>>51551252Because the story fucking sucked.
Nothing happens for basically 90% of the plot, then suddenly the game forces you to resolve some bullshit subplot about a girl and her abusive mother (which, honestly, does not really deserve to be in a children's game, or a Pokemon game for that matter, it has literally nothing to do with Pokemon and just has an alien apocalypse shoved in there because the writers realized there wouldn't be stakes otherwise).
Most of the characters were either completely flat or sucked yet the game devoted overly long cutscenes to try and fail to flesh them out, it also doesn't help that the actual MC of the game Lillie is nearly completely passive and does not actually grow beyond having you solve all her problems, the Kahunas/captains are just as cardboard cutout as gym leaders have ever been despite having 10 times as much dialogue, Hau continues to show why rival archetypes in these games are boring as shit and is a 5th time over recycled concept who does absolutely nothing new, Guzma and Team Skull are complete nonsense from an in-universe standpoint on top of being unfunny douchebags, Lusamine has nothing going for her other than KUHRAYZEE and coom appeal, and finally most egregiously there's no fucking speedup or skip text button that would make the game even slightly tolerable to get through or replay.
It makes me laugh when I see people say that USUM 'ruined' the story, as if shifting the villain from random crazy bitch to generic doomsday villain suddenly completely destroyed the already shit narrative