>>58590958I replayed most of Y a few months back out of curiosity and it's kind of baffling how little of the game there is to chew on. Even replaying without the EXP Share the game genuinely feels like it just forgets to include shit to do in routes to keep you at the right level
The pace of the story is complete nonsense, it'll bring up things hours before they're relevant as foreshadowing but the focus doesn't feel like it's letting you linger on what's going on. You meet AZ a grand total of once before he's kidnapped and it feels less like the game was foreshadowing his relevance and more that it just forgot to inform you on the fact you should care about the tall man. All of his backstory is just dumped on you in Lysandre Labs in a completely optional library. At least Sinnoh makes effort to have a proper individual building that encourages you to read everything. Even then AZ just goes and explains to you everything immediately afterward and expects that to be the reason his encounter with Floette in the ending is a heartwarming reunion instead of being a confused inclusion
Now people wanna blame it on Masuda being kicked out of the director's chair for the reason the game feels scuffed but honestly I feel like the adherence to needing the game out early in the 3DS' lifespan genuinely hurt it more. 3D games are just harder to develop than 2D games, Game Freak weren't prepared for that. XY was sacrificed for ORAS and SM which isn't fair to that game at all. Even Z-A feels completely compromised like they didn't give a shit about Kalos when making it
