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Least Favorite Third/Enhanced Version

Which did you Dislike?

  • Yellow

    Votes: 10 34.5%
  • Crystal

    Votes: 3 10.3%
  • Emerald

    Votes: 2 6.9%
  • Platinum

    Votes: 1 3.4%
  • Ultra Sun/Moon

    Votes: 13 44.8%

  • Total voters
    29

SammyW27

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To counter or balance my Favorite on poll.

Me, I really didn't like the Ultra Duo for being a scam. Charging people the price of new game price for about ten bucks worth of DLC was bad enough, but making them a duo is too much (both ways)!
 
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USUM. It was far too similar to the original and improved a lot less than the versions before it (notably Emerald, Platinum, and BW2). Yellow and Crystal didn't add a lot either but those games were early entries back when Game Freak was just trying to find their footing and they were less experienced and working with weaker hardware, so it's a little more understandable that those games didn't change a whole lot. USUM not so much, that's just blatant laziness on their part.
 
usum, but that doesn't mean that i disliked it, either. i don't really feel all that strongly about yellow and i liked emerald/crystal and platinum is my favourite, so that leaves out usum. i think it was okay for what it was worth, but i dunno, i felt like i was wanting a bit more after playing SM.

i wish that usum was a bit more than what it was, but in a way, it followed in the footsteps of many third games before it: a game that provides an alternative storyline, slightly different mechanics, and a slightly better postgame.
 
Yellow because what's the point? It barely improves on the originals and doesn't even reflect the anime that it's supposedly an adaptation of in any meaningful way. Oh so Pikachu follows you around and can't evolve. Whoopee.

None of others are perfect, but they all add increasing amounts of new features and concepts, and generally improve upon certain imperfections in the originals. Any one of them is more worth your money than Yellow.
 
Yellow because what's the point? It barely improves on the originals and doesn't even reflect the anime that it's supposedly an adaptation of in any meaningful way. Oh so Pikachu follows you around and can't evolve. Whoopee.

None of others are perfect, but they all add increasing amounts of new features and concepts, and generally improve upon certain imperfections in the originals. Any one of them is more worth your money than Yellow.
To be fair Yellow made some nice learnset enhancements (in normal R/B Mankey learns no fighting moves except Seismic Toss), gave the Elite Four better movesets, the ability to get Machamp without a friend, and all three starters are available. It's not as big as latter third verisons but I think it changed more than it's predecessor, Japanese Blue.

However you can tell they "ran out of show" mid development; the anime changes are more prominent up to Vermilion City then mostly consist of some enemy team changes (and they even edited that later--Blaine doesn't have his Magmar, for instance) and replacing some generic Rockets with the TRio.
 
USUM took the single best aspect of SM - the excellent story - and transformed it into another run-of-the-mill, angry-legendary-must-be-stopped plot. Stylised, non-sapient animals do not make for good villains; it carries the same emotional heft as cornering an irate badger.
 
To be fair Yellow made some nice learnset enhancements (in normal R/B Mankey learns no fighting moves except Seismic Toss), gave the Elite Four better movesets, the ability to get Machamp without a friend, and all three starters are available. It's not as big as latter third verisons but I think it changed more than it's predecessor, Japanese Blue.

However you can tell they "ran out of show" mid development; the anime changes are more prominent up to Vermilion City then mostly consist of some enemy team changes (and they even edited that later--Blaine doesn't have his Magmar, for instance) and replacing some generic Rockets with the TRio.

That's a good point, and very fair. But even still, those are mostly just adjustments, with very little being actually added to the content like in later third versions.

That being said, you mention Japanese Blue, and I do think that whole situation is so awkward that it's almost not even fair to consider JP Blue or Yellow in a comparison between third versions, because from the outset, the notion of what a "third version" could or should be was not even remotely defined at the time of those games' production. Indeed, that's probably why it is so easy for me to slam Yellow - because it's not exactly setting out to do the same thing as later third versions.

So, were I to exclude Yellow from consideration, I would probably say that USUM is my least-favorite of the bunch. Contrary to the fandom response, I actually like a lot of the story changes and don't have any problem with letting them coexist alongside the SM story (if anything, I wish they'd have changed even more, so as to make the experience less same-y). I think the contrasts and divergences in certain characters' arc reveal interesting things about them, and some characteristics are better-articulated in USUM. Plus, all the random NPC scenarios scattered throughout the map are fun and charming, and add more life to the Alola region.

But that doesn't change the fact that the games are still weighted down by long cutscenes, which I find deeply irritating when trying to play through any Gen 7 game. On that count alone, I'd probably rather have Crystal, Emerald, or Platinum, which despite them all running on older mechanics (and despite Emerald's story being shittier than the original) don't feel like as much of a slog to me.

Besides that, while I never really made use of either Battle Frontier, I really admire the amount of creativity and scope that went into them in comparison to, say, the Battle Agency, which is a Factory clone rooted in the ever-infuriating Festival Plaza hub.

But my biggest gripe with USUM is simply that the time for third versions had long since passed, and yet they still went for them, even though B2W2 had demonstrated a better alternative. Crystal, Emerald, and Platinum can all be forgiven somewhat within their historical context, but in that regard, USUM can't be divorced from the fact that they came out for a console like the 3DS in the year 2017, well after many studios had shifted to DLC updates to fulfill that sort of purpose.

Also. How you gonna go and leave those embarrassing empty lots scattered throughout Alola in SM and then, when given the chance to fill them in with something, make two of them Photo Clubs, one of them a Pokémon Fan Club (so, nothing), two of them Surf Associations (one of which is pointless), and then not even fill in the last one?

Oh and I just thought to something. Datamining has revealed a quest within the Crown Tundra update titled "They Came from the Ultra Beyond," presumably allowing the player to track down and capture Ultra Beasts. So I wonder if maybe it would have been a better idea - obviously not better for TPC's profit margins, but more respectable from a consumer view - to just tell Necrozma's story as a part of that, like how Zygarde's developments were deferred into SM. Obviously there's a lot more to USUM than just the Necrozma arc; like, I think its Totem battles are a lot better, which to me is not a negligible point since Totem battles were one of Gen 7's best ideas. But I just have to wonder if it would have been a bit smoother to go from SM to Let's Go to SwSh, and then to tie up SM's loose ends in the SwSh DLC.
 
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UsUm.

They took a bad game and made it worse by taking away the one redeeming quality (Nice characterization) and messing it up. (Looking at Lusamine here.)
 
In terms of which game I enjoy playing the least, probably Yellow, because I feel that none of the Gen I games have aged particularly well. But my vote goes to Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon because they're the only games on this list which, in my opinion, failed to improve upon their predecessors.

The biggest problem I have with these games is the changes they made to Sun and Moon's story. They removed most of Lillie's best moments, made Lusamine less compelling, and reduced Solgaleo/Lunala to a damsel in distress who has to be rescued. Even a couple of the most charming moments from the Trials were removed. It was as if someone had torn some pages out of an acclaimed novel, then stuck in some new pages of their own badly-written material. It was slightly heartbreaking to see such a beautiful story defiled in such a way, especially as the enhanced versions tend to be the ones people remember and recommend to others.

These games also made the Rotom Dex talk too much (Sun and Moon got the balance just right, I thought) and added two compulsory Festival Plaza tutorials.

They did add some things that I loved as well, like the new Ultra Beasts, Ultra Warp Ride, Mantine Surf and the Alola Photo Club. I even found myself enjoying the spectacle of the new cutscenes, and I was intrigued by the Ultra Recon Squad and their homeworld, but I would have preferred to have seen these things in a brand new story. Team Rainbow Rocket was fun, but Looker and Anabel's story arguably had more depth.

Taking all aspects of the games into account - gameplay as well as story - I'd say that Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are probably about as good as Sun and Moon, rather than better like they should have been. They made some things better, and some things worse.
 
They removed most of Lillie's best moments

I think removing the Ultra Space confrontation is fair, because the game is going to have a different climax anyway, and if I'm going to play USUM, ideally I want it to be as non-identical to SM as possible.

That being said, I Ultra Don't Understand why they removed the Exeggutor Island scene in favor of a quasi-trial. From a storytelling perspective it just doesn't make sense because what Lillie would have said in that scene is still enlightening, and the reason for barring Lillie from going with you is gobsmackingly arbitrary considering it wasn't an issue whatsoever for her to go to the island in SM.

But then you have the double-whammy, where it turns out they actually did keep the scene... more or less, as an optional sidequest, except instead of waiting out the rain with Lillie, you wait it out... with... the Seafolk Captain

(That video contains a playful edit; he doesn't actually say his "skirt got wet" of course. But even if he had, I wouldn't be any more confused than I already am.)

made Lusamine less compelling

Hard disagree

and reduced Solgaleo/Lunala to a damsel in distress who has to be rescued.

tbf, Nebby already spends most of the story regardless of version being a damsel in distress, particularly on Aether visit #2, but it is kind of a shame that they don't get a badass moment of their own somewhere. Like maybe if Lillie kept Nebby to herself, so that she could use them against Rainbow Rocket. After all, as far as distributing them to the player goes, it is canonical that the Ultra Recon Squad have both a Solgaleo and a Lunala of their own. Why not have them gift the player with one as a thank-you for saving their world? Then Lillie can keep Nebby as she goes on to become a Trainer.

These games also made the Rotom Dex talk too much (Sun and Moon got the balance just right, I thought) and added two compulsory Festival Plaza tutorials.

Rotom Dex sucked always, Change My Mind
 
Kind of neutral on USUM, since there are some aspects I liked better than in SM, and some aspects I didn't.

I'd go with Yellow, I guess. Not much is noticeably different from RBY aside getting all 3 starters and starting with a Pikachu.
 
UMUS to the point where I didn't cared about those games, voted with my wallet and one of my main reasons for now distrusting GF.
Have at you GF!
 
I think removing the Ultra Space confrontation is fair, because the game is going to have a different climax anyway, and if I'm going to play USUM, ideally I want it to be as non-identical to SM as possible.

That being said, I Ultra Don't Understand why they removed the Exeggutor Island scene in favor of a quasi-trial. From a storytelling perspective it just doesn't make sense because what Lillie would have said in that scene is still enlightening, and the reason for barring Lillie from going with you is gobsmackingly arbitrary considering it wasn't an issue whatsoever for her to go to the island in SM.

But then you have the double-whammy, where it turns out they actually did keep the scene... more or less, as an optional sidequest, except instead of waiting out the rain with Lillie, you wait it out... with... the Seafolk Captain

(That video contains a playful edit; he doesn't actually say his "skirt got wet" of course. But even if he had, I wouldn't be any more confused than I already am.)

The Exeggutor Island part was the worst - making Lillie stay in Seafolk Village was an insult to her character. I liked the changes they made to the island itself, having you climb up Exeggutor's neck and everything, but there's no reason why Lillie couldn't have still been there, done her speech, and helped you figure out what to do with the Exeggutor. I didn't know about that sidequest with the Captain! In fairness to USUM, those little sidequests were pretty good for worldbuilding, even if some of them were a little bizarre.

I wouldn't have wanted the climax to be identical to in the originals, but they could have at least let Lillie travel to Ultra Megalopolis in a bid to help save Nebby, rather than being left anxiously waiting at the altar.

tbf, Nebby already spends most of the story regardless of version being a damsel in distress, particularly on Aether visit #2, but it is kind of a shame that they don't get a badass moment of their own somewhere. Like maybe if Lillie kept Nebby to herself, so that she could use them against Rainbow Rocket. After all, as far as distributing them to the player goes, it is canonical that the Ultra Recon Squad have both a Solgaleo and a Lunala of their own. Why not have them gift the player with one as a thank-you for saving their world? Then Lillie can keep Nebby as she goes on to become a Trainer.

In the original story, I liked how Nebby went from being a damsel in distress to being the hero who transports the human characters between worlds. It's not often that a Pokemon gets character development like that! Taking the flutes to the altar had a purpose, because it was Nebby's evolution that allowed the protagonist and Lillie to travel to Ultra Space and rescue Lusamine and Guzma. In the Ultra story, playing the flutes and evolving Nebby achieves nothing except to make the antagonist, Necrozma, stronger. And then the protagonist travels to Ultra Space with the help of a different Pokemon, which suddenly appears out of nowhere, so there's no emotional weight to it.

I really like your idea of Lillie keeping Nebby. If that had happened, I think I would have liked the story a lot more. They could have pulled off a brilliant twist by having Nebby evolve into the opposite legendary to the one you're expecting (Lunala in Ultra Sun, or Solgaleo in Ultra Moon) and had the Ultra Recon Squad's legendary be the one that you ultimately end up catching. It could have been the Recon Squad's legendary that gets absorbed by Necrozma, and Nebby that transports you to Ultra Megalopolis, hopefully with Lillie in tow.

The Recon Squad's legendary just needed a better introduction. You don't even see it being summoned from the Ultra Wormhole, or released from a Poke Ball - it's just suddenly there.
 
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Yellow. I don't like being lumped with an unevolvable Pikachu or having Meowth unavailable. This is the only time where I actively choose to play the previous paired versions over the "refined" version. When I first played Yellow (via emulator), I edited my starter to be an Eevee and later cheated to catch a Meowth in their usual location because those restrictions can suck a Diglett.
 
I honestly like all of them so this is a hard poll @_@ but if I absolutely had to pick, I suppose usum? they were good and imo a huge step up from the original sumo but compared to the other third versions, they probably rank lower. I can never get enough of replaying yellow, crystal, and emerald, and platinum was just awesome in general to go through... meanwhile I never did do much in US after beating it, nor have I ever replayed it. My festival plaza also went nearly untouched, lol.
 
I wouldn't have wanted the climax to be identical to in the originals, but they could have at least let Lillie travel to Ultra Megalopolis in a bid to help save Nebby, rather than being left anxiously waiting at the altar.

In the original story, I liked how Nebby went from being a damsel in distress to being the hero who transports the human characters between worlds. It's not often that a Pokemon gets character development like that! Taking the flutes to the altar had a purpose, because it was Nebby's evolution that allowed the protagonist and Lillie to travel to Ultra Space and rescue Lusamine and Guzma. In the Ultra story, playing the flutes and evolving Nebby achieves nothing except to make the antagonist, Necrozma, stronger. And then the protagonist travels to Ultra Space with the help of a different Pokemon, which suddenly appears out of nowhere, so there's no emotional weight to it.

I really like your idea of Lillie keeping Nebby. If that had happened, I think I would have liked the story a lot more. They could have pulled off a brilliant twist by having Nebby evolve into the opposite legendary to the one you're expecting (Lunala in Ultra Sun, or Solgaleo in Ultra Moon) and had the Ultra Recon Squad's legendary be the one that you ultimately end up catching. It could have been the Recon Squad's legendary that gets absorbed by Necrozma, and Nebby that transports you to Ultra Megalopolis, hopefully with Lillie in tow.

The Recon Squad's legendary just needed a better introduction. You don't even see it being summoned from the Ultra Wormhole, or released from a Poke Ball - it's just suddenly there.

Ah, I hadn't thought of the bolded parts. That would be a good improvement as well. I mean, I think in general it's consensus that the Ultra Megalopolis part of the game is perhaps where it needs the most work. It's a cool concept, but in practice, it's nothing more than a snazzy background for a boss battle.

Come to think of it, maybe this is a little nitpicky of me, but this actually gets at something I find somewhat irksome about the "light trio" and their "lore," which is that Cosmog and its evolutions seem to have some kind of fundamental connection to Necrozma, but then, the story kind of suggests the opposite, that they're just incidentally good sources of the vitamin D that Necrozma happens to be low on. (Contrast this with Sword & Shield, where Eternatus is clearly and explicitly just a deadly alien creature and isn't related to the Z-wolves on any innate level, while Zacian and Zamazenta clearly are related to each other.) It definitely doesn't help that the Recon Squad's backstory revolves around Necrozma, but then then just inexplicably have their own Solgaleo/Lunala as well.

I've always kind of assumed that the reason why the Recon Squad were faffing about with helping Lusamine obtain Nebby is because they didn't want to risk their own Solgaleo/Lunala being captured by Necrozma, so, better to work with Lusamine and help her find another way to pry open a wormhole that they can send Trainers through rather than exposing their beast to Necrozma upfront.

Now I feel like messing around with an alternative sample scenario:

- The URS travel to Alola on their own Solgaleo/Lunala. (I'm very tempted to say they should only have one, not both.) As before, their objective is to discover some way of dealing with Necrozma. They have met Lusamine, and learned that she is studying Cosmog and its relationship to Ultra Wormholes for her own reasons. But of course, Cosmog was recently stolen from Aether Paradise by Lillie.

- The URS work out a deal with Lusamine - they'll try to find and reclaim Cosmog, in exchange for Lusamine lending her resources to help devise a solution to the Necrozma problem. Honestly, I would just merge the two "versions" of the URS's goals, and say that they want strong Trainers who can battle Necrozma as well as the development of a Poké Ball that can capture it (so I would make the Beast Ball multiplier apply to Necrozma, and to the Cosmog line as well).

- Aether visit #2 plays out largely the same way as before, except it turns out that Lusamine was deceiving the URS. While sending them on a goose chase after Cosmog (and using Team Skull to artificially prolong that chase), she was in fact planning to steal the URS's Solgaleo/Lunala for herself. She still uses Cosmog to open the wormhole, because this serves as a distraction while Guzma is (off-screen) using one of the Beast Balls they developed to capture the Recon Squad's beast. He then appears and turns it over to her and absconds with her through the portal, marooning the URS in Alola. The reason why she wants the beast is so that she can search through the many worlds accessible via Ultra Space to find Mohn.

- The URS tell you what you need to know about the Poni altar, revealing that Solgaleo/Lunala is the final evolution of Cosmog, a fact they weren't actually aware of until they discovered it through Lusamine's research and their investigation of old Alolan myths. They explain how the Solgaleo/Lunala that they used just happened to appear to them one day, apparently taking sympathy on them for the state of their world. This begets your quest toward the altar.

- Once at the altar, you and Lillie use the flutes to evolve Cosmoem. Lunala/Solgaleo then takes you through the wormhole. You arrive in a version of Alola in which all of the light is gone. Here you encounter Lusamine and Guzma, but they no longer have the Solgaleo/Lunala that they stole. It turns out, this version of Alola is the one that the URS's beast originated from, one of many worlds that was pillaged for its light by Necrozma when it was wounded by the URS's ancestors. Hence, this is why Solgaleo/Lunala wanted to help the URS. Lusamine and Lillie have a confrontation, though it's not quite the same as in SM because I'm still interpreting this Lusamine as being more mentally stable. Seeing the darkened version of Alola opens her eyes to her own selfishness, the same selfishness that the URS's ancestors demonstrated which caused all of this misery, and she knows that this is the fate that now possibly awaits everyone in her own world. (Thematically, what I'm getting at here is that Lusamine's mistreatment of her children for her own gratification also "darkened" their worlds, in a manner of speaking.)

- When this situation is resolved, Nebby telepathically hears the URS's beast suddenly call out for help. The four of you then ride on Nebby, following the call of the other beast. It seems it instinctively went back to Ultra Megalopolis out of concern for its friends there. But because Lusamine wasted so much time with her detour, Necrozma was able to break free of its imprisonment. when you arrive in Ultra Megalopolis, the URS's Solgaleo/Lunala is attempting to fight back against Necrozma, but loses, and gets absorbed. While Necrozma begins going on a rampage, It is decided that Lillie, Lusamine, and Guzma will use Nebby to help evacuate people from Ultra Megalopolis while you go on to battle Necrozma, first in its fused form, and then in its Ultra form. When its Ultra form is defeated, the light returns to Ultra Megalopolis and the other worlds Necrozma had pillaged, and the URS's Solgaleo/Lunala decides to join with you as a sign of gratitude for all that you've done. That way, as mentioned, Lillie gets to keep Nebby, but you still get a box mascot of your own, which you've built your own connection with. And this one, having been fused with Necrozma, understands the pain it's in and now wants to help it, which I hope assuages the concerns I mentioned in the other thread about Pokémon fusion and its weird ethical implications. Also, it can then be Nebby and the URS beast that create a second Cosmog for you, rather than Nebby and some rando Solgaleo/Lunala in that mirror world.
 
Please note: The thread is from 4 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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