Platinum for Gen IV. Heartgold and Soulsilver were also great.

Black.B2 or W/W2 if you feel like going through gen v.

>>25663645
BW2 are the best Pokemon games in my opinion.

>>25663669
>>25663720

Thanks, Platinum and Black 2 it is.

Black and White have pretty good stories, especially compared to the rest of the post gen 2 games where the plot is pretty much the same every time.

>>25663645
Diamond and Pearl were garbage. Even Sinnoh fanboys would agree. Platinum fixed ~~all~~ a lot of the problems from the originals, but they didn't fix IMO the worst problem--the game is so ridiculously slow it hurts. Even turning off battle scene and making the text speed fast won't help. Also, the story is boring, they do that "how about you do fuck-all for 48 hours until you get to fight another gym" thing they did in Gen 3. The legendaries are ridiculous too. Overall, it's probably in the bottom 3 best gens. Wouldn't recommend you skip it though.

I would definitely recommend BW2, it has oodles of post-game and really good levelling. BW is decent but far from being as good as 2.

>>25664458
sounds like I missed out on a lot, I guess I'll have to play all of them before sun and moon come out

>>25663770
Just saying it's recommended to get Black or White as well since Black 2 and White 2 are the direct sequels to them and without playing the prequels you could really be lost when it comes to the story and character development. Not to mention that Black and White have one of the best stories and characterization of the series and it would be a shame for anyone to miss out on it.

>>25664589
Thanks for the heads up on diamond and pearl
>>25664653
I didn't realize that the two games were so intertwined / different, I always thought of BW2 as the director's cut. Thanks for the feedback though, as I am right now I plan on playing platinum-black-black2-heartgold in that order before the new games come out