I booted up Ultra Sun on my new Ayn Thor since the last time I played the game was almost 10 years ago when I was still in the middle of high school. I hated the game then but since its been a long time and I'm now an older, wiser human being, everything deserves a second chance right? I'm almost done with the game and like....you know I think high school me had a point. Its the slowest paced, most boring Pokémon game ever made.
While I respected the game for trying to have a more complex story this time around since Pokémon lore for the most part is shrugged off, but I wish cutscenes didn't happen so often. Even after the tutorial island (which is roughly 2-3 hours long btw) I swear to god you get interrupted about every 10 minutes or so just for Lilly or Hau to stop you dead on your tracks and talk about shops or the festival plaza most players wouldn't remotely care about. Even the friggin Pokedex is like this. Rotom doesn't know how to shut up either! It wouldn't be such an issue if these cutscenes were at least skippable, a feature that has existed in JRPGs since the Super Nintendo days. Youre telling me Game Freak made this \*twice\* and still didn't add it in? Never mind the fact the ultra versions are hardly different than the original Sun & Moon, they couldve at \*least\* fix quality stuff like this.
And when you're finally getting into the gameplay, I find the Island trials are even more trivial than ordinary gym leaders. Again, I respect it for changing it up and being different, but its not necessarily a better change either. Because of how long it really takes to get going in these games, it makes the entire flow of the game, including the really fun stuff like battling and team building more boring. Z Moves are pretty lame too, I know Dynamaxing wasn't great either but I'd easily take that over this.
To every trainer that has a particular dislike towards Scarlet and Violet, I would like to remind you that Gen 7 exists and in my opinion, they're much worse games. I'm still going to finish what I started but I would be enjoying this a lot more if it was literally any other game, and this is coming from a person who genuinely liked Sword and Shield despite its problems. If you legitimately like Gen 7, by all means more power to you. I just can't imagine liking it any more than the slop than it really is if you remove the nostalgia factor that Pokémon is so notorious for. I've said it before in high school and I'm saying it now, Gen 7 is my least favorite gen by a landslide.