>>36179349The first points aren't really accurate. The plaza is accessible at any time using the touch screen, and it hardly feels like the plaza is distant from the rest of the game.
The feel of a constantly connected world makes the PSS great but apart from that I find it a little overrated. Battle Spot, GTS and Wonder Trade are just as easy to access in the plaza and that's all I really care about, trading with random passerbys in the PSS got old pretty fast since there were lots of kids who had completely different ideas of value.