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Spoilers What do you NOT like about USUM?

Part of the Battle Agency. To be clear, as a whole, I love it. It's practically what I wish every Battle Tower or Battle Tower-like facility would be. You clear increments as you go up, and regardless of whether you win or lose, you don't get sent all the way back to start over, just at the start of the increment. I desperately pray that they implement this kind of feature in future Battle Tower facilities.
But I digress, what annoys me the most about the Battle Agency is that you have to depend on others. Now, that in itself isn't necessarily bad. The problem is, the vast majority of time you get players with Grade 0. Sure, at first it's not much of a problem, up until you get to a Grade so high that it puts you at a severe disadvantage.
And the other option, where the Agency lens you NPCs, is not better at all, because all NPCs are Grade 0.
 
Use the Battle Tree's QR code feature instead. You may have to start from scratch when you lose, but you get to pick a good team pretty easily.
 
After spending so long working on the Dex, I finally filled it and got the karate outfit. But the pants are just a simplified palette swap of the cut-off pants, and there are no shoes that go with it the outfit. They gave us a hat and shoes to go with the nurse outfit; couldn't they at least give us good shoes that match?
 
lack of badges and league.

Some pokemon got good moveset changes, others still feel unfinished or hold back like they are waiting for next gens to make it, maybe on purpose.
 
The same problem it suffered from Sun and Moon along with Generation V: the experience points distribution on what your levels are at.

As for any unique problems of USUM, I guess my problem would be that if they wanted a reboot, there was nothing stopping them from calling it Pokemon Stars and releasing only one game showing it to be a third version to core games that already exists with the programmers fixing what was broken. Oh, I also hate Mantine Surf. It's not fun and I would rather battle to earn BP at the Battle Tree (assuming it's there. I haven't looked at spoilers).
 
I hate how you can now add Totem Pokémon to your team, yet they are treated differently from regular Pokémon. I thought it'd be fun to add Totem Salazzle to my team and while it's a valuable member of my team, I found out Totem Pokémon can't be placed in Bank (and probably can't be traded, haven't tested that yet). That sucks, because that means I can't bring Salazzle to future generations (unless they update Bank to include Totem Pokémon in the future) like I do with all my in-game teams.

What is also really odd is that an NPC in Seafolk Village asked me to show her a Salazzle. I had Totem Salazzle in my party but she didn't react to it. When I brought a regular Salazzle, she did. It seems Totem Pokémon are really treated differently.

Oh and also: Rotom Pokédex. I didn't find it annoying in the slightest in SM but in USUM it has turned into Pokémon's version of Link's annoying sidekick who bothers you every other minute with pointless stuff. When a Pokémon's HP is down, Rotom will constantly ask me if I want to check my bag for healing items, and when I select no it will ask again a minute later. It also seems to suffer from resting sadface, since its eyes are sad most of the time. I know you can make it happy by tapping its eyes, but then afterwards its eyes will most often flash for Rotom Loto, something I don't really care for and am just too impatient for :ROFLMAO: So now I've decided I just let it stay sad all the time.

The only thing I like about Rotom nagging is sometimes reminding me to save, but that doesn't happen too often.
 
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I hate how you can now add Totem Pokémon to your team, yet they are treated differently from regular Pokémon. I thought it'd be fun to add Totem Salazzle to my team and while it's a valuable member of my team, I found out Totem Pokémon can't be placed in Bank (and probably can't be traded, haven't tested that yet). That sucks, because that means I can't bring Salazzle to future generations (unless they update Bank to include Totem Pokémon in the future) like I do with all my in-game teams.

You can store some of them in Bank. I’m not sure what the problem is if you can’t store your Salazzle, though. The reports I’d seen said that it was just the new USUM Totems like Marowak and Araquanid that couldn’t be stored.
 
1. The changes to Lusamine's character. With her abusive nature downplayed, Gladion and Lillie are made to seem less justified in their actions. S/M did it right; US/UM ruined it.

2. I like the Rotom dex, mostly, but I could do without the constant spamming of "pieces of advice I didn't ask for" in late- and post-game. I've seen all these things a million times already, thanks!

3. The Lurantis outfit from Gracidea. Why is it all sexed up? (MY CHARACTER IS ELEVEN, why is it all sexed-up????) Give me long sleeves and bellbottoms and it would actually resemble Lurantis.

4. The lack of exploration in Ultra Megalopolis and the Ultra Wormhole destinations. And all of the Ultra Space Wilds areas are the same map just skinned differently.
 
You can store some of them in Bank. I’m not sure what the problem is if you can’t store your Salazzle, though. The reports I’d seen said that it was just the new USUM Totems like Marowak and Araquanid that couldn’t be stored.
Ah, then I judged too quickly. See, I selected all of the Totem Pokémon at once to be stored in Bank and got the message that this Pokémon could not be stored in Bank. Leading me to believe all Totem Pokémon can't be stored in Bank. Good to know they can though, with the exception of those two.

Still weird that NPC didn't react to Totem Salazzle though.
 
So I finished the Rainbow Rocket stuff and honestly, it lived up to my expectations. Which is troublesome, since my expectations were pretty low.
  • Team Rainbow Rocket's Grunts had such a shallow amount of Pokemon. They all used the same few Pokemon over and over, which made is seriously boring to fight them. Made worse is that they only used Kanto Pokemon, for extra Gen I pandering. I get that they're a Kanto team and it's symbolic/nostalgic or whatever, but it's just another harsh reminder that Game Freak will always prioritize Gen I over everything else (outside of the current generation.) Other teams had no problem using Pokemon outside of their Generation.
  • These are endgame fights, too. Why are all the Grunts using 1-2 Pokemon at most? Why are all the main bosses using 5 Pokemon each? I know they can't be too tough, but this isn't like the Elite Four, where we're locked in the building until we defeat everyone. Plus Lillie's there to constantly heal us, and a PC is a stone's throw away.
  • Even worse with Giovanni. He's the biggest threat, the most powerful enemy in the game. Plus four of his Pokemon are weak to Ice or Fighting, so my Buzzwole demolished everything until Mewtwo. (Which my Noivern solo'd.)
  • I like that Colress sort of had focus here. Except he didn't appear nearly enough, and apparently invented an "invisibility machine" to stalk us (which is pure bullshit and leaves a ton of questions left to answer.)
  • Faba was totally right about Lillie being a burden for me during that Multi Battle; she only has one Pokemon, and it has no way of countering the enemy Pokemon (outside of Scrafty, but it has a good Sp. Def, so it's not even that helpful against it.) Her only way of support seemed to be setting up Reflect and Light Screen, but even then, it's not that helpful, and Faba's Bruxish could simply break them. Clefairy's only really good at being a meat shield, but I'd actually do better in the match if I could use two of my Pokemon instead. To top it all off, we now have 8 models on the screen, so the fight is super laggy. Thanks for your contribution, Lillie.
  • Speaking of Faba: I like that they incorporated his power-hungry personality and made him relevant. But I dislike how he basically ended up a villain and didn't get redeemed, like in Sun and Moon. I liked how this person was greedy, but still wanted to make a turn for the better, even though he had no real reason to. Here, he never learns anything.
  • One Rainbow Rocket Grunt was throwing a regular Poke Ball in the overworld, but used a Great Ball in battle. What?
  • To top it off, we only get 55 Big Nuggets. Which isn't even enough to buy the full Kommo-o set of clothing. I didn't want the full set, but still.
  • Archie, Maxie, and Lysandre didn't really do much, though Archie and Maxie fighting was kind of fun. Too bad they didn't get their fight afterwards.
  • It felt like Giovanni didn't really do anything besides take things over. Kind of a letdown. Ghetsis (bless his black heart) felt more intimidating, since he had plans to overthrow Giovanni and made that power play with Lillie.
 
Minor, but still grating. I'm not sure if this happened in SM, but whenever you get a new button for the bottom menu, it scrambles up the order of the buttons you've had! I've had to rearrange the buttons (Pokemon Refresh, Bag, etc.) each time I get a new one. Thankfully, it shouldn't happen again since I just got the Pelago (the final one), but that's still irritating and unnecessary.
 
Oh boy, it's that time again! Lets goooo. First I'm just gonna say I really do like the change of Totems and stuff, also the sidequests. But this is about what we do NOT like, so here we go! (Giant Stakataka of text ahead, so putting it in a spoiler tag):
- I begin with saying that there is not a single good reason in the world for these to have been split in 2. Literally n.o.n.e. They even went as far as to include both box legends in the game separately, you really did NOT need 2 games for this.
No, "so people can trade stuff!" is not a good reason at all.
- Next up, we have the fact that the entirety of the pre-launch marketing was intentionally deceptive. I lost count of all the things I presumed would be something more based on the trailer footage, while in-game they turned out to be half-assed teases or a load of nothing relevant. To list some examples:
1. I spent the entire game wondering if they had axed the extra scenes Hau has as shown in trailers. It turns out they were meaningless and shoved at the end while you're collecting flower petals for Mina..by meaningless I mean not impactful at all, just seemed shoehorned in at that point.
2. Yes, I know, enhanced/upper version (split in 2, however...cannot defend this), but it honestly felt like replaying SM again. The worst part of it all is that even the overly advertised climax of the games was so underwhelming and happened so fast that I was like...uh..what? That was it? 30 trailers with "This is no longer the Alola you know!" for THIS? It really IS the Alola everyone knows and they don't even spend time showing anyone any effects of Alola losing its light..you just rush right into a wormhole and go fight a bossmon 10lvls higher than your entire team (unless you used expshare that is). And then it just disappears and everything is so underwhelming and short, it feels like it made the plot shorter AND worse as opposed to improve it like E and PT did.
3. The gym building in trailers made you believe Ryuki would be involved more in it and that it'd be something more than what it turned out to be- "the alolan gym project has started". It didn't even have a puzzle to it. Trainer levels don't change until postgame.
4. Kahili teased in trailers- Many people had hopes the golf course would be in the game if Kahili appears, but in reality, she only appears out of nowhere to teach you the Fly zthing and never appears again until the E4. No golf course either.
5. The battle arena in the photo club backgrounds made many believe it might be another battle facility. Turns out it was just a photo club background.
6. Teased UB cutscenes made one hope things would be more elaborate this time. They were not. Copy paste of SM, except you now see all islands face their UBs.

-Moving on to the next point, or rather, adding onto the previous examples... The plot genuinely felt worse to me.
1. Lusamine is still psycho, she still has a collection of cryogenically frozen pokemon, but somehow after Necrozma whoops her and Guzma's asses, she's all back to normal and nobody seems to address that or her initial psychopathy (this time with no UB toxins involved).
2. Lillie is still the same character, and everything that made an impact in SM was axed in USUM (all the Nebby moments and the ones in the credits too). It's like they shoved Lillie in your face until the climax and then just got rid of her like she doesn't matter anymore. (Yes, she is back for RR episode but it's just more of the same free healer role).
3. Nebby itself is treated like a mindless being that never had a bond with Lillie to begin with. You free it and there's nothing to reflect the impact of that.
4. Necrozma is just shoehorned randomly collapsed before the league without any addition to its story after you fight it in the megalo tower.
Overall the plot felt like a rushed mess and more out of place than anything that happened in SM. SM plot felt unfinished but at least it made more sense than this mess. Not to mention the pace was still the same horribly slow start where the plot doesn't pick up until you've finished 3 islands, only to get completely rushed while you traverse the 4th.
-Alola photo club being executed poorly as a feature. I remember when we all speculated we'd be able to wear villain team uniforms after unlocking them alongside stickers. None of that, nope. Also, the only poses you can do are zmove dances, which are frankly ridiculous most of the time. Further, every photo background is during daytime. No variety. Like if I want to commemorate my Ghost evolving, and would like to use a creepier/spooky theme, the options are condensed to ...what? Faraway space? Everything else is just nature during daytime. Even Po Town's eternal rain isn't there. Stickers and photo frames are also too limited, I feel like I wouldn't use more than 2 of the frames available, and so far I haven't managed to unlock any new ones (if there even are any).
-The pokefinder itself got 0 improvements. It's still an impossible grind for an unworthy feature (or if you just want the stamp, which is ridiculous).
-All of the "x project has started"-esque teases/half finished things in the games that did not get any fixing or improvement from SM.
1. We go back to the golf course. It is clearly visible there in the background, you still can't access it. Same goes for other similar areas that were not accessible in SM- lighthouse, malie garden tower, powerplant and so on.
2. Region with 2 big hotels, they still don't have floors. Sure, they added a floor to the smaller hotel, but that to me is just another half-finished attempt at things that have existed since the DS era.
3. Tv channels which exist since gen 3, not fixed from SM. Only malasadas, photo club and surfing, with a grand total of like 9 lines repeated to infinity.
4. Still can't sit. So many places with benches that could make for a good view like in XY, but you're still out there sniffing people's beds and being able to sit in 3 chairs in the entire game and nothing else.
5. They even went as far as to add an interactable document in the GF building which is a clear tease for the Battle Pyramid. I don't know why they keep doing this honestly... It's just adding salt to the wound at this point.
6. Battle agency - sure, I like rentals but I don't like the way they executed it. You can't do much with this agency. A feature tied to the festival plaza- the very place where you connect via wifi with random people around the world, and all you can do is singles. Where's the online coop, GF? They could have at least added diverse battle modes for the thing (or more gimmicks)
7. Battle Royal and Battle Tree not improved in any way. Could have added more characters instead of making them version exclusive. Could have added more modes and again, online coop. But noope

- The pokemon distribution is just as horrible as in SM. The addition of 100 more pokemon was hardly felt since the distribution was utter crap. Not to mention all the issues with lvlup movepools and evolving too early are still present.
- STILL no good way to level up new members of your team in case you wish to train something else or if you're doing a locke. Battle buffet, the useless gym and everything else is locked into low levels until postgame
- Removed cell hunting instead of leaving it together with the sticker hunt. Shame. Sina, Dexio and Zygarde look even more out of place now.
- Rotomdex is an unbearable annoying little creature. It just doesn't stop talking. There's no way to turn it off. I just wanna view my map, but it has to talk every minute and recycle the same few phrases. I also can't ignore it because the map doesn't show up until I answer the current question. And worst of all... "Here's where I give you advice you didn't ask for!"...Just.
- No skip button for zmove animations and cutscenes. These things should be a common feature when you take into account game replayability. I have nothing against cutscenes but it gets tedious for anyone if they have to sit through the same ones too many times (or each time they wish to replay SM/USUM)
- No national dex still. Having the natdex locked behind bank is ridiculous.
-Again, I know it's an enhanced version, but it wouldn't have killed them to add some new explorable areas to the alolan map (ORAS ring-style legend areas in ultra space hardly mean much to me when i do that after the game is over and not while going through the region). If anyone can let me know what the point of pikas-imean pikachu valley was, please do, because it's a waste of space in my eyes. You can't even enter the trailer (unless I'm missing something).
- They went out of their way to add brand new UBs mid-gen, but couldn't add new alolan forms, which were another alolan staple and were redesigns of existing pokemon... (Yes, I'm aware the gimmick of the gen is Zthings, but even those had mostly lame additions that only did any good for Kommo-o)
- Customization still as limited as in SM. Still version exclusive colors and lack of variety.
-They went on and on about how "players could really get into the new post game content" in interviews. It turns out it's just mere fanservice with no deeper meaning or lore, and it's condensed to going through a Rocket base. I don't know, I sure didn't enjoy it. I don't think I like these "Episode X" postgame stuff, I'd rather them give me a new small island or place to explore and do mini quests in, and/or a good battle facility that keeps me busy (frontier/pwt). Episodes are cool only if they're not the ONLY thing there.
-Collection of legends is also postgame stuff, sure, but I didn't like the ORAS ring stuff because it was as random as the wormhole stuff.
-Guzzlord is arguably the best world and best thing to come out of the entire wormhole fiasco. Everything else...eh
-Speaking of wormholes, I do not like the wormhole ride minigame. I don't know why exactly, it just feels meh to me, and the random factor doesn't help.
- Plenty of posters and hints about Lillie being a trainer, it only happens postgame and she has a single clefairy (3 NFEs in battle tree). Nothing is done with this and she goes back to being your personal healer after 1 battle..
-Last but not least, the credits are a butcher in various ways:
1. Good scenes that were in SM got axed and nothing added to deepen our friendship with Lillie OR Gladion (appreciate Ya Boi Guzma scenes though)
2. We don't even go see gladion off (presuming he's gone to kanto instead of Lillie), but Lusamine seeing him off was nice at least.
3. Hau still doesn't voice his feelings for Lillie (or maybe that was axed too, who knows)..and yet Wicke calls him Master Hau later..why?
4. Tapu Koko scene axed
5. The credits themselves..... A literal recycle of the Crystal credits, but with the totems dancing instead (and with a bad remix of the same bgm as Crystal's credits). Literally nothing of relevance as opposed to all the random little pictures in SM's credits

And here we are, at the end of this long rant. I sincerely hope the Switch games will for some reason not be made with the same mentality of leaving things half-finished as the entire 3DS era. In my own personal view, I deem these to be the worst enhanced versions made, because they did not do a good job fixing what was wrong with SM. This kind of view is always gonna be subjective because different people care about different aspects in a Pokemon game, but when all is said and done, the only things I'd really like to see carry over from gen7 to future gens are the QoL updates and the Totem pokemon concept (simply 1v2 fights vs a boss pokemon in the wild). Most of all, I hope Gen 8 and beyond will add 100+ pokemon to the dex and that 25+ of them won't be legend-level stuff like in gen7. I also hope they abandon the concept of enhanced versions altogether and start making finished games instead...but we all know most of that is unlikely to happen with the current mentality of GF.
 
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they don't even spend time showing anyone any effects of Alola losing its light.
I thought this was unintentionally hilarious. After things started going down, I went to Seafolk Village to see what changed. The NPCs didn't react to the change, like they didn't even notice what was going on.
 
Oh boy, it's that time again! Lets goooo. First I'm just gonna say I really do like the change of Totems and stuff, also the sidequests. But this is about what we do NOT like, so here we go! (Giant Stakataka of text ahead, so putting it in a spoiler tag):
- I begin with saying that there is not a single good reason in the world for these to have been split in 2. Literally n.o.n.e. They even went as far as to include both box legends in the game separately, you really did NOT need 2 games for this.
No, "so people can trade stuff!" is not a good reason at all.
- Next up, we have the fact that the entirety of the pre-launch marketing was intentionally deceptive. I lost count of all the things I presumed would be something more based on the trailer footage, while in-game they turned out to be half-assed teases or a load of nothing relevant. To list some examples:
1. I spent the entire game wondering if they had axed the extra scenes Hau has as shown in trailers. It turns out they were meaningless and shoved at the end while you're collecting flower petals for Mina..by meaningless I mean not impactful at all, just seemed shoehorned in at that point.
2. Yes, I know, enhanced/upper version (split in 2, however...cannot defend this), but it honestly felt like replaying SM again. The worst part of it all is that even the overly advertised climax of the games was so underwhelming and happened so fast that I was like...uh..what? That was it? 30 trailers with "This is no longer the Alola you know!" for THIS? It really IS the Alola everyone knows and they don't even spend time showing anyone any effects of Alola losing its light..you just rush right into a wormhole and go fight a bossmon 10lvls higher than your entire team (unless you used expshare that is). And then it just disappears and everything is so underwhelming and short, it feels like it made the plot shorter AND worse as opposed to improve it like E and PT did.
3. The gym building in trailers made you believe Ryuki would be involved more in it and that it'd be something more than what it turned out to be- "the alolan gym project has started". It didn't even have a puzzle to it. Trainer levels don't change until postgame.
4. Kahili teased in trailers- Many people had hopes the golf course would be in the game if Kahili appears, but in reality, she only appears out of nowhere to teach you the Fly zthing and never appears again until the E4. No golf course either.
5. The battle arena in the photo club backgrounds made many believe it might be another battle facility. Turns out it was just a photo club background.
6. Teased UB cutscenes made one hope things would be more elaborate this time. They were not. Copy paste of SM, except you now see all islands face their UBs.

-Moving on to the next point, or rather, adding onto the previous examples... The plot genuinely felt worse to me.
1. Lusamine is still psycho, she still has a collection of cryogenically frozen pokemon, but somehow after Necrozma whoops her and Guzma's asses, she's all back to normal and nobody seems to address that or her initial psychopathy (this time with no UB toxins involved).
2. Lillie is still the same character, and everything that made an impact in SM was axed in USUM (all the Nebby moments and the ones in the credits too). It's like they shoved Lillie in your face until the climax and then just got rid of her like she doesn't matter anymore. (Yes, she is back for RR episode but it's just more of the same free healer role).
3. Nebby itself is treated like a mindless being that never had a bond with Lillie to begin with. You free it and there's nothing to reflect the impact of that.
4. Necrozma is just shoehorned randomly collapsed before the league without any addition to its story after you fight it in the megalo tower.
Overall the plot felt like a rushed mess and more out of place than anything that happened in SM. SM plot felt unfinished but at least it made more sense than this mess. Not to mention the pace was still the same horribly slow start where the plot doesn't pick up until you've finished 3 islands, only to get completely rushed while you traverse the 4th.
-Alola photo club being executed poorly as a feature. I remember when we all speculated we'd be able to wear villain team uniforms after unlocking them alongside stickers. None of that, nope. Also, the only poses you can do are zmove dances, which are frankly ridiculous most of the time. Further, every photo background is during daytime. No variety. Like if I want to commemorate my Ghost evolving, and would like to use a creepier/spooky theme, the options are condensed to ...what? Faraway space? Everything else is just nature during daytime. Even Po Town's eternal rain isn't there. Stickers and photo frames are also too limited, I feel like I wouldn't use more than 2 of the frames available, and so far I haven't managed to unlock any new ones (if there even are any).
-The pokefinder itself got 0 improvements. It's still an impossible grind for an unworthy feature (or if you just want the stamp, which is ridiculous).
-All of the "x project has started"-esque teases/half finished things in the games that did not get any fixing or improvement from SM.
1. We go back to the golf course. It is clearly visible there in the background, you still can't access it. Same goes for other similar areas that were not accessible in SM- lighthouse, malie garden tower, powerplant and so on.
2. Region with 2 big hotels, they still don't have floors. Sure, they added a floor to the smaller hotel, but that to me is just another half-finished attempt at things that have existed since the DS era.
3. Tv channels which exist since gen 3, not fixed from SM. Only malasadas, photo club and surfing, with a grand total of like 9 lines repeated to infinity.
4. Still can't sit. So many places with benches that could make for a good view like in XY, but you're still out there sniffing people's beds and being able to sit in 3 chairs in the entire game and nothing else.
5. They even went as far as to add an interactable document in the GF building which is a clear tease for the Battle Pyramid. I don't know why they keep doing this honestly... It's just adding salt to the wound at this point.
6. Battle agency - sure, I like rentals but I don't like the way they executed it. You can't do much with this agency. A feature tied to the festival plaza- the very place where you connect via wifi with random people around the world, and all you can do is singles. Where's the online coop, GF? They could have at least added diverse battle modes for the thing (or more gimmicks)
7. Battle Royal and Battle Tree not improved in any way. Could have added more characters instead of making them version exclusive. Could have added more modes and again, online coop. But noope

- The pokemon distribution is just as horrible as in SM. The addition of 100 more pokemon was hardly felt since the distribution was utter crap. Not to mention all the issues with lvlup movepools and evolving too early are still present.
- STILL no good way to level up new members of your team in case you wish to train something else or if you're doing a locke. Battle buffet, the useless gym and everything else is locked into low levels until postgame
- Removed cell hunting instead of leaving it together with the sticker hunt. Shame. Sina, Dexio and Zygarde look even more out of place now.
- Rotomdex is an unbearable annoying little creature. It just doesn't stop talking. There's no way to turn it off. I just wanna view my map, but it has to talk every minute and recycle the same few phrases. I also can't ignore it because the map doesn't show up until I answer the current question. And worst of all... "Here's where I give you advice you didn't ask for!"...Just.
- No skip button for zmove animations and cutscenes. These things should be a common feature when you take into account game replayability. I have nothing against cutscenes but it gets tedious for anyone if they have to sit through the same ones too many times (or each time they wish to replay SM/USUM)
- No national dex still. Having the natdex locked behind bank is ridiculous.
-Again, I know it's an enhanced version, but it wouldn't have killed them to add some new explorable areas to the alolan map (ORAS ring-style legend areas in ultra space hardly mean much to me when i do that after the game is over and not while going through the region). If anyone can let me know what the point of pikas-imean pikachu valley was, please do, because it's a waste of space in my eyes. You can't even enter the trailer (unless I'm missing something).
- They went out of their way to add brand new UBs mid-gen, but couldn't add new alolan forms, which were another alolan staple and were redesigns of existing pokemon... (Yes, I'm aware the gimmick of the gen is Zthings, but even those had mostly lame additions that only did any good for Kommo-o)
- Customization still as limited as in SM. Still version exclusive colors and lack of variety.
-They went on and on about how "players could really get into the new post game content" in interviews. It turns out it's just mere fanservice with no deeper meaning or lore, and it's condensed to going through a Rocket base. I don't know, I sure didn't enjoy it. I don't think I like these "Episode X" postgame stuff, I'd rather them give me a new small island or place to explore and do mini quests in, and/or a good battle facility that keeps me busy (frontier/pwt). Episodes are cool only if they're not the ONLY thing there.
-Collection of legends is also postgame stuff, sure, but I didn't like the ORAS ring stuff because it was as random as the wormhole stuff.
-Guzzlord is arguably the best world and best thing to come out of the entire wormhole fiasco. Everything else...eh
-Speaking of wormholes, I do not like the wormhole ride minigame. I don't know why exactly, it just feels meh to me, and the random factor doesn't help.
- Plenty of posters and hints about Lillie being a trainer, it only happens postgame and she has a single clefairy (3 NFEs in battle tree). Nothing is done with this and she goes back to being your personal healer after 1 battle..
-Last but not least, the credits are a butcher in various ways:
1. Good scenes that were in SM got axed and nothing added to deepen our friendship with Lillie OR Gladion (appreciate Ya Boi Guzma scenes though)
2. We don't even go see gladion off (presuming he's gone to kanto instead of Lillie), but Lusamine seeing him off was nice at least.
3. Hau still doesn't voice his feelings for Lillie (or maybe that was axed too, who knows)..and yet Wicke calls him Master Hau later..why?
4. Tapu Koko scene axed
5. The credits themselves..... A literal recycle of the Crystal credits, but with the totems dancing instead (and with a bad remix of the same bgm as Crystal's credits). Literally nothing of relevance as opposed to all the random little pictures in SM's credits

And here we are, at the end of this long rant. I sincerely hope the Switch games will for some reason not be made with the same mentality of leaving things half-finished as the entire 3DS era. In my own personal view, I deem these to be the worst enhanced versions made, because they did not do a good job fixing what was wrong with SM. This kind of view is always gonna be subjective because different people care about different aspects in a Pokemon game, but when all is said and done, the only things I'd really like to see carry over from gen7 to future gens are the QoL updates and the Totem pokemon concept (simply 1v2 fights vs a boss pokemon in the wild). Most of all, I hope Gen 8 and beyond will add 100+ pokemon to the dex and that 25+ of them won't be legend-level stuff like in gen7. I also hope they abandon the concept of enhanced versions altogether and start making finished games instead...but we all know most of that is unlikely to happen with the current mentality of GF.
I feel like all of these flaws was either because most of Game Freak's time was spent on the Alolan Photo Club or (if we give them the benefit of a doubt on their lack of competence) because of various debugging shenanigans that had to happen since SM were already pushing the 3DS to the limits.

Anyone remember what happened with that one stream with Lycanroc's Z-Move crashing a local battle? Sure, they said it was due to bad connections, but I honestly feel taht this wouldn't have happened with SM. Simply put, I think Game Freak tried to outdo Platinum, but the 3DS got pushed to its limits too much with what was already added/changed that they literally couldn't make it better than the final result because of it. Overall, I think that Game Freak should have just added move tutors and the new Pokémon/Forms to SM via DLC and left Alola like they did with Kalos (even though we would only have two games for the whole generation) if the 3DS was giving them that much trouble with adding things.
 
A couple more minor nitpicks:
  • I'm disappointed they moved the location of the Volt Tackle tutor and Pikanium Z to the very end of Akala, rather than in Konikoni City. I was looking forward to teaching my Pikachu that move as well as using both aspects in our Grand Trial with Olivia, but now I can't. It also doesn't help that a Thunder Stone is explicitly given to you right before Konikoni, so players may be even more prone to evolving their Pikachu and inadvertently giving up having it learn Volt Tackle in the Pikachu stage.
  • I know Lycanroc Dusk has a lot of similar features to Midday, but I'm disappointed they gave it the exact, same animations in Pokemon Refresh. That was just lazy on Game Freak's part-the form, like Oricorio's forms for example, warrants its own characteristics, interactions and such (especially given all the promotion that was done for it).
 
Personal gripe because I'm stupid. I never want to use the rare Roto-Loto options because they're so hard to come by. Even when I need them, I always want to hold off on using them. It's like Pre-BW TMs. At least with the O-Powers, you just had a small cooldown to hold you back.

Plus, if you close the game, you lose the Roto-Loto boost you just used, no matter how much time you had left on it. Lame.
 
I really hate the Ultra Wormhole minigame. Like, I lot. It's probably my least favorite part of the game so far. It's impossible to control with motion controls, but even if you change to circle pad (which is overly convoluted and completely unknown unless you search the internet for answer, which automatically signals bad game design in my mind, when it should've just been a toggle option on the minigame screen--I had to travel to Heahea mid-climax just to progress, so dumb) it still looks and controls like crap.
 
Personal gripe because I'm stupid. I never want to use the rare Roto-Loto options because they're so hard to come by. Even when I need them, I always want to hold off on using them. It's like Pre-BW TMs. At least with the O-Powers, you just had a small cooldown to hold you back.

Plus, if you close the game, you lose the Roto-Loto boost you just used, no matter how much time you had left on it. Lame.
Though basically this with any semi-rare item. WHAT IF I NEED IT LATER? (That later never seems to come though)

Some kind of influence on the outcome would have been nice
 
That reminds me, does anyone remember that brief encounter with Looker outside Konikoni City? Does he do anything after that encounter? Because that's the only time I saw him in USUM
 
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