About the Sun & Moon topic, I totally agree with Codraroll who expressed my feelings better than I could have done myself. Pokémon is a game of exploration, you don't play at Pokémon for the history or whatever else. Even the new Pokemons are not the main goal of a new game, it's a just secondary purpose which helps to increase the feeling of exploration.
Sun&Moon is the most dirigiste game I have ever played for an "exploration" game. I felt to play at a point and click but without the puzzles, the interesting conversations and the good history behind. The game is just unplayable, it's the only game I have never started again when I finished the first time the adventure.
To do a comparaison, let's take Zelda Breath of the Wild. Zelda is like Pokemon, a game of adventure and exploration. In Botw, they didn't focus about the history (which is the most simple in the world), they didn't focus on the bosses (which are by the way the worst one in the zelda history) but they focused on the exploration. And it worked. Botw is a piece of art because it fills the reason why people buy the game. Due to that, we forgive the lack of inspiration about the history and other little flaws because we simply don't care and like the game how it is.
The first island is basically to click the button A to read the uninteresting conversations and the three other islands is to obey to rotom dex and if you don't, we stop you to anywhere. The irony goes until the ending where you have a cutscene of... 15 minutes. Create a game as dirigiste as it becomes unplayable makes already Sun & Moon the worst official Pokémon game ever created. However, I will still talk about some "good" points of S&M in arguing how they don't make the game better.
The region in itself is okay with some cool places such as Paniola Town, Konikoni city or the Seafolk Village. However, big cities and nature area are meh at best. Nothing is really beautiful in the first island except maybe the Iki Town but it's again a small village. The big nature places in the second island are just a failure. There is no exploration, neither for the jungle nor for the lake. Their only goal is to let the totem battle taking place. I don't know why but in this game, Pokémon Compagny has failed every big city. They are just uninteresting and unnecessary for the game, nothing catches our intention (contrary to Castelia city or Lumiose city where you had a lot stuff to do or people to talk with). The third island starts with a city done by fan-service and as uninteresting as other big cities. Konikoni is a success because you have the atmosphere of the streets with shops in Japan. This city just looks to be an ugly area for tourism. Po Town and Tapu village are both destroyed places and if I know some people like that, it's personally not my cup of tea. The fourth island is probably the best island but unfortunately it's cut between before and after the league which means the exploration too. It became a frustrating exploration in caves where it could have been a great experience in the plains. Oh and this island is empty too. Codraroll already explained the problem with the "exploration areas" which are just forward without anything interesting. I won't talk about that more but I support totally this fact.
Now let's talk about the Totem battle. Unpopular opinion, the Totem battles are very bad.
The reason why most of people liked the Totem Battles is because they are unforgettable because they were challenging. They were indeed hard, but not in the right sense. If you want to make a challenging Pokémon game, it's pretty simple, you have to do third things. 1) Allow to the player to use potions, revives, items
only outside of battles 2) Give the Exp. Share to the player after the league 3) Disallow the possibility to switch your Pokémon when you have killed the mon of the opponent (this feature gets a name but I don't remember it). In doing that, the game becomes challenging without being frustrating because you just have the same rules than your opponents in the game. You don't have to give a boost to a fully evolved mon and to fight at 2 versus 1 with VGC strategies to make a battle challenging.
But still, it's not even my main problem about Totem battles. My main problem is the reason why Totem battles exist. Pokemon Compagny removes the Gym Leaders to put instead of that Totem battles. Why not ? It is not necessary a bad idea. However, if you do that, it is to fix the problem there was with Gym Leaders. What was the problem with Gym Leaders ? The goal of Gym leaders was to be the guardian of the area. When you finished to explore a place, you had to fight the Gym Leader. Once it was done, you could discover new pokemons, new cities, new characters until the next gym leader. Since it was their purpose, they were a necessary stop at the exploration. If you remove Gym Leaders, it is to make the game more free and to improve the feeling of the exploration. Sun&Moon does exactly the contrary. The Totem battles are not different to what Gym Leaders were, they do the exact same thing. What was the point behind that ? Just create an artificial feeling of change without actually changing anything.
I have exactly the same problem with the Pokeride system. Why did HMs exist ? The HMs existed to prevent the player to go everywhere he wants to. If you remove the TM system, you normally hope you will have more freedom. It is not the case, they added instead of that a Pokeride system which... just doesn't have any sense. "Mister Stop" in the game already limit heavily your actions so you don't need anymore these limitations of strength/surf/rocks to prevent the player to pass.
The game could have exploited the pokeride system in limiting the actions of the player due to traditional obstacles of rocks/water/waterfall. In this case, the Pokeride system would have been a soft improvement of the HM system, it would have been the same thing except that you don't need a HM slave anymore. However, instead of that, Sun&Moon added Misters Stop everywhere in obstacles.... Which makes the existence of a Pokeride system completely useless. If the Pokeride was deleted and Misters Stop put instead of the few times it is used, the game would have been exactly the same. So, what is the point of this feature ?
I feel PokemonCompagny listened to fans but didn't understand why they were fed up of the gym leader/HM system. Totem battles and the Pokeride system are exactly the same things under an other name and without fixing the issue.
A last thing, the design of the game is better than previous one... But am I the only one to be heavily disappointed with how characters are designed in this game ? Lusamine especially has her face too big for her body (and even sometimes looks to levitate) and her hair look to be a hat. IN X&Y, characters look like small dolls but not as monstrous as they sometimes are in Sun & Moon.
So, yes, without a doubt, Sun&Moon is for me the worst official Pokémon game ever created. It is unplayable and even "good points" are a failure somewhere.
