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Spoilers What are your feelings on Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon?

What is your opinion on Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon's reveal? [Max. 2 Choices]

  • It's an attempt at a quick cash grab

    Votes: 34 23.0%
  • Reserving judgement till more information

    Votes: 73 49.3%
  • I like this reveal

    Votes: 53 35.8%
  • A third version/third version pair on the Switch would be better

    Votes: 11 7.4%
  • I'd have preferred ANY other reveal, for any console, but not Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon

    Votes: 19 12.8%

  • Total voters
    148
It's sad to read some opinions saying that some things weren't changed. I looked at USUM with negativity, knowing that they would repeat some of the same mistakes, but deep in my heart I wanted the games to prove their worth. But no, they made the same mistakes of not listening to the players, and this time they have no excuse, because more than half of the game was already made. Every entry in the 3DS family has been the same story, listening to 80% of the competitive players' complaints and 10% of the other players' opinions.

I might like the game if the new trials are worth it and if the postgame stuff (Wormhole ride specially, every day that passes I care less about RR) is good, but I still expect to roll my eyes a lot of times.
 
The gimmicks of the Frontier are quite different from the problem of facilities screwing you over; all the facilities deliberately use the normal RNG mechanics such as the trainers you face to counter you and in terms of evasion mechanics and getting protect to work almost every time the opponent uses them. The “gimmicks” are supposed to be the real challenge if the Frontier’s facilities, and most of them provide different and fun twists from the standard battle formats (with the Battle Palace actually being the Scrappy of the Battle Frontier’s legacy, but that’s besides the point).
except other than the Battle Palace, which brings the rng completely into the battle, none of the facilities actually change or twist the battle format. other than the Pyramid, all of the facilities are just an onslaught of trainer after trainer with a die roll somewhere in-between to determine whether you get a favorable or unfavorable outcome in the facility's gimmick.
Also, I’m sure people would enjoy these twists on battling a lot more in pvp than you seem to think. For one thing, both players are under the same wacky twist on battling, and we can’t screw each other over via RNG like the AI is capable of. For example, I’m due a lit of people would like to face each other in Inverse Battles, which is a twist on battling that was well received.
people already hate that competitive pokemon is half strategy and half rng, so no i don't think they would appreciate the facility gimmicks being applied to pvp. not to mention you're conflating the gimmicks with different battling styles anyways. setting that aside, i would say you're wrong. prior to their removal, there were very few people doing triples and rotations (could you even pvp with those? i don't even remember.) competitively. not sure inverse battles or sky battles or whatever actual battling twist they could come up with would be actually popular, especially considering that singles are popular only because it's a standard format for the game as a whole and doubles are popular because of the VGC format. without any support for other battling modes, they will not be as popular. that's a verifiable fact that can be seen across not only Pokemon but other competitive gaming scenes.
 
I have to say that I'm very happy the game was datamined. I am still buying it, cause I just wanna play Pokémon, I really like the Photo Club idea, and I'm quite excited to battle all the previous bosses again. But gods am I happy to know beforehand that all this 'ultra change' promotion was exaggarated as hell. No matter how extremely sceptical I was at the start, all that promotion even managed to convince me this game was going to be a lot better than I thought. Now I can just be disappointed beforehand, and not after playing the game, which I prefer :p
¿why you can play this? ¿you dont feel any pain for that? i m jelly for you can enjoy
 
I’ve watched the GameXplain review and it seems my doubts were correct. This appears to have nothing added until the fourth island and the problems from SM still exist... I guess I will have to make my own solution to this problem...
 
http://i.********/vp/1510771655779s.jpg
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The real reason why Photo Club was created... :p
 
except other than the Battle Palace, which brings the rng completely into the battle, none of the facilities actually change or twist the battle format. other than the Pyramid, all of the facilities are just an onslaught of trainer after trainer with a die roll somewhere in-between to determine whether you get a favorable or unfavorable outcome in the facility's gimmick.

You have a point there, but you forgot about the Battle Pike, which had different rooms that don't always lead to trainer battles.

people already hate that competitive pokemon is half strategy and half rng, so no i don't think they would appreciate the facility gimmicks being applied to pvp. not to mention you're conflating the gimmicks with different battling styles anyways.
I can't argue there.

prior to their removal, there were very few people doing triples and rotations (could you even pvp with those? i don't even remember.) competitively. not sure inverse battles or sky battles or whatever actual battling twist they could come up with would be actually popular, especially considering that singles are popular only because it's a standard format for the game as a whole and doubles are popular because of the VGC format. without any support for other battling modes, they will not be as popular. that's a verifiable fact that can be seen across not only Pokemon but other competitive gaming scenes.
And that was part of the problem there. Single battles are standard, and double battles are VGC. However, just because something was less-used than other things doesn't mean Game Freak should just throw it away and not add more content that isn't purely aesthetic. The one thing we can both agree on is that Game Freak needs to push their battles formats a little harder. The other factor is Smogon, which ends up inadvertently pushing their ideals (only vanilla battle formats and separating things in tiers) into the majority of the competitive scene.

EDIT: Oh, and last but not least, you could PvP Rotation Battles.
 
i don't buy the whole "3d is hurting the games" argument because it's not like core features are being cut; as per usual, it's just that there's "no postgame" (ie., no PWT, second region, or Battle Frontier). people just need to get through their heads that stuff like that isn't coming back. they are a product of an era where player communication was much more limited. now that communication is incredibly easy, it seems much more practical to just push for pvp instead of bland player vs AI. the Battle Agency seems to make that quite clear.

the reality of the situation seems to be that there's just so few people, if any really, that started with six or seven that there isn't anyone yet with the rose colored glasses to defend the games, let alone many to defend the games at all. this makes it so easy to paint XY and SM as bad games or categorically different from anything before them. because really, for just about any complaint dropped on XY and SM, there's a parallel in earlier games.

It's not just the post game though. It's a lot of different things ranging from the side features to the region design to the lack of new areas. Think about it, what games have we had that have had even so much as a Sevii Islands/Battle Zone esque post game section on the 3DS? When have we ever had changes anywhere near the scale of BW2? What games have we seen full sidequests like Contests and Secret Bases (besides ORAS which included those things simply because they were remakes and they almost had to)? The 3DS era has regressed in a lot of different facets of the game, it's not just the lack of a battle facility.

The Metacritic reviews are favorable for whatever that is worth. To me that isn't saying much, since most reviewers give main series games around the same score no matter what. A lot of them also thought that SM were the best games.


They gave them a 90.

The reviewers are definitely giving these games more credit than they deserve. There's been several that overrate the game even by their own logic. Gamexplain mentioned how the game was a "boring slog" for the first half of the game and yet they said "Liked it a Lot" (they don't give numerical scores). And then there's NintendoLife's. Oh boy NintendoLife's. They gave the game a 10/10 and they didn't give any kind of critical analysis on why the game deserves a perfect score, they basically just listed the features. It reads less like a review and more like an ad for the game. Say what you will about whether or not you like the content the game has, but high scores like that just don't logically match those kinds of impressions. As conspiracy theory-esque as it sounds, it really does seem like Game Freak paid reviewers to give the game high scores because they're doing a poor job of conveying that the changes in the game are really enough.
 
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As conspiracy theory-esque as it sounds, it really does seem like Game Freak paid reviewers to give the game high scores because they're doing a poor job of conveying that the changes in the game are really enough.
I doubt that, but it's certainly possible that a lot of reviewers want to stay on Nintendo's good side so that they keep getting pre-release copies to review for their own selfish reasons. Not to mention how rabid Pokemon and Nintendo fans can get when a game gets a "bad" score (7.8/10 comes to mind).
 
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I doubt that, but it's certainly possible that a lot of reviewers want to stay on Nintendo's good side so that they keep getting pre-release copies to review for their own selfish reasons. Not to mention how rabid Pokemon and Nintendo fans can get when a game gets a "bad" score (7.8/10 comes to mind).
The games might be disappointing from the perspective that they didn't change much from Sun and Moon, but that doesn't mean that they are bad games on their own. Sun and Moon were very well received so it shouldn't be surprising that a game which is an improvement is also doing well. If a review decides to judge the games on their own merit then he is free to do so. Lets not forget that it isn't a minus point for the game to be less different. It is problem against the developers not the game itself.
 
It sends a misleading message to people who have already played SM, which is the majority of potential consumers.

It's baffling that B2W2 got a lower score than BW (80 vs. 87) for being too similar, and yet USUM get a free pass. Times have changed.
BW had a better story. B2W2 were the better games though. And they were not similar to BW. They actually said that?
 
I'd say that SM have a better story than USUM, too. It's just that the base template is still the same, so the differences don't stand out for better or worse. As for the B2W2 reviews, they aren't all critical, but here are two examples:

Game Informer (75) said:
I know that is a common complaint about Pokémon these days, but it has been earned through years of Nintendo and Game Freak sticking to the same formula. Black and White Version 2 has a title that is usually reserved for sequels that adds new features and expand the experience, but it doesn't live up to that promise.
RPGFan (78) said:
So is Pokémon Black or White 2 worth your time? Honestly, probably not. They're still good games, but there's nothing overtly special about them that makes them stand out from the rest of the series or, more importantly, Black and White 1. Even writing a review for these sequels felt a little odd in light of how little they changed from their predecessors. Pokémon World Tournament is an awesome nostalgia trip for veterans, but everyone else would be better advised to save up your hard-earned cash for Pokémon X and Y in October.

Game Informer gave USUM an 85: "As a revisiting of the excellent Sun and Moon, it feels like a good note to close the generation on, but if you had your fill with Sun and Moon, don’t worry – you aren’t missing anything important."
 
It's just that the base template is still the same, so the differences don't stand out for better or worse. As for the B2W2 reviews, they aren't all critical, but here are two examples:
I have no words for the excerpts you gave. I'm never going to stop seeing people treating B2W2 as third versions, and USUM just furthers that narrative.
 
I am not a big B2W2 fan, but not because they weren't worthy of being called sequels. They're praised for their features and I respect that, but they simply weren't great sequels from a story perspective. A post-game episode in N's faraway region would have been a lot nicer than retreading largely unchanged BW locations, too.

Having said all that, giving USUM even a point higher than B2W2 is insulting. BW and SM have the same average score.
 
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For me, I was able to get over the regressed story because it was at least not repeated. In addition, I guess I'm in the minority here compared to the rest of the fandom, but I actually appreciated the new locations, the changes to existing locations, and the new path to the League; it was sufficient for me. I mean, that's a big step up from what we got this year, and evidently, the general public never grasped this.
 
I can’t even begin to wrap my head around those B2W2 reviews. What on Earth went wrong there? :confused: I know I’m speaking from the position of a long-time B2W2 parishioner, but surely any objective measure can see not only the gulf of substance between B2W2 and past revisit games, but also the entire structural overhaul from BW?

Did they just take “sequel” to mean something way more extravagant?
 
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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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