I don’t know what it is about Urbain/Taunie that I find so remarkably annoying; it’s a very unusual response for me to have toward a character who isn’t designed to be that way, but nevertheless I do appreciate the last side mission of the DLC letting me get to tell them to their face how much cooler Lida is.
Getting into the latter half of the Hyperspace missions, I dislike the large amount of variance the new DLC brings into its gameplay. Probably the thing I have the biggest issue with is the randomized selection of Pokemon for the Hyperspace Wild Zones, which makes finding newly re-introduced Pokemon like Galarian Farfetch'd feel harder than it should be. I'm biased on this because I want to dabble in Season 4 ranked matches but had to start the DLC late, so I'm more pressured to find the new Pokemon that are defining this season's metagame before it ends next month.
On the one hand, my brain sees it and is like, “Okay, I suppose at its core it’s no different from wandering into a grass patch over and over for a specific Pokémon,” but then on the other hand, I remember that wandering into grass patches over and over sucked, and at least didn’t require you to sit through the day/night cutscene in between every reroll.
What’s great about overworld encounters is that they remove a lot of that pointless, tedious filler, but the way that Hyperspace Zones are generated just finds a new way to bring all of that back into overworld encounters.
I also dislike how SV's sandwich powers are implemented via the donut system; I prefer SV's implementation over forcing players to save scum for increased shiny odds (for a specific type too) or more chances to get more Berries, just to repetitively game some kid's baking services.
This is something I’m also sorta of two minds about. On paper, I like the
idea of having desirable benefits balanced out by some degree of obscurity and randomness in order to nullify the player’s ability to game the system. But the fact that you can abuse backup saves to sort of game the system
anyway makes me think they might as well have just made the values fully controllable outright. There is a school of thought that if you give people access to what they want in a way that’s fun, then they won’t feel the need to save scum (because that in itself is really tedious and boring), and in theory, that should make things more engaging for everyone.
I also really don't like the Hyperspace Battle Zones. Although making competitive items like Bottle Caps and Seeds of Mastery as well as Hyperspace Berries easier to get is much appreciated, my biggest problem is that, unlike the base game's nighttime system, the calorie timer still counts down even while you're in a battle with an opponent. That makes fighting any non-reward Trainer a waste of time after you achieve your tasks during your venture, and trying to find the golden Bonus Ball puts more annoying pressure onto you when you're running away from NPCs that not only are free to take potshots at your Pokemon but also freeze you in your tracks for a few valuable seconds.
Personally, I’ve actually come to really enjoy the sense of urgency that comes with these situations.
That said, I think having battles not freeze the timer is a mixed bag. Once again, this is a thing where I like what they’re going for on paper, but in practice it runs up against some disappointing realities.
Ideally, you’d want the player to have to actually think about the most efficient way of dispatching opponents, so as to more smartly navigate the timer, similar to how the Z-A Royale rewards players for having a diverse team that can answer all kinds of type-based challenges from Bonus Cards. This is likely why hyperspace battle zones never have more diverse tasks than “defeat Trainers” or “KO by surprise,” because although the Z-A Royale is also on a timer, it’s not as stressful as the one for hyperspace battle zones, where the goal is simply to take out as many opponents as you can.
However, a problem here is that the opponents in hyperspace never use more than two Pokémon (or three Alphas if they’re a hologram Trainer), so the hard emphasis on efficiency means that battles almost never consist of more than you delivering two trivial OHKOs and then moving on, assuming you came in prepared for the type of the zone*.
I can see some of the logic in that design choice — having Trainers wandering around with teams of four, five, or six Pokémon would cause those battles to feel like even
bigger time-wasters if you happen to get dragged into battle with them.
Those battles, if they were to be included, would probably need to offer much bigger reward payouts in order to feel worth one’s time. (I also think it’s a little odd that batte zones still culminate in a Bonus Ball and not, like, a dedicated boss Trainer. Just spitballing, but perhaps that could have been a fun way to mirror the Z-A Royale, but having the boss Trainer be one of the Royale opponents with a significantly different team.)
What I think would greatly benefit all of this is having an array of tools that the player can use to change up their style and give themselves strategic benefits. Something that I feel is missing in this game compared to Arceus, is thinks like the Smoke Bomb**, Sticky Glob, berries that you can throw to distract Pokémon, and so on. Imagine if you could make like, a bag of Gimmighoul Coins to throw and distract Trainers in hyperspace, lol. Maybe also include some kind of consumable tool that can be used as a “panic button” to pause the timer for a short while. This kind of stuff would also widen the pool of rewards that hyperspace excursions could pull from.
* There are battle zones that have multiple types on the opponents’ teams, which are not
quite as monotonously easy (though they still aren’t really difficult, per se), but generally I feel like, and here’s the reward problem again, there’s not a significantly increased benefit for these zones to match the increased challenge factor and need for a more diverse team with good coverage. If anything, I think it just makes you end up having to swap Pokémon more often.
** I know you can use the move Smokescreen to similar effect, but that takes up a move slot, is only available on certain Pokémon, and frankly never seems to work as well as the Smoke Bombs in Arceus did.
