>>38771100...Alright now that you've got that strawman out of the way.
You're talking to me. The reason it's annoying to have this many cutscenes is because they aren't engaging, the story isn't well written and the characters are all 2 dimensional at best. I have no investment in what is going on. If we wanna talk other games, I finished MGR:R just a week ago. You best believe I was hype as fuck in every cutscene in that game, because the characters were interesting, the story was off the rails insane and the cutscenes were well directed with bursting emotion. Additionally, between every cutscene the gameplay is excellent and loaded full.
Meanwhile, Sun and Moon has entire dungeons cut (Wela Volcano Park) and underwhelming difficulty.
Sun and Moon is a mess of pacing and atmosphere. Pokemon gameplay is simply not that exciting, and that's fine. The issue arises when you try to create some false sense of tension or drama with stiff cutscenes the way it does. The previous games worked better because the tension was created more by the gameplay. Take the team Aqua and Magma hideouts for example, the music was strung tight, and you knew going in that there were going to be stretches of battles back to back where you had only your inventory to heal up. So you economized your resources and your moves, creating natural tension. Meanwhile with Sun and Moon, you're usually healed up perfectly right before big battles and generally just never too far from a healer. Po Town was the best part of S&M for me, because it accomplishes much the same as the hideouts I mentioned. But the rest of the game is lackluster.
Gamefreak proved to be incapable of writing something engaging. They should either take more risks with their writing or stick to what they do normally and just use plot points for more battles, keep the story subtle and more on the periphery. Let the player read in-between the lines like before instead of the exposition in SM.
