>>52766728I used to be into competitive (a little) during gens 6 and 7 (and heavily into breeding), so initially the lack of abilities, held items, IVs & EVs, mutable Natures, etc. in PLA confused and irritated me.
I eventually grew to appreciate it since it brings back some of the Gen 1 feel when you could just catch a Pokémon and be happy with it instead of knowing that you'll have to box it after the main game and breed a superior replacement for multiplayer.
It reduces depth, yes, but without any multiplayer (or Battle Frontier equivalent) that's kind of superficial anyway. Alpha Pokémon and the new trainers you fight tend to have a lot of coverage moves and hit pretty hard, so I found the difficulty overall adequate (by Pokémon standards).
>>52767005There are a decent number of varied sidequests that play with the formula (e.g. having to identify a Pokémon from a partial photo, looking for different variants, etc.), stuff like the balloon courses or finding that girl who keeps getting lost, and a few that just add to the setting, like pic related.
