I have done the story and the post story. I have my thoughts right now, despite being a bit drowsy but I wish to still share them fresh after finishing the game.

The game, I really don't want to say it but this might have to be my ideal Pokemon game. It has been a very fun journey, many memorable characters that I honestly don't dislike any of the Gym Leaders, the rivals, the champion. I thought I had ideas about the Rivals and Leon, the Champion, but the game did more than I expected with them. Gave story arcs for each of the rivals.

Hop: I was thinking he was going to be another Hau. I did not like Hau in Sun/Moon. If we just didn't have a rival then I would have been fine after knowing Hau's existence. But Hop...He knows what he wants from the start, but for the first bit he's just beating his head against the wall being, your character, but it takes till Bede to knock some sense into him and realize, something's wrong and he has to reassess what he has to do to try towards his goal. By doing this, you actually see that he begins to change. He starts with a different mindset, from there he gives up on trying to exact same team he's been using and try out two different teams pretty close to one another, completely different, then he takes something good from them and uses that as he becomes more true to himself. This all while realizing, he's the younger brother of Leon but that doesn't mean he is born with skill at that point. Bede knocks him down and gives him trouble and that makes Hop end up bouncing back. He ends up losing and struggling against Gyms instead of "oh I'm going to do this Gym over here and yup, I have all the badges, no trouble at all." but you get an idea that he's struggling but won't give up. Now a few things is when you crit or use a move that is super effective, that gets annoying but post game, he doesn't do that anymore which is very nice but also feels like it's a smaller growing point.

Post game, he's struggling to figure out who he is or what he wants to be. You're champion, Leon is doing something else, he has no guidance or any idea of what he wants anymore because everything he's tried to do has not gone his way at, but upon helping the Legendaries, he figures out he wants to help others, help pokemon, help people, and become a professor. This honestly felt like a good hurdle for him as he's done so much but continues to doubt himself as his goals were just out of his grasp, he didn't completely give up despite that he really wanted to and you could tell.

Bede: I hated him at first. But as you learn more about him, how he was taken in by the Chairman, and blindly following him only wanting to impress the man who basically saved his life then tossed aside like he was nothing, Bede ended up being a better rival after Opal was introduced and sunk her nails into him making him into the new Fairy Gym leader. Even taking note that he was easily manipulable and used that to her advantage. Bede wants to prove how strong he is, but he was very blind and felt his life only had 1 type of meaning for him at any time, that being him doing as the Chairman was saying, then after his usefulness was over with, trying to prove he is better than you and he continues that but Opal helps him hone in on his skills and post game you hear that when he had taken down 3 Gigantamaxed Pokemon, then battles you, and goes off to finish taking down the last one. That in of itself is very impressive. He's very strong willed but Opal was training him nicely as he was still a jerk rival but you see his life have pseudo meaning, no meaning, what he thinks is meaning, then actually having meaning when he becomes the gym leader.

Marnie: So, she felt the weakest of the rivals on her own, but she had a reason to do what she was doing. She wanted to prove her strength almost like bringing honor back to her brother, Piers. But to be honest, that was noble but she really didn't need to in the end. She wished to show she was a capable trainer and she very much is. She starts off not being very talkative, giving off a feeling that she's behind something just because Team Yell follows her around but you see what is actually happening and that's that she's got the support of her town who just wants her to succeed even when she tells them not to do shady things. But when you get to Piers and learn about him a bit more, you see she just wants to be as good as her brother is and honor their town.

As for Gym Leaders, here's the ones that stood out the most for me.

Opal: I love just how manipulative she is. She is such a trickster and her battle actually threw me a curve ball in such a way I had to set my game down for 15 minutes to try and answer one of her questions during said battle. She throws so many trick questions but I got all of them correct (thankfully) but the fact she asks you about her age, you don't know if she wants to actually be told her age or to butter her up. She can ether get mad at you for lying to her or mad that you didn't butter her up yet you could answer truthfully and get rewarded or answer with the lie and make her pleased. Both felt like the right yet wrong answer and up to that point, you see she is very much a joker. Her Gym was quite fun being a multiple choice event. And then when she meets Bede, that was when I just outright loved her character. PINK. PINK. PINK. PINK! I was dying laughing because of her.

Piers: He was very cool to see become an asset of the end game and post game. To hand off being a Gym Leader to his sister post game and even being sarcastic about it was great for some dry humor. How he uses Team Yell, who has been hindering you up to this point more or less, to help you figure out what is going on and how to solve the problems with the situation, such as finding the guy hiding (sending Yell to help look for him.) to storming the Monorail station and putting on an impromptu concert to make people go wild so you can steal the key from the guy running away from you so you can go pursue Rose.

As for the others, I did like them all for their own personalities and seeing more of them instead of just defeating them once and moving in, fighting some of them later was very nice, then even teaming up in post game with almost all of them, that was a very delightful time I felt. They weren't just there and gone, they were around more and I loved to feel things were more alive.

The world itself: I did like exploring Galor. It's got to be one of my top 3 favorite regions to explore. Not just the Wild Area but the routes and cities. Sure the cities were huge and mostly empty but it was kinda fun to still look around and explore. It felt so alive here, it was enjoyable and I loved it.

My team: So I went through with 3 members of my team after seeing the leaks. I knew what I wanted but by the end, I dropped half and went with Pokemon I had that I felt were right. I had 1 that I added to round out my team by the end but he was just a place holder till post game when I felt more of an attachment as he ended up becoming a bit of a rival to my Inteleon in camp as the two got into fights and raced quite often it felt like and was quite fun to watch.

My end game team here was:
Inteleon- The Levelheaded Sniper
Corviknight- The Dark Knight of the Skies
Noivern- The Deafening Dragon
Grimmsnarl- The Heroic Demon
Shiftry- The Sage of the Forest
Gallade- The Fist of Valor

What felt sooooo good to me though was at the end of the main story. Inteleon's animation when he uses a Special attack is him pointing a finger gun at the opponent and firing water. Vs Leon's Charizard, I got really into it to the point I said "This is a gift from all the water types I have ever trained, to you." and pointed my finger at the screen in sync with Inteleon's animation. It felt so good to have that lined up as I finished off his Charizard and became Champion.

I have had many friends along the way, I have played since Gen 1 up to now being Gen 8. I have had teams that are mostly Water types, then up to Sun/Moon I expanded further, and now I have an even more varied team. I love these 6. I can't wait to make new friends in the future in Pokemon as I can see this having a thing similar to Ultra Sun/Moon or even a sequel as it feels like they have set up for it. But I'm looking forward to it. I have made good friends in this game and I know I'm not done yet with things to do. This game is, without a doubt, one of my most favorite games of the year and of the series. It does have it's issues here and there but I'm not going to nitpick things. The game set out to tell a new story, and I think it did just that and I am so very pleased and satisfied with it.