Pokemon Ultra Sun / Moon

[The Sideromancer]

I'm probably not qualified to talk about Hoenn since my first main game was Emerald, but I do feel that ORAS had the best secondary functionality. The Dexnav especially was amazing since you could prompt a specific encounter, check for held items, even get hidden abilities.

[That kid from that region]

I don't claim to have ever really been thinking the same way as the locals, but I've begun to notice I've been drifting away from the ordinary. As an example, someone asked what held item is best for enduring sunlight. My response was the Red Orb. As if everybody I meet has an ancient artifact available and the god to use it. In my defence, I've mostly been interacting with members of other realities that do.

[The Sideromancer]

It's hard to find anything about Necrozma without a pile of comments based on how hard the boss is, which has prompted me to write this rant. Late revival, but I like ghost types anyway

Wall of Text:

I'm going to say it: I think Ultra Necrozma is one of the worst, if not the worst-designed bosses in the core games. And no, I'm not salty because its hard, in fact I have the opposite problem. I knew a hard counter to U-necrozma before gen 7 even came out.

When speculation was rampant leading up to Sun and Moon, a lot of people were thinking it would be cool for the Ultra Beasts to be non-catchable wild pokemon fulfilling a solitary boss role. I immidiately thought "there's a massive problem with that, indirect damage trivializes it." Toxic will kill in 6 turns, and only requires one turn of doing anything other than stuffing your team full of potions. Ghost Curse will kill in 4-5. If you try to completely toxic stall a champion with a team of 6, you need to set up your condition 6 times and not get wiped out by the end of turn 24 (assuming no steel or poison types, alternately that you have a salazzle). This flat-out doesn't work when trying to catch a legendary, since you need it still standing. You need to be ready to take 30, 40-odd turns of a level 70 demigod hitting you with anything it has to succeed. These can be balanced for in-game challenges such that Rayquaza doesn't care if its 6 on 1, because those 6 are just defenses for the 1-on-1 against the trainer.

Non-catchable single entities cannot beat passive damage. On one level, Game Freak knows this: most totems carry some defense against being poison stalled. Ultra Necrozma doesn't. It has to be a borderline unfun offensive threat because if you get a move off turn 1, you can beat it with at most one item used. I came at it with a muk, and it was one turn of RNG stacked in my favour (Necrozma needed a crit) followed by 5 turns of formality. It was pitiful and anticlimactic, I ended up just sitting there with magnezone for the rest of the fight.

Necrozma is either too hard or too easy, because everything is a glass cannon when its 6v1 and you only need to KO. It's either frustrating or disappointing. I would urge GF to drop this style and reduce the main legend's catch rate if they want to provide a fair challenge. TM06 is balanced, but it destroys bosses that aren't.