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Spoilers Best Main Pokemon Game of the 3DS Era?

Best Main Pokemon Game of the 3DS Era?

  • X and Y

    Votes: 18 18.9%
  • Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire

    Votes: 32 33.7%
  • Sun and Moon

    Votes: 19 20.0%
  • Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon

    Votes: 16 16.8%
  • All of them suck

    Votes: 10 10.5%

  • Total voters
    95
I honestly regret not buying Ultra Sun after seeing how little the story and the version exclusive stuff changed. Though preferably I wish I hadn't bought Ultra Moon at all. I don't think USUM are terrible games, but I feel like I wouldn't have missed out on anything if I had skipped them. The cinematic trailer convinced me to buy Ultra Moon, thinking we'll actually get to explore some of the Ultra Space but what we got is very little to be worth the cost. The USUM content really feels like something that should have been a DLC.

With that said, I would probably recommend USUM to someone who hasn't played any Gen VII games yet due having more content such as Mantine Surfing and the side quests. I would recommend SM to someone who is interested in the story more than the content, though. SM's story needed some fine tuning, but it's a fairly complete story and most characters got some sort of closure. The changes USUM made left us with incomplete character arcs or character actions that made little to no sense. The climax was a joke, too.

USUM should have been better than SM in every way, since it's the same base game but with more content, and yet USUM failed to do that. They are not sequels to excuse story shortcomings or content that feels unfinished. Game Freak literally had a decent game that they only needed to expand upon in order to turn it into a great game. USUM even removed content (Beast Lusamine, Looker/UB post-game story) in order to add something else. I don't think Lusamine's character arc and the Looker post-game quest really interfered with Necrozma and the RR episode. There are ways they could have incorporated everything. The Looker quest even provided us with expansion for Nanu's, Anabel's and Looker's characters. They might be minor characters, but it's a shame not to have that in USUM.

Preach. I hate that I keep coming back to that Looker Post-Game, because all you're doing is walking around in grass and catching multiple copies of the same Ultra Beast until you get more story and a new one. However, it added so much character to the game with said story and explanation for why Ultra Beasts were drawn to some people. And yeah, the Lusamine arc is a joke. I am happy that Lillie got to patch things up with her mom, but it felt more like a dream Lillie would have and wake up from than how Lusamine would actually act. She has frozen Pokemon in her house-lair! She is gone. And without Lusamine's final arc, Lillie then ran away from home and just...stalled? I don't know. It feels so pointless. Especially when Necrozma is a sort of parasite that feeds off Solgalunala's light in order to make itself more powerful/"whole". That definitely doesn't sound like a direct parallel to a certain mother daughter relationship, nope. I got nothing.

The parts I like in USUM I really like, but it feels like the enjoyment I got from it was from playing the previous game, which consequently hampered my enjoyment with the new one. Who is the audience for the game? I truly don't know. I don't think it knows either.
 
I think it is quite shocking how USUM is the least voted here. It was advertised as the "ULTRA" game, and the peak of their entire 3DS game development. Yet it is the least voted.

Ok, I get that we are less favorable to this whole "third version" formula, but still, I can´t imagine Emerald or Platinum losing a poll to RS and DP respectively. Yet here we see that SM is beating USUM.

I can think of a couple of reasons as to why that's the case. We were more used to the third version formula with Emerald and Platinum. There was still some backlash to the concept. It wasn't uncommon for people to skip the first two games of a generation because they knew that a third upgraded version would be out in a couple of years. It clearly didn't drastically affect the sales for any of the main series titles, but I would often hear that when a new generation was revealed. After doing B2/W2 and skipping a third version game altogether in the sixth generation, releasing two third version games does feel like a bit of a step backwards. It's honestly the same reason why I wasn't into the idea of a Z version either. It could have expanded the Kalos region, fixed some of the issues I had with X/Y and been generally a fun experience, but it would have felt strange to go back to that formula when we already knew that they could do more with sequels. It's also one of the reasons why I was hoping that US/UM would be more different than a return to the third version format. They're still fun games and pretty good third version games, but using the third version formula after not using it for so long is a bit jarring to say the least.

Plus, Sun/Moon probably felt more refreshing by comparison. US/UM does improve upon it in terms of the difficulty and post storyline content, but I don't think it feels as unique to a lot of people when we went through basically the same game just a year ago. I still don't think this bothered me as much as other people. I play through both versions and having different Pokemon still made traveling through Alola a third and fourth time more refreshing for me, but I can see why others might feel differently about it. I think that there were larger gaps between when previous third version games came out, or at least with Emerald and Platinum, so that possibly helped with making going through the same region again less stale for people.

I'm more surprised that X/Y is in second place. OR/AS being first makes sense. They're really good remakes, but I didn't think X/Y were received that well here.
 
I'm more surprised that X/Y is in second place. OR/AS being first makes sense. They're really good remakes, but I didn't think X/Y were received that well here.
It's only by one or two votes, though (XY is just one vote ahead while I'm typing this). But if it gets ahead by more than three votes in the future, I think it would be because of two reasons. First, the XY games offered a lot more conveniences compared to SM (PSS, leveling up methods, more variety in terms of clothing, etc). Second, this may or may not be relevant, but the XY(&Z) anime was quite popular and perhaps may have influenced people's opinions and that maybe the games weren't as bad as the initial complaints. I'm not sure about Sun and Moon, though.
 
It's only by one or two votes, though (XY is just one vote ahead while I'm typing this). But if it gets ahead by more than three votes in the future, I think it would be because of two reasons. First, the XY games offered a lot more conveniences compared to SM (PSS, leveling up methods, more variety in terms of clothing, etc). Second, this may or may not be relevant, but the XY(&Z) anime was quite popular and perhaps may have influenced people's opinions and that maybe the games weren't as bad as the initial complaints. I'm not sure about Sun and Moon, though.

I could see the conveniences playing a factor here. While I do prefer Sun/Moon over X/Y overall, there were some features that I also missed when playing through the games. PSS was much better than Festival Plaza, even with the changes they made to it in US/UM in mind, the Double Battles definitely made level grinding easier and the customization was better, which still seems sad to me since I thought that X/Y still needed improvement in that area as well. If there's one thing that I think that the sixth generation had over the seventh, it would be the amount of good features that made things like level grinding much less tedious. It's also still strange to me that they didn't include something like a Double Battle area in the seventh generation. While I don't like the idea of paying in-game money in order to level grind, it would be more fitting to do that in this generation considering how much money you can get.

I don't know about the anime though. While it was popular, especially the XYZ portion, I'm not sure if it would change how people felt about the games. It's certainly possible, but I'm not sure. I don't think it was uncommon for people to mention that they preferred how the anime handled Team Flare over the games, especially after the Team Flare arc.
 
Like all, but voted for XY. Idk, the OST is just awesome. For me XY has the best music of all series too.
 
I think the 3DS era is a step down overall, but I'll go with XY since it introduced Hawlucha.
 
ORAS imo, has the most pros (positives) of all the 3DS titles, but also the most teasers, unfortunately.
 
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ORAS is definitely the best of the bunch, but most of what made it great was already great in the original. In terms of what the remake brings to the table, the bad once again outweighs the good. The game is a product of its time, you have to imagine were it not for the fact that the core game was created in an era where they cared a lot more about making a complete, well rounded experience it wouldn't be as great a game. But by the remake's own merits it's just as bad as every other 3DS game.
 
For me ORAS->XY->USUM->SM

XY, USUM, and SM all have lame postgame content, and USUM and SM are great up until about the Elite Four and then it just feels weird. The abandonment of Gyms should have also meant the removal of E4 and something more creative put in its place.

In terms of postgame content, Rainbow Rocket episode wasn't even that exciting to me, and XY and SM with the Looker episodes are meh. The Delta Episode in ORAS to me would be hard for GF to top.
 
X/Y get my vote. OR/AS are great, too. Being someone who was always disappointed with R/S/E, I felt like OR/AS kind of redeemed the 'game' for me. However, X/Y get my vote because not only are they new games, but I adored the region, a lot of the new Pokemon, the music, etc. X/Y were the first non-remake Pokemon game with an OST that I thought was memorable since R/S/E, and it was more than memorable! I love it!

Sun/Moon actually made me appreciate X/Y, more.
 
as much as i love SM/USUM I have to say ORAS is my favorite due to being one of my fav original games (next to diamond and pearl) I also have a huge crush on archie so that might be why
 
After giving it some thought, my résumé of the problems of 3DS era games is the following:

XY: boring, linear region, boring cast, boring plot. Stylish boredom.

OR/AS: a great base work plus some brilliant additions like Soaring and DexNav, brought down by some weird as fuck decisions and teasers (and the fact that Emerald and HG/SS are too good, and comparison is a bitch).

S/M: rushed for the anniversary: The Game

US/UM: let's add less content than we did in all previous third versions, and hope fans don't notice: The Game
 
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Although I have a less harsh view of the 3DS generations than many of the people in this thread, I can see where the disappointment stems from. XY, though fresh visually and game-mechanic wise, were pretty empty all together. ORAS was almost too-tightly wound to RS and lacked a taste of E, though the addition of the Zinnia chapter was definitely cool and very welcome and I thought the Hoenn transition from 2D to 3D was done very, very well.

My favorite of the 3DS gens, ultimately, were SM. They're absolutely not perfect but I enjoyed the changes to the gameplay, presentation, story-telling, and region. I liked the characters a lot, and nearly all of the new pokemon. That said, USM were disappointing. They just kind of threw everything in there but in a way that was muddled and conflicting, unlike BW2.

I'm certainly interested in wherever the Switch game(s) go.
 
I am in the minority in that I actually enjoyed XY the most. I'll spare the details, but SM was a huge disappointment to me and what burned me off of the series. I'll concede that XY does have some glaring flaws that I'm not too happy with, but I still find XY more enjoyable and indeed playable than SM is.
 
I didn't really enjoy any of these games, but if I had to pick the best one I'd have to go with Ultra Sun and Moon I guess.
 
XY and SM were unfinished. USUM was a cash grab.
The most complete games (albeit still missing the Battle Frontier) were ORAS.
The way they integrated Mega Evolution, having all legendaries via Hoopa rings.
Best story for sure

My vote goes to ORAS
 
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