Just finished Pokemon Moon. My thoughts.

Have been playing it off and on for the past few months and finally finished it. Just the main quest, no post game content so far.

I simply hate the trend the Pokemon Games have been going since Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire. That is, your character has a bunch of friends(Hau was fricking annoying) who hand hold you the entire way through the game. Is it too much to ask to simply have a game like the original Pokemon Red/Blue where you were on your own for the most part and there was little, if any, handholding and you had to figure out yourself where to go next instead of having your lame friends or Rotom Pokedex fricking put a target on the damn game map on where to go next.

I know Pokemon games are designed so that those new to the series(read: young kids) aren't overwhelmed. But shite many of us were kids when we first played Pokemon Red/Blue and all we had was the instruction manual in the box to help us, and this was really before the internet was mainstream so if you got stuck you better hope your friends at school knew how to progress. No handholding or lame friends giving you 50 Max Potions and Max Revives each time you talk to them, or healing your party every time you talk to them. What is the point of the Poke Marts or Pokemon Centers anymore?

I still remember the first time I played Pokemon Red, I was on a road trip with my family. I went through the Rock Tunnel with NO FLASH and it took me hours to get through. I finally come out on the other side where I had one pokemon with like 3 HP left and oops, there is a trainer outside the Rock Tunnel and he KO'ed me and I had to start ALL OVER AGAIN. In today's Pokemon games you would have your friends heal your party 50 times in the tunnel and heal you again once getting out. I didn't black out ONCE during the main quest.

Anyway. I feel like Pokemon is becoming too easy, too much handholding, too linear. You literally had the Rotom Pokedex tell you where to go. Game Freak needs to look at creating a hardcore Pokemon game for hardcore players.

I like how they at least tried something different with the trials instead of gyms, but I am not sure if it was a better concept in execution than the gyms. It feels like they tried something different for the sake of being different instead of doing something to improve the experience