I don't necessarily miss the bike, but it would be nice if I didn't need to hold B to have Tauros or Mudsdale charge at full speed. I mean, Machamp just needs the B tapped when facing a boulder to start shoving it as far as it'll go, (and tap again to have it stop) so why can't the other ride options work like that? (Charizard aside since it's literally Fly, and really once you've Sharpedo you're only using Lapras to get close to a fishing spot in the water)
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
This is incorrect. It will push it some distance but not all. I've had to press B a few times to get Machamp to push the Boulder to where it needs to go. Tauros isn't that bad but Mudsdale should definitely always be at full speed since both speeds are quite slow.
Festival Plaza visitors are the worst sometimes.
"Take me to a place you think I'd like!"
Except there's no indication anywhere of which shops the visitor would actually like to visit, and it changes from day to day. A shop they like one day, or for that matter five days in a row, can be turned down on the next, and then be fine again on the day after.
It is a short, simple and inconsequential task, sure, but you have no control over whether you can solve it or not, and you cannot retry. This is terrible game design.
"Take me to a place you think I'd like!"
Except there's no indication anywhere of which shops the visitor would actually like to visit, and it changes from day to day. A shop they like one day, or for that matter five days in a row, can be turned down on the next, and then be fine again on the day after.
It is a short, simple and inconsequential task, sure, but you have no control over whether you can solve it or not, and you cannot retry. This is terrible game design.
My opinion of Poke Rides:
Tauros Charge: One of the most useful, its not only the on land Rock Smash replacement but also serves as your bike. Its fun to charge around on Tauros, especially smashing rocks with that split second slow down and satisfying breaking sound. Though that said its a peeve you need to hold down B to charge otherwise you're going only a bit faster than normal.
Stoutland Search: But that's where Stoutland comes in. I was surprised how fast Stoutland was normally, being somewhere between Tauros walking and Tauros charging. It sort of felt there was two bikes much like in Gen III: Tauros is the Mach which you need to manually make go fast, Stoutland is the Acro with is medium speed. Though instead of doing neat but useless tricks Stoutland serves as your Item Finder so at least during the main game/post game wrap up it has an additional use. Of course after that it's only benefit is the medium speed if you don't want to be holding down B to make Tauros fast.
Mudsdale Gallop: It just exists to get over a roadblock. And its slow too. Of course the question is what else could have been done with it? The only thing I can think of is maybe make its gallop prevent wild battles from happening, so even though its slow you don't have to worry about getting into at least random wild battles going through grass or in caves if you don't have/want to use a Repel. But for what we got, it's disappointing.
Machamp Shove: Strength replacement, but we get it so late there's no use for it. It's yet another roadblock remover as any block is either one push away from a hole or is a simple puzzle in the Tapu's ruins. It's also slow, though at least when holding down B it gets slightly faster. Aside from putting in more block puzzles I have no idea what else they could have done with Machamp Shove, maybe "shove" you over ledges?
Lapras Paddle: Good at first...
Sharpedo Jet: But then gets overshadowed. Does any one use Lapras Paddle after getting Sharpedo Jet? Okay, sure, Lapras Paddle doesn't disturb the special fishing spots that are out in the middle of the water, but unless you're trying to chain fish, once you got the unique Water-type from that spot you're probably never going to fish there again. It's a shame, I kind of wished they gave Lapras Paddle a second use like maybe able to go over rough water/tides/whirlpools. Of course even Sharpedo Jet loses its after you've pretty much done everything you need to do in the water. You know, for a region based on an archipelago, there isn't much use for surfing. Also, where is the Dive Poke Ride? Major missed opportunity.
Charizard Glide: Hey, where can I get a Charizard in Alola (I know and gotten some of the Johto and Unova Starters, but Charizard is my favorite Pokemon). Anyway probably the most used Poke Ride as its the Fly replacement and easiest way to get around. Though it has its problems, it's animation is longer than I'd like (a contrast compared to other Poke Rides which are instant) and it's just Fly instead of the Soaring we got from the ORAS games.
So yeah, only Tauros, Stoutland, Sharpedo, and Charizard feel like they were good Poke Rides while the others were just to pass road blocks or got overshadowed by another.
Tauros Charge: One of the most useful, its not only the on land Rock Smash replacement but also serves as your bike. Its fun to charge around on Tauros, especially smashing rocks with that split second slow down and satisfying breaking sound. Though that said its a peeve you need to hold down B to charge otherwise you're going only a bit faster than normal.
Stoutland Search: But that's where Stoutland comes in. I was surprised how fast Stoutland was normally, being somewhere between Tauros walking and Tauros charging. It sort of felt there was two bikes much like in Gen III: Tauros is the Mach which you need to manually make go fast, Stoutland is the Acro with is medium speed. Though instead of doing neat but useless tricks Stoutland serves as your Item Finder so at least during the main game/post game wrap up it has an additional use. Of course after that it's only benefit is the medium speed if you don't want to be holding down B to make Tauros fast.
Mudsdale Gallop: It just exists to get over a roadblock. And its slow too. Of course the question is what else could have been done with it? The only thing I can think of is maybe make its gallop prevent wild battles from happening, so even though its slow you don't have to worry about getting into at least random wild battles going through grass or in caves if you don't have/want to use a Repel. But for what we got, it's disappointing.
Machamp Shove: Strength replacement, but we get it so late there's no use for it. It's yet another roadblock remover as any block is either one push away from a hole or is a simple puzzle in the Tapu's ruins. It's also slow, though at least when holding down B it gets slightly faster. Aside from putting in more block puzzles I have no idea what else they could have done with Machamp Shove, maybe "shove" you over ledges?
Lapras Paddle: Good at first...
Sharpedo Jet: But then gets overshadowed. Does any one use Lapras Paddle after getting Sharpedo Jet? Okay, sure, Lapras Paddle doesn't disturb the special fishing spots that are out in the middle of the water, but unless you're trying to chain fish, once you got the unique Water-type from that spot you're probably never going to fish there again. It's a shame, I kind of wished they gave Lapras Paddle a second use like maybe able to go over rough water/tides/whirlpools. Of course even Sharpedo Jet loses its after you've pretty much done everything you need to do in the water. You know, for a region based on an archipelago, there isn't much use for surfing. Also, where is the Dive Poke Ride? Major missed opportunity.
Charizard Glide: Hey, where can I get a Charizard in Alola (I know and gotten some of the Johto and Unova Starters, but Charizard is my favorite Pokemon). Anyway probably the most used Poke Ride as its the Fly replacement and easiest way to get around. Though it has its problems, it's animation is longer than I'd like (a contrast compared to other Poke Rides which are instant) and it's just Fly instead of the Soaring we got from the ORAS games.
So yeah, only Tauros, Stoutland, Sharpedo, and Charizard feel like they were good Poke Rides while the others were just to pass road blocks or got overshadowed by another.
Oh, and another annoying thing about Festival Plaza: if you don't do online activities like trading (and Wonder Trade doesn't count) or battling for a few days the amount of FC characters give decrease. They can all the way down to giving just 1 measly FC no matter what you do. Really? You're punishing me for not going online? It has come to a point where I'm not even bothering with Festival Plaza anymore. It takes too long to upgrade and I'm not going to use any of the services. You took away the fun that was building up your own marketplace of Join Avenue, the ease of online interaction of the PSS, and even limited out clothing options between versions to force us to use this thrown together mess that's not fun, is a hassle to use, and good luck getting a certain article of clothing you want but is exclusive to the other version.
I only made sure to get to Level 10 for the clothing thing and got a bunch of lottery stalls and barely bother with it at all beyond that. Festival Plaza is atrocious on it's own but especially compared to PSS and Join Avenue which were both excellent and arguably revolutionary (for Pokémon at least) in their own way.
Oh, and it doesn't help that you can't get back a stall you've replaced with a new one. Hopefully I'm completely wrong about that and I just haven't found a way to get back an old stall, but if I am wrong that means it's pretty shoddy design since I've looked everywhere and can't find a method; and if I'm right then that's just kind of shit.
Oh, and it doesn't help that you can't get back a stall you've replaced with a new one. Hopefully I'm completely wrong about that and I just haven't found a way to get back an old stall, but if I am wrong that means it's pretty shoddy design since I've looked everywhere and can't find a method; and if I'm right then that's just kind of shit.
From what I understand, the shop should be similar to the one the visitor visits the most (so they expect you to "know" by asking them what facility they would recommend which is practically the same thing). I know my friend who's similar to Kurona with mostly lottery stalls, when her character asks that question, she's always satisfied with me sending her to a Lottery House.
That's what the Fortune-Teller tents are for. Their fortunes will give a multiplier for the FC earned in doing specific activities. (and the Festival Plaza one itself stacks with the others) This includes Wonder Trade if you do it inside the castle. (the last person you WT with shows up here and gives you a couple FC by default. Wish I'd known that earlier...)
Oh, the amount of ire I could write about Sun/Moon in this thread...
I know we've all had our rants on how some of the Gen VII Pokémon are so hard to find in Alola, but let's take a moment to consider another stupidity of the encounter tables: Not the Pokémon that are hard to get, but the Pokémon that are easy to get.
Because while Game Freak apparently hid away some Pokémon so we'd have a hard time finding them, they really made sure we would get our prescribed dose of some others. For instance:
These are the encounter tables for Yungoos, Gumshoos, Rattata, Raticate, Wingull and Pelipper in Sun and Moon. While many Pokémon can be said to be rare in Alola, these three evolution families are everywhere. They have encounter rates around 30 % in most routes, sometimes as high as 50 or 70 %. And don't get me started on Magikarp when it comes to fishing, with its famous 99 % encounter rate in certain fishing spots (down to 50 % when the spot bubbles). Tentacool and Finneon are no slouches in water routes either, but at least you don't surf around as much.
Worst thing is, these Pokémon don't get any less common in the endgame. Yungoos and Rattata are really early-game Pokémon, if you don't catch one at the beginning you have no reason to want one later. Wingull and Pelipper are slightly more powerful and suitable somewhat later in the game, but spamming them all over the islands are overkill.
I legitimately have no idea how anybody could think of this as a good idea, at any point. Why would players late in the game (we're talking after the second-last trial) want to step into the tall grass and have a 60 % chance of encountering the early-route rodent or Pelipper? The designers are using up more than half of the encounter odds on Pokémon that should have been left behind on the first island. There are so many Pokémon in the games now, the opportunity is there for some great variety, so why are they making early-game crap so phenomenally common in the mid-late game? Heck, when you're rushing to take out the evil team and save a Pokémon in Po Town, you encounter nothing but Gumshoos, Pelipper and Slowpoke for three routes straight.
"But these are invasive species or otherwise common all around Alola, so the lore says!". Yes, they are. But there is no excuse to go on accord with gameplay for the sake of lore. Insisting on enforcing the lore is hugely detrimental to the gameplay in this case. I'm sick and tired of Gumshoos, Raticate and Pelipper. There are eight hundred Pokémon out there, and some eighty new ones to showcase. Why am I seeing the same three families everywhere I go, for such a large portion of the game? Why are nearly every other Pokémon pushed to the sidelines to put these Pokémon in the limelight? For the most part, they are terrible Pokémon. There's nothing special about early-game rodents, and I can curb my enthusiasm for Pelipper even after it got Drizzle. I don't want to catch them, and even if I did, I'd only need one.
I'm going as far as saying that Poni Island (and the latter half of Akala Island too, but Poni suffers the most) is wasted because of this. It's a diverse tropical island completely left to nature, a giant showcase of wilderness near the end of the game. The variety of Pokémon should be immense here, giving players dozens of options to fill out their teams. But wherever you go except Vast Poni Canyon and Poni Meadow, you have a 50-60 % chance of bumping into the usual suspects. There is some rather good variety aside from these three, but when everything else is found in only 4 out of 10 encounters, every non-Gumshoos/Raticate/Pelipper Pokémon becomes unnecessarily rare.
The only excuse I can think of is that the designers never found time to tweak the encounter tables for a variety of routes, and ended up submitting their placeholders. And since quality control outside of bugtesting apparently was totally non-existent for these games (yes, I am making that case here), the placeholders made it to the final game.
Eight hundred and two monsters in total. Eighty new ones, half of which are too uncommon for most players to pick up during their playthrough. Yet the same three Pokémon are given more than half the space in the encounter tables for large portions of the game. That is not just dumb, it's inexcusable.
I know we've all had our rants on how some of the Gen VII Pokémon are so hard to find in Alola, but let's take a moment to consider another stupidity of the encounter tables: Not the Pokémon that are hard to get, but the Pokémon that are easy to get.
Because while Game Freak apparently hid away some Pokémon so we'd have a hard time finding them, they really made sure we would get our prescribed dose of some others. For instance:
These are the encounter tables for Yungoos, Gumshoos, Rattata, Raticate, Wingull and Pelipper in Sun and Moon. While many Pokémon can be said to be rare in Alola, these three evolution families are everywhere. They have encounter rates around 30 % in most routes, sometimes as high as 50 or 70 %. And don't get me started on Magikarp when it comes to fishing, with its famous 99 % encounter rate in certain fishing spots (down to 50 % when the spot bubbles). Tentacool and Finneon are no slouches in water routes either, but at least you don't surf around as much.
Worst thing is, these Pokémon don't get any less common in the endgame. Yungoos and Rattata are really early-game Pokémon, if you don't catch one at the beginning you have no reason to want one later. Wingull and Pelipper are slightly more powerful and suitable somewhat later in the game, but spamming them all over the islands are overkill.
I legitimately have no idea how anybody could think of this as a good idea, at any point. Why would players late in the game (we're talking after the second-last trial) want to step into the tall grass and have a 60 % chance of encountering the early-route rodent or Pelipper? The designers are using up more than half of the encounter odds on Pokémon that should have been left behind on the first island. There are so many Pokémon in the games now, the opportunity is there for some great variety, so why are they making early-game crap so phenomenally common in the mid-late game? Heck, when you're rushing to take out the evil team and save a Pokémon in Po Town, you encounter nothing but Gumshoos, Pelipper and Slowpoke for three routes straight.
"But these are invasive species or otherwise common all around Alola, so the lore says!". Yes, they are. But there is no excuse to go on accord with gameplay for the sake of lore. Insisting on enforcing the lore is hugely detrimental to the gameplay in this case. I'm sick and tired of Gumshoos, Raticate and Pelipper. There are eight hundred Pokémon out there, and some eighty new ones to showcase. Why am I seeing the same three families everywhere I go, for such a large portion of the game? Why are nearly every other Pokémon pushed to the sidelines to put these Pokémon in the limelight? For the most part, they are terrible Pokémon. There's nothing special about early-game rodents, and I can curb my enthusiasm for Pelipper even after it got Drizzle. I don't want to catch them, and even if I did, I'd only need one.
I'm going as far as saying that Poni Island (and the latter half of Akala Island too, but Poni suffers the most) is wasted because of this. It's a diverse tropical island completely left to nature, a giant showcase of wilderness near the end of the game. The variety of Pokémon should be immense here, giving players dozens of options to fill out their teams. But wherever you go except Vast Poni Canyon and Poni Meadow, you have a 50-60 % chance of bumping into the usual suspects. There is some rather good variety aside from these three, but when everything else is found in only 4 out of 10 encounters, every non-Gumshoos/Raticate/Pelipper Pokémon becomes unnecessarily rare.
The only excuse I can think of is that the designers never found time to tweak the encounter tables for a variety of routes, and ended up submitting their placeholders. And since quality control outside of bugtesting apparently was totally non-existent for these games (yes, I am making that case here), the placeholders made it to the final game.
Eight hundred and two monsters in total. Eighty new ones, half of which are too uncommon for most players to pick up during their playthrough. Yet the same three Pokémon are given more than half the space in the encounter tables for large portions of the game. That is not just dumb, it's inexcusable.
I completely disagree. One of the most unrealistic things about some other games in the series is that species that should be everywhere aren't. It's not "lore"; it's world-building, and it's always, definitionally, more important than game-design or convenience. Our interest in playing the game is contingent on our ability to believe (basically, at least) in the world in which it takes place. The more you do to undermine the conceptual integrity of the world, the more you threaten that. There's merit to the idea that some of these species don't belong or shouldn't be as common on Poni, but the idea that it's a matter of early- and late-game is nonsense.
I get all the reasons talked about. On one hand, there's definitely a bit of lore in having common Pokemon be common EVERYWHERE. But at the same time, there is a bit of gameplay-and-story segregation that should exist just to reduce frustration. I mean especially with the way Sun and Moon handled some of the more unique new Pokemon should never have happened. There's definitely no reason why Bruxish had to be a 1% find. I could get Corsola and Mareine, but something like Bruxish definitely shouldn't have been that rare. In fact, as you all mentioned, Poni should be near devoid of Gumshoo if not also Raticate due to how unsettled it was. In fact, Poni would have been a great place to reintroduce many of the new Alolan Pokemon after being "rarer" finds in other islands due to how much more isolated it is.
I stand more on a middle ground on this point. I do prefer Pokemon to show up in place it makes sense for them to exist... but Sun and Moon don't do a particularly good job at that.
Four isles, yet little variation in terms of Pokemon; even the encounter rates are similar.
In that aspect, they are disappointing. I mean, if it were a continuous section of land (e.g. Kanto or Johto) it would make more sense...
IIRC Sinnoh did a fairly good job at that, given the drastic differences between East and West not only in terms of the land itself, but also the Pokemon you can find. Only a handful of Pokemon were common in both sides.
Four isles, yet little variation in terms of Pokemon; even the encounter rates are similar.
In that aspect, they are disappointing. I mean, if it were a continuous section of land (e.g. Kanto or Johto) it would make more sense...
IIRC Sinnoh did a fairly good job at that, given the drastic differences between East and West not only in terms of the land itself, but also the Pokemon you can find. Only a handful of Pokemon were common in both sides.
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There has to be a balance. Frankly, at the point these Pokémon are all I'm seeing, I couldn't care less about how much it makes sense. It's absolutely ridiculous to insist that this is excusable in a video game just because it makes things a little more sense; I want a variety of decent Pokémon rather than having to run into Raticate half the time.
The world has to be believable, yes; but not to the point it gets in the way of fundamental gameplay elements and makes things frustrating or boring for the player. It's a fantasy cartoon world, my suspension of disbelief can kind of excuse this one species not being everywhere as long as it means a variety of colourful, intriguing and interesting creatures I might want to consider for my team. You need balance, and high encounter tables for about 10 Pokémon throughout the entire game is not what I'd call balance.
How much of a pain in the ass it is to obtain Razor Claw and (to a lesser extent) Metal Coat in Sun and Moon. The former is only available 5% on a Pokemon that only appears 5% of the time in the Victory Road of the game. You could try to SOS scum for a 50% with Kommo-o, but other than Butterfree most Thief users flat out lose to Hakomo-o and Kommo-o. Metal Coat is fortunately available on much more common Pokemon though, but it still should've been purchasable in Battle Tree along with Razor Claw. (Requiring Thief to get certain items really SHOULDN'T be a thing)
Also, the fact that you only get 1 Lucky Egg at all (especially since its post-game only) is a bit too inconvenient for me.
Also, the fact that you only get 1 Lucky Egg at all (especially since its post-game only) is a bit too inconvenient for me.
I agree with this. In fact, this has been a problem ever since the first generation. Imagine you are at Cinnabar and still run into Rattata / Raticates there. Raticate and Arbok are still common in Victory Routes in Johto. Bidoof, Bibarel and the Starly family are everywhere in Sinnoh. Tranquil all over Unova. While it does fits in the world, they are aggravating especially when you are trying to find some other Pokemon.
If they just spread around the rare encounters and make the bubble fishing rate the regular fishing rate, I feel like half these problems would disappear.
For example, add Bruxish into Hau'oli. The 'Mon is literally in the Pokedex saying that lifeguards leave it around to scare away the meaner, dangerous Pokemon. Where is it found normally? Some random beach away from civilization as a rare fishing encounter. Makes sense.
Considering how Corsola seem to be just about everywhere in the overworld, make it more than just a rare Pokemon in two routes.
Sandygast, Pyukumuku, and Staryu are on one beach. Sandy and Staryu use a unique encounter method of shifting sand; that's awesome for that one beach, but it would've been nice if they put them on OTHER beaches too.
Sharpedo is just on Poni Island; why no Carvanha anywhere? Seems like a waste.
Additionally, there are no Schooling Wishiwashi in the wild. Seems weird to have the poor thing's gimmick go totally wasted for encounters; doesn't really make them live up to their reputation of being terrifying, unlike the trained one Lana used.
Sheesh, make Feebas live up to that sturdy reputation and make it more than some mythic trashmon stuck as a 5% encounter in ONE AREA .
A Tough Pokémon that is perfectly fine even in dirty water. However, due to its ragged, shabby appearance, it isn’t popular." Way to be hardy in one place.
Same rules apply for land 'mons. Spread Komala, Igglybuff, Lilipup, heck even stuff like Snubbul and Eevee, Fletchling even. Why make Pikachu and Munchlax only like one or two spots too!?
There's no reason for Faticate, Trump, Magikarp, a single sardine, a seagull, and a woodpecker to be seemingly over three quarters of the entire game but these and their entire evolutionary chains only take 12 spots on the Alolan Dex, with only 10 actually appearing bar SOS Gyarados. Come on, now.
For example, add Bruxish into Hau'oli. The 'Mon is literally in the Pokedex saying that lifeguards leave it around to scare away the meaner, dangerous Pokemon. Where is it found normally? Some random beach away from civilization as a rare fishing encounter. Makes sense.
Considering how Corsola seem to be just about everywhere in the overworld, make it more than just a rare Pokemon in two routes.
Sandygast, Pyukumuku, and Staryu are on one beach. Sandy and Staryu use a unique encounter method of shifting sand; that's awesome for that one beach, but it would've been nice if they put them on OTHER beaches too.
Sharpedo is just on Poni Island; why no Carvanha anywhere? Seems like a waste.
Additionally, there are no Schooling Wishiwashi in the wild. Seems weird to have the poor thing's gimmick go totally wasted for encounters; doesn't really make them live up to their reputation of being terrifying, unlike the trained one Lana used.
Sheesh, make Feebas live up to that sturdy reputation and make it more than some mythic trashmon stuck as a 5% encounter in ONE AREA .
A Tough Pokémon that is perfectly fine even in dirty water. However, due to its ragged, shabby appearance, it isn’t popular." Way to be hardy in one place.
Same rules apply for land 'mons. Spread Komala, Igglybuff, Lilipup, heck even stuff like Snubbul and Eevee, Fletchling even. Why make Pikachu and Munchlax only like one or two spots too!?
There's no reason for Faticate, Trump, Magikarp, a single sardine, a seagull, and a woodpecker to be seemingly over three quarters of the entire game but these and their entire evolutionary chains only take 12 spots on the Alolan Dex, with only 10 actually appearing bar SOS Gyarados. Come on, now.
The irony is that once again, XY has the exact opposite problem - there were too many new Pokémon on each route that you barely got a breather or allowed to take in anything new. Nothing was spread out and you were barely if ever given a second chance to get anything.
The more I think about it and the more I look into it, the more it seems XY and SM are on two opposite ends of the spectrum. Two extremes that there is some perfect, balanced Pokémon game between but we haven't quite gotten yet.
The more I think about it and the more I look into it, the more it seems XY and SM are on two opposite ends of the spectrum. Two extremes that there is some perfect, balanced Pokémon game between but we haven't quite gotten yet.
SuMo doesn't even wait to give you a Pokemon before the game tries to get you killed. Seriously, Nebby?
Well... it's not Pokémon if there's no Random Number God screwing one often.
What I find is that one can soft reset it though, but eh, only for 10 coins, when other requests can get one 30 FC. What I hate is when there's like 3 of them asking this out of around 8 to 10 requests. At least the requests seem to frequently refresh in regular interval (I think each 3 hours).
And on that matter, the guest loading, when someone fails to load....
I can't comment much about the encounter stuffs, but at least I can safely say I'm sick of seeing rats. And Zubat living its reputation again in caves as if it's a revenge since Zubat Cave in Kalos... which is inhabited by Whismur.
Another matter is repel. I was hunting to soft reset for a good Celesteela. I am sure I have turned on Max Repel, but annoying ducks and spiders still jumped at me just as frequent as when not using repel. This thing is defective, unlike when I hunt that cable tree where Zubats were gone with repel. I finally got my desired bamboo rocket (0 Spe), but without the repel, and now I wonder if past third island repels are useless....
To be fair, I've never used repel in story play though, but that last hunt made me think repel is completely useless by second half of game.
I think this is really apt. XY had the most forgettable characters in the series, SM probably has the most memorable. XY were pathetically easy, SM has a nice challenge with the totem pokemon having stat boosts and double battle strategies. XY gives you a million rivals, SM you have 1, maybe 2 (depending what you think Gladion is)
Thing is, you could still have Gumshoos, Raticate and Pelipper appear everywhere, but make their encounters a little less common. Say, 10 % each, at most. Since they, again, are everywhere, you'd still run into them wherever you go if you spent time there, but you would have a much greater chance of encountering other Pokémon. At the moment, literally more than half of the Pokémon you encounter in grass on Poni Island and much of Ula'ula Island are Gumshoos/Raticate or Pelipper. Once again, I'd say that is inexcusable.
And if you speak about world building, what about the massive battle disadvantage these Pokémon have? Any Electric type would easily keep Pelipper away from its area. Raticate are so weak to Fighting that they would be unable to settle in areas with high presence of Fighting-types (and it doesn't like Bug or Fairy either, or for that matter other Dark types). Gumshoos is a pretty weak Pokémon, and would have trouble with stronger wild Pokémon you'd usually find in the late-game.
"But there are very few Electric, Fighting and Fairy Pokémon in Alola, they are very uncommon!" Well, that is a consequence of the crappy decision to put Gumshoos and Pelipper everywhere. The designers spammed the same crapmons everywhere, rather than giving the areas some diversity, and as a result, the game lacks Pokémon that would naturally have displaced the infamous trio.
I don't think "They have to be common even on Poni Island because of lore" is a good argument. I'd rather argue the reverse; they could easily have made lore reasons for not having them there at all. Poni Island is remote with few human settlements. It's a harsh place. There are strong wild Pokémon there. Nothing really forced the designers to make the early-game rodents so common, they could have made any number of lore reasons to the opposite if they wanted to. And they really should have. Did it never dawn on them that players might grow tired of seeing the same Pokémon - and rarely anything else - everywhere?
Sure. I'm all for determining species distribution on grounds like those. I'm just not for determining it based on player convenience or notions like "late-game" that don't exist as far as the actual world is concerned. Obviously, it's a game, and people making it are trying to make it a good one, but decisions
Then compound that with XY's phenomenal PSS vs SM's frustrating and inconvenient Festival Plaza; XY's easy ways to grind vs SM's having nowhere to grind; etc. XY was incredible for multiplayer but not so much for single player; on the other hand, SM had an incredible single player but getting into multiplayer is a frustrating process.
Trumbeak is totally broken early-game. You get a 140 BP Z-move with Brick Break after the first trial coming off of 85 base Attack that covers two of its three weaknesses.
I'm not a fan of gamefreak's decision to introduce such a limited number of new Pokemon yet again. In X and Y, it was gamefreak's first time utilizing 3d graphics, so their decision to introduce a limited number of pokemon was somewhat excusable, but not here.
Additionally, I'm not a fan of the fact that a majority of the new pokemon introduced are legendaries / ultra beast since it makes the roster feel even more limited. Like seriously, 20 out of the 79 newly introduced Pokemon are either legendaries or ultra beast (assuming silvally and type null are counted).
Alola forms kinda remedy the lack of new Pokemon, but I honestly felt there weren't enough of them. I feel sticking with just Kanto Pokemon was a bad decision here since a lot of mediocre Pokemon from other regions would have benefitted from them too (things like Corsola, Octillery, Sunflora, etc.).
While the lack of Pokemon sucks, my biggest complaint with Sun and Moon is the lack of memorable locations / dungeons. Previous generations were filled to the brim with memorable areas / challenging areas to navigate through, like Reversal Mountain, the Kanto Power Plant, the Old Chateau etc. but most of these type of areas are lacking in Sun and Moon. In general, it just feels less fun to traverse the landscape in Sun and Moon than in Gen 4 and Gen 5, but that just might be my nostalgia.
Additionally, I'm not a fan of the fact that a majority of the new pokemon introduced are legendaries / ultra beast since it makes the roster feel even more limited. Like seriously, 20 out of the 79 newly introduced Pokemon are either legendaries or ultra beast (assuming silvally and type null are counted).
Alola forms kinda remedy the lack of new Pokemon, but I honestly felt there weren't enough of them. I feel sticking with just Kanto Pokemon was a bad decision here since a lot of mediocre Pokemon from other regions would have benefitted from them too (things like Corsola, Octillery, Sunflora, etc.).
While the lack of Pokemon sucks, my biggest complaint with Sun and Moon is the lack of memorable locations / dungeons. Previous generations were filled to the brim with memorable areas / challenging areas to navigate through, like Reversal Mountain, the Kanto Power Plant, the Old Chateau etc. but most of these type of areas are lacking in Sun and Moon. In general, it just feels less fun to traverse the landscape in Sun and Moon than in Gen 4 and Gen 5, but that just might be my nostalgia.
^To be fair to Gen VI, if you count Megas and new Formes there were over 120 new Pokémon between the two games (OK, four, but really: two). That made it bigger than Gens II and IV in terms of new creatures to model. Then again, it should be mentioned that a good chunk of those were introduced halfway through the generation, with ORAS.
Gen VII has 81 new Pokémon + 18 Alola Forms so far, bringing the total to 99. The number grows to 104 if you count School Wishiwashi, Night Lycanrock and the four Oricorio forms, but it'd be the same as counting stuff like the Meloetta formes or the different Basculin, so eh. Anyway, if they add some twenty new Alola (regional?) Forms to the next Gen VII games, this generation could end up just about average. Then again, with half the Pokémon being either legendary or prohibitively difficult to obtain, I completely agree with your sentiment.
As for whether Alola forms made mediocre Pokémon better... ehh, that seems to depend. The general sentiments I've seen suggest that the mediocre Pokémon are just mediocre in a different way now. I think Megas did more to change the viability and notability of old Pokémon, by several orders of magnitude.
And as for memorable locations, I feel there were some... ish. Malie City and Konikoni City had some pretty sweet Eastern architecture. The Abandoned Thrifty Megamart was really cool too, and the operating one was not too shabby either. Certainly something we've never seen before. The cliffs of MeleMele Island were also nice, with their great views and all. Po Town was great overall, really post-apocalyptic in a way. And for some strange reason, Mount Hokulani stuck in my memory too.
I totally get your point, though. For all its locations and its fancy graphics, Alola sure had a lot of forgettable locations. Not as bad as most of Gen IV or Johto in general, but still there was a lot of blandness about, and the number of memorable locations is rather small for the size of the region. Just look to Hoenn, or to Unova, and all the landmarks there. Heck, as you said, even Kanto has a lot of dungeons with surprising variety.
Speaking of forgettableness in Alola, though... am I the only one who can't for the life of me remember the names of the cities? Earlier generations' cities had names made up of English words, or at least portmanteaus (portmanteaux?), and were easy to pronounce and remember if you know a bit of English. But without any knowledge whatsoever of Hawaiian, I can't get the Alolan cities and towns to stick in my head. Po Town and Tapu Village, sure, but Heahea or Konikoni or Hau'oli or Hokulani or Paniola... I had to look up all of those, and I've probably already forgotten them. This is rather egregious since Alola only has nine cities and towns (10 if you count Royal Avenue). Whereas I could easily rattle off the names of the Kantonian settlements (PalletViridianPewterCeruleanVermillionLavenderCeladonFuchsiaSaffronCinnabarIndigoPlateau) or the Hoennese ones (LittlerootOldalePetalburghRustboroDewfordSlateportMauvilleVerdanturfFallarborLavaridgeFortreeLilycoveSootopolisMossdeepPacifidlogEverGrande), the Alolan ones do not stick at all. It's all jumbled letters to me, without any context. Quite annoying, actually.
Gen VII has 81 new Pokémon + 18 Alola Forms so far, bringing the total to 99. The number grows to 104 if you count School Wishiwashi, Night Lycanrock and the four Oricorio forms, but it'd be the same as counting stuff like the Meloetta formes or the different Basculin, so eh. Anyway, if they add some twenty new Alola (regional?) Forms to the next Gen VII games, this generation could end up just about average. Then again, with half the Pokémon being either legendary or prohibitively difficult to obtain, I completely agree with your sentiment.
As for whether Alola forms made mediocre Pokémon better... ehh, that seems to depend. The general sentiments I've seen suggest that the mediocre Pokémon are just mediocre in a different way now. I think Megas did more to change the viability and notability of old Pokémon, by several orders of magnitude.
And as for memorable locations, I feel there were some... ish. Malie City and Konikoni City had some pretty sweet Eastern architecture. The Abandoned Thrifty Megamart was really cool too, and the operating one was not too shabby either. Certainly something we've never seen before. The cliffs of MeleMele Island were also nice, with their great views and all. Po Town was great overall, really post-apocalyptic in a way. And for some strange reason, Mount Hokulani stuck in my memory too.
I totally get your point, though. For all its locations and its fancy graphics, Alola sure had a lot of forgettable locations. Not as bad as most of Gen IV or Johto in general, but still there was a lot of blandness about, and the number of memorable locations is rather small for the size of the region. Just look to Hoenn, or to Unova, and all the landmarks there. Heck, as you said, even Kanto has a lot of dungeons with surprising variety.
Speaking of forgettableness in Alola, though... am I the only one who can't for the life of me remember the names of the cities? Earlier generations' cities had names made up of English words, or at least portmanteaus (portmanteaux?), and were easy to pronounce and remember if you know a bit of English. But without any knowledge whatsoever of Hawaiian, I can't get the Alolan cities and towns to stick in my head. Po Town and Tapu Village, sure, but Heahea or Konikoni or Hau'oli or Hokulani or Paniola... I had to look up all of those, and I've probably already forgotten them. This is rather egregious since Alola only has nine cities and towns (10 if you count Royal Avenue). Whereas I could easily rattle off the names of the Kantonian settlements (PalletViridianPewterCeruleanVermillionLavenderCeladonFuchsiaSaffronCinnabarIndigoPlateau) or the Hoennese ones (LittlerootOldalePetalburghRustboroDewfordSlateportMauvilleVerdanturfFallarborLavaridgeFortreeLilycoveSootopolisMossdeepPacifidlogEverGrande), the Alolan ones do not stick at all. It's all jumbled letters to me, without any context. Quite annoying, actually.