So... I realized something odd about this whole Pokémon-Amie feature. It lets you feed and pet your 'mons to elicit cute reactions and boost friendship. All seems well and good in the trailer, but look at the examples they use: Pikachu, Snorlax, etc. Those guys are all actually cuddly. In contrast, would you really want to pet your trusty Muk? Or your Slugma?

Maybe Slugma are like Ponyta, and they won't burn you if they choose not to.

Muk…maybe not so much. You certainly wouldn't want to have a scratch on your hand if you tried…

Maybe you get to wear some gloves when you try to pet the…less favorably designed pokemon?

Idk I mean Muk is always on top of Prof. Oak and he seems fine. Pokemon aren't always the most consistant creatures haha

That's a good point…

Pokemon likes to make out that pokemon are fully sentient and intelligent creatures, far more so than real animals, but not enough so that they not all capable of a form a human speech and understanding. Yet, although I don't know fully what features Amie has, to me, it does seem to treat these 'intelligent' creatures as mere pets. Game Freak seems to be toeing a line here…

Meh…don't get me wrong, I prefer to think of most pokemon as more animalistic than human as was implied in the early days. Alakazam and Metagross may be 'smarter' than (or be, for that matter) a supercomputer, but when have they ever been shown to be fully intelligent by human standards? I mean, certainly, I can see some psychic types be truly capable of intelligence, but more ordinary pokemon? Snorlax? Muk? Countless more? Not so much. I'm more in favor of the theory that Meowth is the result of a Team Rocket experiment, much like Red's Eevee, than the idea that his given back story is true. I kind of see Amie as counter intuitive, now.

I can't wait to pet my Mewtwo... Who's a cutie-patootie? You are! Yes you are!

…aren't we all? isn't that why we're here, and why we play da pokimanz…

Anyway! Childhood traumas aside, you bring up a good point about the larger pokemon, although I'm sure they'll do something to compensate.

Is it just me, or does it seem like it would be entirely too weird to pet the humanoid pokemon like Gardevoir and Mewtwo, given some of the more…eccentric corners of the fan base?

I like it much more than I thought I was going to if i'm being honest.

I thought it felt a bit "cute. A bit tamagotchi/Sims/Animal farm (and witht he graphics of X/Y I was very concerned the entire game would be a bit young for me).

But to be fair it is awesome. Same as the super training.
There are 3 mini-games that I have clocked up a serious amount of ours on so far. They win you puffins to feed your pokemon, raise their enjoyment and lowers their fullness.

When you feed them it raises their fullness and lowers their enjoyment.

When you pet them their affection grows, but you can only pet them 2 or 3 times before they stop responding. To "reset" it and allow you to carry on petting you have to play 2 mini-games. So its a cycle to get max affection.

Each mon seems to have a place it hates being touched (my Riolu fumes at me if I touch his right knee) and some pokemon hurt you for touching them (the flame on a tail or an electric mouses cheeks for example).
You are also able to talk to it, have it copy your movements (blink/tilt their head, smile etc).

The one thing that is a bit annoying though is that max affection is not max happiness. I became really good at Amie and have played with everything in it trying to get myself a Lucario, but it hasn't evolved. So I think affection is just another part of happiness - not the "all" of it.

Well, Luna, and I'd assume other gardevoir like her, is pet-able, and she is submissive… When you pet the top of her head, she'll close her eyes and lean into the petting. You can pet from her head down the lengths of her arms, and she makes a somewhat cute chirping noise that is unlike her normal cry. When she likes the attention she receives, she'll do a short, one-armed bow, but when she doesn't, she'll flinch back and cross her arms over her chest. Apparently, it seems that the horns of hair under her, and not the pink horns, oddly, are sensitive enough that she doesn't like them being touched.

When she is being fed, she'll 'hold' the food with both hands to take large bites. She never gets too expressive, facially, though this could be because you can only see her from the front, and she tends to stay subdued and in control. She seemed happier and was more expressive as a kirlia. It's kind of as I thought before, they do take away from some of the 'human' aspects that they try to instill in pokemon, but the affection on her part could be due to the love she feels for you. It still feels odd to pet her, though. It's the same with Flair, my Delphox, honestly. But it is cute.

I did notice, back in the early game when I taught them all Return, that where others would make some sort of charging motion, she would backhand her opponents. It was rather amusing to watch.

Apparently, affection from Amie has some uses in battle. After a certain point, a happy pokemon will start receiving experience boosts, and will start developing the chance of self healing from status afflictions. I've not used Amie enough on a single pokemon to notice these effects, but I know that it involves a lot of petting.

I should warn you, CuteKirlia, as, even though this may be considered a spoiler, I don't think that you'd want to chance the possibility of missing out on catching a Ralts as early as possible, that Ralts can only be found on Route 4. I'm warning you because it took me a while to find one, and then a while longer female one after that, so it would be possible to miss it, if one were to rush through the route. I was actually looking for a for a white Flabebe at the time… Looking for her was actually quite reminiscent of Hoenn, only you just had to grind her one level, and not two, before she became viable for battle.

Edit: Curse you, poor Internet connection, for making me wait 'til morning. But yeah, forgot about the games. It pulls in three pokemon that you have with you, but will always include the one that you're playing with at the moment. You have a berry retrieval game, a puzzle, and I honestly haven't played the third game yet, because I've been content with the puzzle. You earn food for how well you score.

RE: the in-battle benefits of amie, I have come across the following so far:

Dodged an attack
Landed a critical hit
Shrugged off paralysis (I believe all status' can be overcome)
Gained boosted experience
Refused to faint (sort of like the Sturdy ability)

You know this is related to Amie because the text changes (Riolu is so in Sync with Mick that it landed a critical hit for example). Also a little pink heart floats above the head when Amie has had an effect

Another thing I noticed is that, after a battle, you sometimes rub your pokemon's head. Adorable!