>>36141635XY were ok for being the first 3ds games and the first 3D main games developed by GF. They had issues, of course, like the toned down difficulty, the annoying friends and the weak plot. But they also made a lot of improvements and brought some very cool features. Character customization, even if not perfect, was way better in XY than SM/USUM, the PSS was just fantastic, the breeding and training mechanics were simplified in a way that they allowed a lot of people to get into online battling while not making it stupidly easy (which is what gf tends to do when they try something like that). Megas, I suppose you either love them or hate them. I think the idea was ok, but the execution could have been much better. Kalos was a bit of a messy region, but it had many interesting spots. Sadly it was clearly not finished. Friend safaris were a great way to get people to connect with each other and get rare pokemon at the same time. The maison was boring, but at least I never expected XY to have a full fledged Battle Frontier or something like that (I would have expected that for a third version, though).
I think the main issue is that the games were clearly rushed for some reason. Quite honestly, playing XY for the first time up to Korrina's gym was amazing. Great pacing, you get time before they start shoving megas down your throat, and there's a fuck ton of pokemon to find. The exp share was broken, yes, but the way I played it the first time, constantly swapping team members to try and train pretty much every pokemon in each route, was made really enjoyable by it. Sadly, the game loses the good pacing after the first gym and everything after that becomes very forgettable after that.
