The first two arcs are equally amazing, to be honest.The third arc had the potential to be as good or even better than the first two, but they just focused too much on autoconclusive episodes
I'm kinda going to spoil something a little bit, not too big though
In the opening for the third arc, you can see something that you'll be wondering what it is for the entire season, and it never shows up and you start thinking that it's not even a part of the real plot and it's just something they put there to make it look cool. It's actually the real thing, and it appears for the first time in episode 76 (21 if we start counting from the beginning of the arc), and the last episode is number 79 (25)
So...Arc 3 is pretty much 13 episode of fillers, Episode 14 is exciting and reveals some stuff, 6 episodes of fillers, 4 episodes of plot.
About the pokemon thing, I've only watched the first seasons I think, I'm not even sure...but I've seen some things of the last ones and I can't believe it's still the same thing
Ash still being the same age and still wanting to be the pokemon master or something like that is just...ugh