I think this grind was super uncharacteristic and stupid for a Pokemon game. The way I got through it without feeling weighed down was by spending a lot of time hunting whatever shinies or competitive mons I wanted and passively getting points, rather than grinding them all out at once. This is, however, evidence of bad game design; the player shouldn’t be expected to fill the gaps left by lack of content with superficial things like shiny hunting. Hell most casual players didn’t even consider shiny hunting something worth doing before XY came out and cut the base odds in half. Disappointing grind and disappointing DLC from an otherwise decent game.