So, /vp/, I have a story for you. It gets a little blogshit,

>>30762853
Some of the things I really enjoyed are:

* The characters actually feel like characters, not cliches or caricatures. They
have arcs, they feel like they grow from start to end, and I actually got attached.
Lillie leaving really got to me, if she doesn't have a noticeable role in the
inevitable RBY re-re-make, I'm going to be real fucking cross.
* The evil teams felt more real. They aren't some genocidal
fashionistas, ecological terrorists, or god-wannabes, they're just a bunch of
street thugs led by a failure at life. And aether seems to be led
by an unhinged woman who needs some psychiatric treatment, holy shit.
* The pokemon design feels much nicer and more coherent. Maybe that's to do with
the fact that a Hawaiian theme is more visually interesting than France, but
whatever. The alolan forms feel like a nice way to introduce new species without
bloating the pokedex number.
* The difficulty feels much better. X&Y felt like they balanced for the EXP share
to be off, and so playing with it on was easy mode, where S&M felt like it was
balanced for it to be on, and playing with it off was hard mode. No gift lucarios
or latias either. I played with a self imposed challenge where I never fought wild
encounters, and soft-reset if I got party-wiped, meaning there was only so much XP
to go around. I ended up having to break this and grind 5 levels after running into
the brick wall that was kukui (I was an average of level 45 on
my first try), where as I breezed through X&Y without a single thought.

diaper beam lol

>>30762879
* On that note, I was not expecting the champion to be who it was, so good on GF for not following the same pattern they have since RBE. Honestly thought it was going to be hapu for the longest time
* I was completely prepared to hate the captain/kahuna/trial/totem system, but found it very enjoyable. I hope in the future that if they keep it, there will be more trainers involved like the hiker in the fire trial.
* Given that there are large sections of poni island left unexplored, and I haven't seen any legends except the box legend, I suspect there is a decent post-game which I found severely lacking in X&Y.
* Visuals are beautiful, it really has gotten to the point where it looks like what I imagined when I played red 2 decades ago. I hope now they stop trying to increase the poly-count and start working on performance.
* The ride system is brilliant. They can still use them to wall off areas like HMs, and there are still puzzles with them, but you don't need to have an HM slave or take up move slots. I'm really happy they didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one.

[3/4]

>>30762908
Some things I'm still not happy with, however:

* No dungeons. All of what would be are just straight paths with one or two branches. I wish these would be replaced with more labyrinthine areas with lower encounter rates where the challenge is to find the exit, not just how many repels and potions you can buy.
* Framerate still chugs when there's more than 2 pokemon on screen, and sometimes even when there isn't.
* Z-moves are interesting, but really feel phoned in, like they were trying to find something like megas that didn't completely break the game. Pretty to look at, but I really don't see the point. Never used them.
* Game is really linear for the first half. Cutscenes every 5 steps wasn't helping. Was about ready to pack it in. Glad I didn't, but I don't intend to do any more runs unless they make a patch where you can skip the cutscenes.
* Similarly, things are still just handed to you too often. I want to have to work for my HMs/rides, not just have them handed to me when its convenient for the plot.

What are your thoughts on any of this? How do you feel S&M stacks up against the previous gens?

[4/4]

No-one has anything to say?

Okay.

too many points to really respond to atm m8, sorry

but in short: I agree