6th Gen Is it me or...

I enjoy ORAS gameplay more than I enjoy S/M gameplay. I mean, don't get me wrong, S/M has a lot good, interesting mechanics that I wish were incorporated sooner in the other games, a great story, and cool Pokemon; it's just that ORAS is right now taking more of my time. (Mostly because I can easily come up with a team as opposed to S/M, loving the DexNav, and Pokemon contests).

S.O.S battles are cool, I will admit. :) It shows that Pokemon help each other. (We knew this through text and human interaction but it's cool seeing it in action)!

The problem I have going back between generations is that I pretty much always like the new mechanics introduced, so while I love ORAS and XY, I'm having a hard time going back because of how much I love the gameplay of Sun&Moon, regardless of the fact that I think generation 6 were better games.

I prefer how SM is more challenging, but I do think overall ORAS has better gameplay features than SM--DexNav, hordes, triple battles, and rotation battles. Not to mention ORAS has access to all Mega Stones, whereas SM do not (they managed to exclude my three most favorite Megas!). And while I absolutely love that SM brought back Join Avenue, ORAS does have Secret Bases...

How are the trials compared to the gym battles? Opinions?

SquirSaur said:

How are the trials compared to the gym battles? Opinions?

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Personally I like battling better and while you did battle Totem Pokemon in the trials, it kinda seemed unfair to have a 6 vs 1 (maybe 2) battle.

Some gyms are kind of boring because the puzzles are pretty straightforward, but some gyms in ORAS (Sootopolis Gym comes to mind and the Mossdeep Gym) are some of my favorites.

Maybe in the future I would like to see a mix of the two. Like you would have to complete a trial first to prove you were ready to challenge the Leader, rather than plowing through (or avoiding, depending on the layout) weaker trainers.

I don't like how they messed up EV training... with hordes you could get EVs in multiples of 50. easier to calculate. they removed blissey bases too :( no quick way to lvl up pokemon. i thought they wanted to get more people into competitive battling...

the storyline of SM was pretty good tho

I can see what you mean because Game Freak has a notable reputation of removing a good feature when a new generation rolls around. While S/M has a notable difficulty spike and good story, 6th Gen has had some features that were better than what 7th Gen - those of course being better EV training method in horde battles, PSS being seen as superior to Festival Plaza, and then there's also the fact that 6th Gen is easier to train to Lv100 thanks to OR/AS's Blissey Secret Bases and trainer rematches, while X/Y has Battle Chateau where you can do infinite trainer rematches.

7th Gen saw reintroduction of 5th Gen EXP mechanics and a notable lack of trainer rematches, meaning getting to Lv100 is hard but since Hyper Training is only available at that level, it does feel like you have to work hard for it.

You're not alone in enjoying the gameplay of OR/AS better than Sun/Moon. I haven't gone too far into Moon, but at least three-quarters of the time I spent in that version was going through completely unnecessary cutscenes, much more frequent and longer than any previous games. (Like I keep saying, if spamming long cutscenes is necessary to help younger players, how were we able to survive in Red/Green/Blue/Yellow when they first came out, since most of us were 7-12 years old when those games were new, especially considering that generation was choc full of glitches?) Sure, Gen VI had its share of such things, but they were far less frequent compared to what we have now. Also, it seemed to me the features in OR/AS were more exciting to me than in S/M, particularly DexNav and being able to register key items to the D-pad.

I can't seem to motivate myself to continue Moon, and have thought at various times about trading that game in. I enjoyed my first time playing Alpha Sapphire much more than I have so far in Moon.

SquirSaur said:

How are the trials compared to the gym battles? Opinions?

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About 10x easier? I don't know if it's just me but I feel I'm absolutely blasting through the trials, they're not even a challenge.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the mechanics of it - it's a nice refreshing change from the generic gym battle format - but they just don't even feel like obstacles in the games progression.

kitarei said:

About 10x easier? I don't know if it's just me but I feel I'm absolutely blasting through the trials, they're not even a challenge.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the mechanics of it - it's a nice refreshing change from the generic gym battle format - but they just don't even feel like obstacles in the games progression.

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Really? I've had some easy times with the oras gyms, but I've lost twice on the S/M gym battles.

kitarei said:

About 10x easier? I don't know if it's just me but I feel I'm absolutely blasting through the trials, they're not even a challenge.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the mechanics of it - it's a nice refreshing change from the generic gym battle format - but they just don't even feel like obstacles in the games progression.

Click to expand...

I would say trials are actually harder than Gyms, notably the Totem battles - Lurantis, Wishiwashi and Mimikyu tend to be very problematic to take down.

Hikamaru said:

I would say trials are actually harder than Gyms, notably the Totem battles - Lurantis, Wishiwashi and Mimikyu tend to be very problematic to take down.

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Perhaps I've just had a lucky run, but I didn't felt like the trials were even notable for me in my run through. It was honestly a little disappointing as the game didn't really feel challenging at all.

Altairis said:

Personally I like battling better and while you did battle Totem Pokemon in the trials, it kinda seemed unfair to have a 6 vs 1 (maybe 2) battle.

Some gyms are kind of boring because the puzzles are pretty straightforward, but some gyms in ORAS (Sootopolis Gym comes to mind and the Mossdeep Gym) are some of my favorites.

Maybe in the future I would like to see a mix of the two. Like you would have to complete a trial first to prove you were ready to challenge the Leader, rather than plowing through (or avoiding, depending on the layout) weaker trainers.

Click to expand...

Interesting. My brother told me about the trials yesterday and from what he said I would prefer the gyms. A combination of the 2 sounds good though