While waiting for modders to fix the Fyre Festival that is called Sword & Shield, I am currently doing my 4th run on this romhack, using Froakie as well as a "traded" Fennekin from another saves for PSMD roleplaying and shipping purpose. It's definitely nice to see that even to this point, I can still get a fair amount of fun from the challenges and varieties that the hack has. I'll be posting some more musings from the run, though I guess these musings are going to be pretty incoherent
From what I hear Dio Vento will have something out soonish, and I'll probably have a Sword/Shield hack out next year (depending on if/when the newer switch models get hacked). Awesome to hear you're still getting some use out of this hack!
* With both Braixen and Frogadier performing decently well against Viola, with the former having Incinerate and the latter having Smack Down and rain boost from Surskit, I'm having some wondering about how much Quilladin is going to suck against her. Grass typing sucks yes, but Quilladin does have some bulk behind it to be able to eat a few supereffective physical Bug attack tbh; my guess would be that while he is going to struggle a bit more against Viola compared to the other 2, his bulk and Smack Down should be able to net him a few KOs or something.
Quilladin gets Rollout very early and can easily sweep most of her team with it, especially if another Pokemon handles Surskit and you use an X Speed on it. It also has access to Thunder Punch which helps against some of her Pokemon.
* A Ghost type with Frisk somewhere after the 1st gym could be valuable. Turns out the stretch of route 8 before Ambrette turns out to contain quite a lot of valuable stealable items at pretty low chance like Life Orbs, Toxic Orbs, Quick Claws, while all the Frisk-capable ghost types (Duskull, Shuppet) are only found at route 15. Having a way to spot them early on would make the stealing process much less frustrating imo; Toxic Orb in particular cannot be spotted manually at all since Zangoose comes with Immunity and does not get poisoned while carrying one.
The earliest location with space for them is Reflection Cave. I could make Frisk one of Sentret and Furret's regular abilities as an alternative, unless there's a particular reason you wanted a Ghost type with Frisk?
* Greninja is missing Mat Block from its levelup move list, which means it's now a Throh-only move; definitely wondering if it's deliberate balancing decision or not, would be fine either way.
I think that was a mistake, it's only missing in the legal versions (at least according to the docs). Good catch!
* How would you feel about redesigning the level curve to have Diantha at lvl100? I completed diovento's RRSS hack a while ago, and while the romhack itself was a giant dumpster fire (vanilla ability mons/movesets with no competitive items against NPCs with hidden abilities mons with egg moves? no soul dew? incomplete guides? lacking pokemon selection with magikarp still infesting 90% of the routes? lvl50 Groudon/Kyogre while everyone else is lvl90+ already?), the Victory Road + Championship was definitely one pretty cool endgame that featured all lvl100 trainers and lvl95-99 wild mons with zero mercy. Having a lvl100 champion would mean that it would be impossible to muster through them by overleveling; and while I definitely like the idea, I would presume that it would close the gates against those who are having a bit of trouble against the champion and would like to overlevel a bit.
The main reason Diantha isn't at level 100 is that trainers in XY can't have any EVs, so she could be even more disadvantaged than usual if she and the player were both level 100 (also I wanted a slightly gentler level curve). She's supposed be a few levels higher than the player, but as you say this way there's also the option to grind past her levels if desired.
* Since I'm the guy who edited Fennekin in, I definitely like the idea of being able to catch the Kalos starters that you didn't pick much earlier on, like "near the start of the game" early on. Wouldn't complain too much if you don't like it though, especially if it would mess up with game balance.
They're late in the game so that your starter choice is still significant; early routes are also a bit stretched for wild Pokemon slots so it'd be hard to relocate them.
* Wondering if Light of Ruin can be made usable by something too; I mostly just want to see it in action because AZ's Floette dies too fast for me to see it.
I could do, but the move description explicitly refers to the eternal flower so it doesn't really fit any other Pokemon. Might be able to make AZ's Floette available as a post game gift Pokemon though so you'd be able to play around with it then.