I think the idea is interesting, but they added it way too late in the series. It just further shows that they are running out of ideas in the games, at least to me.In post 274, Garmr wrote:I love the idea of regional variants I hope they put them in every game.
It could have very easily been started in the Hoenn games. Hoenn had a very stereotypical semi-tropical climate, with an active volcano and more water than was in previous games. It felt a lot more "coastal" and rugged than the previous games, so there's a potential outlet.
From there, Sinnoh was significantly more polar than the other regions, so that's an outlet. Unova had taiga-esque qualities, but that probably wouldn't have had many potential regional variants compared to Johto and Kanto, since they were also fairly forested areas. Kalos is definitely the most plain-like region, but again, not many ideas for regional variants.
Unfortunately, for someone who found Kalos almost unplayable, regional variants seems too little, too late. Also, Ultra Beasts didn't really drag in my attention like Hoenn or Sinnoh's main plotpoints did. Hoenn's Weather-based catastrophe really captivated me, and it still does. The thought of a giant storm starting over a city and spiraling out over an entire region of a country is just such a cool sounding problem (and has inspired some of my tabletop plotpoints).
Sinnoh was an interesting idea, too. Once it started ramping up, and your group had to split up to go to three separate areas of the region (even though they proved to be useless, but that's neither here nor there. You're the star of this show) felt like a real "adventure" type of thing, which felt absent in Kanto, but started to ramp up in Johto, reaching fruition in Hoenn, and then applied differently in Sinnoh. I will say, though, that the whole "Pokemon in charge of Time and Space" sounded way cooler than it ended up executed. Which was a shame. I know that it wasn't really possible to have true "god-like" Pokemon because there still needed to be a shred of balance, but they still could have felt more, I dunno, "wow" (Sorry about that, but onomatopoeia was the only way I could really describe it).
