I have an irrational hatred of that move so I'm glad to hear it's excluded. (Sorry.)
Onto something else that's annoyed me today: Bloodmoon Ursaluna having a fixed Hardy nature.
It's not fixed natures that I mind per se, because those often serve a purpose: there's often an element of strategy to it when event Pokemon used to be distributed with special moves, like Eruption Heatran being Quiet or Aura Sphere Raikou in Gen IV being Rash. And a lot of recent distributions of Pokemon with fixed natures have actually tended to be useful: in the case of the Melmetal, Zeraora, and Magearna you get from Home all three have relatively optimal natures and IVs, presumably because you're not able to reroll them. This is good. I'm not sure I'm not the only person to have played through the entirety of XD only to wind up with a Lugia with a crap nature and IVs.
But generally there's a justification for it when this happens. This one being fixed to Hardy just feels stupid, not least because mints now exist. It wouldn't be so much of an issue if you could get more BM-Ursaluna, but no! That form is the only one of its kind: you can't evolve your Ursaring into it or breed ones that can. I get that it's meant to be a unique individual but that doesn't mean the nature should be locked. Even Ash-Greninja didn't have a fixed nature, and Own Tempo Rockruff was breedable.
I've griped about this before, but there's an increasing sense with a lot of these decisions that Game Freak wants to railroad players into having a certain experience when they play. Which is pretty much the opposite of what I like(d) about Pokemon games: everyone's journey is multifariously different. Even two people with the same team might have played the game in totally alternative ways. Don't want to catch legendaries? Cool, no-one's making you. Don't want to complete the Pokedex? You don't actually have to. Don't want to do sidequests like contests or musicals or movies? There's no requirement to.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with BM-Ursaluna being unique and unbreedable, if not for the fact that it feels rather the main series is taking their lead from Pokemon Go on this. With the exception of - ironically - Ursaluna, Go has taken the approach of releasing new evolutions of existing older Pokemon as discreet species rather than as direct evolutions. Alolan Forms were introduced in Pokemon Go in 2018 and you STILL cannot evolve Pikachu, Cubone, and Exeggcute into them in regular gameplay - Exeggcute and Cubone had two time-limited events last year where this was briefly possible, but nothing equivalent was done for Pikachu. Scyther, Rufflet, Bergmite, Koffing, and Mime Jr are also completely unable to evolve into Kleavor, Hisuian Braviary, Hisuian Avalugg, Galarian Weezing, and Galarian Mr Mime respectively. It's a frustrating way to release new Pokemon that are technically part of an older line but functionally completely different species.
