As of now, I feel like the distribution of Flash is somewhat lacking, possibly because it lost its HM status as time went on. This is fine in the mainline games, where its not very useful in battle, but flash is very important in PMU - in fact, I would argue that flash is a necessity in dark, small-room dungeons.
According to bulbapedia, there isn’t a single pokemon past gen 6 that can learn flash. I’m not saying this is a bad distribution, but in my opinion, it should be even better; an HM move (or something that fulfills a similar function, like flash) should be able to fit on almost any team. If you had to ask me for a simple fix, I’d say that anything that can learn dazzling gleam should also be able to learn flash. That makes logical sense, right?
The exact same argument could be made for HM Rock Climb, which is a necessity to access some portions of the overworld. It, too, is a former HM which I’d argue needs better distribution - aside from the Lycanroc family, there’s nothing past gen 5 that can learn it. Maybe give it to more rock, fighting and steel types?
I don’t see how the presence of a mid-to-late game item removes the necessity of flash - that’s like saying the affinity pendant is useless because the golden mask exists!
As it stands, Flash is far more useful than x-ray specs. The x-ray specs do not reveal the map and the location of enemies and items like they do in the PMD games, while flash does. Furthermore, flash can light up the map for the rest of your party, making it vital in multiplayer dungeon runs.
…but i can’t speak about the x-ray charm since i don’t have it and i’m not sure what exactly it does does it reveal the map for just your team, or for the whole party? even if it did reveal the map for the whole party, I’d still argue that flash has a niche.
Totally unrelated… Those items where made to have easier access to new players, affinity pendant is almost mid-game compared to golden mask that is in an end-game like dungeon (CCh) and is also now extremely rare to get. Like any game, with time you’ll find better options or more useful/powerful items the more you advance.
This is using the minimap, some people prefer not use it (More when you are Top-Right of the map) because the map isn’t transparent at all and see more easy to use X-Ray items, AND also, Safety googles covers WAY MORE effective than X-Ray items does (Again with my last comment, early to end-game like comparisons). Is not vital, I like it the hard way and rarely use it, but that varies from each point of view (and sadly that creates dependance to certain items/moves that some veterans tell to low experienced people, instead of allow them find it by their own to improve and make their own way to play), Vital it’ll be like escape items and high rarity items, not flash, that’s just a way of assitance, like the other ones: safeguard, heal bell/aromatherapy/refresh, weather moves, HP recover moves, recycle, etc. Depends which one you’ll like to use personally.
Also, X-Ray Charm is the same as X-Ray Specs but Team item.
does it reveal the map for just your team, or for the whole party? even if it did reveal the map for the whole party, I’d still argue that flash has a niche.