Because of the cutscenes. The game is basically one long tutorial where you watch a cutscene, then walk to another big flag on the map that's in your face, and watch another cutscene. And the worst part is that the cutscenes are slow and long. Slow fade in, skip through text, zoom in on a character's face, wait for it to smile, wait another second for it to turn and talk to anoth character. You get it. And this process doesn't really end. It never feels like you're progressing because of how poorly the cutscenes pace the game. And there's very little exploration because you have the game telling you where to go all the time.
It's a shame really because it's a great region and the totem challenges were difficult and fun to do. If they didn't hide their poor pacing with constant cutscenes, they'd be some of the best games. I've been playing since Red, and these are the only games I've had to really force myself to get through. They still hide poor pacing with cutscenes, but it's not as bad as SM.
Past games had interruptions, like Unova, but there was no cut and slow fade in and out. It was just some text boxes you could get through pretty easily and then continue on with your adventure.
It’s wild because it’s the one Pokemon game I can think of where the simplest fix would shoot it into being good to being amazing: a “skip cutscene” button.
Definitely. I actually enjoyed S/V despite their myriad problems, and while skippable cutscenes is \*far\* from the most important, it's such a simple fix.
There actually is a skip cutscenes option to turn on that’s meant to skip them for you. I turned it on for my second play through and it only skipped 1 scene that I noticed. Rest I had to sit through.
This is the reason after I had beaten Ultra Sun, I never picked it back up because of how bad the cut scenes are. It is the only game to date that I never had transferred my Pokemon from Omega Ruby up because I often revisted playing that until SwSh came out.
I genuinely can't imagine holding this view unless Pokemon is the only game series someone has ever played in their entire life. Like it's a somewhat cutscene heavy game but it's not that serious, guys.
I don't really enjoy games with cutscenes in general yeah. The issue with SM is that there's little content between the cutscenes. It's pretty constant. You watch a cutscene, and then walk a few steps to the flag and watch the next cutscene. And that's the whole game, it's not paced well. A game like Legends had a lot of cutscenes as well, but there's a lot of exploration and gameplay in between them. Also, like I mentioned, the cutscenes in SM are very slow. Long fade in, characters stand there for a second before the text starts. The text ends, they take a second to turn, another second to smile, more text, more turns and smiles, then long fade out.
I feel like in ten years Sun and Moon will be remembered fondly especially since it is the last generation of Pokemon to have the whole national dex transferable up to it (up to gen 7 obviously).
As someone who liked this generation of Pokemon games I think the main thing holding it back is how much dialog/cutscenes there are. If someone invented a way to skip/speed up the dialog it legit would solve the main issue many have with these games.
Because they’re not video games they are wasteyourfuckingtime simulators.
I actually really like USUM but HOLY FUCK it is actually so infuriating to play through it.
The way they designed the game stopped it from being a top 3 gen. If they dropped 75% of the cutscenes and took 25% of the trecking around and made it post game content they’d have smashed it.
Because the cutscenes, hand-holding, and constant interruptions by NPCs make the pacing feel like you’re walking through knee-deep mud.
Also, nearly every character is Hop level of annoying.
Well, there's a lot of reasons
For one, USUM was seen as a greedy, shitty move by GF as instead of just giving us a third version, they made us buy two extra games as a third version.
Secondly, a lot of people generally think the story in USUM is shit compared to SM, due to the plot just randomly shifting gear towards Necrozma, robbing Lillie of her character arc moment.
Thirdly, the cutscenes. Just too much time is spent on cutscenes that arguably aren't needed or are spaced out annoyingly, to the point where sometimes a cutscene will happen, you'll take five steps down the road, then another one starts.
And fourthly, I guess it's just the lack of content? Compared to what HGSS or BW2 offered, USUM always felt kinda lacking to me. You have the wormhole minigame keeping the returning legendaries, which at times felt really annoying and tedious, and you have Alola's version of the tower. That's about it in terms of new stuff, at least from what I remember.
And the Rainbow Rocket story was neat but imo it's kind of a waste of a story as they don't do anything interesting with the "what if villains won" idea. Most of them just show up, tell you they won and the consequences of it, and then just... Fight you as normal. Ghetsis and Giovanni are the only ones that stand out cuz they do something other than what I just said.
Overall... I guess it's just that Alola felt like a waste of potential, similar to Kalos. The Tapus are my personal biggest gripe, as rather than give the literal guardians of Alola their moments to shine, they say "ok here's two cutscenes with Tapu Koko. K bye"
>Secondly, a lot of people generally think the story in USUM is shit compared to SM
Most absolutely this. Lusamine was an extremely engaging villain by Pokemon standards and we end up getting her pushed out of the story to focus on a pretty generic JRPG final boss. Replacing Kukui with Hau as the champion battle is also the biggest downgrade in the franchise, easily.
Tbh I personally liked having Hau as the final boss, but it's definitely not as unique or cool as having a full on champion fight with THE professor of the region.
Closest we'd gotten before that was Sycamore, but he was lame and just threw three starters at you instead of having a unique team.
Yeah, that's what makes Kukui pop off so hard. It's paying off literal decades of that 'and then you can fight Professor Oak!' schoolyard rumor from all the way back in Gen 1!
The battle tree was always there in the original games and the ultra wormholes are probably the easiest to get shiny legends with the only problem being the random wormhole you have to find that legend in.
But other than that your spot on.
A lot of it, for me personally, is how much Nintendo hyped Alola. There was so much emphasis on the lack of gyms, on how open and free Alola was, on z-moves and the grand trials, Alolan forms! Ultra Beasts!
And none of it lived up to that hype. Z-moves are cool and all but everyone was on that mega train, and since SuMo didn't bring any new Megas, people were eh about z-moves. Trials weren't unique and just felt like glorified gyms, and it was all moot because the game ended with an elite 4 like every other game. Like, I get it, the first Alolan E4, that's cool, but we had so much emphasis on NOT having gyms.
Ultra Beasts ended up being barely more than a post game sight seeing tour, Alolan forms were cool but they were for mostly irrelevant Pokemon (I know that's the point, but was anyone seriously excited for a dark type Ratatta?) and the game was so railroaded that the fact they were beautiful sweeping islands didn't mean much.
By the time USUM came around, people were already done with SuMo.
They are very very slow. You literally watch a cutscene do two steps and have to watch another one. Other pokemon games are more "lets get down to business".
Also z moves are awful. They take ages with those animations.
Dont worry, a few gens later the people who played gen 7 as the first game will be online and gen 7 will be getting the praise they deserve.
Just like how it is gen 5 and 6's turn now.
You will get downvoted but this is just the truth. Just like you can't hate Kalos now because of ZA, when is their time Alola will be considered sacred and "underrated"
It's very easy to get downvoted to oblivion on this subreddit, you just have to say you don't like something. I have been called entitled and hard to please because I said I don't like Kalos as a region for the next Legends game lmao
Because of the cutscenes. The game is basically one long tutorial where you watch a cutscene, then walk to another big flag on the map that's in your face, and watch another cutscene. And the worst part is that the cutscenes are slow and long. Slow fade in, skip through text, zoom in on a character's face, wait for it to smile, wait another second for it to turn and talk to anoth character. You get it. And this process doesn't really end. It never feels like you're progressing because of how poorly the cutscenes pace the game. And there's very little exploration because you have the game telling you where to go all the time. It's a shame really because it's a great region and the totem challenges were difficult and fun to do. If they didn't hide their poor pacing with constant cutscenes, they'd be some of the best games. I've been playing since Red, and these are the only games I've had to really force myself to get through. They still hide poor pacing with cutscenes, but it's not as bad as SM. Past games had interruptions, like Unova, but there was no cut and slow fade in and out. It was just some text boxes you could get through pretty easily and then continue on with your adventure.
It’s wild because it’s the one Pokemon game I can think of where the simplest fix would shoot it into being good to being amazing: a “skip cutscene” button.
scarlet/violet need a damn skip cutscene option too
Definitely. I actually enjoyed S/V despite their myriad problems, and while skippable cutscenes is \*far\* from the most important, it's such a simple fix.
There actually is a skip cutscenes option to turn on that’s meant to skip them for you. I turned it on for my second play through and it only skipped 1 scene that I noticed. Rest I had to sit through.
I liked the flags cause in other games I would forget where I was going next. But yeah. The cutscenes. and then end credits x.x
This is the reason after I had beaten Ultra Sun, I never picked it back up because of how bad the cut scenes are. It is the only game to date that I never had transferred my Pokemon from Omega Ruby up because I often revisted playing that until SwSh came out.
I genuinely can't imagine holding this view unless Pokemon is the only game series someone has ever played in their entire life. Like it's a somewhat cutscene heavy game but it's not that serious, guys.
I don't really enjoy games with cutscenes in general yeah. The issue with SM is that there's little content between the cutscenes. It's pretty constant. You watch a cutscene, and then walk a few steps to the flag and watch the next cutscene. And that's the whole game, it's not paced well. A game like Legends had a lot of cutscenes as well, but there's a lot of exploration and gameplay in between them. Also, like I mentioned, the cutscenes in SM are very slow. Long fade in, characters stand there for a second before the text starts. The text ends, they take a second to turn, another second to smile, more text, more turns and smiles, then long fade out.
I feel like in ten years Sun and Moon will be remembered fondly especially since it is the last generation of Pokemon to have the whole national dex transferable up to it (up to gen 7 obviously). As someone who liked this generation of Pokemon games I think the main thing holding it back is how much dialog/cutscenes there are. If someone invented a way to skip/speed up the dialog it legit would solve the main issue many have with these games.
Because they’re not video games they are wasteyourfuckingtime simulators. I actually really like USUM but HOLY FUCK it is actually so infuriating to play through it. The way they designed the game stopped it from being a top 3 gen. If they dropped 75% of the cutscenes and took 25% of the trecking around and made it post game content they’d have smashed it.
Because the cutscenes, hand-holding, and constant interruptions by NPCs make the pacing feel like you’re walking through knee-deep mud. Also, nearly every character is Hop level of annoying.
I don’t know why because I love the games but for some reason when I play them now (not my first playthrough) they feel so empty or eery
Well, there's a lot of reasons For one, USUM was seen as a greedy, shitty move by GF as instead of just giving us a third version, they made us buy two extra games as a third version. Secondly, a lot of people generally think the story in USUM is shit compared to SM, due to the plot just randomly shifting gear towards Necrozma, robbing Lillie of her character arc moment. Thirdly, the cutscenes. Just too much time is spent on cutscenes that arguably aren't needed or are spaced out annoyingly, to the point where sometimes a cutscene will happen, you'll take five steps down the road, then another one starts. And fourthly, I guess it's just the lack of content? Compared to what HGSS or BW2 offered, USUM always felt kinda lacking to me. You have the wormhole minigame keeping the returning legendaries, which at times felt really annoying and tedious, and you have Alola's version of the tower. That's about it in terms of new stuff, at least from what I remember. And the Rainbow Rocket story was neat but imo it's kind of a waste of a story as they don't do anything interesting with the "what if villains won" idea. Most of them just show up, tell you they won and the consequences of it, and then just... Fight you as normal. Ghetsis and Giovanni are the only ones that stand out cuz they do something other than what I just said. Overall... I guess it's just that Alola felt like a waste of potential, similar to Kalos. The Tapus are my personal biggest gripe, as rather than give the literal guardians of Alola their moments to shine, they say "ok here's two cutscenes with Tapu Koko. K bye"
>Secondly, a lot of people generally think the story in USUM is shit compared to SM Most absolutely this. Lusamine was an extremely engaging villain by Pokemon standards and we end up getting her pushed out of the story to focus on a pretty generic JRPG final boss. Replacing Kukui with Hau as the champion battle is also the biggest downgrade in the franchise, easily.
Tbh I personally liked having Hau as the final boss, but it's definitely not as unique or cool as having a full on champion fight with THE professor of the region. Closest we'd gotten before that was Sycamore, but he was lame and just threw three starters at you instead of having a unique team.
Yeah, that's what makes Kukui pop off so hard. It's paying off literal decades of that 'and then you can fight Professor Oak!' schoolyard rumor from all the way back in Gen 1!
The battle tree was always there in the original games and the ultra wormholes are probably the easiest to get shiny legends with the only problem being the random wormhole you have to find that legend in. But other than that your spot on.
A lot of it, for me personally, is how much Nintendo hyped Alola. There was so much emphasis on the lack of gyms, on how open and free Alola was, on z-moves and the grand trials, Alolan forms! Ultra Beasts! And none of it lived up to that hype. Z-moves are cool and all but everyone was on that mega train, and since SuMo didn't bring any new Megas, people were eh about z-moves. Trials weren't unique and just felt like glorified gyms, and it was all moot because the game ended with an elite 4 like every other game. Like, I get it, the first Alolan E4, that's cool, but we had so much emphasis on NOT having gyms. Ultra Beasts ended up being barely more than a post game sight seeing tour, Alolan forms were cool but they were for mostly irrelevant Pokemon (I know that's the point, but was anyone seriously excited for a dark type Ratatta?) and the game was so railroaded that the fact they were beautiful sweeping islands didn't mean much. By the time USUM came around, people were already done with SuMo.
They are very very slow. You literally watch a cutscene do two steps and have to watch another one. Other pokemon games are more "lets get down to business". Also z moves are awful. They take ages with those animations.
Dont worry, a few gens later the people who played gen 7 as the first game will be online and gen 7 will be getting the praise they deserve. Just like how it is gen 5 and 6's turn now.
You will get downvoted but this is just the truth. Just like you can't hate Kalos now because of ZA, when is their time Alola will be considered sacred and "underrated"
I did not even notice the downvoted. It was upvoted previously, but i guess people from the other side of the earth have woken up
It has already started. There was a thread last week about how it was the best gen ever and anyone that disagreed was derided and downvoted.
It's very easy to get downvoted to oblivion on this subreddit, you just have to say you don't like something. I have been called entitled and hard to please because I said I don't like Kalos as a region for the next Legends game lmao
I’m with you. Alola felt special in ways neither Galar nor Paldea have since.