The Ultra Warp Ride had I feel one too many factors:
- Wormhole colors. There was five colors with one strictly for Ultra Beasts and the other four leading to a generic location where all the Legendaries were split between. PROBLEM: Since it was random what colors showed up you could get some runs where you never get the wormhole color you want.
- Wormhole levels. Besides colors wormholes would have additional rings and halos around them to show they have a CHANCE for a rarer Pokemon. There were four levels: basic, one halo, two halo, & three halo with aura. Obviously Legendary and Shiny Pokemon are usually encountered in the three halo with aura and sometimes two halo. PROBLEM: Combined with the above problem, even if you see the color you want it may not be the level you need it at (and sometimes you have to settle with a lesser wormhole and hope you get lucky).
- Light-years traveled. Legendaries requiring you to travel as far as you could possibly go before getting sucked in or choosing the wormhole you want. PROBLEM: So even if you find the color and level wormhole you want, it could be too early to get the Legendary you're looking for so have to pass it up hoping another will show up later on... which sometimes didn't.
- Energy orbs. In order to go further you needed to collect light orbs, however there was also dark orbs which would zap your strength. As you went further on light orbs became much rarer & dark orbs more abundant. PROBLEM: Why are the dark orbs even a thing? Also they like to show up in clusters where you either don't collect as many light orbs you wanted or accidentally get a get dark orbs that cancel out any light orbs you might have managed to get.
- Twisting Path. The Ultra Warp Ride wasn't just a straight hallway, it twist and turned and sometimes you'll lose sight of your character or don't know what's coming ahead. PROBLEM: With wormholes and energy orbs placed all about, whenever it gets to a twisty section your likely to either collect dark orbs or enter a wormhole you didn't want to enter.
Were it up to me, I would have kept the colors and light-years traveled but either drop or severely lessen the other three.
Have there only be two wormhole levels: normal & rare (rare either guaranteeing a Legendary or higher chance for a Shiny).
There's only light orbs which appear less and less the further you go.
Keep the path straight, the challenge should only be dodging the wormholes and trying to collect as many light orbs as you can to get as far in as you want.
Of course this doesn't really fix the problem with the Ultra Space worlds being kind of bland.
Now I love the aesthetics of the Ultra Beasts worlds, but many times they're just a straight path. Would have liked for it to have been an actual dungeon and getting to learn more about the environment that the Ultra Beast comes from and how it had made the Ultra Beast adapt to the way it is (also wouldn't hurt to have some normal Pokemon appear to show they're not the only inhabitant of their world, just a unique lifeform within it; some did have some unique people which I wouldn't mind to have seen more of also). And let's not get started on how disappointing Ultra Megalopolis was (an ENTIRE city of people who had to live and adapt in a world without light with their structures reflecting that design... only summed up by a hallway and simple tower).
But getting back to the point, the most boring way of doing the Legendary Hunt is just having the Legendaries appear in the generic Ultra Space worlds. Those locations are fine for normal Pokemon and even the "lesser" Legendaries, but you couldn't give the major Legendaries at least a unique looking location? Mewtwo could be in an abandoned research lab, Ho-Oh & Lugia you have to climb up a Johto-ish tower, Groudon & Heatran inside a volcano, Regigigas in what looks to be Snowpoint Temple, Kyogre & Kyurem in an deep underwater ice cave, Rayquaza on a floating island, Giratina in a Distortion World-looking place, Dialga/Palkia & Zekrom/Reshiram in some kind of celestial metaphysical place, Xerneas/Yveltal/Zygarde in a destroyed castle covered in overgrowth, etc..
While ORAS had its own problems at least the Legendary Hunt felt like, you know, a hunt. You had to either think "where would this Legendary actually be if placed in Hoenn" or just stumble across it while exploring around and soaring through the sky looking for mirage islands (or a distortion in the sky).
Yeah, Hop doing it after the first time felt dumb. Like, yeah Hop, I showed you I knew about Type advantage last time we battled, do you think I'm stupid and would forget? And instead of doing that they could have maybe showed us more and more how Hop was getting disillusioned via other triggers (knocking out his Pokemon, sending out his last Pokemon; would likely be different for each battle).
That said I didn't mind when Leon did it cause, if you watch the way both Hop and Leon battle, you'll see Hop was emulating Leon this entire time including his battle banter. A little character moment without having the actual character in it, you see how badly Hop wanted to be like Leon he copied his mannerisms. Makes me think maybe knocking Hop out of the Champion Cup was a good thing as he can find his own path... even though his secret League Card still has him mimicking her brother's secret League Card (yes, I know they're doing Leon's Charizard sign, but Hop chose the exact same background and border pattern (though the pattern color is at least different)).
Edit: Shedinja'd but I'll keep what I wrote anyway.
And it took them until SS to finally let you fix the issue.
Actually, let's talk about that. Before it felt like they didn't want you changing the Pokemon's Nature because, well, that's like changing someone's personality which would be bad. However they knew Natures locking your Pokemon with certain stat changes was an issue but chose not to do anything about it until SS. So how did they get around this complicated issue? Did they try to dance around the topic by maybe saying your sending your Pokemon to acting school? No, just feed your Pokemon this mint candy and it'll change the stat mods. Really? REALLY?! That's how you're doing it? You refused to address the issue for generations because you didn't like the idea of changing a Pokemon's personality... to only then go "oh yeah we can just change the stat mods without touching the personality".
Even I who have played since 2016 have just achieved only 10000 km walks. Evolving it takes 8000km or like 3 years?! (thankfully at times I can ask someone to do the transfer for the box, but still....)
