I haven't done a lot of digging, even still, I feel like the major headlines reviewing this game should exalt the decision to do away with HMs. As someone who largely plays only the single player aspects of pokemon games, being able to navigate the game without wasting four or five move slots is relief. Why are not more people excited about this?

Most people are, I think. Almost every review I've seen praises the removal.

@jordarx: A couple of them were alright (Surf, Waterfall, Fly and Strength all did pretty good damage, though fly being two-turns wasn't the greatest) but not having to deal with all of the rest is extremely nice. Rock climb / smash, dive, cut, etc. No more HM slaves (losing an entire pokemon slot was terrible). And yeah it's kind of surprising nobody else seems to be excited about it.

If they had to get rid of them, I'm really happy they chose to replace it with riding pokemon instead of something else. Aside from being awesome in general, it's a really good way to show the relationship between people and 'mon. Also Lapras is baller.

Oh wow. I haven't finished the game and am on the second island and have been wondering if the HM's were ever going to surface but yeah this makes total sense because that's what those poke dudes you summon are for.

I do miss having strength, surf, and fly as battle moves though

I wonder what they're gonna do about pokemon from previous generations that have the hm stuff as battle moves. I imagine that's one of the reasons previous generations aren't transferable yet.

@riptheveins: They forced you before to see a move deleter before being to transfer Pokemon to another version that doesn't have a specific HM

@riptheveins: All of the HM moves are still in the game, so probably nothing. They'll just be useful inside battle and nowhere else.

They made those old HMs into TMs for battle purposes. I've gotten Fly, but haven't finished the game yet, I'm sure there are others.

Yeah it's incredible. That and EXP share are so good.

Pretty much everyone agrees it's a good change, the only reason I think it isn't worth making that big of a deal about is because it's so obvious they should have ditched that design choice a long time ago.

Interesting thing to know if I care enough to get the Switch version.

Oh cool, was worried that they were gone completely

I haven't purchased this game but fuck, that's a great move. I always hated having to waste those HM slots, and every game iteration there seemed to be more and more of them.

Holy shit I might've actually bought the new Pokemon just for this, if only the game wasn't set in a tropical setting.

I went through the whole game without a water pokemon on my team. It was really weird. I do wish they'd given you the old HM moves as TMs sooner; some of them had decent battle utility.

I'm glad they made TMs reusable. Was that new to Sun/Moon or was that introduced in another generation? I always ended up saving TMs until I get what would be my "final" team set-up and then never used them.

@burncoat: I think it was Gen 5 that made TMs reusable. That or 6.

@jjor64: @burncoat: Yeah, that was Gen V; although, they had obtuse breeding mechanics that let you pass down TM moves from male pokemon ever since they introduced breeding in Gen II.

The only thing that annoys me about riding pokemon is that it changes the music. It's nit picky, but I like to hear the different music of the places I go. Way better than HMs though.