HMs IN POKEMON BLACK AND WHITE
For a long time, HMs, or Hidden Machines, were a staple of the Pokemon formula, essentially serving as roadblocks in the world to impede progress until you had a specific move to be able to get past it. A lot of people didn’t like HMs, largely because most of them were rather useless in actual battles (though some can admittedly be pretty nifty), and because they’re permanent moves that couldn’t be forgotten, which meant one of the Pokemon in your party ends up having to sacrifice a move slot to learn what is most likely a useless attack (or worse still, you end up losing one party slot to a designated HM slave). With Pokemon Black and White, Game Freak ended up streamlining the Pokemon formula in various ways, and one of the many things they trimmed were HMs. Sure, the games still had HMs, but rather than being critical roadblocks, they were now entirely optional. Since Black and White, with the exception of OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire, HMs have either been heavily downplayed (like in Pokemon X and Y) or entirely missing (like in Sun and Moon and Sword and Shield). Then again, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl probably will have HMs, so we’re not entirely free of them just yet.
