Featured: What-If Speculation 1: What if Alola had gyms?

"WAIT, BUT THEY'RE BUILDING A LEAGUE IN ALOLA!!!" I hear some of you cry.

Alright, let's imagine, for a moment, that the Alola games are set far into the future. Kukui has already finished setting up the league and established eight gyms around the Alola region, and as the player, you have to take on the region with gyms thrown into the mix. This has one thing that has been debated a fair few times, especially considering there are a fair amount of people who do not like the trials approach, and would rather want their precious gyms back.

What if this actually happened, and Alola had gyms? How would the overall gameplay be changed? Would trials still be in? How would you feel about it? Discuss away...

I feel like for most people, the game would have an improvement in so far as gameplay goes, but I dunno, for me, that's not so much the case.

The magic of Trials lies much more than just the minigames themselves. I think each trial captain has some sort of a life and character to them that no other gym leader really had in the past. gym leaders don't really interact much with the player beyond just in passing and then you just... forget about them. that's how it has always been. but trial captains and island kahunas are much more expressive, care much more about the player's progress about being the island champion, things like that.

honestly, alola with gyms would just be a clone more or less of every generation before it and it would be really boring and uninteresting, imo.