Sorry, but I just have to rant about the Battle Royal and I refuse to let anything stop me. Good god, I think it may be
worse than the Battle Maison. All the enemy pokemon gang up on you and can use Mega Evolution along with Z-Moves. And this is just the Normal Rank BTW, I dread to think of the Master Rank.
Like usual CPUs use abilities you can't even earn yet due to fake padding by the game developers, (Protean Greninja is still irritating) not to mention that it has an obsession with duplicating Pokemon. (I just fought two Swamperts with similar movesets in the same match) I barely made it through my round alive thanks to a lucky Power Whip, but it also managed to bring the point home of how every pokemon in this region is so damn slow. My team DID OHKO the enemy pokemon when we got a hit, but we were so slow and being attacked by three at once just led to all out hell.
Seriously, just let me get my EV Trained Articuno and Noivern brought over so I can boomburst blizzard everyone to death. Or at least make the World champion QR teams available so I can rent those teams until bank is released from prison.
Of course the first obvious reply you may give is to EV Train my Pokemon... But the thing is, you can't. Seriously, there's no super training and SOS EV training is impossible since you can't attack with a Level 1 Pokemon. (If you can distribute EVs to level 1 Pokemon without having them go to Poke Pelago or battle themselves I'd love to learn) I can't seem to unlock the IV Training mode either and that seems to be because you need to be at level 100 to do so, something that I think will be downright impossible to do in this game without endless rematches against
Spoiler
The Elite Four/Title Defense. There, I gave a spoiler tag out of courtesy since I'm not dumb.
EDIT: Already found a possible exploit looking back on my match. If you sent out an electric type like I did, teach it moves that would be SE against the types that would be SE against it. For example a power whip for taking out ground types.
To my research, all I have left to do is collect Zygarde Pieces and TMs... And then I'll run out of stuff to do outside of completing the dex.
Spoiler
Which is going to be a bit boring even when the fake padding is removed as lo and behold THEY FUCKING REMOVED THE NATIONAL DEX. You get the Shiny Charm for completing the Alolan dex instead.
I mean, I guess I could play with people at the local TCG league (Already fought against my friends online) every tuesday, but I think I may be heading back to La Mulana soon. At least the post-story was good this time around.
When I get my overall motivation back and let my anger over recent events in my life subside I'll write my review of this game to give more thoughts in detail on the game as a whole. Thankfully the cheapness of the battle royal is the only major issue I've had so far. (Haven't tried battle tree yet due to me not having a capable team, as this whole fiasco proved)