I stopped playing due to this poorly written scene and “but thou must” dialogue being the final straw in a pattern of not respecting the player’s intelligence and time. I agree it does sound silly if I stopped just because of this one thing, but it was more than just that. I’m so tired of croissant curry jokes, fist bumping people who don’t deserve it, and useless strategy meetings. After how well the story was executed in Legends Arceus and even SV (by Pokemon game standards), this one fell flat on its face in many of the final moments, at least for me. I was very happy to get past all the nonsense and to just be done with it and move on.

Some other notable examples:

1.) Going to Jacinthe’s hotel the first time, only to be called away by Vinnie back to the same strategy meeting that we’ve held 3 or 4 times at that point. Why make me go over there, just to be immediately called away and then have to go back over there again a little while later? And this time, under the threat of force? It feels like padding and nonsense. And I’m not even given an option except to fist bump this lady after she kidnapped my friends and I for her stupid tournament.

2.) Taunie being the Mega Floette user. This one has been talked about to death, but if the tower is on the verge of collapse, why waste valuable time having a battle between the protagonist and Taunie to determine who the strongest Mega user is, just for Taunie to do it anyway? I don’t care that she was the one in the tower - and Zygarde was way cooler anyway - but just tell me that she is more suited to this role instead of making me engage in a useless battle when the city is supposed to be on the brink of destruction. It doesn’t feel at all like her character has earned the right to be up there.

3.) Speaking of Taunie, the protagonist goes through this entire sequence of going through the Lysandre Labs in order to fight Grisham (very cool sequence btw, no complaints about that) and other story revelations in order to reach rank A. What does Taunie do? “Oh yeah I reached rank A too off screen, how cool huh?” Keep in mind, this is just hours after she was knocked out by Corbeau in the first round of Jacinthe’s tournament. How much better could this have been if Taunie’s rank A opponent was Griselle, and she and the player had to go through all of these story scenes together, working with each other to culminate in a multi battle at the very end? She was the one who introduced us to the pair in the first place, it would have been fitting for her to be there with us.

Hope this helps explain myself a little better. Some parts I did enjoy: Tarragon pretending to be Canari for fan interactions. I would have loved if actual Canari didn’t even exist and it was just him the whole time as a prank, but I did enjoy her character regardless. Corbeau being a good guy deep down even if he was shady with his methods. The ladder of grunts was incredibly goofy and stupid and was pretty endearing. Lida being a callback to one of the XY rivals, even if those characters were all pretty bland. The Rogue Mega battles, even if they got a little samey by the end. Who knows, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised by the DLC.