The Last Poster Wins! [v21]

[Chakramaster]

More so was done wrong I'd say personally. More so it kinda hurt them. They're really gonna have to work on mending it back. Even if there was some good to it.

[AD]

tfw you finally have friends to Pokemon with and GF gets rid of the interactive facility

I read this as your girlfriend taking your Pokemon away

[Noblejanobii]

Really? I thought they did a lot of things right. The soundtrack was great, not as good as PMD, but it was getting there. The storyline didn't stick to the same old formula of the other games, it had the same basic elements but they went much more indepth with it. They broke the usual trends of gyms for something so much more fun! Plus the trials were actually pretty difficult in a nuzlocke challenge if you weren't ready for it. They finally had another dual typed starter and then flipped that trend on its head by changing its final typing! They take the rival system they've been working on since BW and while it's not perfect, having a friendly rival and an enemy rival worked fairly well. They implemented a new battle system, Battle Royale, which is actually pretty fun to mess around with even without friends. They got rid of HM slaves in favor of ride pokemon. You have an evil team that makes fun of all the tropes in the past and another that isn't really that evil, just has evil leaders. You've got the Ultra Beasts, weird unknown pokemon that fit right in with the theme of discovery that Sun and Moon sets up when it first introduces the desire to found a Pokemon League. They bring cameos in from previous games like there's no tomorrow, like Grimsley from BW, Professor Burnet from Pokemon Dream Radar (aka a side game), Sina and Dexio from XY, and Red and Blue! Sure clothes are ridiculously expensive but it's based on Hawaii so what do you expect? They bring in Alolan forms as a tribute to the fact that the Pacific region is notorious for adaptation and evolution in our world, and they breathe new life into some pokemon that were really needing it. They even go so far as to let you meet some of the Trial Captains again and develop their backstories a bit as well so that you learn more about them! And while I'll be the first to admit the Festival Plaza is a bust and the color exclusiveness is stupid, the whole mega stone distribution idea that encourages you to battle with more people in order to get the missing mega stones is a great way to encourage connectivity.

[Chakramaster]

I honestly did not like the trials at all. Nothing close to what gyms were. Gyms will ALWAYS be superior imo. The trials did not even come close. I'm not a big fan Ultra Beasts. A lot of people don't like them, but to each their own. It's like favorites. My is Pikachu while many hate it. The choice of customization this time was far lacking in comparison to X and Y. Not being able to find mega stones outside of competitions and event codes is the worst idea possible. Don't even get me started on the Plaza.

Yeah the game is slowly staying to pick up in both story and soundtrack, but it's still nothing close to what PMD is.

[Arrow-Jolteon]

I read this as your girlfriend taking your Pokemon away

XD

[Noblejanobii]

I honestly did not like the trials at all. Nothing close to what gyms were. Gyms will ALWAYS be superior imo. The trials did not even come close. I'm not a big fan Ultra Beasts. A lot of people don't like them, but to each their own. It's like favorites. My is Pikachu while many hate it. The choice of customization this time was far lacking in comparison to X and Y. Not being able to find mega stones outside of competitions and event codes is the worst idea possible. Don't even get me started on the Plaza.

Yeah the game is slowly staying to pick up in both story and soundtrack, but it's still nothing close to what PMD is.

Gyms are so boring though! Battle a bunch of trainers, get a badge, battle a bunch of trainers, get a badge. There's almost no creativity to it whatsoever. At least with Sinnoh they had puzzles that weren't stupidly easy to solve. The trials were fun and some even had you use new mechanics that were implemented into the game like the Ride Pokemon or the Rotom Pokedex's camera. And the Totem Pokemon battles were legitimate challenges. With the gyms, I didn't have to be overleveled at all and I could wipe the floor with them just by having a pokemon with a super effective move. Totem pokemon? Nah, they got allies that'll inflict stats, heal the totem, and change the weather. When they announced the trial system I was so happy because gyms just aren't any fun anymore. They're boring. Plain and simple.

I mean, I'll admit, wasn't a huge fan of the UBs either, but like all pokemon, they've grown on me. Are they my favorites? Nah, but you can't say GF has run out of ideas for designs when we've got everything from a jellyfish to a christmas tree to whatever the heck Guzzlord is. It all just seems to fit in the big wacky world of Pokemon if you ask me.

Yeah the customization sucked in this game. On top of the prices being RIDICULOUSLY expensive, I couldn't find a decent looking outfit that I could afford until I was about to challenge Akala Island's Kahuna, which is stupid. And I'm not gonna disagree on the Plaza, that's just a mess.

You can't complain about the mega stones. You were literally just complaining about how SM didn't encourage interconnectivity, and this is how they're doing it. They're incentivizing it through battle competitions. Plus you can get all the stones later on even if you don't participate so I don't understand what the problem is. While it made sense in XY, why on earth would there be a bunch of really powerful stones just lying around in the region where they didn't originate? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially since they already have Z-crystals and no Alolan pokemon can mega evolve. It makes more sense to me that these powerful stones would only be available for powerful trainers, so they're in the Battle Tree.

You're right, it's not there yet, but it's definitely getting there. I mean the Aether Grunt battle theme is so cool.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

I think it's pretty lame that the mega stones are only available through codes as well. Like I get your point Noble that they don't really fit into the game elsewhere, but then they should still put them in the Battle Tree as regular prizes, not in limited online competitions or just throwing out 4 at a time with codes. If they're gonna give them out like that they might as well have just had a shop somewhere in the game you could buy them from. At least then if you wanna restart the game in a year after the codes expire it's not like you can never get them again. :(

The greatest disappointment for me actually came after I had finished the games, and that was the lack of a National Dex and new dex entries for the rest of the Pokemon. :/ I don't think I should have to buy Bank in order to access a National Dex when the whole point of the game is to try and fill the dex. I hope they rectify that in the next game.

[Noblejanobii]

I think it's pretty lame that the mega stones are only available through codes as well. Like I get your point Noble that they don't really fit into the game elsewhere, but then they should still put them in the Battle Tree as regular prizes, not in limited online competitions or just throwing out 4 at a time with codes. If they're gonna give them out like that they might as well have just had a shop somewhere in the game you could buy them from. At least then if you wanna restart the game in a year after the codes expire it's not like you can never get them again. :(

The greatest disappointment for me actually came after I had finished the games, and that was the lack of a National Dex and new dex entries for the rest of the Pokemon. :/ I don't think I should have to buy Bank in order to access a National Dex when the whole point of the game is to try and fill the dex. I hope they rectify that in the next game.

Hm... yeah that's true. I mean with stones like the Mewtwo mega stones and Diancie mega stone it would make sense for them to be distributed because why on earth would the Battle Tree have those. I think they're just trying to encourage more people to battle in the competitions online, which I don't really see much harm in on its own.

Yeah sadly I don't think that's getting changed. As disappointing as it is, I think that's going to be the new system from now on because it allows for you to view the dex entries from multiple previous games all in one place.

[Arrow-Jolteon]

Honestly, if there's one thing that makes me want Gyms back is the fact that we never got a Dark-type Gym (I know there's a Dark-type Kahuna, though, which I guess is as close as we'll get for now). Because I really want a Dark-type Gym. Also a Poison-type legendary (and no, Nihilego doesn't count).

[Chakramaster]

There's more people I've seen miss gyms and want those back than want to keep the trials. The trials just can't compare to what gyms are/were. Now if they kept trials they would no doubt have to improve them vastly. They just seemed like a lot of random things to do just thrown together. It didn't last and wasn't as tough as gyms either sadly. That was just a big disappointment to me.