I'm of the same thinking re the trainer horde battles in ORAS. It was touted as a cool new feature in trailers/prerelease media and it happens... twice in two highly scripted moments in the game itself.
The trainer horde battles, earnestly, felt like a joke.
I feel it's a little bit of column A and B. On paper, Horde Trainer Battle felt like the next logical evolution of Horde Battles introduced in XY, and if any group was going to have a Horde Trainer Battle it would be the villain team who has legion of grunts and makes sense they would gang up on you if they could.
The problem of course came to balance. Sure, they could do Horde Battle with grunts no problem as they're always lower level... problem came with doing anything more. An Admin or the Boss? Battles with them are intended to be evenly matched (overleveling issue aside), but now add in 4 grunts on the "sideline" who are taking pot shots while you only have a single Pokemon out at a time. While certainly a multi-targeting Move would even the odds, there's no guarantee a player would be packing one of them. So, in the end, they decided to leave it to just the two grunt encounters, ones which were meant to be jokes but that's all they felt "safe" doing.
Two curiosities though:
1. An obvious "harder" Horde Trainer Battle would have been an Admin backed by 4 Grunts, but would there ever have been one instance with the boss? Would have been a neat post game challenge that you could challenge the team boss & admins in a Horde Trainer Battle with the Boss, the 2 Admins, and a male & female grunt. Heck, considering they made Inverse Battles its own little side activity, surprised they didn't do the same with Horde Trainer Battles; would have been fun to see what combinations would have come out from different Trainer Classes working all on a same team (and maybe even have a few planned ones which take advantage of unique strategies).
2. If they were planning more but scrapped it, when in development did they? I ask because it is odd they advertised it at all, which makes me wonder if it was a late decision. Not too late to change it, but too late to take it off marketing bullet points. I suppose they could have felt, even if it was for two mostly joke encounters, it was technically a "new mechanic" so worth mentioning.
Tyrunt getting Strong Jaw bugs me because you would think the elemental fangs would be part of its moveset to give it coverage, and you'll be right...
...as egg moves, meaning unless you get a female Tyrunt from the gift fossil and breed, you're stuck with Bite and Crunch as the only biting moves. Head Smash+Rock Head does move damage than Strong Jaw+Thunder/Ice/Fire Fang, even with super effective hits, so even in the one place where hidden abilities aren't a major factor in (the main game), it can't take proper advantage of Strong Jaw.
In general I have issue when a Pokemon gets one of these "Powers up a specific category of Moves" yet that category Moves doesn't have one which is at least one of the Pokemon's Type:
Strong Jaw: Tyrunt Family & Chewtle Family. Which is odd, like you'd think the Dragon-type, with the limited amount of Moves they have, would have one of the things dragons (or at least dinosaurs) are fully capable of doing. And it's odd how they keep giving Strong Jaw to Rock-types (Hisuian Avalugg was just given it, though at least its part Ice so has Ice Fang) but yet haven't made a Rock biting Move (which, considering Rock's connection to Fossil Pokemon, I wouldn't think be difficult to do). And then we have the Water-types which get it, oh but there is a Water biting move... Dracovish's Signature Move which is tailored for it to be OP (though the solution to that would be either lowering Fishous Rend's Power (70 I feel is fair) or weakening its secondary effect (instead of doubling power is 1.5x)). Kicker is they did give the Chewtle family a biting Signature Move with Jaw Lock... but for some unfathomable reason made it Dark-type (they did this for quite a few Pokemon).
Iron Fist: Okay, I get Ledian gets it as a joke... though the issue when doing a joke like this is it only really "works" in the Gen its done for. Haha, in Gen V Ledian gets the punching power-up Ability even though it has weak punches!... AND now we've moved onto Gen VI, are we planning on doing anything with that? If not, jokes over, change it to something which Ledian could at least use. Or, if you insist on not changing it, maybe give it a Signature Move which works with the Ability and Ledian's stats, a Bug-type punching Move which uses its Special Defense stat for damage calculation (since its said Ledian can land many hits make it a multi-hit Move too, like Triple Axel or Population Bomb). Also, while the Golett family does get Shadow Punch... wouldn't mind if they got a better punching STAB as well; hopefully they get Headlong Rush.
Mega Launcher: So only Water-types so far get Mega Launcher and their STAB is the 60 Power Water Pulse. And I still say Lucario should get Mega Launcher; I don't care if people more use it a Physical Attacker than Special, the Ability powers-up aura/wave Moves so naturally the aura/wave Pokemon should get it (how about this compromise: give Lucario a Signature Move which is a Physical Aura Move: Aura Spear).
Adaptability is an ability that boosts the power of STAB in a Pokemon, often letting Pokemon eschew coverage in favor of raw power. My issue is that that's the complete opposite of what being adaptable is. Adaptability normally means being able to adapt and change to different environments and whatever a situation calls for. Protean is a great synonym of Adaptability. Eevee getting Adaptability means they recognize this definition. How Adaptability works in Pokemon is more Specialization i.e. being an expert of a singular trait. Unless there's some Japanese wordplay at work here since Adaptability is a direct translation, I think the devs thought "having adaptability" was the same as "being adept/ being an expert at something". Maybe Adaptability is meant to read as "Adept-Ability"?
I assume they want it something like, they're so adaptable because they're so good at something
Corphish can live anywhere, because it can hit you like a truck with water.
So just checked the Japanese word and there's no word play I noticed.
I think what
R_N said is maybe more on target. The Pokemon is adapting to the situation by making itself (aka its STAB) move powerful. It's an odd way of presenting that idea, "Adeptness" is definitely more fitting in what it does, but as seen with the Pokemon chosen they had the idea of it being powering-up its natural talents via adapting to any situation its in.
especially if they do the thing a lot of games do and just have VO for major scenes (& maybe a few minor ones) and then just little barks for misc lines to add spice. Like Zelda! Or, for a game without any real voice acting at all, Mario.
Also, or alternatively, they probably wouldn't bother translating the game's voice acting to every language, a number of games don't. "Pokemon is world wi--" they wont care
e: God honestly going back to the barks thing, I would seriously be willing to settle for that. Even just vague noises, it would add so much more life to the dialog sequences.
If only we had a side Pokemon game showing how that could be done...
There we go, made those back in Gen VII, would be fine with those lol (gotta fit Freeze Dry on Kyurem tho).
I get why people wanted Primal Kyogre to become part Electric so that Groudon could do SE damage on Kyogre... but I feel this would actually take away from the Sea Vs Land theme. Like it or not, it makes sense Kyogre would have an advantage over Groudon; not only is the surface of the planet covered by more water than land, but H2O water is also a special element as its essential for life on worlds that are or based on Earth. If it were not for water, Earth would be a lifeless rock like most other planets (and I say most because there are planets made of gas & ice, which are also mostly if not all completely lifeless). Sea & Land are "equal" not because of Type relation of their Pokemon embodiments, they're equal because both are essential for life to exist (as we know it) and disturbing/empowering one would destroy everything.
Yes, some aquatic animals can generate electricity... but more of them are poisonous (and it glowing doesn't mean it has electrical power, its just bioluminescent). Yes, Kyogre can learn Electric-type Moves, but I think that more has to do with it able to summon storms.
Though in exchange their Primal Abilities address this with Groudon's completely nullifying Kyogre's (making the area too hot for water vapor to clump together) while Kyogre's only affects Fire while Ground remains unaffected (it can make the air too humid for a fire to light, but it can't do nothing to stop land from existing and moving around).
Anyway, I do agree that, if they every bring back Mega Evolutions, it would be best if Rayquaza had to hold the "Jade Orb/Meteorite" to do so. I get the wanting to do something different, and keeping it to a 680 Legendary which are always usually banned from things make sense to do it with, but it just proved to be too overpowered as the "Move restriction" wasn't really that much of a restriction when Rayquaza gladly would have a Flying-type Close Combat.
Don't think we need to get complicated with Kyurem as you suggested. Yes, it's odd of all Moves they chose Scary Face to be the one which it replaces the Fusion Moves with, but I like that it does at least allow Kyurem to have a choice to have Glaciate in its fuses forms and keep Ice Burn & Freeze Shock in its unfused form. Personally I would have chosen Harden to reference unfused Kyurem filling its missing part with ice armor, but I can sort of see why they also chosen Scary Face considering the lore with it and Lacunosa Town.
Like your idea for improving and making Teravolt & Turboblaze different. Would be worried your suggestions would be a bit OP. Like in my suggestions I just added that (Teravolt has Electric-type moves & Freeze Shock)/(Turboblaze has Fire-type moves & Ice Burn) bypass Protect & its variants, Reflect, Light Screen, Safeguard, & Aurora Veil. Keeping with the idea the Abilities just allow their attacks to go unstopped by certain Abilities, but also adds a special benefit to Moves of their Type to go even further unstopped by certain Moves.
Finally I agree Glaciate should be stronger (not sure about halving the Fusion Moves; I'd rather drop that and make Glaciate 100% Accurate).
(Sorry for responding to these late, only just now realized I hadn't been keeping up with this thread; catch up with Page 535 and 536 tomorrow)