Disappointment and Disillusionment
After a long drought, the first piece of definitive game news hit us at long last, around last year's February. Was it what we wanted? No, it felt off at the get-go and only got worse as time went on, culminating in a catastrophe that can be said to have crashed the entire franchise with no survivors. What the hell went wrong?

It should be noted that all perception is colored by the beholder's own attitudes and prejudices: people see what they want to see. Still, I feel like I'm being honest here, even though impartial judgement might be impossible here because of an inexcusable decision crippling the entire game for me.
So what is it? The original sin of Sun/Moon is the sickening removal of Triple and Rotation Battles. No niceties, I will not spin it into "replacing" or some crap, since the truth of the matter is that the new and advanced formats that were gradually nurtured and expanded over the course of six years were straight-up removed, and behind happy faces, politics and pleasantries "they" want us to think that nothing has happened and everything is fine. On the contrary, this betrayal of trust shatters the entire foundation of this game and series and any scrounging for positives from here on is simple damage control.

The Renegades
The Pokémon franchise was character-driven, not in the usual sense of talking and acting characters in-story, but designs and the attached baggage, and the individual game characters that could be raised and battled with, and (this is the important part), transferred into new games. This was the single biggest advantage of the series, one that was built up gradually with conservative game & design choices and ensured that competitors in the genre would have a very poor foothold, relatively. Not only is the familiarity present in the general monster designs, but in the individual characters that could be carried over from game to game.

The past tense is intentional. Like with many other occasions here, the words sprang to my mind --"you're actually insane if you think..." in this case, "you're actually insane if you think I'll transfer my Pokémon to this crap, doomed, hopeless world". The monsters exists as tools in a toolbox: each has its task in the specific context. Now, the context has been thrown away, and my tools are useless, if I were foolish enough to permanently migrate them into a worthless world where their purpose has been taken away. I have no faith in this loathsome present, nor in the grim future.

With the loss of faith: secessionism, division, weakness. A crumbling empire. I've always believed that as long as the institution is sincere, it is to be supported and cooperated with. When the essential ideals are corrupted and forgotten, so must the old allegiances, built on trust and goodwill, be discarded. Though I've now joined the ranks of the renegades, I still believe those who did so before me were wrong in their reasoning.

Damage Control
In a fantasy world, where conscience doesn't exist, let's pretend that the deathblow of the franchise doesn't happen at all and look at the game from other fronts. It can still be enjoyed on its own... that's what I hoped to think, but the finality of the downfall spares no aspect from banality and monumentally bad decisions. The betrayal of Triple and Rotation struck the game down, the rest finished it off.

The game world is incredibly unappealing. "Alola" is a collection of the worst kind of surface-level stereotypes and tired tropes that set the tone well for the childish design style plaguing the entire game. At this point it's obvious that the region choice is influenced -- basically completely -- by where Japanese people like to go for a vacation. This elephant in the room, the tiresome Japanocentrism that had undermined the globalistic ideas touted by the series in its final years, is nowhere as obnoxious or embarrassing as here. We have authentic palm trees, forgettable hula hula ooga booga names for locales and plenty of brown people, but in the end: your character is Japanese, the world is presented from the viewpoint of a Japanese tourist, and overall exists just to serve as an amusing, temporary spectacle for the Japanese player. We are very global, but only if it's interesting to Japan. We like diversity, but only if it means Single and Double Battles only. We don't like the way you play, so get lost. You cannot disagree with someone as global and tolerant as we.

The entire game has the stink of vapid spectacles and sanctimonious preaching with no depth, meaning or context. First impression is important, and from the very first, I thought that something was very wrong.

There has been much discontent about the first part of the game, where railroading is at an all-time high and the watching of pointless cutscenes is the name of the game. Generally, I don't much care how much tutorials there are at the beginning of a Pokémon game, since you only play that part once, in a game that lasts hundreds of hours. Except here, disinterest and disgust settle in well before the hundred-hour mark, so the intelligence-insulting handholding in the first island delivers an inflated impact. The beginning is promising enough, with a stylish JRPG-esque cutscene of the "mysterious" Lillie running away from the Aether Foundation. Even with leaks nonwithstanding, you'll know everyone and every place here from the pre-release promo material, so the mystery falls flat.
When the actual gameplay starts, it gets unbelievable. There is really nothing here that is specific and unique to the game or region; it's all just going through the motions, for the most part rehashing the beginnings of Hoenn, but the cutscenes just keep coming like I'm supposed to care about any of this. The things presented here could be part of any Pokémon game: introduction to [insert region here], meeting Professor John Doe, meeting your new best friend, choosing your starter, learning about catching Pokémon, Pokémon Centers, etc.. Not only that, but also some rather pointless padding courtesy of the annoying characters that want you to care about them. I won't care about something just because you tell me to: there needs to be context, depth, a reason for it all. And in this subsection, the characters fail the test as well. I saw demographics, not characters. Professor "What is up, fellow kids", new black best friend who is exotic and amusing to the Japanese player, otaku-bait Lillie and the worst of all, kid-appeal unholy marriage of Clippy and Poochie, RotomDex: none of them endear to me, because I saw and felt them to be attempts to pander to specific types of players, not people in a world.

Introduction to gameplay is tiresome to veterans, the characters are not genuine, so the one aspect that remains is the world. As said before: this is a collection of surface-level tropes put together to create an impression of interest and dedication, but after the initial romp through, or even during it, one can't but help notice how shallow and pointless everything is. Nothing in the world has real meaning behind it; the story is basically a series of events given no explanation or context. The gameplay is removed of depth; what remains of the basic elements have been locked behind tiresome busywork to give an impression of meaning. More strongly than in any of the games before, Sun & Moon have a theme binding everything together: vapidity. All through the game, from the outward elements and the meat of the gameplay itself, this is apparent: people with appearances but no motives, lands with names but no history, gameplay with no meaning in the rules, merchandise with no reason to like that which is marketed.

The story is overall boring, and nothing comes together. There is a wannabe "Team Skull", with whom you have sparse encounters, with the expectation of elaboration later. Well, that doesn't come. The other "evil team" is the Aether Foundation, which likewise made players expect some unforeseen plot developments. Wrong again, Aether unsurprisingly becomes hostile at one point, then after the relevant part, it's as if nothing ever happened. There is a bit of irrelevant "Ultra Beast" nonsense, but it comes and goes so quickly with no consequence that it's hard to even remember. An alien invasion is hyped, and briefly shown in the pre-release videos even. One alien and the yellow legendary clash, and what next? Absolutely nothing at all. The result of that battle, or any other battle, is not shown or talked about. You might expect to go out and see aliens attacking everything, but nothing is happening and everybody is acting as if nothing happened. Well, they'd be right.
With the "great revelation" of the mascot legendary being related to the aliens comes... nothing, again. You teleport to a place that looks like the Impact Crater from Metroid Prime, and face the crazy woman in another average Pokémon battle, and then... nothing, the UB nonsense is swept away and becomes irrelevant, and the UBs are apparently just normal Pokémon after all. I kept playing, but the focus shifted to the Elite 4 and overall the UB stuff seems like so many other things in this game: a disconnected, irrelevant, showy gimmick with no depth whatsoever. There might have been more after the credits, but there is no desire to play a game this bad for any longer than necessary.

And that Team Skull? The leader is shown to be friends with the crazy woman, or something, and is then swept away and forgotten. That's it! Like a cut-off tumor. I wish the same could be done for this game. The dungeon/town crawling with Skull thugs? It stays like that forever, and nothing at all has changed since your last visit. This is the point where I really lost faith that this game could do anything competently. I see it like this. The official site revealed a bunch of stuff, and normally they'd just be little previews of what is to come. Here, though, that's basically it. Nothing is elaborated upon, there is no reason to care about anything at all here, because nothing will be developed or finished. Certainly not all those empty lots.

Thorough the game Lillie is fixated upon you like a satellite, unable to do anything herself, and is such a dishonest, emotionally manipulative character that I'm glad she goes away. You might even care about the "Nebby" plot, but then you take one look online and see that from the get-go, there have been Nebby™ plushies and Lillie's™ Bag™ merch for sale. Nothing at all about this game is sincere. It's all junk that is designed to lure in players with crap like the endless "heh heh, remember Kanto?" moments, then fool the feebleminded into buying the garbage merch that has been planned since day one and making them think that the game isn't an unmitigated disaster.

The earliest signs of this dishonest design came before, though. When the new gimmick is announced together with a ridiculous toy and immediately marketed, there is reason to have worry.

Z-rank sincerity

What's the gimmick that was purposely leaked beforehand, that had lukewarm reception before and after, that brings no meaning, has no meaning, yet is said by the marketers to have meaning? This is the name of the demon: Z-moves.

False Game Freak, masters of the long con, tricked us good, but unfortunately for us, not in the positive manner. What preceded the SM announcement was a drought of a mystery train of conspiracies, wrapped in an enigma, bound by the symbol that was both predictable and mysterious: Z. We were lead to believe that the 20th anniversary celebration was also for something else than an excuse to sell more "exclusive" merchandise, a celebration of the journey to this point, not merely the beginning and the end but also everything in between. All walks of life could claim to have unity in Pokémon, the faithful friend for when fortune fades. Then it hit us, and hit us some more: the announcement of the "helpful" Rotom Pokédex, an awful, mandatory kid-appeal character that stands in sharp contrast of the tasteful ambiguity, maturity yet inclusivity that the series had developed with Black/White and X/Y. However! The real kicker that sealed the deal came with Z-moves, or Cringe-moves or Chuuni-moves as I like to call them.

The perpetual shonen audience, that kid with the Charizard knowing Flamethrower, Fire Blast, Fire Spin and Cut, was the one to rejoice. The rest of us groaned, and for a series spanning 20 years and all walks of life, as portrayed by TPC themselves, that's a lot of people. Representative of the other major theme in Sun & Moon: pandering of the perpetual, profitable audience, and abandoning everyone else because your diverse reputation can still take that.

The acquisition of the plot item required to use Z-moves is acquired considerably earlier than the closest equivalent, the Mega Ring. The devil's advocate says that this is because Z-moves scale in a more balanced manner when acquired early, but the realist knows that this is to introduce the gimmick as early as possible to the young Japanese boy playing the game so that the audience wanting to buy Z-ring merch is as big as possible.
Naturally, since introduction is rushed, the actual context and meaning behind the concept of Z-moves is equally shallow.
What is their origin?
How are they activated?
What is their meaning?
Why is nothing reacting to the great destruction they are shown to bring about?
The last one might seem like nitpicking, a minor peeve at the bottom of a long list of atrocities, but it goes to show the regression since Black/White. The entire series and its meanings were delightfully deconstructed and reconstructed in that game, beginning with the surprising consequences of allowing Pokémon to battle in someone's room. In a bleak turn, the substance, world building and context of Black/White have been replaced by tasteless spectacle with no meaning. This is worse than regression; it's purposeful and conscious dumbing down and childish appeal. The early games were blank slates; Sun/Moon are a slate defaced with inane scribbles. The inactivity of the wise is preferable to the efforts of the simple-minded.

In terms of gameplay, the concept of Z-moves is nowhere near as satisfying or inspired as the usual comparision, Mega Evolution. Acquiring a Mega Evolution has two components: the base Pokémon and the Mega Stone. Once both are in the player's possession, the eligible Pokémon can be upgraded into a "hero unit", each with a specific profile and design behind it. The player must think about how to maximize the potential by having the Mega work together with the team as a whole. Does the Mega patch a hole in weaknesses, or will the team play to its strengths and support the Mega with things such as weather? What moves will the Mega have, and what role do they have in the overall strategy? The choices are satisfying, and the mechanic interacts with other game play elements in a much more natural way, over a longer course than a single move.

When it comes to Cringe-moves, words such as "generic" and "boring" come to mind. Instead of the power being specially distributed over certain subjects, everyone gets an unsatisfying portion. Which Pokémon should sacrifice an item slot for a slightly higher-power move with one use? Should I care? Gems are nothing new and coating them with embarrassing animations doesn't help. Practically everyone can use every type of Chuuni-move, and the result is that the player has no real emotional bond over any of them. The move has no personality, and the mechanics involved are banal. The Pokémon-specific Z-moves fare no better. They are incredibly limited, one-trick-pony gimmicks that only work with a specific move (and Pokémon!), and the visuals are even more embarrassing and decidedly un-Pokémon-like than the regular super attacks.

The only bright side is the way Z-moves interact with status moves. Instead of simply doing damage, a variety of surprising side effects are applied to the move. In a foolish move, powerful effects are applied to some event-only moves, but the lack of future for the franchise dulls the pain from this. It's sad that the only interesting and versatile Z-moves are also the most generic ones, with no special visuals attached. What does this tell us? Style (in poor taste) over substance is the name of the game, and the game play suffers, mortally.
Z-moves have no interesting game play dynamics, encourage limited formats with small team sizes, have no charisma, fit poorly in the world, are offered no elaboration or shown any reason to belong, and are a fitting harbinger of the series of deathblows that Sun/Moon deal to the franchise.

Tourist Trap

Another gimmick that ties in to the lame, plastic world discussed above is the element replacing the role of Gyms, Trials. To begin with, there aren't too many of them, one less than the usual 8 Gyms, and at least one exists in name only. Supposedly Trials reflect the "unique" "culture" of the region, but end up resembling yet another banal tourist trap. Why? When you enter one and go through the dialogue explaining the Trial™s, you go in to the area and are informed that the Trial™ has begun. You cannot leave without giving up, and it all happens in a contained area. Accordingly, the trials feel like scripted piperuns, some fun thingie that tourists go through and then forget about on the way to the next diversion. Sound familiar? The themes binding this game together run deep indeed. The things you do in the Trial™s are banal as well... To summarize, you go to the next spot and press A until you face the boss... not a trainer, but a Pokémon, yes, the Gym Leaders... I mean "kahunas" are battled after you've done all of the tourist traps on a given island. The boss Pokémon encounters are one of the few inspired segments of the game, and remind of the fun times and intriguing strategies of PokéStar Studios and Triple Battles. Unfortunately no explanation was given for the particular mechanics involving these bosses. Why do they get boosting auras? Why are they so special? One of the core tenets of the series was that all Pokémon can be yours, and enemies are simply specially configured, or trained, Pokémon individuals, and it all makes the game transition seamlessly into multiplayer situations. Here, though, you face special enemies with unique powers, and at a disadvantage: an extra enemy is often summoned, but you can't send another one of your own to compensate. Very disappointing, considering the best moments of the series are from the ultimately balanced design where everything is connected to something else and nothing feels artificial. The Pokémon series was like a patiently tended tree, carefully made to grow in a specific, graceful manner. Now, it was handed to a witless cretin that cut off its branches and wanted it to bend left instead of right, so he bent it left until it gave and snapped. The tree is now broken and uprooted, and will rot away, but I will always remember it at the height of its bloom!

After defeating the boss, you are shown the pedestal containing a Cring.. I mean, Z-Crystal. Touch it and you are informed by a lame cut scene that you have acquired a new Z-Crystal™ and the "Trial™ [is] Completed". None of this feels real or sincere, especially since you can find some other Z-Crystals lying around with no special cut scene attached to them. Why is this stupid "trial" important? Why is this crystal important? No answers were shown, so I really can't connect with the character spinning in joy like a moron. I felt like I walked through a plastic tourist attraction, faced "danger" and "excitement", and bought a lame souvenir.

The worst of a bad lot has to be the ghost trial. There is nothing you can do on your own initiative; even if you try to wander off you must press A on the correct spot, or nothing will happen. After this tiresome hallway resembling a second-rate haunted house, you have to take a picture (yet ANOTHER lame gimmick, more on that soon), but the target is nowhere in sight, except, completely predictably, behind you. "Spooked", you'll take a picture and the boss is none other than the sickening, artificial, merchandise-wannabe scrawling on a potato sack. I have to give this special emphasis. Mimikyu is the most artificial, insincere, predictable and transparent design possible. The "ironic", terminally insincere focus group will eat it right up, because what's not to love? A "scary" but "cute" ghost that is actually sad and evokes "feels" in these cretins of a target audience. Even if by some miracle the series recovers from death to life-support, blighted sores like this will forever taint the series. This and the other crappy Pokémon will never go away, "Alola" will always remain an (embarrassing) chapter of canon, Z-Crap will always loom somewhere, and the returning old characters will forever be tainted by their presence in this festering muck.
Thus, chances at redemption are minimal at best: even if a future game would try to correct all these mistakes, the damage has been done, and that damage is severe.

After the trials comes the Elite 4, and no attempt is made to make it feel special or fitting, and for your last opponent you are treated to Professor Woo!'s ugly mug one last time. Well, not the last, because the cutscenes still keep coming even after wiping the floor with him and the rest of the puny region. Then, you get the Hall of Fame, viewing of which has been brutalized into a single NPC's text-only briefing; the Hall of Fame has been a staple feature since the first games, where it was more advanced and informative.

The ending cutscenes deserve special mention. Maybe to tie the ending with the beginning, you have to watch an unbelievably long and pointless series of cutscenes before you even get to the credits. This isn't an epic JRPG where the fate of all the universe is decided and then shown in detail... Again, all of this "celebration" could apply to any game in the series! Yet BW2 and XY convey the jubilation in a much more concise and effective manner in a fraction of the time. "Alola"'s way of celebrating a new Champion consists of about eight people standing around. Work soft, party soft! The ending cut scenes and battle in XY came as a legitimate surprise and wrapped up the AZ plotline in a satisfying manner. It was cheesy, but sincere. ORAS did the post-credits thing again, but there the idea was to return to the ret-conned intro location, and to beat May one last time. Cool, but repetitive, and not dynamite like the XY ending. In Sun/Moon, the idea is "just do it again, and for longer". I could think of something else that could have been done again, such as Triple Battles, you insolent curs. The worst part is that the game tries to make you catch a legendary in the middle of the ending cutscenes. A nice trap to make people catch it with a worthless nature, either out of ignorance or fear that it might not respawn. The tiresome barrage of cutscenes ends someday and you can finally continue playing. Theoretically speaking, of course, since the game is a plastic, barren wasteland of few battle formats, relevant mechanics or things to do. Why would I want to spend any more time in this crappy, cursed region? Are you nuts? It makes me feel disgusted at itself, myself and the world. I would much rather continue to run around Hoenn as I've done for over 2000 hours, that is if Sun/Moon hadn't killed my interest in the series.

The "new" features are so pointless that I might not even feel like talking about them, but their lackings have to be explained as well...

The photo-taking gimmick is another feature that might make you think it's an upgraded version of XY's version, but think again, because the locations are boring and few, you're forced to grind points, your guy isn't in the picture, the camera has fewer features and is that obnoxious piece of junk RotomDex. Nothing about the photo-taking feels organic or natural. You have some specific Pokémon spawns walking specific routes, and you must take identical pictures because you have to grind points in order to get more features on the camera. All the while you're cringing because of the tragically stupid lines the RotomDex spews, in addition to the fake "social media" comments. This is the absolute nadir of Pokémon writing. The point system makes you feel like the photos exist for them, and it makes taking pictures that YOU like (instead of the computer) unsatisying. Not that there is much interest in that, since the photo spots are distinctly more plain and ugly than the ones in XY.

The Festival Plaza apes Join Avenue like no tomorrow, but misses all the points that made it satisfying or worthwhile, while dumbing it down and making it reliant on luck and grinding. Another metaphor... so tiresome. The worst thing, however, is that the PSS functionality is MOVED here, with no alternative for online play. The PSS functionality is MOVED here, with no alternative. This is so unbelievably stupid that it had to be said twice. After the awkward Wi-Fi waiting room systems earlier, the PSS suddenly made multiplayer features fast and intuitive. The only major lacking was that, ironically, actually searching for a specific player among strangers was akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. When it came to interacting with people you already know and have on your friend list, or random strangers, there were no complaints. Slick and intuitive, as it should be.

All that is thrown into the trash in favor of a system that resembles an unholy combination of the Union Room, the Wi-Fi waiting room, Wi-Fi Plaza and Join Avenue. A fast and effective GUI changed for a silly and cumbersome in-world representation... now, where have we seen this before? That's right. Microsoft Bob. I can think of no better comparison. The only difference is that Bob was a separately sold graphical shell, a spin-off of sorts, whereas Sun/Moon, along with all of its other crap and removals, is the next, mandatory part in the series. If you think Vista was bad, coming from XP, change that into Bob and you know how I feel.

The shops, the meat of the Join Avenue experience, have been butchered in translation. The single biggest mistake is that shops CANNOT level up; they will remain at the level they were recruited at. I still have in my Join Avenue a raffle shop, max level, ran by a NPC Youngster that I got the day I began playing the game. Can't do that here. Basically the only way is to get a random level-up gift, or ask random players if they have the shop you want. (Every time you talk, the characters do this unbelievably stupid hand-waving animation. If that moron NPC hadn't suggested that, maybe your character wouldn't be cursed into doing ridiculous hand-waving every time they talk to someone on the Wi-Fi Limbo. And you need to talk a LOT. Another example of the harebrained design plaguing the game: extreme short-sightedness. This regional crap in particular overstays its welcome in record time. )
If they do have that shop, prepare to pay an exorbitant amount of "Festival Coins" that you don't have. Oops! How to get them? Long story short, play multiplayer missions, and a lot of them. The most effective one involves answering type-effectiveness quizzes, and.... hand-waving! Aaaaargh!! When you've finally ponied up the coins over a monotonous, braindead journey, the shop is yours. The shops want coins too, so better get back to grinding.
Why coins? PokéDollar/yen is one of the most untrustworthy currencies out there, it seems. Everyone's making their own special currency because the inflation is out of hand. BW2 had some good uses for money with Join Avenue, but here it's back to the same old, but also the new, which involves hours of hand-waving and talking to strangers. Sad!

Also, unlike Join Avenue, no attempt is made to integrate the Festival Plaza into the game world. At some point, you can just teleport there from a menu, with no explanation given. It's nowhere to be seen in the game world, and is all-around a non-entity. The revolting eyesore of a character that disgraces the place with his presence is seen elsewhere later, but aside from an off-handed mention, the Festival Plaza is brushed aside. Festival Plaza? What festival? Why? There is no reason to care.
I don't know about you, but given the choice between training and grinding for coins to buy points equivalent of training, I'd rather do the training myself. That is if the region and game didn't instill within me a deep disgust towards the human condition.

When it comes to the rideable Pokémon, the main reason is obviously that the blue blur (not Sonic) just won't cut it when everything else in the game world has much more detail. So, you'll have to do with some stranger's Pokémon, and you must wear a full set of riding gear that appears and disappears instantaneously and is never given any explanation or acknowledgement. This system is integrated rather poorly, again. It doesn't feel like there is a significant link between it and the region, and the rideable Pokémon are given to you so casually that there is no reason to feel anything for them. That is, other than contempt for the moron Tauros that serves as the arbitrary roadblock for the first part of the game. The Tauros functions as a poor man's bicycle, as it's larger and more cumbersome, and needs you to hold B to go at full speed. It and some others have the capability to clear obstacles, but this is woefully underutilized. The only time when you might feel like exploring with it is when you first get the Tauros, since by that time you've seen a lot of the rocks. This is no Zelda or Metroid, or even any past Pokémon game. There are simply not enough times when you have the opportunity or interest to clear an old obstacle with a new tool. The most pointless of all is the horse. All of the relevant obstacles are seen AFTER you get it, so it's simply a matter of going through the motions! There are no engaging mechanics involved, either. You just have to go on it to go through the gravel, then dismount in order to move faster than a snail and not look like a dork. Boring and underutilized mechanic overall, but that's what you get when the world design combines the worst parts of tile-based and fully 3D mapping. Your movement is restricted to a small area because no mechanics exist for travelling in uneven terrain, and the playable area is not dynamic or engaging either, resembling a fancy hallway.

A special note on fishing: Fishing is now only possible at predetermined spots. Very lame! It wasn't something I did often, lately, but this is yet another thing that goes a long way toward making the game world seem artificial and limited.

Poké Pelago is a great example of more thoughtless design. In short, you can do some basic functions like level and EV train, and collect items, but you need to get beans. How to get beans? Click the things you can, then wait. Then spend the beans and wait some more. It all functions like a parody of ""smart""phone macrotransaction platforms, in an attempt to attract the most braindead audience possible. This exemplifies the unsatisfying distribution of gameplay elements in this game. Instead of going out into the world and making use of the various routes and cities (both of them), you have to do endless monotonous grinding in a disconnected side area. When I play a game, I want to spend it on meaningful and satisfying things, not wait because the game designers are hacks that try to artificially stretch small amounts of actual content.

You get some beans from the cafe area in the Pokémon Center, which might be the most stillborn and useless feature in the game. Since the left half of the center interior is dedicated to this cafe, you'd expect it to be significant, right? Well, no. You have a choice of ordering a few different beverages, and the first one every day gives you some beans, and possibly some other items. Other than that? Nothing! You may get some different comments depending on the place you order, but there is no substance whatsoever to this "feature". In addition, the proprietor doesn't even have a little plate under the cup he gives you, no spoon, and certainly no sugar or other niceties. Even lemonade gets served in a random plate-less cup, like you're in someone's house and all the glasses are dirty. Very unprofessional! With the combination of this subpar service and the dissonant music, the desire to leave the Pokémon Center and "Alola" itself becomes great indeed.

Medals got brutalized into a form so pathetic that I don't want to speak more of it.

The Global Link is also a shadow of its former self. No logbook, no medals, no Dream World or attractions, no interesting stats. Sad!
Also, fittingly, the last tournament in the old Global Link was in the Triple Battle format. Make everyone raise teams for a format that will be removed in a month, nice!

Music I don't even want to think about... Everything about this is so twisted and broken that all of it just resembles a dirge to forgotten dreams and lost hope. It will certainly not find its way to my music folder, and now all the previous soundtracks also only remind me of a vision of a future that is no more.

I almost forgot about the demo version. Thankfully there are no hoops to jump through to just download it this time, but it still has annoying mechanics that make playing it feel like a chore, if you even feel like playing it, since all you can practically use is... "Ash-Greninja". That piece of shit is the ugliest thing I've ever seen! Has nothing to do with anything, and only exists to pander to the eternal shonen audience. The definitive "jumping the shark" moment for Pokémon.

But wait. What was that thing originally announced in conjucation with? Zygarde, of course. How does it factor into everything?
Like everything else: in a disconnected and unsatisfying manner. At some point you meet Sina and Dexio from XY (it should be noted that the developers stole the "S & D have nothing to do with the mysterious masked heroes" joke for Professor Shirtless, in an excruciatingly unfunny manner). Without any real reason, they give you a thing that can collect Zygarde cores that are scattered around the region. Why? Don't know. Then, when you collect enough, you can assemble a Zygarde, in a place located rather far along the plot tunnel, so don't bother searching for cores early. It is the dog form. Why is it a dog? Don't know. What's the deal with its moves, Thousand Waves, Thousand Arrows and all that? Don't know. Why is Zygarde in "Alola" and not Kalos in the first place? Don't know. Nothing gets answered. It all doesn't come together. Very disappointing.

The character customization feature is present, sort of, and the writing was on the wall early on for this feature as well. Firstly, your character is a little kid again. In ORAS that might have been acceptable if you can take the sometimes slavishly accurate translation of certain aspects from the original games. But for completely new games, on the heels of BW and XY, it's telling of the ever-present regression and shonen pandering that this game represents. I simply don't care about customizing my character when at best he'll look like a little kid trying to look grown-up. Do note that all of this is written from the perspective of someone who always plays as the boy character.

When it comes to skin tones, there's the addition of a very dark skin to the 3 choices XY gave us.
When it comes to hair styles, boys got shafted again, if only slightly less. There are a few more styles and colors.
When it comes to clothes, there are no choices at all. Basically, there are only baseball caps and fedoras, t-shirts and tank tops, shorts, sneakers, and ordinary backpacks. I say it again, there are ONLY shorts! It is not possible to wear pants that cover your ankles! Unbelievable. This alone messes up many outfit ideas, if the terminal lack of shirts didn't. The trailers and game try to trick you into thinking there is a great amount of variety in the clothes by prominently presenting the dyes feature. I simply don't care what color you can color your clothes, since the clothes and the body underneath them suck in the first place. No matter how high your multiplier is, the result is still zero if you have nothing to multiply with! The dying is of course accessible with the incredibly tiresome coin-grinding nonsense explained above. You can also buy clothes directly from other player-NPCs, but this is again luck-based and possibly so expensive it makes you think violent thoughts about the person responsible for the greedy NPC in your game.

There is the option of removing your hat, but there are so few hat types to begin with that it practically counts as a separate "hat". You can also wear sunglasses, but the hat ornaments section is gone, so the only real change is that it's your character wearing the glasses instead of the hat.

There is also an out-of-the-way feature that lets you change the way your character throws Poké Balls. This is gimped as well, since it only changes the initial throw at the beginning of the battle, and your character still throws balls at wild Pokémon the same way, and continues to stand awkwardly and laboriously no matter the "style".
Between the customization in XY and SM, I'd much rather choose XY's. The color choices are few and often garish, but the amount of unique clothes is much greater and your character isn't a little kid that looks like he's going to Sunday school.

When it comes to EV training, regression strikes again. With the huge amount of Pokémon and individual builds available, the increased methods to train your Pokémon that came with XY were welcome. Super Training could be used to gain EVs anywhere without specific arrangements, or everything could be powered through fast by combining Pokérus, Power items, Horde Battles (also gone! They won't stop until only 3v3 single battles are left!)and the Exp. Share. Here, though, the "best" option is to wait and then wait some more for the phone-waiter-Pelago to train your Pokémon, so you don't need to do anything, except wait. Why the hell would I want to do that? I want to play, I want to spend time with my Pokémon that I carefully plan and hatch. Where is the substance? If you want that, you could do the old grind, or a drudge through obnoxious wild double battles, hoping that the enemy summons help. Very transparently a ghetto attempt at copying the Horde Battle functionality, obviously gone because the gibbering imbecile of a director thinks graphical nonsense is more important than the depth and variety of gameplay.

Each game varies in its way of offering the player Exp. Points through battles. In recent memory, the most bare-bones system would be in BW, where there were a fixed amount of semi-random trainer battles per day, and the invaluable help of our dear Audino friends. BW2 had all of that plus some bloodthirsty Breeders, and the interesting semi-facility in Black City/White Forest. XY only offered the "confined within a single building" type of leveling, but ORAS has it delightfully right with its wide variety of "respawning" trainers out in the world who may even drop items upon defeat, encouraging ad-hoc adventuring and sightseeing. Not only that, there are also the player-populated Secret Bases, and the unscrupulous may even powerlevel everything with unarmed Lv. 100 Blissey teams.
Sun/Moon? Cheese the buffet restaurant by retiring early and going in again, and beating the few morons there over and over again. Other than that? No good wild Pokémon, so... Elite 4 grinding. Unbelievable. Regressed way back into the very first games. In ORAS the combination of daily events, Secret Bases, rebattlable trainers and other things makes it endlessly replayable, and makes you travel around the region during daily life in a satisfying and meaningful manner. Here, if I even wanted to do that, the options are so few and disconnected from each other that I'd much rather just let this disgrace gather dust in the shelf.

As a side note, the "X = exit" feature for menus that was added in BW has been removed. An incredibly poor choice, as it was among the simplest, yet most effective solutions for making navigating menus as quick as possible. Out of muscle memory, you'll press X a lot in menus here, which now does some context-sensitive shortcut nonsense nobody needed or asked for.
L=A is still here, but it is also still unsupported. Random, useful UI functions suddenly become unusable because they are mapped only to L and A, whereas in XY and ORAS they were used for minor things like switching bottom screens and boxes (which you could also do by other means), and doing tricks while soaring. I recognize the need to make all play experiences equal, but why not even support the New 3DS's ZL and ZR buttons?

Another thing that I almost completely forgot to discuss: the bottom screen. They looked at the transition from Platinum/HGSS to BW, and only took the very worst. The touch screen is useless junk again. The PSS has become Game Freak Bob, Super Training is gone, Pokémon Amie has been relocated, records are gone and TV's only shill malalsalsaladas, DexNav is gone, and the world map has become a minimap, the only function the bottom screen now has. But instead of the remainder of the screen being thumbnails and shortcuts to the other functions, it is now occupied by RotomDex's big, ugly, blinking face. This is another major thing that greatly disincentives me from playing the game for any longer than necessary. Clippy is always there, watching, distracting you with his ugliness and blinking. Touching your location tells you where to go next in the plot tunnel. Now, what happens once the tutorial is done and the credits are long gone? You are only given a useless, generic comment. Another short-sighted feature that becomes worthless in short order. The map itself does not really offer any info, and given the still fixed camera, is not supposed to be too helpful either, as you would expect to see everything you need to see at any given moment. This is not the case, though, and more than ever, if you go in the "wrong" direction, you can't see anything in front of you, and this is where you need the map. Using a bandaid to fix your own flawed design, bad!

As a consequence of the Super Training screen being gone, you cannot see your own team without going into the menu. I never hatched any eggs here, because the game disgusts me, but this should prove to be very annoying, since you will need to count the amount of eggs hatched or check the party screen periodically, instead of just seeing at a glance whether you've hatched all the eggs with you.

The 12-hour time shift is a gimmick so stupid that it deserves special mention. Because of this silly system, nighttime obviously must be so bright that it's basically daytime with a blue tint. In battle, the models practically glow in the night environment because they lack the darkening nighttime models receive in XY and ORAS. The times of day are also busted. It becomes night ridiculously early, obviously to make sure that everyone sees both times of day in a given session. It ends up breaking immersion, not only because it's ridiculous for night to come so early, but also because the reason for it is so transparently meta. What breaks immersion even more is the pathetically crude transition of the sky. In both XY and ORAS the sky and lighting is rather elaborate but transitions smoothly -- the only clear break is when the model lighting changes from dark to light in the morning and night. In Sun/Moon however, there are many, many clearly noticeable "stages" that the sky suddenly jumps to when it's time. It looks ridiculous and shatters what little immersion is left. Also, the problems with fake perspective STILL aren't fixed -- you can clearly see sections of stars hovering midair, for instance.

Battle Royal finishes the series of unsatisfying and disconnected features. There is no reason to think it somehow belongs in the "culture" of the region other than a single, lazy, offhanded mention about guardians or something, and the core design serves no one's interests. Similar to the PWT in BW2, you are forced to enter once in an easy version of the normal entry, but since the Battle Royal ends when one person's team is out, the match ends very quickly and unceremoniously. Then it's just swept aside and forgotten. If you want to stick around and try it again, you'll quickly change your mind, since the enemies are fully evolved level 50 Pokémon that will sweep the floor with your underleveled, underevolved, nature-impaired, inferior-IV'd, schizo-EV'd band of misfits. No attempt is made to have an easier option for earlier teams. Why? Even way back in the Battle Subway there were the normal lines full of not fully evolved Pokémon, but here, in a facility where you would (theoretically) want to battle earlier to properly try out and practice in the new format, there is no such option. If you even want to try the Pokémon equivalent of a two-minute point match in Super Smash Bros.. The fundamental problem is: you do not feel like you're in control. The only possible opportunity for that to feel "fun" is with 3 friends, but good luck with that. NO ONE likes when the computer player ""wins"", except in Mario Retardy (and even then if it's not Daisy). You can't even watch bot matches here (the VS seeker still does not let you search for videos in-game, by the way! Hope you like inputting long codes if you can find them!). Is this your idea of evolving the appointed purpose of Rotation Battles? It's more like contests in battle form, and I have never liked contests, I tell you what. That this crappy slide show of a "format" is in and Triples is not fills me to the core with disgust and contempt for all of mankind. Masuda, you have swiftly changed your status from hero to traitor and will be dealt with accordingly.

Downfall

When I decided that I will not take the "Alola" crap a minute longer, I withdrew all of my Pokémon from the Bank, deleting trash beforehand to make room, let my subscription run out, looked at the empty boxes, and saw a new feature that compiles statistics into a central location. Looking at the thousands of hatched eggs and other stats across X and Alpha Sapphire, I felt a strange bit of closure. Like in Star Fox 64, after clearing the game, you are taken to the high score screen, looking at your accomplishments and history while the wistful menu theme plays in the background. That's when I knew that there was nothing left for me but finish this image and all the associated baggage... Then, I could have some closure, for the first time in many years.

Now what? I've fallen, and the only thing to do now is to pick up the pieces. Pokémon was the last hope I had for the video game industry, the city on the hill that would inspire everyone else to be as honest and good. With this atrocity, and the foreseeable platform for next games being a paid-online, DLC-ridden disgrace, the last light went out and we are alone in the darkness. I would have gone with you to the end. The only thing I want now when it comes to future of games is to let the dead rest in peace.

In truth I knew that my faith in the Pokémon series was both my strength and a fatal weakness. It's like an unstoppable force and an immovable object, but a single strike into a pressure point shatters everything. In the summer of 2015 I took the first steps towards building something of my own, so that my anchor is not on any external, vulnerable factor. The downfall happened much faster than I thought, however, and I'm badly unprepared to go forward with those plans. It will be years before the prerequisite steps are completed.

Now more than ever, I feel like I have to be in seclusion. All of this has been so tiresome, and all of my efforts have been for naught... perhaps. Every time I was finished, I was soon locked into meeting the next deadline, in a never-ending cycle. Now, maybe, I can be free for the first time in years... I'll see what I can do. The next part of my training I have to go alone. My public activity will be sporadic at best.

The next major project won't be completed soon... years, perhaps.
This is something I've got to do for myself.