If you watched Pokemon as a kid, you should watch the last 11 episode arc. The entire thing is basically just a huge love letter to those early seasons.
For most of its existence the Pokemon anime was trash-tier. Even the early seasons that I’m nostalgic for just don’t hold up even compared to other shows at the time.
…but for like the past five (maybe ten?) years the quality of the anime has really gone up, and I think the current crop of show runners finally have enough clout within the Pokemon Company to make the big change that the older execs were almost certainly afraid of.
It felt like actually playing an RPG game and advancing in it. I always like those kind of shows (few and far between, and they’re usually webcomics).