I beat Leon finally. But the ending credits appear to be unskippable, and booting out of and relaunching the game sends me back to before Leon's match so now I'd have to do it again.

Seems my entire life was a lie. I was so invested in Isle of Armor's restricted sparring that it recontextulaized my second playthrough from start to finish (any Pokemon I chose to catch and level were done so with restricited sparring in mind- long term planning!) and in both my first and second playthroughs I actively avoided leveling up any of my Pokemon past 50. (where reasonably possible.. I needed to break to rule with at least a few Pokemon to even stand a chance against Leon) Problem is that nowadays by habit, I never sit through the end credits anymore for any videogame and always skip them wherever possible, which not only means I can't gain access to restricted sparring, but I technically should never have found out about it to begin with.

So, what now? Do I force myself to sit through the credits or do I decide to let it go and finally free myself from absolute slog fest that this game was? It was an absolute struggle session and no part of it was fun. I just wanted to defeat restricted sparring so bad. It felt so rewarding to the assemble an all star team and check off another type from the list. The road to actually achieving that though was borderline abusive. So much tedious catching and so much mindless grinding. But now maybe I don't have to do any of it anymore. I'm finally free.

Maybe Scarlet Violet is up next.