#icantactuallyart

Huh . . . that’s an interesting way to think of it, and honestly one I hadn’t thought of before! You bring up a good point about Amie + Super Training, but to be honest, even if they didn’t want to use Super Training, they could have still used Amie. Sylveon evolves by maxing out Amie and having eevee know a fairy-type move. While eevee can’t learn any dragon-type moves (at least not in Gen VI, I just checked), they either a.) could have worked one in somehow, or b.) perhaps made it item dependent instead. Like, max out Amie, and then level up eevee while eevee is holding a Dragon Fang. Something like that easily could have worked to give us the dragon-type eeveelution that we all know we deserve.

This is really disheartening! Lack of puzzles was one of my least favorite things about SuMo (and there were a lot of frustrating things about it…). And I’m not into IV breeding and such myself, but that WAS one of the “new ways” people found to enjoy Pokemon games?? So why say that’s the goal if he’s actually just locking people out of what they like for what he thinks they should like. Sad news, but thanks for the analysis.

The lack of puzzles in the Alola games was particularly disappointing because the island trials system made it sound as though puzzles would play an integral part. After all, these were supposed to be trials that you completed with your pokémon; a lot of older fans were reminded of the Orange Islands from the anime, or even though of temples like in The Legend of Zelda. But that isn’t what we got. The “challenges” were so easy that there were times (such as during Kiawe’s trial) that I thought I was being faced with trick questions, and the “dungeons” were very, painstakingly linear. This isn’t even getting into how things were changed in USUM; whereas you were at least allowed to do Mallow’s trial on your own in the original Sun Version, in Ultra Sun she literally escorts you through it. They stripped out whatever challenge there was in the remakes. It was ridiculous.

And that’s the thing about features such as IV breeding or EV training: you don’t have to do them in order to complete the main game. If all you want to do is collect badges, beat the Elite Four, and do whatever gimmick there is that gen (whether it’s contests or movies or whatever else), you can do that with just the pokémon you catch and train through normal gameplay. Things such as breeding, EV training, Battle Frontiers---these are optional things for players who want to explore the game a bit more deeply, and who want to put more work into it. They’re not mandatory at all. So to strip them out in the name of “simplifying” the game and making it more “accessible” makes no sense. No one has to do these things, so how are they making the game inaccessible? They’re not. They’re just adding more content, which Masuda seems to hate for whatever reason. Honestly, it seems to me like maybe he’s terrible at IV breeding, and terrible at EV training, and thus wants to take these features out so he no longer feels bad about being terrible at these games. Considering he doesn’t even remember how HMs work, that wouldn’t surprise me.

If it's any consolation I'll likely be doing paper prep during the day and working all evening 'til midnight! I'll try throw some candy to Texas tho, might just make it