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Spoilers How does US/UM hold up to S/M?

That does give me some small measure of hope, because the Switch game is a lot more important than the Gen 7 follow-up so if these were sacrificed on its altar, then I might find it more forgivable in the long run
As far as I'm aware, USUM, and third versions in general, are handled by separate teams from the main one. USUM's development wouldn't have affected the Switch games'. They only rushed it because the 3DS is very quickly nearing the end of its lifespan.
 
As far as I'm aware, USUM, and third versions in general, are handled by separate teams from the main one. USUM's development wouldn't have affected the Switch games'. They only rushed it because the 3DS is very quickly nearing the end of its lifespan.

That’s sort of what I’m saying. Rather than taking their time and waiting to release a second Gen 7 game in 2018 (so, waiting two years, as has been the case for every revisit game before now), they cobbled it together in a hurry because the 3DS is going to be replaced by the Switch soon. Releasing it after one year rather than two also gives it more time to be the “active” game and to accumulate sales.

That being said, I’m not so sure that the division across their two teams is as clear-cut as you make it sound. Remember that Ohmori was the director for both ORAS and SM, but actually only joined the SM development team once his work on ORAS was finished, after “quite a bit of progress” had already been made on SM. It has also been said that Masuda still oversaw the development of USUM, and we know that he had a producer role for ORAS as well (he’s the one who insisted that Soaring be included, for example). So yeah, Roger the Peon probably isn’t sweating the Switch so much while he’s sitting there figuring out how to program something in Mantine Surf. But these inter-generation releases do still involve the higher-ups and still require their attention - it’s just that they have room to be more hands-off about it. After all, who do you think are the ones that set the deadlines for a new release?
 
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What issues are these? Cause so far the issues I personally had with SuMo have either been addressed or I didn't expect them to change. I'm only about to do Lana's trial though so I'm not that far in the game

But for example, the much larger FC rewards have made me use the Fedtival Plaza more. Levelling up feels much less like a chore. The fact the overall structure is still the same doesn't surprise me, even if I'd gladly seen it change

Lot of interruptions, lot of text, slow cutscenes/interruptions, Totem Raticate still has a Gumshoos cry, occasionally blurry text, far too low encounter rates while surfing, battle lagging, lack of overworld animations (resulting in a 2-4 second black screen) even when doing simple tasks like opening a gate or being denied access to a certain location, Pokemon distribution is still not optimal (it is slightly better but not great - there are still a lot of repeated mons, bad distribution, and several useful/popular new mons with insanely low rates, including SOS exclusive Pokemon attached to an already rare encounter), Festival Plaza is horrible as ever (no surprise there though, not like they were gonna overhaul a communication plaza mid gen)... I could probably go on.
 
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That being said, I’m not so sure that the division across their two teams is as clear-cut as you make it sound.
I recall reading an interview about the mid-development of GS. While the main team were working on GS almost immediately after the release of RG, other teams were assigned to work on Blue and Yellow. The two projects were so disconnected from each other that one of the members (I believe Satoshi Tajiri, but I'm not certain) was surprised when he heard that Blue and Yellow were completed. That was back then, but I imagine it's mostly the same today. Obviously there would be some crisscrossing of team members between projects, but I don't believe everyone employed in Game Freak is as closely involved in both projects as you make it sound.
 
Game Freak is a fairly small studio. ain't no way that a company that was sub-100 employees total until gen six had its dev split into two teams that didn't have some substantial cross-over, especially considering that they were putting games out every year or every other year.
 
For HGSS, B2W2 and ORAS, you can tell from the credits that almost all the staff worked on them. With USUM, it's pretty obvious that not many resources were needed, although Iwao claimed that half the staff were involved (he also said it was 80 people, which already doesn't make sense given that the company is still under 120 people).
 
I finished the game today (Rainbow Rocket was OK. The battles were pretty challenging) and I think it is a big improvement on the originals, except for Tutorial Island.
 
Just defeated Totem Raticate (they still didn't fix its cry, but I prefer Gumshoos' cry anyway) and found Nebby (again). Have to say, USUM should have been SM from the get-go in terms of content, features and the little things.

Even though I did buy both Moon & Ultra Moon, I can see why people feel the latter is a rip-off, price wise.
 
I missed this:

Isamu Akai said:
I recall reading an interview about the mid-development of GS. While the main team were working on GS almost immediately after the release of RG, other teams were assigned to work on Blue and Yellow. The two projects were so disconnected from each other that one of the members (I believe Satoshi Tajiri, but I'm not certain) was surprised when he heard that Blue and Yellow were completed. That was back then, but I imagine it's mostly the same today. Obviously there would be some crisscrossing of team members between projects, but I don't believe everyone employed in Game Freak is as closely involved in both projects as you make it sound.
You seem to be misremembering. For one thing, there were less than 20 employees back then. Ishihara is the one that was surprised by Blue, because he wasn't actually part of the company and Blue was just a side project. Yellow was released to make up for GS' delay and capitalize on the anime. Did either of these projects take resources from GS? Barely, as the fixed glitches and improved sprites refined the system for GS, which all the staff worked on.

Iwata Asks (HGSS) said:
Iwata: But you didn't manage to get Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver ready in time either, did you? (laughs)

Ishihara: That's right. (laughs) We originally started work on Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver right after releasing Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green, and then just when we were racing forward with the development, Tajiri-san came to us and said: "We've finished one!" I thought that this was really quick and asked him what it was, to which he replied: "We've finished 'Pokémon Blue'!" (laughs)

Iwata: Even though you'd been waiting for Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver? (laughs)

Ishihara: And then after that, we made Pokémon Yellow Version: Special Pikachu Edition... (laughs)

Iwata: That's right. (laughs)

Ishihara: I said: "Now we've got Pokémon Yellow!?" (laughs)

Iwata: Pokémon Yellow Version: Special Pikachu Edition was really fun, but because everyone was waiting for Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver, as you can imagine there was a sense that people were thinking: "I'm not sure they should be putting out Pokémon Yellow."

Ishihara: After all, it was also the year that Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver were scheduled to be released.

Iwata: That's right.

The bottom line is: GS' development spanned nearly 4 years, of which only 6-7 months combined were spent on Blue and Yellow. By the same logic, anyone who worked on USUM (half of the company, supposedly) has been working on the Switch versions for a few months now.
 
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Does USUM do anything in particular to make Hau a better opponent? Personally found that the whole "picking-a-starter-weak-to-the-player-character's" thing made him much easier to defeat than he should've been in Sun/Moon.
 
Does USUM do anything in particular to make Hau a better opponent? Personally found that the whole "picking-a-starter-weak-to-the-player-character's" thing made him much easier to defeat than he should've been in Sun/Moon.
He still picks a starter weak to you, but he used an extra Pokemon or two in all his counters, starting from his first fight after you leave Melemele's meadow. Movesets are mostly the same, though his team have slightly higher levels than they did in SM by the time you reach Malie City.

Story spoiler:
They replace the Championship fight with Kukui, so now you battle Hau for the title. He's much easier to beat than Kukui though, since his starter is weak to yours and he doesn't have the same sort of strategic skill as Kukui.
 
Does USUM do anything in particular to make Hau a better opponent? Personally found that the whole "picking-a-starter-weak-to-the-player-character's" thing made him much easier to defeat than he should've been in Sun/Moon.

The starter picking is the same, but he's overall a stronger opponent than he was in SM. I'm not sure if it's just the higher levels, or maybe better stats, but he's slightly less of a pushover. Almost beat me once.
 
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