How are you liking Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon so far?

I am extremely relieved that they cut the intro sequence down...it should not take longer than five minutes to get your starter Pokémon. Sun/Moon and I got off on the wrong foot straight away with that, and I was glad to see I was getting my starter within a few minutes. Where Moon was slow and tedious, Ultra Moon was...not quite so much. No more than what I've come to expect from Pokémon titles, anyway. Optional tutorials, Game Freak. For crying out loud, why can you not just have the NPC ask if I know how to catch Pokémon.

Festival Plaza is still there. That's a problem. It was a gimmicky, frustratingly convoluted mess in the original games, and it doesn't look to have changed much now. I won't be going near it again if I can help it. They could have at least done something with it. The Rotom Dex, too, is still a complete waste of the bottom screen. The Rotom Powers are nice enough I suppose, but not really game-changing. A little more control over what goes on down there - or at least just the option to switch the thing off - would have been nice.

I didn't expect massive changes, but what I've seen so far I'm content with. I'm inclined to ignore both sides - game "critics" are no more credible than fans in their assessment of these games really; review scores mean absolutely nothing from an objective standpoint, and fans will either love it or hate it for their own reasons - and take it as it comes. With Pokémon, it has always been the little things I've looked out for to separate the experiences, and Ultra Moon is reminding me a great deal of Black 2 in form at least, with the things I most disliked about the first titles (excessively long and boring cutscenes and a painful lack of variety in obtainable Pokémon making it impossible to put a satisfactory team together) being changed. That's enough for me for now. Ultra Moon is letting me play my way to a greater extent than Moon, and that's all I really wanted.

It's also a lot faster, I've noticed. I've gotten a lot further in a much shorter span of time.

What I object to, if anything, is there being Pokémon unobtainable in any of the Gen VII titles. And no National Dex again. Disgraceful.

 

I'm not disappointed because I wasn't going to hope for more original content compared to Sun and Moon.
Though I am going to play it and would like to enjoy it, I kind of wish they had done a sequel like black and white or completely skipped it like X and Y. I can never figure out a pattern to their game releases.

 

I miss the National dex. It was something that I I loved filling.

But I am really enjoying US. It has a lot of subtle changes and feels like a full game, even if I am not yet at the cool parts as I understand it.