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The new league format was great.
I liked that most of the gym leaders had at least a little of something to do in the main plot, which is more than some of them would get in previous games. But to also give them all the opportunity to come out for the league and develop all of them further was really nice. I really, really don't mind the Elite 4 not existing in this one since all the leaders get buffed teams, and with the Star Tournament they all even get the chance to interact. That's something hardly any generation had the chance to do, and certainly not to the extent that SwSh got to.
I liked the DLC's actually open world take on gameplay too. After your brief introduction to each area, they just cut you loose to go do whatever the fuck you want. You don't have to touch the dojo before completely exploring every corner of the isle of armor, and you don't have to touch calyrex's quest to go all the way to the giant tree or the castle at the top of the mountain. You're free to do whatever the fuck you want and I'm glad they took that approach in the DLC. It also has verticality to its areas which hadn't been the case in pretty much all of base SwSh, more than half of gen 7, pretty much all of gen 6, and a lot of gen 5 outside of victory road. The last time we had an emphasis on vertical terrain was gen 4. That said I don't like the precedence of DLC. I still do like having those whole extra areas to go fuck around in on repeat runs, makes it a whole lot less monotonous than running through the Galar hallway.
