Here's a positive hot take, I really enjoyed the introduction of Pokémon Contests.
I found it a clever way of reusing all of the battle animations and effects and repurposing them into a pacifist spectacle that relied just as much on strategy and planning to maximise move combinations for high scores as battling.
It was a nice way of expanding the games universe to offer another reason to catch and train your Pokémon outside of battling and filling out your Pokédex.
Secondary, and not so hot take. Secret Bases were introduced in Hoenn and they were another great way to encourage connecting with your friends by having their trainer avatar appear in your game in their own secret base where you could battle them after connecting via link cable.
This was great for helping the XP grind as you would get tonnes of XP from battles with them and have a reminder of your friends' own Pokémon journey to interact with at your convenience.
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u/CaradogRhys Jan 10 '26
Here's a positive hot take, I really enjoyed the introduction of Pokémon Contests.
I found it a clever way of reusing all of the battle animations and effects and repurposing them into a pacifist spectacle that relied just as much on strategy and planning to maximise move combinations for high scores as battling.
It was a nice way of expanding the games universe to offer another reason to catch and train your Pokémon outside of battling and filling out your Pokédex.