The music? Eh
The post-game? WHACK
The difficulty? WHACK
The characters? WHACK
The story? WHACK
The world design? WHACK
The designs? TIGHT AS FUCK

I can't in good conscience call this a good Pokemon game even if it barely keeps the fundamentals of its combat afloat. Although arguably, Fairy type was incredibly unbalanced during Gen 6 competitive and still is even so now, and Mega Evolutions were a complete bust in either devaluing a shitton of the meta or by making this game pathetically easy. So maybe I can say it breaks the fundamentals at least partly.

Even still, a ridiculously shallow attempt at a story with a region that has no real sense of its identity thanks in no small part to having the "everyone is here" nostalgia bait from all past regions of a Pokemon roster, and no aesthetics identity bar a few areas (seriously isn't this supposed to be France??) and a bleh soundtrack should be enough to deter most people who like this series. And if that doesn't set any interest in fucking flames, then maybe how this is by in large the easiest entry other than Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire with the most pathetic balance I've seen, and it's not even Exp. Share's fault, that's actually fine! They just throw all the good mons your way and have the shittiest teams!

I'm very tempted to call this a bad game in general, but it manages to still have a soul at times, although barely. It's certainly a Pokemon game and it has the amalgamation of features people expect from it. It doesn't royally break apart a good enough structure to make a solid enough rpg. It's meh, I still don't recommend anyone play it.

There exists a ferocious double-standard between Diamond and Pearl and X and Y. Both sets of games feel underbaked and are possessed of quite noticeable flaws and deficiencies. The difference is that one set got a third game to make everyone forget about them, and the other set didn't.

Pokemon Y is too damned easy. Even if one leverages the vast, beautiful freedom Pokemon so often presents, there's so little that one can do to make a late-game gym leader difficult when his team consists only of three bad ice types and one of them doesn't even have a full moveset.

The thing is, I love Kalos. That's just one of my many flaws. I love Yveltal and Xerneas, and I even love Team Flare. They're a cabal of ultra-wealthy hyper-elitist Ayn Rand readers who view everyone but themselves as parasites. They already have more than anyone else, but they think they're entitled to the rest of it and they're willing to kill everyone else in the world to avoid sharing it. I just... is that not interesting to you? Is that level of narcissism not compelling? Team Flare is a great idea failed utterly by poor execution, exemplified perfectly by that one line (you know the one) from Serena/Calem and the insistence on having Flare grunts incessantly spouting lines about "a beautiful world" without selling the sinister subtext of "one without poors like you."

Look, if there's one angle from which I want you to listen to me when I defend X and Y, it's the multiplayer angle. Generation 6 has a proper, honest friends list available at all times on its bottom screen. The PSS is, without contest, the best multiplayer interface that Pokemon has ever had, and I loved living in its ecosystem. I could see when my friends were online and what changes they'd made to their trainers, I could send them little messages and interact with them in other ways. I could battle someone without having to set up a goddamned link code and coordinating with them through some other method. I could trade without having to pray that I don't get randomly matched with some stranger who doesn't have what I want.

There's so much I could say to champion Gen 6, but I so seldom bother to try, because I don't think they're the best of the games and because nobody listens to me anyway. The truth is that I'm tired and it doesn't matter.

Just bring back the megas and super-training.

I skipped Gen 5 when it was out and the Global Link was active for it due to burnout, so the 3DS games were even more of a change from what I knew beforehand. The usual comments apply here—some framerate problems, very hand-holdy and lenient gameplay at times, and characters that don't leave too much of an impression. I'll argue that the series's had a forgettable character problem for a while, at least with the gym leaders—but it's true! The partners don't stick very much, and the team admins aside from Lysandre get as much screen time as a stick of butter in the background.
None of that's too much of a problem for me, as focused as I was on just getting through the game and filling out my 'dex. The linearity isn't an issue (there hasn't been a truly open-ended Pokémon game, with the original Diamond and Pearl coming closest)—it's that even with the new EXP Share, grinding is a necessity to not get wrecked by the Elite Four. Getting my team up enough to do well against Siebold was a royal pain, and it definitely made me enjoy things less in the long run.
All that said, this is Gen 6, and the Kalos games gave us some of my favorite Pokémon designs of the lot. Obviously, Hoopa's up there, but I also gotta give special mention to the Noibat line, Inkay, Froakie and Frogadier, Diancie, the Amaura line, and Goodra. (And SOME of the Megas. Mega Scizor's great.)

This was my most played pokemon game and for that alone I bump it up more than it would probably be objectively deserving of.

I loved the mega evolutions, but little did I know how much they'd milk the idea in the future in various shapes and sizes.

I spent over 800 hours on wi-fi battles with this, it's hard to deny the staying power it had on me.