>>49897381Everything has a purpose beyond just padding and the pieces fit together cohesively.
For instance: most of the characters with notable screen time are flat and serve little purpose - 2 rivals have zero story or gameplay relevance, Tierno's only trait is wanting to raise pokemon to dance yet this game doesn't even have contests or musicals to give you something to actively compete against him in, Trevor at least has dex completion as his goal and will give you hints but it's meaningless since he always has less when you compare and it's redundant with the professor also giving you hints just like every other game. The mythicals were just tacked on, no event to catch them like the gen 2-4 mythicals + victini nor extra story event to tie their lore into the games after obtaining them like the gen 5 mythicals. Mewtwo and the birds had 0 explanation. AZ's floett is completely unobtainable yet has unique dex info when it could've just been a visual change with a special move if it was only meant to be a special fight. They have a pokeball factory but it only served as a single-use dungeon with little information about it and no reason to go back there when they could have made it the one place to get otherwise unobtainable balls like dream balls(probably without the 100% catch rate) or apricorn balls or maybe take the opportunity to introduce new balls. Half the towns had nothing to do in them, after Korrina the gyms have nothing noteworthy about them, and there's a bunch of clearly unfinished ares like the locked power plant you can walk right up to and interact with so it's not just meant to be a setpiece like the big tower in the distance. They had a handful of ride-able pokemon but other than the gogoat to speed around Lumious they were all pointless additions - only there to get around roadblocks that only existed to give you a reason to ride those pokemon - instead of making it a fun reoccurring extra or minigame despite your mom being a retired racer.
