shield, they made sure nobody would miss that Charizard was still there.

They are constantly testing how little they can offer and still have people buy out of sheer nostalgia. That Indigo Disk DLC with the Blueberry Academy looks like it will be very barebones, just an enclosed environment with some Elite 4-like fights, but they made sure to show that all the old starter buddies are back, because they know people will flock to that.

TBF those had to grow on me, especially the first ones. They were actually challenging, due to changes in how exp gain is scaled. Plethora of activities after the game ends is something that got me hooked for a long time in Black 2, which overall I think I enjoyed a lot more than 1

What excactly was so great about the postgame? The right side of unova didn't had that much to offer. Kyurem, Cynthia, the dive maze, the roaming genie and Looker are the only noteworthy things that come to mind.

Enjoyment of something is completely subjective, but I personally just did not enjoy a lot of the design and style choices in these games. The Pokemon didn't feel very exciting, and it just felt like they were running out of ideas quickly. I can understand why people enjoyed B/W and the 2's, but unfortunately I did not

That can't happen, as Gamefreak owns a partial share of Pokemon, along with Nintendo.

TemTem is 3D but they had a bigger team and budget than my beloved Cassette Beasts.

They were decently made games as far as I was aware. The main issue I was seeing brought up with them was that they were direct copies of the originals without any real improvements, so you might as well play the originals. I can't remember seeing any complaints that the ILCA games were made incompetently, just that what they ended up making was uninspired.

(Psst, S/V are the 9th gen)

I’m playing the romhack liquid crystal right now. It’s fun minus some sprite glitches and the fact that the phone/radio don’t seem to work. Can’t figure out if that’s a bug or if they’re story gated. Even with those issues I’m having more fun.

Me too, playing Liquid Crystal now. Just have some issues with the poke gear not working right, but I’m still enjoying it.

I'd agree with this. From story and gameplay standpoints, Scarlet/Violet are among the best mainline games in the series, leagues above Sword/Shield (story wise, don't know if they beat Sun/Moon, though). They gave us an open world, a battle gimmick that's balanced well enough to at least not be broken, allowed us to ride the legendary pokemon (as goofy as the designs are) to get around that world, and let us do things in essentially any order. All things fans have been begging GF for for a long time. Unfortunately Pokemon is a huge franchise that relies on so much other media by design that it's tough to allow GF the time they need to give the games the optimization they need. You delay the main games, you then also have to delay the anime and anime movies, the card game, and all the events built around those things as well. It's a major part of how the franchise has become the #1 grossing media franchise in history. That money train can't wait.

Franchises like Mario and Zelda, on the other hand, don't have nearly as much other merchandise or other moving parts to their brands that would have to wait for the new game release, and even then, that other merchandise isn't nearly as big a share of their overall brand as in Pokemon; they don't have anime, Mario only has one movie (we acknowledge) that wasn't connected to a specific entry in the franchise, and so without all that other stuff tied to specific games or "generations", other franchises can much better afford delays. They're mainly about the video games, and when a new mainline Mario/Zelda/etc game comes out, it's an event in itself that may actually benefit from a delay to further build hype.