Topic: Pokémon Sun & Moon - Discussion & Speculation

Well, these Pokedex entries are pretty dark:

Umbreon: With its black fur, it blends into the darkness. It bides its time, and when prey appears, this Pokemon goes for its throat, and then eats it.

Froslass: The soul of a woman lost on a snowy mountain possessed an icicle, becoming this Pokemon. The food it most relishes is the souls of men.

Salamence(Mega): Mega Evolution fuels its brutality, and it may even turn on the Trainer who raised it. It’s been dubbed “the blood-soaked crescent.”

Palossand: Buried beneath the castle are masses of dried-up bones from those whose vitality it has drained.

From the game script found online.

Thanks Game Freak! The nightmare fuel is gonna be crazy when these games are released!

Okay, I just saw the full leaks. The story is crazy!

Let's self-impose an embargo on story spoilers in this thread. At least until the games come out. Ok?

This might be my second least favorite Generation The Exp Grind of Gen 5 made it my least favorite Pokemon Generation

I never noticed any grindiness or unfairness in the exp yield system on gen 5...

The only horrible moment was in Black and White when suddenly right after the elite four, every trainer has pokemon 10-20 levels stronger than you... Forcing you to level grind.

@DefHalan Hey, I played Black 2 and I don't remember needing to grind, even if I admittedly lost to several Gym Leaders due to my lack of experience. Not sure about Black/White 1, since I never played those.

Plus, I love the Gen 5 EXP System; it balances the difficulty and is more practical. I'm just hoping for Sun and Moon to be at least remotely difficult, unlike Gen 6.

I can't remember BW exp system well either, except for certain Pokemon that took a long time to evolve like Volcarona and Hydreigon.

I prefer a steady increase in difficulty as the game goes on instead of a leap ahead in levels... but it's not a big deal to me. I don't mind a challenge but I also don't mind taking advantage of EXP All to fill the Pokédex.

But if they can avoid parts of the game where you're forced into a grind fest, that would be ideal...

@DefHalan The big difference is this:

Gen 5: EXP. share is a held item and gives tons of XP.
Gen 6: EXP. share goes for your whole party and the amount of XP you gained is half as before.

So gen 5 method = faster levels.

Unless you're literally leveling an entire team at once, (chances are its just the one pokemon you just finished breeding) the original EXP. Share gave A LOT more XP compared to the current one, making that single pokemon in your back level much faster than in gen 6.

Huh? Wasn't it like...

Gen 5= pokemon with exp share gets half of the exp, the other half is distributed in equal parts between all the pokemon who participated in the battle. This is affected by the level of the pokemon.

Gen 6= all the pokemon who participated in battle get the full amount of exp, those who didn't get half. Not affected by the level of the pokemon.

I don't remember ever getting Exp Share in B&W. Gen 5 exp system had you get less exp the higher level you were, so training Pokemon was extremely grindy. If I wanted to level up my team before the next GYM battle, I would be spending hours grinding levels to get them where I wanted them. It was a terrible system. I don't actually remember beating the Pokemon League, I only remember the story being very intrusive and exp grinding. Mostly the exp system ruined it for me.

You get it in the battle co. building I think, it's one of the first things you can do in Castelia.

Anyway, grinding levels is extremely easy in gen 5: farm audino.

Don't get me wrong, Black and White (1) are some of my least favorite games in the series... But it sounds like you somehow overcomplicated things for yourself.

farming audino wasn't the easiest thing to do. Had to run around until a bush started to shake and then hope you don't run into another pokemon while trying to navigate to the bush.

I have grown accustom to playing Pokemon a certain way and B&W didn't like that. I tried to play the way they were making me play and it wasn't as much fun. That is when the story started to feel really intrusive.

Also Team Plasma was pretty terrible. We want Pokemon to be free, so we are going to enslave Pokemon to fight trainers to try to convince them to release their Pokemon... what? That doesn't make sense to me. Maybe near the end game it was explained better but by then I was so done with the game, I was just trying to complete the Pokemon League, but Team Plasma wouldn't even let me do that... Gen 5 to me is the worst, so bad that I never played B&W2. People have said they improved a lot in B&W2 but I just can't bring myself to go back to that generation.

I've probably said this before but... In terms of gen 5, the first pair of games (BW) would probanly rank as my least favorite of the series, while the second pair (BW2) would easily enter my top 3.

That generation was... Odd?

@Meowpheel Nah, gen 6 was like everything in your party gets a quarter but the pokemon who did the killing blow got full.

Gen 5 was exp. share gave a single pokemon half.

Also rotation and triple battles are gone, removed, scrapped, dumbed, trashed, nomorearino.

@MegaBeedrill Considering the redone engine issues, it makes sense.
They were such wasted potential- shame that they didn't do anything with them after their introduction.

That's weird because I distinctively remember it giving every pokemon that didn't participate half of the total exp.

Bulbapedia says the same too:

In Generation VI: if Exp. Share is turned on, any Pokémon that did not participate in battle will receive half of the "full" experience.

About every pokemon who participated getting full exp:

In Generation VI, (...) all Pokémon that participate in battle receive "full" experience.

Sad to see Triple and Rotation battles dropped, but I get why. Too many framerate issues.

5th gen EXP system is really a letdown, it made the game ridiculously grindy and created artificial difficulty. Can we just go back to the EXP system in 1st-4th gen? 5th gen just fixed what wasn't broken (which it did for a lot of other aspects of the game as well), and they've been playing games with it ever since. Provide some optional mechanics to help casuals, sure, but keep the core EXP system intact.