How much does the lore/story of a Pokémon game matter to you?

Pokémon stories have never been that spectacular. A lot of the game is carried by its gameplay loop and the personal emergent stories one naturally crafts for one's self during the events of a playthrough: The starter you chose, the new Pokémon you fell in love with, the shiny encounter with a Pokémon you don't really like that nevertheless became a core member of your team, the lucky legendary you caught with your last regular Pokéball and the skin-of-your-teeth victory against the champion...

Of course, the games are better for a well made (or at least interesting) story, and people are willing to forgive a lot if you can get them to connect with your characters. I think much of the positive reception SV initially received was in large part due to the larger focus on the individual character stories and the way they resonated with players emotionally.

I am not really one for competitive Pokémon; I get my fix in other games. So for me the story is a lot more important, where for others it seems to be something you just have to endure and rush through as quickly as possible to get to the real endgame of online competitive play. It is no surprise that such players love the exp share despite the obvious detrimental effect it has on the single player experience.

Though I hope for better stories and many of my favourite games in the series are such because of them, I recognise that it is largely a vehicle for the gameplay. But a good story can elevate or even redeem a gameplay experience, so while it is more important that the core game works and is fun to play first and foremost, the story should not be neglected.

I think the game also needs to be enjoyable and have actual content apart from the story. For example, SV. The Area Zero part of the story was really cool, but it still has nothing but DLC and online raids. The fact that it's so empty and I don't want to ever replay it because of how tiring the entire game feels still makes it one of the worst Pokémon games (not the worst, Z-A takes that place for making its post-game into a DLC that makes you pay 50% of the base game extra for nothing but a bigger Pokédex when SV's DLC gave you two more maps almost the size of Paldea and an actually amazing story and a bunch of new Pokémon and features and things for the same price while having raids in the base game. And nothing was released November 2021. Nothing was released that month. It was just a nightmare millions had and some people still think it's real! Haha. Funny. I've felt sad there was only one new Sinnoh game and we'll never get actual remakes, but maybe it's for the best.)