>>50666092I'm going to go against the grain here with an unironic unupopular opinion:
If it's not a part of the core gameplay experience to pokemon (catching, battling, gyms, league, completing the pokedex) then I don't think it's necessary to include every single side feature in future installments. Yes bases and contests were cool, but it's extremely obvious not everyone was into them and that's a likely reason they were cut from the game.
THAT BEING SAID, if you're going to remove a feature, it should be replaced with something of equal or greater substance. A good example would be HGSS removing the Poketch (a decent if somewhat clunky to use utility for the touch screen) and replacing it with the bottom screen menu which let you assign two key items to use at the press of a button, a running shoes toggle, and the ability to instantly open any x button menu with a single tap.
A bad example, as you already brought up, would be the musicals, which are so shallow and devoid of content they may as well not be there.
