(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

I just realized how dumb it is that Gigantimax Drednaw's unique G max move that sets Stealth Rocks is Water and not Rock. Not only would it make more sense for the Rock move to set Stealth Rocks, but it severally limits Drednaw's ability to abuse Swift Swim. As it stands now, it's not very helpful for Dynamaxed Drednaw to use its Rock STAB, as doing so replaces the rain with a sandstorm. So instead of fixing that problem by making the Rock attacks do something other than change the weather, Game Freak took away the ability to set up the rain manually.
 
I have two complaints about Y-COMM, an otherwise really good feature in Sword and Shield:
- The game defaults for local connection mode.
- You cannot join a Raid while waiting for a Surprise Trade. Why?

(And I'm aware most people are more annoyed at the lack of a GTS, but I only used it for giveaways so it doesn't change much for me)
 

Codraroll

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I have two complaints about Y-COMM, an otherwise really good feature in Sword and Shield:
- The game defaults for local connection mode.
- You cannot join a Raid while waiting for a Surprise Trade. Why?
Three: The button input for opening the Town map is pressing X then +. What happens if you press Y then +? Why, the game tries connecting to the Internet, of course! This process takes several seconds, cannot be cancelled, and ends with a popup prompting you to buy a Switch Online subscription. To put it mildly, misclicks are extremely frustrating.
 
I don't think Game Freak really gave much thought to having Leon take the starter left behind by you and Hop. This is revealed should you pick Grookey. Because Leon has both the neglected starter and his signature Charizard on his team, this means that picking Grookey results in Leon having two Fire starters on his team, which looks very unbalanced compared to his other two teams.

That said, there is another aspect of Leon's team that I actually really like, which I've discussed in this thread's positive counterpart.
 
I'm not missing anything about the Y-comm, right? Because as is, it seems there's no friend list and the only way to connect with someone specific is putting in a 4-digit code as the same time as them and hoping no-one else of the thousands upon thousands of other Pokémon players online put in the same code.

Because if I'm not missing anything and that is indeed all there is, wow, they succeeded in actually making something worse than Festival Plaza.
 
There should be some sort of indication that a Pokémon's ability is its hidden one to set it apart from the normal ones; maybe even if it was tinted in yellow or something. Otherwise how is anyone supposed to know that the Pelipper they got had something special about it, without looking up which ability slot Keen Eye is for it?

Keen Eye is ability slot 1, which I bet you didn't know, because without going on Serebii would you really know that Pelipper's hidden ability is Rain Dish?
 
There should be some sort of indication that a Pokémon's ability is its hidden one to set it apart from the normal ones; maybe even if it was tinted in yellow or something. Otherwise how is anyone supposed to know that the Pelipper they got had something special about it, without looking up which ability slot Keen Eye is for it?

Keen Eye is ability slot 1, which I bet you didn't know, because without going on Serebii would you really know that Pelipper's hidden ability is Rain Dish?
I agree. In SM, I spent over an hour trying to find a HA Zubat via SOS chaining, and in order to that, I used a Skill Swap Sylveon repeatedly, switching between the False Swipe user constantly. You can imagine how tedious that was. Max Raid battles are also annoying, under most circumstances, you can’t tell the HA until you get one yourself, so it’s quite disappointing when you find a Pokémon in a raid but it lacks its HA.

At this rate, HA should just be regular abilities. I’m guessing the reason GF keeps them hidden is because they want to sell player guides on how to obtain them, despite the Internet existing.
 
I agree. In SM, I spent over an hour trying to find a HA Zubat via SOS chaining, and in order to that, I used a Skill Swap Sylveon repeatedly, switching between the False Swipe user constantly. You can imagine how tedious that was. Max Raid battles are also annoying, under most circumstances, you can’t tell the HA until you get one yourself, so it’s quite disappointing when you find a Pokémon in a raid but it lacks its HA.

At this rate, HA should just be regular abilities. I’m guessing the reason GF keeps them hidden is because they want to sell player guides on how to obtain them, despite the Internet existing.
Oh that's another issue entirely that I know the pain of all too well.

But the specific part I'm saying is that there's no way to know which ability is the hidden one without looking it up or insane amounts of memorisation. So for instance, I sure as heck didn't know Coalossal's hidden ability was Flame Body; so when I caught the one in a raid just now I had to go look it up. Just a small visual indicator would be nice.
 
So, on the wake of having beaten the main story in SwSh, it reminded me of one of the things that really annoy me, not just in Pokémon, but in RPG in general...

Sudden level spikes.

A sudden level spike (such as going from Chairman Rose's average levels in his team being Level 56 to Leon's weakest Pokémon being level 62, with ~15 minutes of gameplay between each other) making the player grind for a while to catch up is not making the game more difficult. It's artificially extending the length of the game for no reason whatsoever.

They are a sign of bad difficulty, and leaves a really sour taste. If you can't make them challenging without drastically raising their level (hello, Red), then the problem is something else.

Platinum Cynthia having pretty much the same difficulty as DPP Cynthia despite lacking the level spike should be enough proof.
 
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They are a sign of bad difficulty, and leaves a really sour taste. If you can't make them challenging without drastically raising their level (hello, Red), then the problem is something else.
I would question though, at this point, when facing a veteran player, how do you actually make a Pokemon encounter challenging?

They tried to make Totem pokemon challenging with a 2v1 sinergic scenario, and that was cheeseable by having correct typing.
Ultra-Necrozma was made "challenging" by having massive BST advantage on top of buffs and yet people still found ways to cheese it with no effort.
BW's "challenge mode" that everyone praised just had the AI with higher IV/EV and stronger moveset available and that was it.
Leon is challenging in both being higher level and actually having solid movesets on its pokemon compared to mediocre ones before, with coverage everywhere and not being monotype. And *yet* just having Stealth Rock makes the fight a joke.
Postgame Hau also sports the actual legendary at a point you're still below his level, and expecially his Zacian can grind through a even leveled team since it beats Zamazenta hard

As far as pokemon games go, unless you arbitrarly invent a mechanic that punishes the type matchup, the only way to make story-AI challenging is give them level / BST advantage, because knowing Type matchups and being able to actually sort our team will always make them a joke.

I don't see any way to make pokemon in-battle AIs challenging in any way that isn't artificial (higher BST / buffs), cheating (create nonexistant pokemon or moveset the player cannot access) for a veteran, honestly.
 
They tried to make Totem pokemon challenging with a 2v1 sinergic scenario, and that was cheeseable by having correct typing.
I have no problem with cheesing as everything has a hard counter at some point, but the USUM totems were a good example of difficulty to me.

In fact, I'd put every boss with some sort of strategy as a good example of difficulty because they are more challenging than other bosses while keeping themselves on a fair level. SM Totem Lurantis, Emerald Tate and Liza, Kukui, Raihan's Gym battle...
 
I don't see any way to make pokemon in-battle AIs challenging in any way that isn't artificial (higher BST / buffs), cheating (create nonexistant pokemon or moveset the player cannot access) for a veteran, honestly.
One way I can think of would be to have the battle style on "set" by default (or maybe have it be "shift" on easy and "set" on hard) and then also craft teams and movesets with that restriction in mind. A Dragon Dance Gyarados is a lot scarier if the game doesn't ask you if you want to switch to your Electric-type right before it's sent out. General improvements to AI decision making would also go a long way. That Gyarados from before would be even scarier if it continued to Dragon Dance on your death fodder as you heal whatever hope you have for taking it down.
 
One way I can think of would be to have the battle style on "set" by default (or maybe have it be "shift" on easy and "set" on hard) and then also craft teams and movesets with that restriction in mind. A Dragon Dance Gyarados is a lot scarier if the game doesn't ask you if you want to switch to your Electric-type right before it's sent out. General improvements to AI decision making would also go a long way. That Gyarados from before would be even scarier if it continued to Dragon Dance on your death fodder as you heal whatever hope you have for taking it down.
I did play both USUM, Let's Go and SwSh in SET mode specifically for this, and while it obviously does add a bit of challenge, that's still brutally outdone by the player knowing the type matchups...
When you have a pokemon that walls/murders the entire enemy team, you don't exactly end up switching it anyway...
 

Codraroll

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I don't see any way to make pokemon in-battle AIs challenging in any way that isn't artificial (higher BST / buffs), cheating (create nonexistant pokemon or moveset the player cannot access) for a veteran, honestly.
I think it would be futile to ask for an AI that can outmatch veteran players using a pre-determined and unchanging team, but the difficulty doesn't have to go that high to provide a more satisfying experience. When people complain that the fights are too easy, they're not asking for an AI that can counter their awesome VoltTurn weather team, it's rather that those strategies tend to be unneeded in the first place because simply spamming the super-effective move tends to be enough to win the fight. With opponents that crumble to any super-effective attack, repeat types and hence also weaknesses, rarely have ways to cover said weaknesses defensively or offensively, never switch and can't punish switching, it seems like there are too many odds stacked in the player's favour. These things can be fixed without having to rewrite the AI or changing the entire concept of battles. So much more can be done on the teambuilding side that would make the main battles in the games more of a challenge.

Note: not an extremely difficult challenge to overcome for players who know what they're doing, but more of a challenge than the current roll-over-and-faint level of resistance many "bosses" are showing. They should at least have a semblance of appearing to put up a fight. Take Korrina in XY, for instance. Only one of her Pokémon has any way whatsoever to deal with Ghost-types, with a single Rock-type move. And all of her Pokémon have unused move slots. That is the reason why people say the Pokémon games are too easy. It's not that the in-game bosses can't withstand a well-built team, but that they are held back, purposefully not using all their opportunities. Each empty slot (both moveslots and item slots, mind you) is a nerf to the opponent that feels all too easy to exploit. It's like boxing against somebody in a wheelchair.
 
I think it would be futile to ask for an AI that can outmatch veteran players using a pre-determined and unchanging team, but the difficulty doesn't have to go that high to provide a more satisfying experience. When people complain that the fights are too easy, they're not asking for an AI that can counter their awesome VoltTurn weather team, it's rather that those strategies tend to be unneeded in the first place because simply spamming the super-effective move tends to be enough to win the fight. With opponents that crumble to any super-effective attack, repeat types and hence also weaknesses, rarely have ways to cover said weaknesses defensively or offensively, never switch and can't punish switching, it seems like there are too many odds stacked in the player's favour. These things can be fixed without having to rewrite the AI or changing the entire concept of battles. So much more can be done on the teambuilding side that would make the main battles in the games more of a challenge.

Note: not an extremely difficult challenge to overcome for players who know what they're doing, but more of a challenge than the current roll-over-and-faint level of resistance many "bosses" are showing. They should at least have a semblance of appearing to put up a fight. Take Korrina in XY, for instance. Only one of her Pokémon has any way whatsoever to deal with Ghost-types, with a single Rock-type move. And all of her Pokémon have unused move slots. That is the reason why people say the Pokémon games are too easy. It's not that the in-game bosses can't withstand a well-built team, but that they are held back, purposefully not using all their opportunities. Each empty slot (both moveslots and item slots, mind you) is a nerf to the opponent that feels all too easy to exploit. It's like boxing against somebody in a wheelchair.
Diantha’s Gardevoir in the Battle Cheateau is also a good offender. On normal difficulty, she has 4 attacks, but on the higher difficulty, it only has 1 or two Psychic moves with the remaining moves being status moves. Not a single fairy type move.
 
Eternatus getting an unobtainable form purely as a boss fight is cool and all, but it honestly makes me even more salty that we didn't get a proper Mother Beast Lusamine fight.
But if you did that then Purity Black Hole Sue Lillie wouldn't have approved that.


I don't like the first villainous team plot in SwSh.

I'll make this clear at first: I don't mind the fact Team Yell is not villainous... it's a fine change of pace. I don't mind that the villainous team plot is secondary as it's also a fine change of pace, and the whole "Pokémon Training being a popular sport" thing is much cooler (all these "save the world" plots we've been having since Gen III were getting very old).

What I mind and I don't like is that the villain conflict feels that it's in the game for the sake of having some conflict to begin with. It's like the story writing team got to Wyndon and thought "Dammit, we're at the final city and Chairman Rose had yet to do anything!" and slapped his actions extremely late in the story for no reason whatsoever. If the story had no villain at all (by literally having Rose wait until after the battle, and have his plan to contain Eternatus backfire) it would have been better.

The post-game plot fares better because it at least doesn't feel it was put there just to have a conflict to solve.
 
On difficulty: I have previously said that it would be great to do double, triple and/or horde battles against multiple trainers where each trainer gets access to their own mega and/or z-move (this now also applies to dynamax) while you still only get one. (Also, gym leaders really need more Mon on their teams. Nature-locking, ability-locking and item use is also important) Some fan games also have things like terrain and weather being pre-set at the start of the match which is also good. Giving trainers a couple of variable Mon they can counter team with would also be good.
 
But if you did that then Purity Black Hole Sue Lillie wouldn't have approved that.


I don't like the first villainous team plot in SwSh.

I'll make this clear at first: I don't mind the fact Team Yell is not villainous... it's a fine change of pace. I don't mind that the villainous team plot is secondary as it's also a fine change of pace, and the whole "Pokémon Training being a popular sport" thing is much cooler (all these "save the world" plots we've been having since Gen III were getting very old).

What I mind and I don't like is that the villain conflict feels that it's in the game for the sake of having some conflict to begin with. It's like the story writing team got to Wyndon and thought "Dammit, we're at the final city and Chairman Rose had yet to do anything!" and slapped his actions extremely late in the story for no reason whatsoever. If the story had no villain at all (by literally having Rose wait until after the battle, and have his plan to contain Eternatus backfire) it would have been better.

The post-game plot fares better because it at least doesn't feel it was put there just to have a conflict to solve.
Oh don't worry. They'll probably pull that off in the "Super-Ultra-It's-20%-Different-Buy-It-Again" versions next year.
 
Raid Battles are a really interesting idea, especially because it's kind of the apex of their attempts to have solo Pokemon be a boss fight without yo ujust sitting there chucking balls for an hour.

Too bad this concept is marred by:
1. The AI suuuuuuuucccccksssssss. They are underpowered not just in levels but in Pokemon, even in the post game. Togepi, Clefairy, Eevee, Pikachu, MAGIKARP are all on the table. This turns the raids from kind of difficult to better hope your idiot partners don't die instantly. It's just artificial and feels like it's punishing you for not using the online features
2. Too bad the online features are super flawed! Connecting to another person's game is kind of a pain because the Y Com updates so slowly, if you accidentally forgot to turn Online on going into a raid and you commit to it it's just a waste of time.
2a. Also people are probably picky about what they commit to. Does anyone really want to waste time fighting a 5* Crustle, even despite what it drops? Apparently not. Much less 3* mons (though those are easier to deal with as a whole). Literally no one wanted to bother doing these raids at the start of the game either...
3. The raids take a while. There's 5 pokemon in play, max moves take a while to execute, field effects and statuses are flying around, the barrier system. This on its own is not a bad thing, but it combines with...
4. Everything about the rewards to raids are a grind. Due to the costs of TRs (& their random daily selection) you are encouraged to grind, daily, across many raids that you have little control over, to get the actual good moves you want. If you want Hidden Abilities you have to keep grinding them until you find them, which takes much longer just due to the pomp & circumstance than otherwise would (thankfully you can breed for these once they start circulating).
4a. The TR situation wouldn't be such an issue if they did not take all the good TMs and make them TRs
5. You get one shot at catching the Pokemon and that';s just a bummer especially if it was a rare one.


It's just a bummer, playing these sucks and having to get an actual raiding party together is such a hassle.
 

Pikachu315111

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Ice Types Should Resist and Beat Water Types
This has always been a hotly debated topic with support on both sides. But you know what, while I don't think Water should be weak to Ice, I think Ice could be resistant to Water (and Water remains resist to Ice).

Now how would this make sense? Well by using the reasons why people used for the other to have an advantage over the other. A Water move used on an Ice-type would be susceptible to temperature change so an Ice-type could use its cryokinesis to rapidly cool the water before hitting it and weakening the blow (except for Scald & Steam Eruption which would be super effective against Ice). Similarly, Ice moves used on a Water-type could have its coldness negated by the water surrounding the Water-type (exception to Freeze-Dry which would be super effective).

If I were to do anything else it would be buffing Ice-type when Hail is active and maybe having Freeze-Dry have a high chance of freezing Water-types (though to counteract that maybe they can have it so an Ice-type is burned is unable to do that and make Scald/Steam Eruption have a higher chance to burn Ice-types).

But then I looked at Avalugg's Gen 6 learnset, and discovered that all of these battles (with the exception of the Gym Battle and the regular Chateau fight) simply use Avalugg's level up moveset, picking the last 4 moves he learns from the level he's currently at. And this applies for all "Writ of Challenge" matches, where Avalugg can be at level 30, 45, 50, 60, etc, so these movesets aren't properly balanced at all, they're just automatically picked from his regular learnset.

And, just like Wulfric's Chateau battles, this Camerupt over here uses his level up learnset to determine the moveset instead of having a specifically crafted, well balanced set of moves. The diference is that this is a STORY BATTLE, one whose tension is thrown in the trash due to the boss' main Pokémon having a horrendously and clumsly made moveset. These are not the only cases of that, I'm pretty sure all other XY bosses use movesets like this for their Writ of Challenge Chateau battles, and I wouldn't be surprised if other ORAS bosses had awful sets just like Maxie's Camerupt over here.
This is just mind boggling, why do that? For Wulfric just reuse his Gym moveset if you couldn't think of anything better and Maxie's Camerupt was given a logical moveset when he's a Battle Maison partner so why not use that one for the last story battle? Wild Pokemon I expect to only have the recent 4 moves they can learn, but Trainer Pokemon should have designed teams cause a human is commanding them.]

Doesn't seem like a problem nowadays, they've also stopped the "giving certain trainer Pokemon 2-3 moves" though oddly both of these problems were just for Gen VI.

Game Freak should make a serious effort to make raising a whole team easier. I think something like this could work:
  • With the EXP Share, every Pokemon on your party receives the full amount from every battle. The experience isn't split up, and it doesn't matter if a Pokemon participated in the battle.
  • You have the ability to redirect the experience a party member receives to a different party member of a lower level. There is no limit to how many Pokemon can redirect experience, and a low leveled party member can receive experience from multiple Pokemon at the same time. As a bonus, maybe you could decide how much experience a Pokemon gives to its weaker partner, instead of just being all or nothing. A slider could work, as could simple menu options of 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%.
I don't think even that will fix a player being able to blast through the story with just their Starter. I think the only one to have players really think about what is the best Pokemon to use in a certain situation or at least make it so at some point the Pokemon they have out will faint if they try solo using it (and it doesn't have a Type advantage) is, at least for League battles, have a set level. That way it doesn't matter if you overtrain as your Pokemon will be brought down to the approved level.

If you want something like that for the whole main game they would have to implement level caps in some form (like maybe in wild battles your Pokemon has the Level it actually is, but when against another Trainer your Pokemon can only go up to a certain level depending on how many Badges you have (or are the Champion) and if you're over that level it'll lower your Pokemon's level for that battle).

They could also limit the amount of Potions, Medicine, and Revives we can bring into a trainer battle and apply the same restriction to other trainers.

When it comes to catching Pokemon, few things annoy me more than when the only way to get certain Pokemon is by in-game trade or gifts.
I generally agree though there are some cases where I think that can be used. For example in SwSh there are in-game trades for Kantonian versions of Pokemon that got a Galarian form (though there is a reason for some of those, since some Galarian Pokemon got evolutions that are different species than their Kantonian counterparts, like Yamask and Meowth, they had to include a way to get the Kanto versions as their normal evolution is still part of the Galar dex).

Or they could use it for older gen Pokemon that they didn't plan on including but thought players would enjoy being able to get one anyway to use. And if you want one that feels like "your's" (and have a Ditto or its a female) you can breed for another one. Though in that case maybe giving an Egg would be a better option or doing something like Mr. Backlot's Mansion (or the Safari Zone area). Though I think we're getting offtrack, I noticed a lot of trades are usually someone giving you a Pokemon you can use against the Gym Leader/Totem Pokemon anyway.

My kingdom for a pokemon game with some sort of Jurassic park feature that lets you catch fossilmons in better pokeballs. It breaks my heart that very pretty shinies like Aurorus are stuck in pokeball hell.
For this I think they could easily do 2 things:

1. When a Pokemon hatches or you create a Fossil Pokemon you're given a choice what Poke Ball it goes in (if you don't it's put into a normal Poke Ball at no cost to you).

2. They should just allow you to swap what Poke Ball your Pokemon are in. Now I know a lot of people spend some time trying to get Pokemon in certain Poke Balls so that would burn them, so for those people maybe have a tag which says what Poke Ball the Pokemon originally was caught in. Or they could bring back Seals and have a certain kind of Seal that makes the Poke Ball looks like another however you can't have any additional effects that way "legitimate" Pokemon can be a bit more flashy.

I don't think Game Freak really gave much thought to having Leon take the starter left behind by you and Hop. This is revealed should you pick Grookey. Because Leon has both the neglected starter and his signature Charizard on his team, this means that picking Grookey results in Leon having two Fire starters on his team, which looks very unbalanced compared to his other two teams.

That said, there is another aspect of Leon's team that I actually really like, which I've discussed in this thread's positive counterpart.
Speaking of which, why is Leon's Signature Pokemon a Charizard anyway? Like before the games were released there was an idea Leon may not be on the up-and-up and uses a Charizard because its a popular Pokemon thus he was manipulating public opinion (and GF maybe commenting on Charizard's popularity effecting players decisions). But we then play the game and, no, Leon's starter was indeed a Charmander and there's no manipulation at all.

They couldn't think of or create a new "cool" Pokemon that Leon would have as his Gigantamax? What could have turned out to be commentary on pandering is now just blatant Gen I pandering after a lot of it from the past few gens.


Raid Battles are a really interesting idea, especially because it's kind of the apex of their attempts to have solo Pokemon be a boss fight without yo ujust sitting there chucking balls for an hour.

Too bad this concept is marred by:
Some more issues:

6. In the post game, as far as I can tell, you only get 5 star Raids. And unless you get lucky with your in-game teammates (or the Raid Pokemon is an idiot) you're not going to be beating them.

7. And unless you beat those Raids or use Wishing Starts to activate another Den there's no way to refresh the current Raids you have if you don't like them until it changes to the next day.

8. And if you're lucky enough to beat the Raid that's a Gigantamax Pokemon good luck with catching it! One chance and it feels like they gave it a low catchrate to increase the frustration. I've managed to beat a few Gigantamax Corviknight but always fail to catch them, I only managed to catch a Gigantamax Butterfree via a Net Ball.

And there was this small moment where I thought at least the AI partner problem was "solved" during the post game episode. Not revealing too much, in the post game episode you got to go back to each Gym, partner with the Gym Leader to do a Raid battle, and afterwards they'd give you their rare card. HOWEVER, when they do that they also say "call me whenever you need help". For a moment I thought, since we just partnered with them for a Raid battle, that them saying that meant during Raid I can call in the Gym Leaders to be my AI partners! But no, their words are empty and meaningless, you're still stuck with the same NPCs you've had since the beginning of the game (at least evolve the Pokemon of the ones which can evolve, and if you weren't going to do that have them all use Pokemon which don't evolve...).

Gigantamax Issues: Breaking Story & Contradictory GF:
I have two more issues concerning Gigantamax. NO, it doesn't have to do with Mega Pokemon. No, instead it has to do something with the game's story and the it going against something GF tried to do.

Breaking Story: So, the only way to get Gigantamax Pokemon is via Raids. And aside from Charmander, you get the G-Pokemon as its fully evolved stage (unless I'm mistaken) and you can't breed Gigantamax status onto a Pokemon. So with all that said, does that mean Marnie, Bede, and Oleana replaced their Impidimp, Hatenna, and Trubbish with a Grimmsnarl, Hatterene, and Garbodor that can Gigantamax? I guess for Marnie and Bede that doesn't really matter even though the game seems to imply its the same Pokemon they've have with them since the early game, but for Oleana it's a massive plot hole concerning her backstory. And even if I'm mistaken and you can catch a Gigantamax Pokemon at a lower evolution stage, you still can't breed them so Marnie, Bede, and Oleana were just super lucky to get one that had the capability?

Contradictory GF: GF took some massive steps toward making it so your in-game team could actually become a competitive. You can finally change what stats your Pokemon's Nature effects, you can teach a Pokemon Egg Moves via another member of the same species with those Egg Moves, and by doubling the amount of technical machines they'd made a lot more moves more available without having to breed for them. YET, by making Gigantamax Pokemon only available through Raids, it kind of feels like a slap into the face to the Pokemon of those same species that can only Dynamax. Why do that? Well, I guess to make you want to do Raids (though if that's the case maybe you should work on making Raids worth it without locking off a major mechanic to only it), but I feel they could have done a compromise. Like a Raid Pokemon comes with the ability to Gigantamax while other Pokemon of that species need to be trained till Level 100 so an NPC can let you switch between having it Dynamax and Giganatmax (infact they should have that NPC anyway so that Gigantamax Pokemon can have a choice to become Dynamax).
 
Some more issues:

6. In the post game, as far as I can tell, you only get 5 star Raids. And unless you get lucky with your in-game teammates (or the Raid Pokemon is an idiot) you're not going to be beating them.
not true. 1 & 2-star raids are removed from the pool, but 3 & 4 star raids are still present. I see 4s in particular all the time, with 3s being kind of rare.
Honestly while I understand why 1 & 2 star raids would be removed (since they have low leveled unevolved pokemon) I think that creates an issue of getting rid of more easily grindable moves. They offer less but something like Pikachu is much easier to handle. I think it'd be fine to keep them around but oops!

And there was this small moment where I thought at least the AI partner problem was "solved" during the post game episode. Not revealing too much, in the post game episode you got to go back to each Gym, partner with the Gym Leader to do a Raid battle, and afterwards they'd give you their rare card. HOWEVER, when they do that they also say "call me whenever you need help". For a moment I thought, since we just partnered with them for a Raid battle, that them saying that meant during Raid I can call in the Gym Leaders to be my AI partners! But no, their words are empty and meaningless, you're still stuck with the same NPCs you've had since the beginning of the game (at least evolve the Pokemon of the ones which can evolve, and if you weren't going to do that have them all use Pokemon which don't evolve...).
Yeah what's up with that? Like a lot of things in this game it just feels like something they didn't have time to implement.
Gigantamax Issues: Breaking Story & Contradictory GF:
I have two more issues concerning Gigantamax. NO, it doesn't have to do with Mega Pokemon. No, instead it has to do something with the game's story and the it going against something GF tried to do.

Breaking Story: So, the only way to get Gigantamax Pokemon is via Raids. And aside from Charmander, you get the G-Pokemon as its fully evolved stage (unless I'm mistaken) and you can't breed Gigantamax status onto a Pokemon. So with all that said, does that mean Marnie, Bede, and Oleana replaced their Impidimp, Hatenna, and Trubbish with a Grimmsnarl, Hatterene, and Garbodor that can Gigantamax? I guess for Marnie and Bede that doesn't really matter even though the game seems to imply its the same Pokemon they've have with them since the early game, but for Oleana it's a massive plot hole concerning her backstory. And even if I'm mistaken and you can catch a Gigantamax Pokemon at a lower evolution stage, you still can't breed them so Marnie, Bede, and Oleana were just super lucky to get one that had the capability?
It's almost certainly just a gameplay contrivance that you, the player, can only see & capture G-Max pokemon at the appropriate stage. It's so you know instantly, from the silhouette, that it's a g-max raid and you get to deal with their g-max moves. Like there's an actual gamefeel reasoning for this.
Likewise the fact the G-Max Pikachu, Eevee & Meowth can't evolve is just a contrivance so you dont evolve them and Oopsies you can't g-max your once-per-file event pokemon anymore
And not being able to breed them could also just be a contrivance so that gamefreak forces you to grind their stupid raid system for all eternity.

if, in-universe, you cannot breed them then the existence of G-Max Charmander would prove they are available at lower stages, just you can't get them.
 
Breaking Story: So, the only way to get Gigantamax Pokemon is via Raids. And aside from Charmander, you get the G-Pokemon as its fully evolved stage (unless I'm mistaken) and you can't breed Gigantamax status onto a Pokemon. So with all that said, does that mean Marnie, Bede, and Oleana replaced their Impidimp, Hatenna, and Trubbish with a Grimmsnarl, Hatterene, and Garbodor that can Gigantamax? I guess for Marnie and Bede that doesn't really matter even though the game seems to imply its the same Pokemon they've have with them since the early game, but for Oleana it's a massive plot hole concerning her backstory. And even if I'm mistaken and you can catch a Gigantamax Pokemon at a lower evolution stage, you still can't breed them so Marnie, Bede, and Oleana were just super lucky to get one that had the capability?
You missed Hop, who Gigantimaxes his Corviknight in the post-game, despite catching it as a Rookidee. However, I don't think this is necessarily an issue. While it may not be possible for the player to acquire an Impidimp, Hetenna, Trubbish, or Rookidee that will evolve into a Gigantimaxable final stage, the existence of Charmander shows that they can exist in-universe. While it may be super rare, there isn't any actually story breaking here.

The same cannot be said for Nessa. During her gym battle, she Dynamaxes her Drednaw, but during her league battle, she Gigantamaxes her Drednaw. There's no way for these two Drednaw to be the same individual. Though I suppose it's not too farfetched for a Gym Leader to possess multiple of one species. It wouldn't be fair for future gym challengers for Nessa to use her level 53 Drednaw during the gym battle, so she uses her level 24 one instead.

My biggest issue with Gigantimax is that it doesn't seem to have any reason to exist beyond looking cool and selling merch of the new forms. Mechanically, it's almost identical to Dynamaxing, except the effects of one move type are changed, usually for the worse. Nessa's gym Drednaw can set up rain to boost its Water attacks, while her league Drednaw can set up Stealth Rock. Leon's Charizard could set up the sun to boost its Fire attacks as well as make use of Solar Beam after it powers down, but instead it deals a little bit of chip damage. Both examples could also use the weather to activate their hidden abilities, if Game Freak wasn't so averse to using hidden abilities outside of the battle tower.

Maybe if the G-max moves had their unique effect stacked on top of the usual effect instead of replacing it outright, or especially if Gigantimaxing provided some statistical advantage over Dynamaxing, then I would be fine with it. But as it stands, it seems like it was a complete waste of developer time and resources.
 
My big problem with Gigantimaxing is that you cannot even use them in official tournaments like the Battle Stadium and VGC. I’m guessing it’s because Pikachu, Eevee, and Meowth are event exclusive and the TPC took the lazy way out by banning all of them instead of those 3. Not to mention that all they have to do is list those 3 are banned, no too much effort right.

So assuming you catch a Gigantamax Hatterene with 4IVs that you worked so hard to catch, you can can’t even use in Battle Stadium, the perfect place for utilizing it. The fact that Gigantimaxing is so limited in games hurt it’s too, since the only place you can consistently use it is in Champion Cup rematches and Raid battles.

Not to mention some like Charizard and Drednaw are just better as Dynamaxes, while Meowth, Eevee, and Pikachu are just awful to the point that you would not waste your Dynamax on it in a serious battle. In all honesty, Gigantamax Pokemon just feel like they exist as a novelty to promote raid battles and to create merchandise off Pokémon.
 

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