Unpopular opinions

[Samtendo09]

I wish people wouldn't do this "be honest, you all agree with me" thing when in fact I don't agree with them.

On a related note, here comes an opinion that I don't think is unpopular in the broader fandom, but I do think is unpopular here. I see a lot of posts here that more or less assert that a Pokemon without a competitive niche / good stats / whatever is a waste of time, and not worthwhile for Game Freak to have made. I get why Smogon would attract that kind of thinking, and I can agree that it might be better that those Pokemon have something noteworthy in their battling abilities, but let's remember that there are a lot of different reasons people might like or dislike certain Pokemon.

I'm here mainly for the designs and lore. Battling performance is secondary.

I 100% agree with you that designs and lore are way more integral to a Pokémon than their battling capability, but I also think it's entirely plausible to have every fully evolved Pokémon have an adequate individual niche over any other fully evolved Pokémon considering the amount of content in the franchise. I mean, Riolu was extremely viable, before they nerfed Copycat, as a Roar-Copycat Prankster phaser that could rack up extreme amounts of hazard damage, even in OU. Those sorts of niches are plentiful and with the number of different possibilities within the potential combinations of moves, abilities and the like present in Pokémon, every Pokémon could be the best at something. And I think Game Freak figuring out something that every mon is best at would be really great, because then every Pokémon has at least the smallest niche going at the highest level of play.

The go-to example for this always ends up being Dustox. The amount of Bug-Type Quiver Dance users that Dustox has to compete with basically makes Dustox an awful Pokémon with no discernible niche. Imagine being outclassed by Beautifly! Admittedly in Gen III ZU it's the best Whirlwind phaser thanks to an anti-meta typing, but realistically speaking this was neither intentional nor something that would endear Dustox to more people. If they're not interested in making it a good Pokémon, at least give it something like Spore to set itself apart from other Pokémon. Parasect and Dustox could comfortably compete as the best Bug-Type Spore user on different teams based on their differing secondary typings, and even that's enough to give a Pokémon a niche. As it is, Game Freak is content with letting Pokémon be comparatively useless compared with the rest of the roster.

But all of that aside, I agree with you. Kricketune is one of my all-time favourites because I had a plastic figurine of it as a kid and find the concept of a cricket (who are famed for making """musical""" noises) be able to make a true violin sound really cool. Kricketune is completely outclassed in-battle with nothing to set it above a Pokémon like Leavanny, but its lore and design are neat so hey it's good in my book. I just think Game Freak could also do more to not make it so dichotomous as choosing between whether you appreciate lore or battle prowess more.

No denying any of that, and there are plenty of Pokémon that I do really like for reasons that had nothing to do with competitive or even in-game values, such as Wigglytuff, Crabominable, Shiinotic, both Raichu (that's a different story in a good way in VGC, especially Kanto Raichu), Absol, Solrock, Lunatone, Seviper (and to lesser extent Zangoose)...

Of course the opposite can also be true, with something with plenty of competitive/in-game value but that I still don't have much regard to it from neutral to outright disdain - and not (just) because some are overpowered. Clefable (neutral), Blaziken (slight like but not a favorite), and Toxapex (admittedly I really don't like it, though competitive didn't helped their case) are among my list in that case.

Keep in mind that there are people who only judge Pokémon with only design and nothing else. Nothing wrong in theory but by then their reason to hate a Pokémon is simply as thin as "it's ugly" even when the accused Pokémon have much more values beyond appearance. Of course calling Stunfisk or Crabominable adorable by their appearance would make an unpopular opinion.

For things that have none of the following - interesting design, high in-game value, comparative uniqueness to other Pokémon with shared type, interesting lore, worthiness of rarity and obtain method - well, good luck guessing which Pokémon that didn't fulfilled any of the following is my favorites.

 

[Deleted User 465389]

Of course calling Stunfisk adorable would make an unpopular opinion

the person who designed this card would like to disagree
(side note: finding this card cute is an unpopular opinion, which I do not find it, as it is ugly)

 

[DrPumpkinz]

I think Stunfisk and Crabominable are cute, because they're so derpy. Stunfisk is flat with a blank stare and has a pug-like charm to it, and Crabominable has a goofy buck-toothed grin and a stupid haircut.

 

[mcooper527666]

I wonder how one could go about nerfing dynamaxing without banning it. Maybe add a conditional ban like only very specific Pokémon can’t dynamax (for example, Gyarados, Excadrill, Hawlucha, Togekiss, etc) the same way that ubers does. Another way to be to make a meta game of the month where dynamax effects only have a 25% chance of happening or maybe even requiring a specific held item to dynamax. I wondear how that would work out.

 

[Tmi489]

I wonder how one could go about nerfing dynamaxing without banning it. Maybe add a conditional ban like only very specific Pokémon can’t dynamax (for example, Gyarados, Excadrill, Hawlucha, Togekiss, etc) the same way that ubers does. Another way to be to make a meta game of the month where dynamax effects only have a 25% chance of happening or maybe even requiring a specific held item to dynamax. I wondear how that would work out.

dynamax is pretty broken. anything with a flying move can go airstream -> stab and start sweeping after just a little chip, especially if they have fighting/poison. double bulk helps offensive mons set up
a conditional ban would be a 'cOOOmplex bAn' and also would be too specific and would have to ban a majority of the meta, pretty sure its only in ubers to keep dyna in some smogon tier
only heavy drawbacks/nerfs to the moves themselves would balance dynamax because many of the side effects are ridiculously strong along with just everything else
this [balancing dmax] has been tried in a pet mod before, too

 

[DreamPrince]

I wish people wouldn't do this "be honest, you all agree with me" thing when in fact I don't agree with them.

On a related note, here comes an opinion that I don't think is unpopular in the broader fandom, but I do think is unpopular here. I see a lot of posts here that more or less assert that a Pokemon without a competitive niche / good stats / whatever is a waste of time, and not worthwhile for Game Freak to have made. I get why Smogon would attract that kind of thinking, and I can agree that it might be better that those Pokemon have something noteworthy in their battling abilities, but let's remember that there are a lot of different reasons people might like or dislike certain Pokemon.

I'm here mainly for the designs and lore. Battling performance is secondary.

I also agree that just because a Pokemon is not that great in competitive battling does not mean it should not exist. That's like saying that Ganondorf and Little Mac should not exist because they are low tier characters in Smash. Obviously people would be really mad if not outright furious if Ganondorf was removed as a playable character, so saying the character was removed because they were bad competitively is not valid excuse, Especially for the casual fanbase.

Its also very hard to determine which Pokemon is good or bad because it is so subjective. Goodra has a BST of 600 but is RU. Does that make it bad Pokemon worthy of being Dexited? Not to mention Goodra has very valuable niche in VGC thanks to being Dragon type that has a better than average matchup against Fairy types thanks to amazing Special Defense and access to Poison type moves. That typing and Sap Sipper makes it an excellent check to Sun-Based teams, since it resists Grass/Fire types that are central to that archetype. As a result, Goodra is ranked higher than Kommo-o and Hydreigon is VGC Series 5 viability rankings despite Hydreigon and Kommo-o being in higher tiers in Singles.

Or look at Leafeon. Its untied in Smogon, but has had some marginal Success in VGC thanks to Chlorophyll and moves like Weather Ball, Dig, X-Scissors, and decent offensive stats of 110 Attack and 95 Spd. While does face pretty stiff competition from Venusaur, people like Wolfe Glick have used Leafeon to reach high places on ladder. So Leafeon is definitely good in a doubles Sense, while still being bad in a Singles sense. A Pokemon could be good in one meta game, and not in another. That's how subjective it is determining a Pokemon usefulness in a competitive scene.

 

[Magnus0]

I wish people wouldn't do this "be honest, you all agree with me" thing when in fact I don't agree with them.

On a related note, here comes an opinion that I don't think is unpopular in the broader fandom, but I do think is unpopular here. I see a lot of posts here that more or less assert that a Pokemon without a competitive niche / good stats / whatever is a waste of time, and not worthwhile for Game Freak to have made. I get why Smogon would attract that kind of thinking, and I can agree that it might be better that those Pokemon have something noteworthy in their battling abilities, but let's remember that there are a lot of different reasons people might like or dislike certain Pokemon.

I'm here mainly for the designs and lore. Battling performance is secondary.

I am one of the people who think that every Pokemon should have some kind of niche (in-game anyway), how small it may be. The reason for that is pretty simple: aspects like design and lore don't have much of an opportunity to shine if the Pokemon in question is bad in battle.

For example, I think a lot of people like Ariados and Ledian for their design. However, they are ungodly terrible in-game, which deters people from using them. Keep in mind, almost anything is usable in game, so if a pokemon is near-unusable even in that environment, they must be really bad. That's just a waste. What's the point of catching and using a Pokemon you like, making memories with it and all that, if it's so terrible to the point that it's just not fun to use?

There are also Pokemon that are perfectly usable, but also plain boring because they have no niche. I think Unfezant is a pretty good example. It's stats are decent, but it plays like every other normal/flying early bird. The one thing it can do that other Pokemon can't do, is early super luck air cutter, but Unfezant's stats don't support this strategy. Imagine if GF really committed to this niche and swapped Unfezant's attack and special attack. Get rid of the charge turn on razor wind and give it a special flying type version of leaf blade, and viola, unique Pokemon. I think it would have made the Pidove line a lot more memorable.

I think my point here is that most of the memories you make with Pokemon are through battling with them. That time your Pokemon got a clutch crit on a gym leader's ace. That time you tricked the AI with a unique strategy. Those are the moments that stick with you. It's just not possible to make these kinds of memories if all your Pokemon can do is "have a nice design".

 

[hjyboy1218]

I also like to use Pokemon with niches, mainly to console myself that I am employing real strategy in battles and not just spamming SE moves. "Look, my Magneton used thunder wave before OHKOing that Pelipper with Thunderbolt! That's some real strategy right there!"

Jokes aside, Pokemon with specific niches are really fun to use. Once in an FRLG ROM hack, I searched for a Technician Scyther for 20 minutes and used a Heart scale once it evolved just so I could use Technician-boosted priority Bullet Punch. Sure, I could just teach a Swarm one Steel Wing and call it a day, but where's the fun in that? I also had fun using Abomasnow in Platinum. Admittedly, most of my 'strategy' consisted of spamming 100% accuracy Blizzards, but actually utilizing a Pokemon's ability in-game is fun.

 

[mcooper527666]

dynamax is pretty broken. anything with a flying move can go airstream -> stab and start sweeping after just a little chip, especially if they have fighting/poison. double bulk helps offensive mons set up
a conditional ban would be a 'cOOOmplex bAn' and also would be too specific and would have to ban a majority of the meta, pretty sure its only in ubers to keep dyna in some smogon tier
only heavy drawbacks/nerfs to the moves themselves would balance dynamax because many of the side effects are ridiculously strong along with just everything else
this [balancing dmax] has been tried in a pet mod before, too

And how did it work out?

 

[didls]

I don't really understand the loathing of "Inanimate object" Pokémon.
Inanimate objects are a perfectly fine inspiration for a "monster" which is why they're commonly seen in other jRPGs such as Dragon Quest.
"Inanimmate object" Pokémon also tend to have a far more interesting lore (and design) than their animal- or mythology-inspired counterparts.
Just look at Klefki, which has very creative lore but is still regarded as one of the "worst" Pokémon:

Click Me

This is cool. It's a kleptomaniac keyring that likes to "collect" (steal) keys.

 

[pokemon4eva]

I talked already about Garbodor line, so about the other overhated line, Vanillite: I love this ice cream mon. Both Vanillish and Vanilluxe have a tendency to get angry and freeze everything in sight, with Vanilluxe being capable of producing snowstorms from its...wafer (which might explain why it got Snow Warning later). It's such a force of nature, contained in an ice cream sundae. No wonder why Unova legends like N and Alder have one.

An issue I have is that the whole Vanillite line has an unused characteristic in the games, just like Golurk turning into a cannon: it can get 'bald' if melting. This could have translated to a very unique ability, like Eiscue in Gen 8. Coincidentally, both mons were designed by James Turner, I like how much detail he put into these lines, even going outside the limits of the games.

 

[MrHands]

I know this is technically a popular opinion at time of release, but as time went on this is slowly becoming unpopular...

I don't think 5th gen is as good as we remember.

Yeah I know. BW2 were huge improvements over BW. BW2 were some of THE best "2d" Pokemon games. This is strict fact. But I also think nostalgia is starting to take over people's memories here. I recently decided to transfer allllll my 4th gen Wifi Pokemon to 8th gen to bottle cap / mint them to perfection. To do so I had to play through BW2. I figured that's fine, BW2 is a fun game right?

ehh... I guess?

First off, it isn't very hard. Not really. I didn't grind at all. I think my starter was the water guy but Imo all 5th gen starters are awful. Competitively Serp is cool but sadly it gets stuck with Overgrow and no movepool in-game. Emboar is slow and has an awkward move-pool (many of its best attacks kill itself, also it kind of has issues getting good physical STAB). I guess the otter is the closest to good you'll get in gen 5 but I don't like Samurott either. My final team was Sigilyph / Magnezone / Lilligant / Braviary / Cobalion / Jellicent (HM slave). A combo of Twave + Flash Magnezone and some combination of setup mons (Charge Beam Sigilyph / QD Lilli / SD Cobalion) pretty easily 6-0ed all bosses, even the Elite 4. I didn't use in-battle items but still found the game overall pretty easy as long as you understand the type chart. Also on the topic of Pokemon there are a lot less options to pick from than I remember. I know they upgraded the Pokedex to not drown us in elemental monkeys + early game dogs for the first third of the game but even then I had trouble piecing together a decent team until about the 4th badge. I think my first "real" Pokemon was Magnemite? I had a lot of issue finding Pokemon I wanted to use, but that might be the "I post on Smogon forums and could tell you the base stats of these garbage NU mons all day" in me talking.

The gym "puzzles" were more annoying than anything. They aren't hard, they just serve to artificially inflate the time spent in each gym. Walk in circles until you find a trainer. Kill trainer to unlock next section. Repeat until Gym leader is defeated. They aren't fun. Also I know SwSh get a lot of flak for the game being "beat gym, walk down the road, talk to NPCs, beat gym... repeat"... but BW2 actually did that a lot. Literally Team Plasma launched an evil space-ship boat thing and the rival is like "oh no MrHands, better beat the 8th gym before we do anything about that!" Wow cool okay.

Team Plasma was just a bunch of easy mooks who died by the dozen. They actually gave you a healing bed on the plasma frigate so wtf, where's the difficulty? Kill a few noobs, rub back to the bed (it wasn't very far) then go back to killing. Colress himself was vaguely strong but he couldn't handle my master strategy of "Twave + Flash Magnezone + Lilligant".

It was a bit of a weird feeling dealing with dungeons and random grass again, unlike in SwSh where you just fucking see that Pikachu. By weird, I mean bad. Caves are genuinely not fun. Either you have enough repels and run around in circles pushing rocks into holes, or you run out of repels and have to hit "run" every 15 seconds. They aren't hard or in any way a mental exercise, they're just a pain in the ass. I know SwSh has barren caves which is bad, but flooding those caves with fucking Sturdy Rogenrollas isn't the answer either. But to be fair the item rewards were usually good enough that I was willing to buy a few extra Repels to go exploring. Grinding through NPCs isn't really fun either. Like, I OHKO probably 90% of what they use. What's even the point? Victory Road wasn't "hard", it just forced me to run back to the Pokemon center a few times which made it take a while... but it wasn't actually skillfully difficult.

Pokestar studios is neat the FIRST time you do it and after than, even 10 years later I have zero interest in doing it ever again. There aren't even any BP style rewards to make it worth the effort. Speaking of BP you can do the battle... train? But the BP rewards are extremely small so it's basically a placeholder until you get a competitive team. Similarly Pokemon World Tournament is fun for the baby version you get in-game but once the difficulty ramps up it's another post-game thing. It's cool seeing trainers like Cynthia / whatever but it basically just amounts to Battle Tower 2.0 with some sprite swaps to make you feel cool fighting gym leaders. I'm trying to think of what other useless gimmicks there are. Triple and Rotation battle that literally no one likes. There's Wonder Launcher as well. I battled my Ex's cousin once and the match took two hours because Max Revives should never go anywhere near a competitive match. Hidden Grottos are pointless. You get that guaranteed hidden ability rat but after that it's all luck. Also they're all "hidden" so I never found another one lol. There's join avenue I guess but I don't think anyone will ever come visit me in my 10+ year old game :( .

Also this might be completely in my head but the game looks like someone took HGSS and dropped the saturation waaaaaay down. It was so dreary and color-less. I even had to check my 3ds to make sure the brightness was up. There's nothing comparable to the bright colors of the almost ridiculously beautiful Bell Tower in HGSS.

Anyway tl;dr I played through BW2 to get my Pokemon transferred and didn't have much fun. It was just a tedious grind with minimal real difficulty. HGSS were and are the best Pokemon games ever and as far as older games go they will always be the best. BW2 is still arguably better than the 1st and 2nd gen, maybe 3rd, but 4th gives it a run for its money. I think we remember the slower, grindier early gen games with nostalgia goggles but despite the very real flaws of gens 6-8 I think they're far more playable overall.

 

[Worldie]

It was a bit of a weird feeling dealing with dungeons and random grass again, unlike in SwSh where you just fucking see that Pikachu. By weird, I mean bad. Caves are genuinely not fun. Either you have enough repels and run around in circles pushing rocks into holes, or you run out of repels and have to hit "run" every 15 seconds. They aren't hard or in any way a mental exercise, they're just a pain in the ass. I know SwSh has barren caves which is bad, but flooding those caves with fucking Sturdy Rogenrollas isn't the answer either.

You know, lately I feel we're a bit """spoiled""" by Symbol Encounters.
Bare in mind, I greatly prefer them to random ones, in every game, not just pokemon.

After playing for so long on games with visible overworld enemies (either actually there, or symbol encounters) I came to realize how much more "barren" the ambience feels and how much it "breaks the immersion" when a enemy (or a bunch of them) just pops out of apparently nowhere every X steps.

Still, I'd never go back. I love symbol encounters. Screw random encounters, they're a relic of the past.

 

[earl]

I know this is technically a popular opinion at time of release, but as time went on this is slowly becoming unpopular...

I don't think 5th gen is as good as we remember.

Yeah I know. BW2 were huge improvements over BW. BW2 were some of THE best "2d" Pokemon games. This is strict fact. But I also think nostalgia is starting to take over people's memories here. I recently decided to transfer allllll my 4th gen Wifi Pokemon to 8th gen to bottle cap / mint them to perfection. To do so I had to play through BW2. I figured that's fine, BW2 is a fun game right?

ehh... I guess?

First off, it isn't very hard. Not really. I didn't grind at all. I think my starter was the water guy but Imo all 5th gen starters are awful. Competitively Serp is cool but sadly it gets stuck with Overgrow and no movepool in-game. Emboar is slow and has an awkward move-pool (many of its best attacks kill itself, also it kind of has issues getting good physical STAB). I guess the otter is the closest to good you'll get in gen 5 but I don't like Samurott either. My final team was Sigilyph / Magnezone / Lilligant / Braviary / Cobalion / Jellicent (HM slave). A combo of Twave + Flash Magnezone and some combination of setup mons (Charge Beam Sigilyph / QD Lilli / SD Cobalion) pretty easily 6-0ed all bosses, even the Elite 4. I didn't use in-battle items but still found the game overall pretty easy as long as you understand the type chart. Also on the topic of Pokemon there are a lot less options to pick from than I remember. I know they upgraded the Pokedex to not drown us in elemental monkeys + early game dogs for the first third of the game but even then I had trouble piecing together a decent team until about the 4th badge. I think my first "real" Pokemon was Magnemite? I had a lot of issue finding Pokemon I wanted to use, but that might be the "I post on Smogon forums and could tell you the base stats of these garbage NU mons all day" in me talking.

The gym "puzzles" were more annoying than anything. They aren't hard, they just serve to artificially inflate the time spent in each gym. Walk in circles until you find a trainer. Kill trainer to unlock next section. Repeat until Gym leader is defeated. They aren't fun. Also I know SwSh get a lot of flak for the game being "beat gym, walk down the road, talk to NPCs, beat gym... repeat"... but BW2 actually did that a lot. Literally Team Plasma launched an evil space-ship boat thing and the rival is like "oh no MrHands, better beat the 8th gym before we do anything about that!" Wow cool okay.

Team Plasma was just a bunch of easy mooks who died by the dozen. They actually gave you a healing bed on the plasma frigate so wtf, where's the difficulty? Kill a few noobs, rub back to the bed (it wasn't very far) then go back to killing. Colress himself was vaguely strong but he couldn't handle my master strategy of "Twave + Flash Magnezone + Lilligant".

It was a bit of a weird feeling dealing with dungeons and random grass again, unlike in SwSh where you just fucking see that Pikachu. By weird, I mean bad. Caves are genuinely not fun. Either you have enough repels and run around in circles pushing rocks into holes, or you run out of repels and have to hit "run" every 15 seconds. They aren't hard or in any way a mental exercise, they're just a pain in the ass. I know SwSh has barren caves which is bad, but flooding those caves with fucking Sturdy Rogenrollas isn't the answer either. But to be fair the item rewards were usually good enough that I was willing to buy a few extra Repels to go exploring. Grinding through NPCs isn't really fun either. Like, I OHKO probably 90% of what they use. What's even the point? Victory Road wasn't "hard", it just forced me to run back to the Pokemon center a few times which made it take a while... but it wasn't actually skillfully difficult.

Pokestar studios is neat the FIRST time you do it and after than, even 10 years later I have zero interest in doing it ever again. There aren't even any BP style rewards to make it worth the effort. Speaking of BP you can do the battle... train? But the BP rewards are extremely small so it's basically a placeholder until you get a competitive team. Similarly Pokemon World Tournament is fun for the baby version you get in-game but once the difficulty ramps up it's another post-game thing. It's cool seeing trainers like Cynthia / whatever but it basically just amounts to Battle Tower 2.0 with some sprite swaps to make you feel cool fighting gym leaders. I'm trying to think of what other useless gimmicks there are. Triple and Rotation battle that literally no one likes. There's Wonder Launcher as well. I battled my Ex's cousin once and the match took two hours because Max Revives should never go anywhere near a competitive match. Hidden Grottos are pointless. You get that guaranteed hidden ability rat but after that it's all luck. Also they're all "hidden" so I never found another one lol. There's join avenue I guess but I don't think anyone will ever come visit me in my 10+ year old game :( .

Also this might be completely in my head but the game looks like someone took HGSS and dropped the saturation waaaaaay down. It was so dreary and color-less. I even had to check my 3ds to make sure the brightness was up. There's nothing comparable to the bright colors of the almost ridiculously beautiful Bell Tower in HGSS.

Anyway tl;dr I played through BW2 to get my Pokemon transferred and didn't have much fun. It was just a tedious grind with minimal real difficulty. HGSS were and are the best Pokemon games ever and as far as older games go they will always be the best. BW2 is still arguably better than the 1st and 2nd gen, maybe 3rd, but 4th gives it a run for its money. I think we remember the slower, grindier early gen games with nostalgia goggles but despite the very real flaws of gens 6-8 I think they're far more playable overall.

Local Man Learns Pokemon is Not Hard

 

[MrHands]

Local Man Learns Pokemon is Not Hard

Not for us who know the base stats, movepools, and abilities by heart backed by a decade or more of experience. I never assumed it would be hard.

But never once did BW2 make me take a step back and go "hmm, I need a different strategy" or anything like that. I had been under the opinion that BW2 was a particularly difficult Pokemon game but in reality it wasn't really any worse than the others. I was under the opinion that BW2 were more difficult than the modern games as there's no hand-holding or frequent "free" heals. But... not really.

I guess I was just surprised.

 

[Pikachu315111]

Not for us who know the base stats, movepools, and abilities by heart backed by a decade or more of experience. I never assumed it would be hard.

But never once did BW2 make me take a step back and go "hmm, I need a different strategy" or anything like that. I had been under the opinion that BW2 was a particularly difficult Pokemon game but in reality it wasn't really any worse than the others. I was under the opinion that BW2 were more difficult than the modern games as there's no hand-holding or frequent "free" heals. But... not really.

I guess I was just surprised.

If I recall BW is the one that's considered hard, especially the final villain battles (in BW2 they nerfed Ghetsis by giving him a Physical Hydreigon with less coverage).

 

[Bull Of Heaven]

Yeah I know. BW2 were huge improvements over BW. BW2 were some of THE best "2d" Pokemon games. This is strict fact.

I definitely don't remember this being a popular opinion back then. The main thing I remember is actually people liking the BW story and thinking BW2 went too far back to the standard formula. In any case, what's written here is definitely not "strict fact" (personally: I like BW2 but am surprised at just how popular they are in this forum).

First off, it isn't very hard. Not really. I didn't grind at all.

I don't really care about this but I recognize that a lot of people do. But for what it's worth I don't think I've played through BW2 very many times without some grinding before Clay.

I think my starter was the water guy but Imo all 5th gen starters are awful. Competitively Serp is cool but sadly it gets stuck with Overgrow and no movepool in-game. Emboar is slow and has an awkward move-pool (many of its best attacks kill itself, also it kind of has issues getting good physical STAB). I guess the otter is the closest to good you'll get in gen 5 but I don't like Samurott either.

Serp best starter design all-time. Serp is kind of cool, but definitely grindy, with a Coil set in-game. Not for everyone, but not bad. Emboar's SpA isn't that bad and TMs are reusable by this point, so it does fine with like Flamethrower and Rock Slide. Samurott is meh, agreed.

Also on the topic of Pokemon there are a lot less options to pick from than I remember. I know they upgraded the Pokedex to not drown us in elemental monkeys + early game dogs for the first third of the game but even then I had trouble piecing together a decent team until about the 4th badge. I think my first "real" Pokemon was Magnemite?

Starters aside, Riolu is available before Magnemite. So is Mareep, though that's more "cool" than "very good in battle". Elekid/Magby at the same time as Magnemite. Not to mention all the gen 5 Pokemon that are still around.

The gym "puzzles" were more annoying than anything. They aren't hard, they just serve to artificially inflate the time spent in each gym. Walk in circles until you find a trainer. Kill trainer to unlock next section. Repeat until Gym leader is defeated. They aren't fun.

The strength of the BW2 gyms is style more than anything. Individual, mostly-awesome themes. A band. Burgh's weird cocoon art. Battles on a fashion runway. Another hilariously dangerous Skyla puzzle. Giant moving dragon statues. The pleasant design of Marlon's gym. I've omitted the bad/uninteresting ones. Can't argue with your take on the puzzles, but I like those gyms a lot anyway for a different reason.

Literally Team Plasma launched an evil space-ship boat thing and the rival is like "oh no MrHands, better beat the 8th gym before we do anything about that!" Wow cool okay.

Haha, yeah, I have nothing to say to this one and I just want to acknowledge it.

It was a bit of a weird feeling dealing with dungeons and random grass again, unlike in SwSh where you just fucking see that Pikachu. By weird, I mean bad. Caves are genuinely not fun. Either you have enough repels and run around in circles pushing rocks into holes, or you run out of repels and have to hit "run" every 15 seconds. They aren't hard or in any way a mental exercise, they're just a pain in the ass.

I mean, this is just how it was until Let's Go? So if you're evaluating BW2 against the rest of the series, it doesn't really mean much. And BW2 gave us the very important innovation of being able to use the next Repel without going into the bag. Anyway, there's so much money available during a playthrough that buying like 50 Super Repels when they're available is no big deal to me.

Similarly Pokemon World Tournament is fun for the baby version you get in-game but once the difficulty ramps up it's another post-game thing. It's cool seeing trainers like Cynthia / whatever but it basically just amounts to Battle Tower 2.0 with some sprite swaps to make you feel cool fighting gym leaders.

...yeah?

Triple and Rotation battle that literally no one likes.

Fake news.

There's Wonder Launcher as well. I battled my Ex's cousin once and the match took two hours because Max Revives should never go anywhere near a competitive match.

I'm pretty sure it was never used in VGC or Smogon formats. What people can do in their own informal battles should be up to them and what they enjoy, right?

Hidden Grottos are pointless. You get that guaranteed hidden ability rat but after that it's all luck. Also they're all "hidden" so I never found another one lol.

It's not that hard, though the payoff does tend to be very underwhelming.

Anyway, all the talk about difficulty throughout your post, the references to competitive play, and the stuff about the gimmicks, suggests to me that you went in with fairly specific wants. I'd suggest that to some extent this isn't a case of the games being worse than people remember, but rather that they don't tick all of your subjective boxes.

Edit: But, hey, it is the unpopular opinions thread, so that's kind of just what we do here.

 

[Yung Dramps]

Sometimes I genuinely wonder if Gen 5's initial cold reception may have been in part because of the lackluster starters. If there's anything that the history of marketing has shown it's that first impressions are everything and considering how Gen 5 really didn't have any standout slam dunk hit starters it absolutely was probably an issue, and I say this as an avid member of the Emboar Defense Squad (there are dozens of us, dozens!)

Gen 5 Pokemon in general really don't seem to be that popular in the grand scheme of things. People complain that the POTY poll was flawed methodologically but even then if the most popular Gen 5 Pokemon in Chandelure isn't even cracking the Top 15 and is surpassed by multiple Pokemon from the absolute most recent Generation with the least amount of time to garner a fanbase... That's not a good look.

 

[Celever]

Sometimes I genuinely wonder if Gen 5's initial cold reception may have been in part because of the lackluster starters. If there's anything that the history of marketing has shown it's that first impressions are everything and considering how Gen 5 really didn't have any standout slam dunk hit starters it absolutely was probably an issue, and I say this as an avid member of the Emboar Defense Squad (there are dozens of us, dozens!)

Gen 5 Pokemon in general really don't seem to be that popular in the grand scheme of things. People complain that the POTY poll was flawed methodologically but even then if the most popular Gen 5 Pokemon in Chandelure isn't even cracking the Top 15 and is surpassed by multiple Pokemon from the absolute most recent Generation with the least amount of time to garner a fanbase... That's not a good look.

The methodology of the POTY poll means that the opposite conclusion is true, kinda.

All that Chandelure not cracking the Top 15 means is that it’s not as much more popular than other Gen V Pokémon as the Pokémon above it in the overall rankings are compared with each of their own generations of Pokémon. (I can’t think of a better way to phrase that sentence but wow.) Essentially what it means is that Gen V has a more even spread of popularity among its Pokémon than any other gen, and IMO that’s a good thing.

Gen V has, “inanimate Pokémon have ruined the series” people notwithstanding, always had a really cool Gen I feel to it where you can talk to friends about the team you used in-game with no judgement. It’s the nature of having such a huge batch of brand new Pokémon, as the most of us who only use new Pokémon on our first playthrough of a new game end up totally spoiled for choice. And with no Pokémon in this gen really being pushed hard by TPCi as one that we should like (Axew and Zoroark kinda were I guess?) it just means that we all like different Pokémon from the generation the most. And I think that’s really cool.

Personally, lots of Gen V Pokémon are among my favourites, and Beartic is actually my all-time favourite now, having been my Discord avatar and in my one on Smogon for years. It’s a very simple design and maybe others think it odd for it to be my favourite but I just happen to be a fan. That exact rationale I’m p sure is why Chandelure ranked #1 in the poll, and the lack of specificity demonstrates how organic a popularity it is compared with other polls where Pokémon are popular because they were shoved down our throats.

 

[Rarycaris]

I agree with the gen 5 thing. I enjoy gen 5, but more than anything it's the oldest game which subsequent QOL improvements haven't made feel antiquated to me, and even then I think I'd feel differently if I went back now I've played SwSh with its overworld encounters. It also had a lot of interaction mechanics which felt really cumbersome. One thing I did really like about BW2 was Black Tower/White Treehollow, and I think it's a real shame they've never brought something like that back.

My unpopular opinion for the current day is that I loved gen 6. I don't think the gen 6 games have aged especially well, because their emphasis was on multiplayer and multiplayer games never really age well, but they felt welcoming and refined for what they were trying to do in a way that gen 7 especially just didn't. I also enjoyed Team Flare's characterisation, though I readily accept the tonal shift about halfway through was a bit bizarre.

My other popular opinion is that I like using legendaries in in-game runs and generally catch and use them at the earliest available opportunity. Getting to use things like Giratina is basically the payoff for the post-gym 7 story in a lot of the older games (otherwise the plot just kinda loses all stakes, a problem that games from ORAS onwards have mostly rectified), and having postgame content where they're both legal and useful is a big factor in my enjoyment of a game -- especially if, as in HGSS, the content manages to be challenging regardless, at least to the degree that I have to plan out a strategy. My favourite run of Black 2 was when I used Dream Radar to get all five gen 4 box legendaries at level 5 and used those and Serperior (chosen partly for the type non-overlap and partly because it has the most useful HM learnset in this context) as my ingame team on Challenge Mode. It wasn't as easy as you'd think, partly because of their movepools and partly because of their XP curve, but it was a novel experience.

Then again, I'm mostly an Ubers player, so I guess it's as much getting to use familiar mons as anything.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

I really shouldn’t be making this post, but this has gotten me so worked up that I just can’t stay quiet. Bull of Heaven already made a reply on the subject so I’m going to repeat some of the things he said, but there are also some new things I am adding here.

First of all, Gen 5 is my favorite and it has been so ever since I first played B/W in 2011. Seeing how the generation and both of its game pairs have been very heavily criticised ever since their release, I do not believe that disliking them or thinking lowly of them is unpopular. It was not unpopular in the past, nor do I believe it is unpopular nowadays either. It seems that Gen 5 will always have some negativity surrounding it, no matter the situation. If someone says something positive about it, someone else will always be there to say something negative about it in response. And whenever someone says something negative about it, many others are going to agree.

Personally, I have mostly been playing the newer games as they get released, but I have gone back to Gen 5 during various times after I was “done” with it in mid-2014. Looking back, the Gen 5 games are the ones I have gone back to the most past when they were the newest, along with X/Y. In comparison, I have pretty much instantly abandoned OR/AS, S/M and US/UM once their successors were released (counting S/S as the successors to US/UM here, not LGP/E). Regarding Gen 5, the most recent point where I went back to B/W and B2/W2 has been this year where I went back to them in order to complete the Battle Subway to 100% which I had never done before. Based on my experiences of the Gen 5 games from this year, I can safely say that Gen 5 is still my favorite, and it is not because of nostalgia. I think it still holds up very well compared to Gen 6-8 and I definitely prefer it over Gen 1-4. I think that the only game from the older generations that comes close is Platinum, but even it is quite far below the greatness of Gen 5. I also feel that Gen 5 is still too new to feel nostalgic for as it has been less than 10 years since it was first released in English and barely 10 years since B/W were first released in Japan, but I think that’s for another discussion. While I miss some of the luxuries in terms of gameplay and features that Gen 6-8 has gifted us with, I still feel that Gen 5 is really great. It remains my favorite, it has many features that I miss in the newer generations, most notably Gen 7 and 8, but also 6 to an extent. And B2/W2 are still the games with the most content in the entire series, which is another area that Gen 5 excels in.

As for the topics that were brought up, here are my thoughts on them:

First off, it isn't very hard. Not really. I didn't grind at all. I think my starter was the water guy but Imo all 5th gen starters are awful. Competitively Serp is cool but sadly it gets stuck with Overgrow and no movepool in-game. Emboar is slow and has an awkward move-pool (many of its best attacks kill itself, also it kind of has issues getting good physical STAB). I guess the otter is the closest to good you'll get in gen 5 but I don't like Samurott either. My final team was Sigilyph / Magnezone / Lilligant / Braviary / Cobalion / Jellicent (HM slave). A combo of Twave + Flash Magnezone and some combination of setup mons (Charge Beam Sigilyph / QD Lilli / SD Cobalion) pretty easily 6-0ed all bosses, even the Elite 4. I didn't use in-battle items but still found the game overall pretty easy as long as you understand the type chart. Also on the topic of Pokemon there are a lot less options to pick from than I remember. I know they upgraded the Pokedex to not drown us in elemental monkeys + early game dogs for the first third of the game but even then I had trouble piecing together a decent team until about the 4th badge. I think my first "real" Pokemon was Magnemite? I had a lot of issue finding Pokemon I wanted to use, but that might be the "I post on Smogon forums and could tell you the base stats of these garbage NU mons all day" in me talking.

From what I can remember, Gen 5 was the start of when the fandom in general started whining about the newer games being too easy. But if we look at how it is in reality, no Pokémon game is hard as long as you know the gameplay basics. Personally, I think the only ones that can be considered hard are the Alola games, and then only if you play with Exp. Share off. But on the other hand, any Pokémon game can also be hard if you don’t know the gameplay basics. If you are looking for a more difficult Pokémon game, you should play one of the Alola game with Exp. Share off or do a self-imposed challenge. If that’s still too easy for you, then you should play something else. Because Pokémon games are not hard if you know what you are doing.

As for me, I do not consider in-game difficulty to be an important aspect of the Pokémon games, so I could care less if the games are easy or hard as long as they are balanced and fun to play. B/W and B2/W2 were very well balanced and extremely fun to play, so that’s one of the many things I liked about them. Compare this to HG/SS which had terrible balance and I did not think were not fun to play, which are among the many things I disliked about them.

Even if Gen 5 is my favorite, the Unova starter trio is not my favorite. But I still think they are great, and Serperior is my overall favorite Grass-starter. As for why they aren’t as popular in general, I think another reason are their unoriginal typings. Serperior and Samurott are single-typed while Emboar was the third Fire/Fighting-starter in a row.

B2/W2 has a smaller regional dex than X/Y, US/UM and S/S, but it is still tied with S/M as the fourth largest in the series so far, and it is larger than the regional dex in every other game apart from these. I’m not sure regarding your complaint about bad early options. Because the games give several good options pretty early on. Going by the in-game tier list, apart from the ones you used there’s also Darumaka, Eevee, Elekid, Lillipup, Pidove, Riolu, Sandile and Scraggy, all of which are available before the 4th Gym. Oshawott and Tepig are also great when it comes to starters. There might be even more from Lostlorn Forest, I don't really remember when you first get access to it. Either way, if you want good Pokémon early, the games give you a decent chunk of options. I also think B2/W2 do an excellent job of having a good balance between old and new Pokémon, as well as having a good balance between all older generations (way better than X/Y and S/M with their heavy Kanto focus, or even S/S which ironically do focus a lot on just Unova in their main game dex).

The gym "puzzles" were more annoying than anything. They aren't hard, they just serve to artificially inflate the time spent in each gym. Walk in circles until you find a trainer. Kill trainer to unlock next section. Repeat until Gym leader is defeated. They aren't fun. Also I know SwSh get a lot of flak for the game being "beat gym, walk down the road, talk to NPCs, beat gym... repeat"... but BW2 actually did that a lot.

If we now are looking at this with your extremely cynical approach, then please tell me the games that doesn’t do the “Walk in circles until you find a trainer. Kill trainer to unlock next section. Repeat until Gym leader is defeated.” I can’t think of any. I don’t think there are any. But I think one thing the Gyms in B2/W2 absolutely nailed was the atmosphere. Every Gym had a theme associated to the leader and the type, and they all had unique music too. No other game in the series has unique music for every Gym.

Literally Team Plasma launched an evil space-ship boat thing and the rival is like "oh no MrHands, better beat the 8th gym before we do anything about that!" Wow cool okay.

Team Plasma was just a bunch of easy mooks who died by the dozen. They actually gave you a healing bed on the plasma frigate so wtf, where's the difficulty? Kill a few noobs, rub back to the bed (it wasn't very far) then go back to killing. Colress himself was vaguely strong but he couldn't handle my master strategy of "Twave + Flash Magnezone + Lilligant".

This is very subjective but I personally liked the story in not only B/W but also in B2/W2, and I’d take it over the lame and terrible story of HG/SS any day. Team Plasma definitely felt like a threat, something Team Rocket can only ever dream of feeling like. The healing bed just made the game more convenient as it meant you didn’t have to go back to the Pokécenter to heal all the time. If that removed the difficulty for you, too bad. At least the bosses had solid teams compared to the garbage rocket admins and their awful teams in HG/SS.

It was a bit of a weird feeling dealing with dungeons and random grass again, unlike in SwSh where you just fucking see that Pikachu. By weird, I mean bad. Caves are genuinely not fun. Either you have enough repels and run around in circles pushing rocks into holes, or you run out of repels and have to hit "run" every 15 seconds. They aren't hard or in any way a mental exercise, they're just a pain in the ass. I know SwSh has barren caves which is bad, but flooding those caves with fucking Sturdy Rogenrollas isn't the answer either. But to be fair the item rewards were usually good enough that I was willing to buy a few extra Repels to go exploring. Grinding through NPCs isn't really fun either. Like, I OHKO probably 90% of what they use. What's even the point? Victory Road wasn't "hard", it just forced me to run back to the Pokemon center a few times which made it take a while... but it wasn't actually skillfully difficult.

I agree that overworld encounters are way better than random encounters. But if you don’t like random encounters, there are Repels. B2/W2 also introduced the very convenient Repel prompt. I think the main thing people liked about the caves from older games are the ability to explore a bit, not just go through a short tunnel without major optional areas, like you do in the Galar Mines. As for the NPCs, they are generally not that hard but I believe another common thing people liked about earlier generations up to Gen 5/6 is that NPCs generally had more than one Pokémon on their team.

Pokestar studios is neat the FIRST time you do it and after than, even 10 years later I have zero interest in doing it ever again. There aren't even any BP style rewards to make it worth the effort. Speaking of BP you can do the battle... train? But the BP rewards are extremely small so it's basically a placeholder until you get a competitive team. Similarly Pokemon World Tournament is fun for the baby version you get in-game but once the difficulty ramps up it's another post-game thing. It's cool seeing trainers like Cynthia / whatever but it basically just amounts to Battle Tower 2.0 with some sprite swaps to make you feel cool fighting gym leaders.

Minigames are another subjective subject, but I think Pokéstar Studios is one of the more popular minigames in the series, it is also one of my personal favorites. Why would it give you BP? Minigames giving BP only started with Mantine Surfing in US/UM. Besides, you get a ton of other items for completing movies. If you want BP in Gen 5, doing minigames is the wrong thing to do. That's basically true for all games apart from US/UM, by the way.

As for the Subway, the rewards are not “extremely small”. Past battle #49 at the Super Lines, you get 10 BP for each round, compared to 7 in the Gen 4 Tower/Frontier. At least that what I believe it was, can't find any info about it now. The Subway gives you less BP than the than Gen 6/7 Maison/Tree and slightly less than Gen 8, but that’s because they improved upon the system from Gen 5, similar to how Gen 5 improved upon the system from Gen 3/4. The standard battle facility was improved in every generation from Gen 2 to Gen 7, then it took heavy nosedive in Gen 8. And if you think the games are too easy in general, shouldn’t you enjoy the difficulty of the PWT? I don’t really understand what exactly you are looking for here.

Also, this is subjective once more but I loved both the PWT and the Subway. I think the Subway is very difficult as well, at least as long as you don’t use a TruAnt team. If you do, then it becomes very easy. Interestingly, it pretty much has a selectable difficulty mode in that way.

I'm trying to think of what other useless gimmicks there are. Triple and Rotation battle that literally no one likes. There's Wonder Launcher as well. I battled my Ex's cousin once and the match took two hours because Max Revives should never go anywhere near a competitive match. Hidden Grottos are pointless. You get that guaranteed hidden ability rat but after that it's all luck. Also they're all "hidden" so I never found another one lol. There's join avenue I guess but I don't think anyone will ever come visit me in my 10+ year old game :( .

Triple and Rotation battles that “literally no one likes”? Then why were there so many records for them in our Maison thread? Especially for Triple which was quite possibly the most popular format there. It is also my personal favorite format and the one where I got my highest ever facility streak in so far. I agree that these battle styles could have been showcased better in Gen 5 though.

If the Wonder Launcher annoyed you that much, why did you use it? It was completely optional from what I could remember.

Hidden Grottoes require a bit of luck to get what you want from them, but you should be able to soft-reset for what you want (I think? Not sure though) or you can just RNG them if you really want something special directly. And if you have trouble finding them, why not use a guide? It isn’t that hard, I think both Serebii and Bulbapedia have all their locations listed.

Join Avenue benefits strongly from online/wireless but I think you can still rank it up pretty decently even on your own, it will probably take a longer time though. I do know that Gym Leaders come to visit after a while and they give 1000 points each if you guide them correctly.

Also this might be completely in my head but the game looks like someone took HGSS and dropped the saturation waaaaaay down. It was so dreary and color-less. I even had to check my 3ds to make sure the brightness was up. There's nothing comparable to the bright colors of the almost ridiculously beautiful Bell Tower in HGSS.

This is also subjective, and I disagree. I think Gen 5 looks way better than HG/SS. It always felt far more detailed and colorful than the awful Johto remakes did. The darker colors also fit the mature theme of the games very well, which goes in direct contrast to the childishness of HG/SS which ironically also fits well with their baby-color scheme.

Anyway tl;dr I played through BW2 to get my Pokemon transferred and didn't have much fun. It was just a tedious grind with minimal real difficulty. HGSS were and are the best Pokemon games ever and as far as older games go they will always be the best. BW2 is still arguably better than the 1st and 2nd gen, maybe 3rd, but 4th gives it a run for its money. I think we remember the slower, grindier early gen games with nostalgia goggles but despite the very real flaws of gens 6-8 I think they're far more playable overall.

And now it is time for me to make the final part of this reply and to add an opinion of my own that is definitely unpopular. You say HG/SS are the best Pokémon games?

Not only do I disagree, but I am also of the complete opposite opinion as I think they are the worst Pokémon games. They are massively overhyped and overrated pieces of garbage that can never get enough criticism for all their massive issues. I have made an earlier post about all of my unpopular opinions about them so I won’t post those again. Though I have a new one which is partly about HG/SS, but I’m not ready to post it quite yet, it will happen another time. And if there’s one 4th Gen game that I think is really good, it is Platinum, not HG/SS. Also, if there are any games I only ever play to transfer Pokémon between games/generations and not for any other reason, that’s HG/SS. Other games manage to have some unique enjoyment of their own, but I only ever play HG/SS if I need to connect them to another game and every time that happens, I get annoyed at them.

So, I guess here’s what I actually wanted to say in response to you. If there’s one game pair which I’d say are “not as good as we remember”, then I’d say that’s HG/SS for sure. Despite all of their massive issues, people still tend to give them a free pass for everything but whine about every little thing about all other, better games. HG/SS have the infamously bad level curve, an awful story with bland characters, terrible Pokémon distribution/availability/placement, a bad regional dex, poorly executed features as well as lackluster gameplay and content. Do people actually enjoy going through a game with such an awful level curve and that horrible trainer rematch system? I don’t get it. To put it in your terms, I’d say they are some 7/10 ideas mixed into a 2/10 game, and the result of that is not good. They are my least favorite Pokémon games and while I feel I am at the risk of being too generous here, I’d give them a 3/10 if I were to rate them. In comparison, everything else for me is a 7/10 or higher (except for LGP/E which I haven’t played, so I won’t rate them).

TL;DR: B2/W2 are actually really good games and among the best in the series, while HG/SS are overrated and among the worst in the series.

Random and unrelated, but yesterday it was 8 years since B2/W2 got released in Europe, and 7 years since X/Y were released worldwide. Happy belated anniversary to both of them!

 

[CoolMan6001]

I don't mean to discredit you, but

no Pokémon game is hard as long as you know the gameplay basics.

...which is mostly true for every game out there

Personally, I think the only ones that can be considered hard are the Alola games, and then only if you play with Exp. Share off.

Question: What was your team here? I did a somewhat recent run with the starters, (purposely obtained in a way so that they wouldn't get the trade boost) Vikavolt, Mudsdale, and A-Sandslash, and even with EXP share off, it was still too easy.

Past battle #49 at the Super Lines, you get 10 BP for each round

It's still just BP though...

Triple and Rotation battles that “literally no one likes”? Then why were there so many records for them in our Maison thread?

Simply just because it was an option to do them. I still believe people who like these formats are in the minor.

Most things here I agree with otherwise.

 

[Tmi489]

...which is mostly true for every game out there

its not
some games require technical skill / precision that you cant get just by knowing how the game works (e.g. super meat boy, but also for less brutal hard like games)
some games require knowing more than mons in order to be succesful

Question: What was your team here? I did a somewhat recent run with the starters, (purposely obtained in a way so that they wouldn't get the trade boost) Vikavolt, Mudsdale, and A-Sandslash, and even with EXP share off, it was still too easy.

ultra necro?

 

[CoolMan6001]

ultra necro?

This one is more of an artificial difficulty mostly for the high statline and level. (If you were wondering how I took it down, I used a Quick Claw proc with Vikavolt and a Z-Leech Life from A-Sandslash. (Since it could live a hit most of the time)) I'm not sure this counts towards the difficulty.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

I don't mean to discredit you, but

It's okay, you did nothing wrong and I'm not feeling sad

Question: What was your team here? I did a somewhat recent run with the starters, (purposely obtained in a way so that they wouldn't get the trade boost) Vikavolt, Mudsdale, and A-Sandslash, and even with EXP share off, it was still too easy.

My in-game teams for Gen 7 were the following:

Moon: Primarina / Toucannon / Mudsdale / Salazzle / Tsareena / Kommo-o
Sun: Decidueye / Ribombee / Lycanroc-Midday / Wishiwashi / Talonflame / Krookodile
Ultra Moon: Incineroar / Alakazam / Lilligant / Stoutland / Mantine / Mimikyu
Ultra Sun: Lopunny / Oricorio / Tentacruel / Leafeon / Forretress / Alolan Ninetales

I recall finding Moon and Ultra Moon harder since I played them before Sun and Ultra Sun, respectively. As for why I had trouble, I believe there were a few reasons and they varied slightly depending on the game. For Moon, my team consisted of 4 and a half slowmons, which led to me getting outsped and often also KO'd before I could make my move. This happened a lot. As a reaction, I made sure to mostly have fast Pokémon on my other teams. I don't recall having as much trouble in Sun after playing Moon, a faster team and experience from Moon made it a bit easier. On UM, I used several great Pokémon but some of them were still hindered in various ways. Alakazam didn't feel as great as I had heard it was supposed to be in other games, Stoutland and Mantine had some movepool issues (the most notable is that they got Return/Scald late). My Mimikyu had a 0 IV in Attack which hindered it greatly. Incineroar was great though, and Lilligant was easily the MVP of the team, though I traded over a Sun Stone from another game so I could evolve it earlier than normal. In Ultra Sun, several of my team members were weak or slow, or even both. Tentacruel is easily one of the worst Pokémon I have used for an in-game team. Oricorio and Leafeon were the best from that team.

I also think the Alola games have an unbalanced difficulty curve in some areas. There are some big level jumps, first from Akala to Ula'ula, from Ula'ula to Aether and then to Poni, from Poni to the E4 and lastly from the E4 to the post-game. And unlike the Gen 5/6 games, they do not give you a free Lucky Egg during the main game, which makes grinding a bit more tedious. I also feel that the Totem Pokémon are somewhat unfair bosses since they get instant advantages in battle while you have to spend a turn getting the same or a similar boost, and they can summon partner Pokémon which you can't. The same goes for regular wild Pokémon, the SOS mechanics can give you a disadvantage in battle. Then there's Ultra Necrozma which is considered really hard in general unless you use some of the known strategies to defeat it easily (I did not, and I had massive trouble with it, most notably in UM).

As for my gameplay style, I did not use Z-moves in every battle, only in "boss" battles or other important battles, or for boosting (my Lopunny occasionally used Z-Splash to get an Attack boost). I did use Pokémon Refresh though.

Interesting how you found it too easy, our differences vary quite a bit there.

An unpopular opinion I have which is related to all of this which I have posted before but I might as well post again: I do not like how the Alola games were harder than a general Pokémon game (with the Exp. Share off). I still had trouble even if I had played Pokémon since Gen 1, and I did not like that. I prefer a more balanced difficulty curve like in the Gen 6 games (once again, with Exp. Share off), or Gen 1/3, D/P/P and Gen 5. Mostly, at least. There are some exceptions but they do mostly fine. The same even goes for Gen 8... providing you train more than 6 Pokémon.

It's still just BP though...

It is possible to get other rewards as well. First of all, you get a Trophy for each Super Line you complete (similar to the Symbols/Prints in the Gen 3/4 Frontiers, the Trophies in the Maison and the Stamps from the Tree), as well as some items from NPCs on the Subway platform: a PP Up after 21 victories in a row, a Rare Candy after 28, a Lansat Berry after 105 and finally a Starf Berry after 203. B/W also gave a Trainer Card upgrade for beating both the Super Single and Double lines, while B2/W2 replaced this with beating the Champions Tournament at the PWT, though they have several medals that can be obtained from the Subway instead.

Simply just because it was an option to do them. I still believe people who like these formats are in the minor.

Fair enough, but it isn't the same as "literally no one", which was written in the original post.