I don't really understand what people mean when they say this game has no exploration, when there were all these little things you could find off the main path if you came back to earlier islands after getting more Ride Pokémon. A surprising amount of stuff like this, in fact, a lot more of it than Gen 6 before it or Gen 8 after it.
When peoples' complaints are with the story, I get it, even if I liked the story. Yes, the game had a lot of cutscenes and a lot of plot moments, I may have been fine with these, but this is an objective fact about the game. There's a lot of stopping to talk to characters and shit. If that shit bothers you, then I understand the complaint completely.
I understand peoples' problems with the difficulty, because really, I don't think any of the Pokémon games are hard, and SM really doesn't do much more to beef it up, aside from a couple of the Totem fights being somewhat tough if you have the wrong Pokémon. None of the major trainer battles gave me any trouble during the game, though.
What I don't understand is the "no exploration" part, because there's quite a bit of it.
