I've played them all, and gen 5 has been my favorite, followed somewhat closely by gen 3. I seem to always like the odd-numbered variants more for some reason, so hopefully 7th gen reignites my love for the series after 6th gen ruined it a bit. -_-
I guess it depends on what you mean by "generation" since the later generations include remakes. I liked Gen II (Gold and Silver and their remakes) the best since they were the first to have the day/night mechanics and I think that a lot of the areas were well designed with good music. It was also cool that you could go back to the Kanto region after beating the Elite Four and challenge Red after beating both regions. Gen III was a little disappointing for me since a lot of areas seem similar and the music was not as good in my opinion. Gen IV was pretty good, but V was a little bit of a letdown for me too. I haven't played VI yet, so I don't know about that.
- - - Post Merge - - -
The odd numbered ones only allow you to catch new Pokemon before the Elite Four while the even numbered ones mix in old Pokemon at the start of the game, so maybe that's why you like the odd ones better.
3 for sure. It's what I grew up with. The newer gems are nice and all but I like the quirks of gen 3 even if it's far from perfect. Like come on it's the last gen where walking around with a poisoned Pokemon will cause them to eventually faint.
Gen 3 also used to be challenging the revised exp share, fighting off status ailments by themselves etc. Just make the new games way too easy. I miss the good ole gen 3 days of stumbling around not knowing what the heck I was doing. Those were the days.
Well, you got to remember. As we grow, we get a lot of experience ourselves and end up knowing what to do in future games now. I remember when all I wanted to do was earthquake in Gen 1 and 2 games. Even in Pok?mon Stadium all I did was earthquake. Hahaha! But as we grow, we learn from mistakes like using earthquake against a flying type as a little kid. Now the game is easy as we know our way too much around them.