the online ways are quite amusing. apart from the same stuff where you can connect to the internet to do global trades, you can for example "negotiate". Two players are randomly put together in a spot where you can see your party pokemons & box pokemons, being able to put them on offer. In other words, it's a very lively trade function. Trading with random people is always fun, especially the Japanese because they make the best deals ever =p
Yea this game exceeds it's former makings quite well.
A new TM system too, TM's are not buy X number based anymore, you can use them as much as you want. you just gotta buy it once. In return they got way more expensive tho. 70k for blizzard, fire blast, thunder for example.