I... only liked Hoenn for Flannery, Steven and the music. The Pokemon and the region, etc were pretty awful in my opinion, so yeah. :c
Definitely. Speaking of development, the stories have also progressively gotten better. I mean, in the first gen, the basic plot was '10-year-old trainer starting his journey, encounters Team Rocket, goes through some drama with them across the region, the end' but it never really delved deeper into anything. Whereas now, you have story pieces involving Gym Leaders, other NPC and things like that to make it much better, and with characters like N and Ghetsis, the 5th Gen games were all that much better. ~