>>48928667I've said before and I'll say again, before the first gym is the weakest part of BW, all for a type matchup tutorial that is easily solved by the time SM comes around (shitty elemental tackles are the solution for the record).
>postgame surf islandsIf you mean the water routes west of Route 1, they're actually available earlier. Not like it matters that much, Larvesta evolves late enough that you'll probably never use it, and that's about the only major thing in the area.
And yeah, USUM is easily the best 3DS era game if you disregard online (ORAS wins there, fucked as that is). I haven't pirated SS but it seems like the second DLC at least has some ideas (although I'm a sucker for the Regis and their puzzles and people not getting the whistle one gave me great joy). And it's less that it's lazy and more that they have no fucking time to make these games anymore. Did you know there was some trainer slots for the minor league gyms in SS? That would have been neat, but unfortunately we don't live in that world, and they probably would have had all the mechanical depth of the Dojo in Gen 1. I like to put it this way, putting in an entirely different shiny animation says to me they're not lazy, but coding it wrong so that it shows up the opposite of the way it should tells me that they're in over their heads.
