I think I can honestly say that Gen 7 has restored my sense of Pokemania. I know there are complaints about the changes, but it worked in bringing me back to actually enjoying Pokemon.
I started back in the FR/LG era as an already grown adult with little kids. Not only did I get hooked, but naturally so did my children. We credit Pokemon with helping my son (age 4 at the time) get a head start on reading by sitting with my wife and my copy of LeafGreen while i was at work. It wasn't long before two more GBA SP's and Pokemon cartridges were purchased for the kids.
I beat LG twice. I also beat the Elite 4 in FR and LG for my daughter and son as they found it too challenging at their ages. I beat Emerald 3 times as well, once for me, once for each of them. We went to the Pokemon 10th anniversary event and had a delightful time battling and trading with other kids & geeky adults while standing in line, my wife serving as our official photographer. When Diamond/Pearl came out, my non-gamer wife decided it was time to join in instead of just watch so I bought her a DS and game for herself. She spent hours sitting in the car playing after we got home because she couldn't put the game down long enough to come inside! Pokemon was now fully a family activity. We spent more hours than I can count in the underground in D/P.
But somewhere in that time, Pokemon started losing its luster for me. Maybe it was the awful, artificial slowness they introduced in D/P that made playing the main game an absolute chore. Again, we mostly stayed in the Underground so the core game lost focus. While I did make it to the foot of Victory Road, I didn't complete it. Perhaps I had franchise fatigue from beating the E4 7 times in the GBA era. We all got copies of Platinum, but my son lost interest at that point and so the shared family activity was partially broken. I was so turned off by D/P's lagginess that I never really started Platinum (not learning until years later that Platinum fixed the very slowness I'd been complaining about). My wife and daughter both finished Platinum and encouraged me to try, but I just couldn't summon the interest.
I still bought and partially played most of the new releases (except BW2 & HG/SS). We went to all the events at Toy's R Us & other retailers to get event legendaries, and it was fun to chat with the staff and other players. Often it was just my wife and I, the kids weren't as interested anymore, so we'd bring their game cartridges and faithfully download the event Pokemon on their behalf. When event Pokemon moved to mostly online downloads, I'd fire up the games just for that. But I hadn't beaten the Elite 4 and become champion since Emerald, much less tried to build any sort of competitive team.
For me, Pokemon Sun & Moon has restored the magic of the game itself for the first time since Emerald. I really enjoyed the story, the characters, and the setting. I was hooked enough to plow through and roll credits. I'm enjoying the post game. I'm already well into Ultra Moon and I think I'm enjoying it more than my Moon adventure. I've visited Poke Pelago and started exploring the online functions. I'm considering EV training a competitive team again for post-game.
Perhaps more significantly, it has re-kindled my interest in revisiting and finishing (at least to the point of becoming Pokemon League Champion) all the Pokemon games I never finished in the past. I know there is a lot of magic that I've missed. I barely started Platinum so I have no qualms about restarting that one from the beginning. Others like Black, Y and Omega Ruby I'm not sure as I do have a number of "event" Pokemon in each one. Is it worth restarting and losing the event Pokemon so I can relish the games in their entirety, or do I watch a play through on YouTube to refresh my memory of what happened up to where I left off and continue from there?
tl;dr
I'm enjoying Gen 7!
