>>20546405Spinda Cafe makes a lot of useless items useful, either through Drink mixing (which gives Sky a better end/post-game for stats and IQ) or Recycling.
The abundance of exclusive Special Episodes definitely give it a better feel of characterization than Darkness/Time.
You can still have Meowth as a partner, or if you want, just hack/code in Meowth as the main partner. It's one of the easier mons to hack in since it still has all the animations for a main partner that other mons lacks (and sometimes cause crashes, which Meowth won't do). I understand, though, anon.
I settled with playing as female for Skitty, since they made it a gender exclusive in Sky; it's not like gender ever comes up in the games.The main story is still the same however. If you wouldn't mind replaying Darkness, there's almost 0 reason to not to play Sky.