>>46506800Unironically this.
If you were actually around during the global launch period, the game had a-lot of activity. Friend safari exchange, Vivillon hunting, setting up Wonder boxes to send off breedjects for the holidays. E-Shop shut down during PokeBank's release because Nintendo couldn't handle the bloody traffic. Casuals were dipping their toes into online thanks to Super Training and the ease of access that PSS provided. VGC14 was a memorable year for casual and competitive players alike. The updated VS Recorder with 100 saves was a boon for content creators doing Battles on youtube.
The strengths of this game vastly outweighed its shortcomings. Still the best infrastructure that any Pokemon game has had to this day. Most of the cynicism about muh difficulty didn't really set in until ORAS came out and gutted RSE.
