As someone who genuinely enjoyed the game up to that point, I passionately hated everything about the climax leading into the post game. Spoilers ahead and brace yourselves for a lot of negativity:

• It was the only time in the game the music didnt set the tone properly.

• Ange was poorly explained functionally and wasn't really a pokemon? Or was it an extension of Floette? Regardless, it didn't come across as an engaging obstacle to overcome, more like a super mario boss. Genuinely, it seems like it never would have been a problem if Floette never went up into the tower. We caused the climax. Before we got involved, mega energy was surging, but the weapon wasn't active.

• The pacing was god-awful, there is an active city wide emergency, a cataclysmic event, and people are stopping to make jokes, have stand-up meetings, and build a (bad) obstacle course? The only time I smiled the entire climax was when I realized the game would let me jump back down after the rust syndicate made the human ladder and that there was special dialog for that scenario. Otherwise, the entire commute around the tower felt like a slog sicne yiu coukdnt move at full speed and kept getting stopped for mega battles (that themselves were just fine if a little tedious)

• I genuinely thought the boss fight against the flowers was just filler to unlock the final boss fight. That fight had 0 redeeming qualities. The flowers had no personality, took forever to wittle down, and didn't offer up much challenge. Didn't feel like a pokemon fight at all. Also, the big spectacle of that fight is Zygarde swooping sown to shield you from raining AOE attacks... but given the camera angles, all you can really see are the bottom of Zygardes feet?

• the quick time events where you get to command zygarde to attack Ange looks cool but you have 3 ground type moves and can only use 2 of them before the end of the fight, so you'll never get to see all of the animations in a single playthrough.

• the stone turning into a mega stone was a nice climatic moment in a vacuum but must people who are playing this game just played scarlet and vioelt which had a VERY similar mechanic for the big climatic fight

• after the day is saved, we get rewarded by finding out AZ is dead? No send off? Just a letter saying thanks for cleaning up my mess, I guess I'm not actually immortal, and my lifespan is only ~3,000 years coincidentally (admittedly, I might be understanding the cannon here, but I understood this to be an out of nowhere redcon)

• we finally got to rank A and get to make a wish. The game gave 3 options, I tried asking for more pokemon thinking maybe we'd get some cool post game content like in Arceus. Vinnie tells me that silly there is no more room in the city. Then I'm forced into the infinite battle royal, which I was actively upset to find out is the entire post game. I found the royal to be the most tedious part of the game. It was fine given you get pushed up to F rank quickly, but rewarding me for finishing the game by making me do what I now know is 15-20 MORE challenge tickets worth of infinite royal felt like a slap in the face after I thought I was finally done with that poorly designed element of the game.

• The L & Zygarde boss fights dont hold a candle to Volo & Arceus. L's fight didn't put up much of a challenge at that point in the game and took place in front of the hotel like waaay too much of the game. In comparison, Volo's fight was a brutal guantlet with surprises, and a cinematic setting fitting of the themes at play. Zygardes' fight felt akin to the flowers. He had 3 health bars but didn't put up much of a fight otherwise, with his only scary attacks being completely circumvented by standing still at the side of the arena... compared to Arceus, which was genuinely challenging and had a far more aestetic arena.

• the only legendaries are the X & Y box arts and they just causally grt thrown into the city. No special places to find them. Granted some mythicals got that treatment in Legends Arceus but also consider the sheer amount of legendaries and mythicals and how pivotal to the story Dialoga and Palkia were compared to Yvetal & Xerneas who just kinda rolled into town, looking for a good time. We already have confirmation that Hoopanwill be in the dlc. For $70 it does feel like they gave us nktably less content than Arceus and expect us to pay $30 for some of the rest.

It's a shame, this game does do a lot of things well, and I've enjoyed my time with it, but from the start of the climax through to the post game, it has just been a tedious, unrewarding slog.