>>46024261XY's mega stone hunt was pretty fun imo, Alola might have captured that same feeling if there were more Z-Crystals and getting the special ones wasn't such a slog/fetch quest. But collecting all the mega stones felt like you were actually exploring and it was engaging despite the shitty time limit.
I personally don't think it excuses things like not having a rental facility or the Game Corner, but Gen 6 did have plenty of side-games and side content to get lost in. The Amie minigames were really fun and I found myself trying to get the highest scores on all of them. Super Training was eh but that might just be because I was left handed and hordes let you EV train mons near-instantly anyway.
I just think XY gets a lot of slack when in actuality it just feels like a different interpretation of what they were doing in Gen 5. Conversely, I don't understand how people seem to dislike SWSH but praise SM when SWSH was just following the same design philosophy Alola had in terms of routes and story progression.
I guess that's what i'm getting at-- I can feel nostalgic for Alola now that SWSH is out but then I realize playing the game does nothing for me because all of the things I enjoyed about SM were the speculation and what could have been. I can be nostalgic about Kalos and still go back and play because most of the things I remember fondly actually happened in the game, and at the very least the region felt detailed enough to where you can go back and explore more than one or two little side areas like in Alola.
