I finally beat Poni Island and the rest of Pokemon Sun! Actually I beat it about a month ago. Whoops! Thoughts after the break:

As soon as Poni started I’m fighting trainers with Pokemon that are the same level as mine! Yay! Challenge!

Why *are* we island challenging still? Normally the series puts this stuff on hold while you go deal with the big bad.

Wow! I was not expecting Vast Poni Canyon to be a good ol’ long one! It’s even got a mid-dungeon checkpoint!

I like the development we’re having for Lillie, but I think we’re overplaying the whole Z-power form-thing.

I literally tried walking past the podium to ignore the trial because we’re in a hurry here guys, and it wouldn’t let me.

Oh boy! Time to go to the place to do the thing! Aaand we’re already at the end. You couldn’t even have stretched this out into a dungeon? There are already “no catching” rules during some sections of the game. I wanted to fight some freaky stuff!

I lost. No joke. Big bad boss person actually beat me. And we’re not talking about a close fight either. Between the Clefable and the Bewear I got totally sacked. Still suffered a good trashing before winning when I retried.

Hi Gladion. Bye Gladion. Hi Hau. Bye Hau. I miss hangin’ out…

Did we run out of budget or something? By this point I’ve got more than a few Z-crystals for doing basically nothing.

Yay… One of the Elite Four is a Fighting-type trainer… My team does so well against those… Well, now that 4 out of 6 of my Pokemon are down, let’s move on to the next fight!

This is a greater contention I have with the modern Pokemon games. Something is lost in the franchise with all these people healing your Pokemon, even outside of PokeCenters. But, it does speed up the action by not having to retreat or stop to use items as much.

However, the Elite Four is still as hard as it’s always been. The Elite Four + Champion fights are a boss rush. If nowhere else, this is when the game should be healing my Pokemon between each fight. This is the end. I have items in excess by now. Having to heal up is a formality, and an unnecessary break in the action.

Oh my gosh the champion fight is against [redacted]! I truly didn’t see that coming!

And end! I liked the game alright. And the difficulty ramped up pretty well overall! I definitely liked X and Y more though. Lillie and Hau were great, but after a while Hau kinda stops hanging out with you and Lillie never fights.

That was one of the things I liked about Shauna/Trevor/Tierno. They were all trainers. You fought them, you fought with them. And your rival wasn’t just canonically your near-equal, they were even there fighting along side you during the finale. That’s what I want more of from the franchise. The idea that you’re not the one, just one of many.

Thanks for reading! You can use the i don’t think i spoiled anything but just in case tag to read the other sections if you want!