>>48198349It's a fun little game that I'm glad I played. Pokemon has never really been about the gameplay for me, I play it cause I like exploring a fun world with my group of bros so I don't really care too much about the game's lack of difficulty (none of the pokemon games were that difficult to begin with). I love the vibe Alola has. All the areas look really nice for a 3ds game and the character designs are my favorite in the series. The new mons introduced are also some of my favorites in the franchise, especially the ultra beasts (Xurkitree my beloved). Switching from gym leaders to Totem Pokemon was something interesting to me. I really love that pokemon right now is exploring the idea of fighting a single really strong boss mon and SM was the beginning of that (sure legendaries existed before but they weren't what I would call a boss fights). I know lots of people hate all the roadblocks and cut scenes and I do too, but man I love the characters and the story a lot. As op said it is definitely simple and plain a lot of the time, but there are some really nice moments as well (when Lillie gave her "fuck you mom" speech I was cheering). My only real problems with the story are that I wish some of the characters were fleshed out more (especially Gladion with Type: Null) and that the player character isn't really the protag, Lillie is. In fact, SM is the game that really makes me wish that Pokemon stopped with voiceless insert yourself mcs and just made actually characters, cause a point of adventure that pokemon misses is developing yourself. People are supposed to change and grow going on an adventure, but I'm not the one changing and growing it's the rival or some other character. In SM I feel more like Lillie's bodyguard than the protagonist of m own adventure. Other than that I love SM and deffo have it as one of my favorite pokemon games alongside BW and GS
