C-Gear, PSS, Festival Plaza, Y-Comm, & Poké Portal — Which one do you prefer?

[Okido]

For quite a few generations running now, we've been able to communicate wirelessly on the fly to hold trades, link battles, and all sorts of activities with other players — without ever requiring you to visit a Pokémon Center to do so. This has usually come in the form of a gadget or a menu option, each one different than the last, adding or removing certain features with every new gen.

The question is, which one do you like best? Which one do you feel is (or was) the most fun or intuitive to use? Are there any features you wish would return from prior games? Feel free to rank them, or even to discuss the pros and cons within each one.

As for me, I will always have a soft spot for the PSS. I still think it was a perfect use of the lower screen; it's snappy and easy to use, fun to interact with and fairly unobtrusive to keep open while you go about your business playing the game. The Poké Portal I also think has been decently good, though not terribly interesting outside of the Union Circle and I personally find it can be a bit slow at times.
(But just speaking from an aesthetic standpoint, the C-Gear screen was beautiful in BW1 and honestly has no competition.)

 

[lisianthus]

I'm a Gen 6 girl at heart, and sadly never ended up playing the previous gen's games in time to actually make use of their online features!

But I will say: having played through all of the mainline games from Gen 6 with online capability (except for SV, which I haven't done online), the PSS is my all-time favorite. It's really... like, aside from it being extremely convenient and relatively straightforward to use, there's a lot of features packed into there. It felt like using a phone, almost? Which I suppose newer Pokédexes were modelled after a little...

I wasn't exactly a fan of the Festival Plaza, although it certainly was... different I suppose? It certainly fit Alola's overarching theme, I suppose, but I really would have preferred the PSS again!

That being said, the PSS couldn't really be done on a non-dualscreen device—I think that the Y-Comm could have been better, and I have no idea what the SV online looks like to this day, despite having beaten the maingame LOL.

...This makes me want another dual-shell handheld from Nintendo again LOL.

 

[Norzan]

I think PSS is generally considered the best and everything after is a downgrade in most ways.

 

[Pasio]

I wonder, what are the positives of the Festival Plaza / Y-Comm / Poke Portal? I agree that the Festival Plaza was a downgrade from the PSS but I've heard stories about how unbearable people found it. I've personally never found anything particularly egregious myself, just minor shortcomings in comparison to the PSS.

 

[Zexy]

Unpopular opinion, I did not mind Festival Plaza that much. In fact it was the time I used wireless features the most.

 

[DigitalGen6]

I almost picked Festival Plaza but ended up picking PSS instead lol