Worst parts of SM!

[Hikamaru]

Thunder Wave has 90 accuracy now, why?

The reason why Thunder Wave's accuracy got lowered was because the move was spammed a lot in the 6th Gen metagame (Thundurus with Prankster was infamous thanks to often using this move) and the VGC's, which Game Freak like to notice what is being spammed and makes sure they take note of it (and therefore notice it's status as OP) when developing the next generation.

 

[Stroker Ace]

My only real complaint is below

 

[Lemonski]

Even though I haven't even played the game yet myself, I could say that my disappointment was surprisingly high when I found out about Cosmog's second evolutions. I just hoped that it'd be its own cute pokemon! ~_~ Difficult to explain.

 

[PageEmp]

Well at only around 20 or so minutes into the game, I have to say the one thing I don't like so far is how damn long the beginning is. I had to restart the game because my starter had a fucking +attack nature and my last save point was like back when you got out of the house. It just took so fucking long until I managed to get a starter without a bad nature. The whole 'let's see if the starter picks you' thing....what's the deal for that?

 

[Twilight-kun]

The PokéDex, without a doubt

Not only is it always on the bottom screen, it then decides to throw four different screens just to tell you about the pokémon every time you catch or evolve one

Get rid of the "pokémon's data will be added to the pokédex" placeholder screen, merge the pokémon's information screen onto the bottom of the "registered" screen and remove the percentage tally overlay

Other then that, it's a solid game

 

[LilyGardy]

I'm not too far into the game but the roadblocks are annoying.

I had some random kid say something along the lines of 'Come Back Later me and Stoutland are looking for every last thing'. You need to block the road for that?

 

[Hikamaru]

I'm not too far into the game but the roadblocks are annoying.

I had some random kid say something along the lines of 'Come Back Later me and Stoutland are looking for every last thing'. You need to block the road for that?

I feel having roadblocks are pointless since Rotom Dex on the bottom screen has a red flag icon to tell you where you're supposed to go. But then again, some roadblocks have been ridiculous in recent games.

 

[LilyGardy]

I feel having roadblocks are pointless since Rotom Dex on the bottom screen has a red flag icon to tell you where you're supposed to go. But then again, some roadblocks have been ridiculous in recent games.

Ah yes. The likes of the dancing men 'for no reason' in Gen 5.

Some roadblocks were reasonably creative though like the Psyduck who have headaches in Sinnoh which has a little story significance.

 

[PingPongCirculate]

SOS battles. I just wish we could throw a pokeball even when there are two pokemon on the field. I had an agonizingly long battle trying to catch a stupid cleffa, who kept calling for help every turn and kept using sweet kiss. Since I didnt want to deal with a confused pokemon, I kept switching out and attacking when I could, only to deal with yet another cleffa and another confusion.

Really miss 6th gen EV training. Granted, I don't worry about EVs and natures until post game, but I just don't like the methods available. Seems too tedious. The reason why I got into breeding and EV training was because it was so easy to grasp in 6th gen. I think Im just going to go ahead with my original plan of breeding competitive pokemon and EV training them in ORAS, then bring them over.

 

[AmetsuCAT]

I'm really liking the game so far, but the one thing that bugs me out of everything is the lack of things to do in Pokémon Refresh. Contrary to popular opinion, I actually really enjoyed the mini games, and i miss making faces at your Pokémon and seeing how they react. But at least they made it easier to get 5 hearts, and the fact that you can heal/care for your Pokémon is a really nice touch.

Besides that, I don't have anything to complain about.

 

[Phoenix7540]

- Pokerides severe lack in variation between generations over half of them are gen 1 (stop trying to please the genwunners GF they won't play your game regardless)
- The pokedex information and "registered" cutscenes are a bit on the long side which makes getting a pokemon with the right nature annoying (Zygarde took me nearly 2 hours)
- The occasional difficulty spike forcing you to train. (while I enjoy the challange sometimes the difficulty shift between trainers and kahuna / totem pokemon is pretty big)

I don't really mind SOS battles so far though...

 

[tenchi]

A few things I dislike so far, but not enough to make me dislike the game!

- Not being able to press B to not learn moves is actually kind of annoying :(
- SOS battles when you're trying to catch a Pokemon
- Alola Pokemon being rarer than some Kanto 'mons! This is really annoying when you're trying to find new Pokemon :( Like why is Pichu 5%? And Jangmo-o?

man searching for jangmo-o, i found a sun lycanrock. I was playing moon. 0.0 I havent opened sun yet. I thought that was weird. A lot of good dragon pokemon are only in one small patch exclusively. It was the same with bagon as well.

 

[tenchi]

I dont like the tapu's and how there are so many ultra beasts. It makes competition rather UB-tapu smothered, as everyone is playing at least one of each- if not two. I personally am going to be using two UB pokes and a tapu for competition after im done ev training the silly things. tapu koku is too strong imo.

 

[Caite-chan]

I felt like I was told how to play the game instead of just letting me play. I wanna go one way but I have to follow the map to do anything.

That and the countless amounts of cut scenes that you have to watch, Just let me play.

 

[Keiran]

-All the routes/areas/zones/islands feel the same
-Little variation of Pokemon from Standard Encounters
-SOS battles
-The game has been 90% cutscenes, 10% gameplay
-I just got to the 4th island and so far nothing has been close to difficult, enemy trainers have 1-2 weak Pokemon
-Every trial is extremely simple and feels like little effort was put into them
-Player avatar feels emotionless and the choice of clothing is a step back from XY
-Lack of PSS is also a huge step backwards

I'm mostly disappointed in the fact that there is very little to explore. Towns are small, routes are small, and there is very little side-content. Not one cave so far. In my favorite pair of games, BW2, it felt like there were endless things to discover and places to explore.

 

[The_Consumer]

Definitely the loading time. It feels slow, like in Diamond and Pearl

 

[Twilight-kun]

Having finished the game, I've found another detail that bothers me.

The lack of focus on the new Alolan pokemon.

Sure, you could pick up all these new Alolan 'mons, but in the same route, you've got four different pokemon that are probably faster and stronger than the new ones.

I'd have liked S&M more had they been a little stricter with pokemon allocation and stuck with pokemon from Gens V and VI without using any from the first four.

 

[Rivvon]

Now that I've beat the game I can say with more certainty than before that there are way too many cutscenes. Even when the plot actually starts to happen--which takes until about the third island, a very long time--there are more cutscenes than are necessary.

The games are short. I finished with a playtime similar to X, but X had way less cutscenes. A lot of the playtime is taken up by cutscenes, not actually playing.

The region is very small and routes are incredibly straightforward. Little exploration is available, which is disappointing since it's supposed to be this "vast, natural paradise." The hyper-linearity does not help this. It also features the problem XY had, which is that most of what few new Pokémon there are are incredibly rare, making the lack of new Pokémon even more obvious.

I get that certain features are gonna get the axe, that kind of thing is inevitable. But no PSS, and no StreetPass (which would have been great with the Festival Plaza!) are direct downgrades to what gen 6 provided. SOS battles are still, in my opinion, not fun, and also a direct downgrade to hordes and the DexNav in terms of shiny hunting, looking for Pokémon with good IVs, and EV training. The fact that hordes are likely gone simply due to the awful lag the game experiences makes this even worse (evidenced by the battle against "five" Team Skull Grunts at once).

Some plot disappointments:

Spoiler:

Hapu is just the definition of "wasted potential." The player is told that there are four Kahunas, but oops, there's actually three! And then Hapu becomes the fourth because... plot convenience? Hapu could have been a really cool parallel and mentor to Hau (both their grandparents were Kahunas) if Hapu actually helped out more before becoming Kahuna (and actually met Hau, instead of just existing to go googly-eyed over Lillie), and if the player knew that there were only three Kahunas from the get-go. The scene where Hapu becomes the Kahuna would have been way more impactful, and could have worked well to inspire Hau, too. But as it stands, if Hapu had already been the Kahuna, nothing about the story would have changed. It's just another pointless cutscene for the player to watch when she is chosen as the Kahuna.

On that note, Lillie is the only character who undergoes any sort of development. Sure, she does go through a drastic change, which is good from a storytelling perspective, but if you're like me and found her annoying, well, she's literally the only important character. Hau never changes, and he and Gladion just disappear from the story when... well, when the story actually happens. I went from thinking Hau was kind of cute to not even caring about him because he was just so boring and static the entire time and completely uninvolved. Same thing applies to Gladion, who, in all honesty, is trying way too hard to be the next Silver. And why is he even a part of Team Skull? Never once does he do anything actually involving Team Skull. Why wasn't he just a regular ol' Trainer the entire time?

And Lusamine... The main conflict just doesn't make sense to me. She is incredibly superficial and honestly didn't pose much threat on her own. The player literally could have just left her where she was and just tried to catch the UBs that entered our world and that's that. The only reason why the player had to bother with Lusamine at all is because Lillie is too incompetent, even after her character growth, to do anything on her own.

The only thing I haven't gotten to yet is the Battle Tree, but I'm kinda worried that, considering how badly the game lags, I won't really enjoy the main draw of the facility because multi-battles are just... not so fun with that awful lag.

I'd still say these games are really good and among my top 5 favorites, but I can't bring myself to think of them as better than gen 5, HGSS, or even Platinum with how they handled most of the story elements and amount of content.

 

[joeytheleo]

Regarding the story I would say Lusamine was the hands down worst part of the story. She's basically bad for the sake of being bad and wants to destroy alola for well...the sake of destroying alola. Also wtf is this plot line with Gladion and Lillie being her kids. She looks like she is freaking 6-8 years older than them and the dialogue between her and the two is horrifically written.

My other main gripe was the story was the fact that it was one of the most linear Pokémon games I ever played (if not the most linear). I know this horse has already been beaten well beyond death but I just had to include it, I really was hoping S/M would move away from linearity and it went in the wrong direction. You can't walk freaking 40 feet before someone interrupts the gameplay with a cutscenes and shoves you in the right direction. Also it doesn't feel like you actually have a choice of going to certain places before others like you could in other Pokémon games. If you took data from every players playthrough of S/M and listed all the game locations from first one they went to to last one they went to, almost everyone's lists would be identical.

Regarding gameplay. The routes suck, I'm just going to come out and say it. They are so small, they are so linear, and they rarely have more than 4 trainers. Graphically they are amazing and a pleasure to explore but I feel like there was a lot of wasted potential on these routes. It's hard to distinguish any of the routes from each other and they are largely forgettable.

My other main problem with the gameplay is the game is just too damn short. With 60% of the game being cutscenes i felt like I had actually played for 1/5th as much as I usually had in a Pokémon game. The difficulty curve and level curve are massively improved over X/Y but I just wish there was more content.

Overall I love this game and I'm going to play it for hours on end, but it is far from perfect

 

[Guest123_x1]

I've only put on about 4 hours on the game's time odometer, and I've found too many issues for me to enjoy this game. Among them are:

• All of the new Pokémon are notoriously slow. There was no need to cut the average speed stat of most of the Pokémon compared to previous Generations. It's Gen II all over again!
• Even without accuracy and evasion stats modified, 100% accurate attacks have a chance of missing. I'm hoping this is just a glitch and not a deliberate (on Game Freak's part) re-implementation of the 1/256 miss quirk from Generation I. (It's not like this quirk is required by the 2DS/3DS series-the 3DS is not an Apple IIe or 8088-based IBM PC for goodness sake!)
• Most of the game time is spent on cutscenes. There's MUCH MORE of them than there are in any previous games! If these cutscenes are necessary to help younger players, how were we able to successfully play Red/Blue/Yellow (and Gold/Silver/Crystal) when we were kids? Most of us who played those versions back in the day were between 7 to 12 years old at the time, and yet we made it just fine, despite Generation I's sheer brokenness.
• They took an already bad feature (Horde encounters) and apparently made it much worse.
• For no reason, they removed the ability to register key items to the D-pad, like in Generation VI. That feature was perfectly fine back then.
• Having to press A just to open ANY door. In all previous games, we got along perfectly fine with being able to walk into any unlocked door. This is one of those "fixing what isn't broke" things.

There's so many more issues that I'll run into, that I can't keep in my mind to list here.
To sum it up, Sun and Moon are the Windows 8 of the Pokémon franchise. Changing too many things just for the sake of changing rather than doing so out of absolute necessity (like NASCAR has done with its stupid "Chase for the Championship" playoff implemented on their main three racing series (Cup, Xfinity, and Trucks).)

Bottom line - you know the old saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it!