Hottest Pokemon take?

I agree that Platinum is overrated but I do not think it is bad. In fact I think it is one of the best games in the franchise. The QoL and story improvements are great, but many of the DP issues remain and drag it down in my eyes. And the slow gameplay really starts to drag in the late game and subsequent playthroughs. A game that really benefits from a speed hack.

I disagree with you on the USUM point though. Platinum improved (NB: not "fixed") DP's bad story, but USUM made SM's story worse. I liked Rainbow Rocket, but it basically skipped the end of Lusamine's story from the original game to accommodate it. There aren't any major QoL improvements. All the gen 7 games are riddled with unskippable tutorials and cutscenes.

That said, I did like gen 7's story and characters. It was the presentation that ruined it for me. I would love to see a remake that removed all of the bloat and unskippable stuff, integrated RR better into the story and generally addressed gen 7's issues. USUM was not the game that did that.

Unfortunately I think a gen 7 remake would be at least a decade out and I do not think modern Gamefreak would fix these issues. We'd either get a BDSP situation or they would take the same framework and try to cram even more in.

@D-ManBlue I don't think that BW2 had a bad story. The stuff with Colress and his quest to bring out the power of Pokémon at any cost was interesting and contrasted well with N's story in the first game. I liked seeing how Unova and the characters progressed after the events of the first game.

The problem I think was Hugh and his sister's Purloin. I never cared and it made his character seem stubborn and obnoxious. The story would regularly have to be put on hold for MUH PURLOIN and it killed the pacing.