If anyone read my introduction a couple of days ago, you´ll know that I´m quite the old fan for the PKMN games. Been playing since the B/R/Y days. Every gen has brought us something different and just to say it... amazing. With the first ones was the games themselfs, second one we got a way to Reproduce our beloved pkmn, making it possible to get, lets say, all three starts without having to restart a game. It also brought us new types and new features like the always loved PokeGear plus the first time we where able to be outside on the dark and really see it on a game.
Hoenn brought, a break from Team Rocket and the mostly over exploited Kanto region, lets face it, doing the same thing for a third time on the row... it would have killed the franchise right there and then. So they parted from EVERYTHING that we knew, and tried to show us that the diversity on the pokemon world was not only on the pokemon, but on the world itself. We got some many things that at least I was expecting... like being able to actually dive and go into an active volcano. Yeah the not being able to get most of the old pokemon was a disappointment, but lets face it we got some pretty good ones out of the change (like the beldum, ralts, trapinch lines, to name a few). We got to fly, dive, climb on trees and go into dangerous caves... and after we were over with that they gave us something better, a trip back to Kanto to make that pokedex shine complete (lets face it, they were planing to make us buy 5 games since R/S came out).
Hoenn was not bad, it was different, but that doesn´t make it bad. I for one loved the games they were new and amazing and thank Sugimori, different (and that decision must have been hell to make)