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Spoilers What do you NOT like about USUM?

The tutorials are just...so poorly done in most games. Unskippable for those who don't need it, and unreplayable for the people who do. I really wish the Teachy TV would be brought back.
 
the Lack of new damage dealing sound moves that would be from
the ghost , psychic, steel(Bell-Hammer or Sound Hammer), rock(could be a sound copy move that copies last sound move used on the field) ,fighting, poison, electric, fire, grass(Flower Bell) type.
the Lack of physical fairy moves that could work like dragon tail, u-turn, leech horn.
That we didnt get more bug/fighting pokemon that are not UBs(legendary like)
 
After a few months to chill out and not be so critical, below are my main issues with USUM:

-There really isn't much difference in the USUM storyline until Nebby is kidnapped. I think GF should have been more adventurous and deviated further from the SM storyline

-I like the Roto Loto and Rotom as a Pokedex in general, but he talks too much.

-There should have been complete shakeup in the order of the trials by either re-ordering the trials or just completely replace trials.

-I understand the story in the anime, but there is no explained story in the games as to why Lillie doesn't become a trainer until after you finish the main game. Lillie could have been given the third unchosen starter and been effectively the "third rival" but instead being a useful traveling partner. Also, she could have healed my Pokemon more often.

-I would have like these games to have been sequels without being sequels. The story could have been told in a way that would tie up some of the loose ends from SM. USUM doesn't really tie up loose ends, just removes them.
 
Having played through them a couple of times now, I’m pretty cool with USUM - most of my gripes with them are problems I have with Gen 7 as a whole, although there are still a few USUM-specific things that I wish they’d done more with, like the Dream Park.

I think my biggest disappointment is simply that I wish they’d gone more into detail about Solgaleo and Lunala’s lore. I think they did an excellent job with the “proper” UBs by letting us observe their homeworlds and catch glimpses and hints of how they live, and Necrozma got a decent backstory for itself along with a really memorable climax battle. Whereas Solgaleo and Lunala were kind of hung out to dry - the original SM left quite a bit up in the air about them, as far as why the line is the only Legendary to (formally) evolve, why they seek out parallel worlds in which to reproduce, and where exactly the Solgaleo/Lunala that appeared in Alola’s past might be living, and what, if any, kind of relationship they have with Necrozma. Not to mention, do they and Necrozma qualify as Ultra Beasts themselves? The evidence presented in SM was ambiguous and inconclusive.

Now, granted, the games never really imposed those questions on us directly - I’d say that those are mostly just trivial details that happened to pique my interest. But USUM could have addressed them pretty easily. We saw the other UB worlds, so they could have shown us Cosmog’s world (assuming it has one - and if it doesn’t, then why not?) instead of recycling the Lake event from the first games. I assume that the Solgaleo/Lunala used by the Ultra Recon Squad might be intended to be the “old” Solgaleo/Lunala that appeared in Alola’s past, but we’re not told enough to be sure and have no idea how the URS came to develop their relationship with them. And then, USUM don’t really tell us about any kind of previous dynamic between Solgaleo/Lunala and Necrozma, making it seem instead like the Cosmog line is just its own thing that conveniently happens to have what Necrozma is looking for. I am aware that Kazumasa Iwao gave a description of a sort of relationship between them in the official guidebook (saying they’d always lived in Ultra Space, where Necrozma would constantly pursue Solgaleo and Lunala for their light, and then they’d pursue it to get that light back), but that doesn’t quite match what we’re told in the games (Necrozma used to have its own light, and only sought the light of Solgaleo/Lunala that one time that we know of prior to being locked away in Megalo Tower), and was confusingly worded (he seemed to credit the URS and the protagonist with disrupting that dynamic, but that doesn’t make sense because that dynamic would have been interfered with centuries ago).

And of course, they still stopped short of ever properly referring to them as “Ultra Beasts.” Necrozma is described as being “almost like” a UB, while the new Pokédex entry for Cosmog in Ultra Moon says that whether it’s a Pokémon from this world or a different world is a mystery, so I have to assume that they deliberately chose to keep the issue muddled.

That all might seem pedantic of me, but given how much thought clearly went into every other aspect of the setting in Gen 7 and the ecology of the Pokémon, including the rest of the UBs, I just feel kind of surprised/disappointed that the box mascots, which you’d think would get the most focus, were left so vague.
 
Having played through them a couple of times now, I’m pretty cool with USUM - most of my gripes with them are problems I have with Gen 7 as a whole, although there are still a few USUM-specific things that I wish they’d done more with, like the Dream Park.

I think my biggest disappointment is simply that I wish they’d gone more into detail about Solgaleo and Lunala’s lore. I think they did an excellent job with the “proper” UBs by letting us observe their homeworlds and catch glimpses and hints of how they live, and Necrozma got a decent backstory for itself along with a really memorable climax battle. Whereas Solgaleo and Lunala were kind of hung out to dry - the original SM left quite a bit up in the air about them, as far as why the line is the only Legendary to (formally) evolve, why they seek out parallel worlds in which to reproduce, and where exactly the Solgaleo/Lunala that appeared in Alola’s past might be living, and what, if any, kind of relationship they have with Necrozma. Not to mention, do they and Necrozma qualify as Ultra Beasts themselves? The evidence presented in SM was ambiguous and inconclusive.

Now, granted, the games never really imposed those questions on us directly - I’d say that those are mostly just trivial details that happened to pique my interest. But USUM could have addressed them pretty easily. We saw the other UB worlds, so they could have shown us Cosmog’s world (assuming it has one - and if it doesn’t, then why not?) instead of recycling the Lake event from the first games. I assume that the Solgaleo/Lunala used by the Ultra Recon Squad might be intended to be the “old” Solgaleo/Lunala that appeared in Alola’s past, but we’re not told enough to be sure and have no idea how the URS came to develop their relationship with them. And then, USUM don’t really tell us about any kind of previous dynamic between Solgaleo/Lunala and Necrozma, making it seem instead like the Cosmog line is just its own thing that conveniently happens to have what Necrozma is looking for. I am aware that Kazumasa Iwao gave a description of a sort of relationship between them in the official guidebook (saying they’d always lived in Ultra Space, where Necrozma would constantly pursue Solgaleo and Lunala for their light, and then they’d pursue it to get that light back), but that doesn’t quite match what we’re told in the games (Necrozma used to have its own light, and only sought the light of Solgaleo/Lunala that one time that we know of prior to being locked away in Megalo Tower), and was confusingly worded (he seemed to credit the URS and the protagonist with disrupting that dynamic, but that doesn’t make sense because that dynamic would have been interfered with centuries ago).

And of course, they still stopped short of ever properly referring to them as “Ultra Beasts.” Necrozma is described as being “almost like” a UB, while the new Pokédex entry for Cosmog in Ultra Moon says that whether it’s a Pokémon from this world or a different world is a mystery, so I have to assume that they deliberately chose to keep the issue muddled.

That all might seem pedantic of me, but given how much thought clearly went into every other aspect of the setting in Gen 7 and the ecology of the Pokémon, including the rest of the UBs, I just feel kind of surprised/disappointed that the box mascots, which you’d think would get the most focus, were left so vague.
To me they're Legends because they wowed the ancient Alolans with their power ( and much like the Gumshoos line) was added into to Alola's culture and helped shape it to what it is.
Necrozma in an odd case is in truth completely unrelated to the Cosmic duo and only seeks after them so it can achieve its glory days.
 
To me they're Legends because they wowed the ancient Alolans with their power ( and much like the Gumshoos line) was added into to Alola's culture and helped shape it to what it is.
Necrozma in an odd case is in truth completely unrelated to the Cosmic duo and only seeks after them so it can achieve its glory days.

It’s definitely clear that they’re considered Legendary Pokémon, though that term is pretty valueless these days. But what bothers me more is all of the are-they-aren’t-they about them being Ultra Beasts. If they are, then why doesn’t the Beast Ball apply a bonus when used on them? One might surmise that it has to do with their lack of an aura (and you couldn’t capture Necrozma when it would have an aura anyway because that would mean catching a fused Pokémon), but in that case, why don’t they have that aura? The answer to that would seem to be that those three are all about producing Z-Power rather than simply harnessing Z-Power like the UBs do, which would certainly explain why they’ve all got the “light” theme in common and would possibly explain why they’re the only ones that can open Ultra Wormholes on their own - but then, those are some pretty remarkable similarities, which really starts to make it look like Necrozma isn’t really all that unrelated to them after all. If they’re not UBs, but they share these unique traits and abilities, then it makes them feel like a distinct group or subspecies of their own. But even if they are UBs, they’re clearly a special kind with unique abilities that the “lesser” UBs lack, which makes them feel like they should be related to each other like a formal trio.

On the other hand, if they’re not supposed to be UBs and are instead just sort of a separate-but-similar group, why are they so similar? What with their prime number-based stats and learnsets, the metallic echo in all of their cries, the fact that characters, despite never specifically calling them “Ultra” Beasts still do refer to the three as “beasts,” which seems telling. And of course the fact that although the other UBs can’t open Ultra Wormholes, the fact that Solgaleo, Lunala, and Necrozma can gives them a pretty clear and conspicuous link to Ultra Space. Plus, you have that story beat while we’re invading the Aether Foundation, where you and Hau discover the lab report saying that Cosmog might be an Ultra Beast, which feels too on-the-nose and unquestioned by the characters to simply be a faulty hypothesis. Obviously, when the game makers put in a line like that so blatantly, it’s clearly meant to make you think a certain way, but if you assume that they are considered UBs based on that, then everything just loops back around to the first half of this post. :confused:
 
I generally feel like the third game formula doesn't really work well with USUM. During the end of SM, I think most people were expecting a sequel of sorts like B2W2 and hoping to see Lillie in Kanto as a full-fledged Trainer, but instead we get some combination of the typical alternate timeline stuff that's standard in third versions and a sequel which didn't really mesh all too well, to me.

It would've been fascinating to see someone like Gladion head up the Aether Foundation for example (maybe he does post-game USUM, I haven't gotten that far yet), it would've been interesting to see Lusamine recover from her near-trauma in SM to be on your side in USUM fighting against a new antagonist. Things like that would've made the game feel fresh instead of encouraging the myriad of complaints that the games feel generally the same, which is unfortunately the case with all third games but it doesn't help USUM's case in particular mostly because how the games were marketed made it seem more like a sequel than anything else. I suppose the hype train crashed, and crashed kinda badly.

In short, I feel like a lot of characters missed out on development that we could've seen had it not been for USUM being third games. I would've loved, for example, for Hau to take on Hala's place as Island Kahuna, and see how the other characters would've grown and progressed throughout the timespan between SM and a hypothetical sequel version of USUM. I feel like a lot more people wouldn't have minded experiencing that kind of plot because it would've been totally different with characters that have much more depth to them than before.
 
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how the alolans are only for kanto pokemon and only for the boring, predictable ones. I know you want people to cash up for those alolan vulpix plushies but i couldn't care less. Give me alolan mr mime n jynx, the only gen 1 pokemon that matters
 
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