"The Big Island" is right. That's a lot of ground we've covered to get here, and in addition to all but finishing off most of our team's evolutions, we've also learned many of the moves that will appear in our final learnsets. In addition to this, the story has expanded in scope, with not only Team Skull growing to become a greater threat, but their financial backer came to meet us on her terms. So, what does the midgame look like in Pokemon?
Malie City opens with a surprise battle against Rival Hau, and in a startling moment, this is actually going to be the last one before the end of the game. In USUM in particular, he puts up quite the fight, but Hau serves as a surprising example of a rival for not having a matchup between "still setting up the pieces of his team" and "final encounter in the very endgame". Not unfitting to his character- while many rivals set themselves the goal of challenging us directly, Hau instead questions whether this is the path his heart is set on following. In that light, perhaps us challenging him wouldn't be much of an encouraging direction to have him constantly chasing our shadow. Besides, it's hardly as if we've been bereft of opponents in his absence.
Following this encounter with Hau, we get to tell Kukui about our encounter with the Ultra Beasts- something that amounts to very little owing to his and Burnet's tragic absence from this plot point- and then escort Lillie to Malie City's Library in order to look into the Legendary Pokemon. Although the relevance to Nebby's plight seems apparent, this leg of the plot is not interested in drawing any conclusions about the matter. In SM, we strictly speaking don't even know Cosmog's teleportation powers have anything to do with Ultra Space! All we know is that there exists a legendary Pokemon capable of travelling between dimensions, and is presumably benevolent. Pokemon proves itself to be relatively lax about developing the boxart legends in a timely manner, if ever. Pokemon never really struck me as a series big on this kind of plot development, though- it prefers to show things off before it explains them, and that's when it explains it at all and doesn't leave it up to the player's imagination and experience. Capturing the childlike wonder found in the environment of playground rumours is pretty difficult, especially for video games.
Next up is our first Ula'ula Island Trial- itself a bit of a modest affair not helped by the lack of confidence in the Trial Captain, and ultimately more interesting because of the cool sights to see atop Mount Hokulani. Before we make it there, we're shown Kukui's grand ambition of a Pokemon League, and afterwards, we're first introduced to Guzma and his- and by extension Team Skull's- resentful attitude towards the Island Challenge. Around this point, the Island Challenge starts to be challenged as a concept, and the story doesn't really seem too opposed to that fact? Sure, Guzma is framed as wrong, since he's the main antagonist and all, but Kukui's arguments, since he's a proponent of his new Pokemon League, are more general, about the idea of exploring a region as a young child at all, rather than specifically about the Island Challenge. This gets even worse as the plot continues, since our next representatives for the Island Challenge are Acerola (whose Trial uses a relatively new setpiece) and Nanu (who is not interested in being an Island Challenge staff member at all). The undertones this plot point deals with by being related to both the Hawai'ian's colonisation and the fandom's disinterest in drifting away from the Gym Challenge make for interesting reading, and I'm not entirely certain- or comfortable with- what conclusions one is meant to walk away with.
Around this stretch of the game is a nice, long stretch of gameplay with a relative position of spinning wheels in the story. We go through Route 12, have Gladion take a stance on the Nebby plot point, try to find a safe spot for Lillie, do Acerola's Trial, have the Yungoos get kidnapped, and then have to traverse three routes to get to Po Town and do the dramatic rescue. Akala framed Lillie's relative absence from the story as her being literally unable to pursue her plotline due to a roadblock, but here, it more just feels like Lillie genuinely has nothing of interest to be doing right now. Nebby's interest in the ruins where the Tapus reside goes unexplored, owing to Lillie not having a clear understanding why, and perhaps they could've allowed that connection to become more apparent to help Lillie feel more involved here. As it is, Lillie is limited in portrayal as little more than a fancy MacGuffin, and while there are good reasons to explore that angle, I would prefer if the characterisation was actually actively portrayed rather than her helplessness coming about as a result of a lack of plot agency.
After Po Town, we are thrown into the major infiltration of the enemy team base- rather than Po Town, like Team Skull's portrayal would lead one to expect, it is instead the Aether Foundation, which explores a few key ideas- the corruption inherent in their use of secret, dangerous research for Faba, their ability to play both sides by bribing Team Skull to take the heat with Guzma, and finally the monstrous control Lusamine exerts over what she considers her property when it comes to her children and her personal collection- at least in SM. The Aether Foundation ultimately comes out of this raid looking every bit the villain they're trying to look like, when later plot developments- and even Hau, Lillie, and to some extent Wicke and Gladion- seem to see the Aether Foundation's evil ventures as temporary in nature. This may be a strange case of a values mismatch between writer and reader, but ultimately, it does somewhat explain the characterisation retool of Lusamine for USUM- it is bringing Lusamine more in line with what the writers were intending her to look like, with her SM portrayal being less an accident of a branding mismatch and more an accident of a writing fumble. Now granted, this doesn't really make the shift better; I'd argue it makes the shift worse, as in a vacuum, the SM idea is stronger, and the USUM idea also doesn't entirely fix the problem that caused this whole mess. Ultimately, what exactly caused the shift is something it's going to be hard to properly identify, for the same reason identifying it matters- what caused the shift strongly reflects the attitudes and beliefs of the writers on the topic of people like Lusamine and the power they wield in all three roles of "independently wealthy director", "public role model" and "mother". Such a volatile answer is one the writers have no incentive or interest in divulging, considering their nature as a world-famous child-focused brand encouraging them not to delve too deeply into such matters.
Gameplay wise... there has been a lot of extra fights to get into. Seven numbered routes to explore (Route 13 doesn't count), a fair number of non-numbered routes, we're more regularly challenged by the boss fights, there are multiple Trainer boss battles in addition to Totems, we're given ample opportunity and reason to be on our toes. This is matched by a similar opportunity for us to get access to endgame quality moves of a variety of attacking types, to join the freebie Psychic, most of our Pokemon are reaching their final forms, the new Pokemon we have the option of catching are getting stronger, and our Pokemon's natural learnsets are rounding out. Pokemon's excuses for not throwing everything they have at us are getting weaker, since we are getting every resource we need to bite back, and so the game is making no bones about making the Pokemon we fight be individually optimised. This does, however, raise the question of what "upness" the lategame can throw if the midgame is already there.
