True honest review from someone really wishing to play a fun pokemon game again.
My favorite part of pokemon games has always been just finding new amazing and epic pokemon, training my team and fighting battles, overcoming any challenge. This game really allowed me to pick and choose from a variety of pokemon, and it was so enjoyable to explore and finally see an epic pokemon I just absolutely NEEDED on my team. The new catching mechanics also made it seem more worked for, rather than just happening to spawn one when going through some grass.
For battling, the wild battles stay core to pokemon, but now better I'd say. They are in real time, throw whatever pokemon you think would work the most towards another and instantly start a battle wherever you are. Being able to just go to a higher level area and challenge yourself while getting a high reward feels good to me. The Agile and Strong mechanics also do allow for some strats, such as quickly using a move with a status effect on a pokemon, then using hex strongly to deal more damage.
For trainer battles, well, I don't really think you can say that they are trainer battles. They're not, "Trainers also going about the area that you can run into", more so sparse fights along your adventure. These fights are quite disappointing to me. First, I really wish there was more trainers just walking around. Maybe some would actually run up to you and ask you to fight them, or some you'd see battling, and you can join in that battle. The few fights we get aren't really fun, because the automatic exp-share in this game makes the game far too easy. At the start of the game, I feel that the game is at its best, but later on your pokemon get too strong automatically. I only grinded for 4 levels, and that was just because I caught a high level pokemon and didn't want them among my team until they were a similar level because I'd thought it would make the game too easy. It was right before the final boss however, so I did decided to grind anyways. Even the final boss, or final pokemon battle, I was able to two-hit while only being 4-6 levels higher. I had to restart the game 3 times just because I kept accidentally killing them instead of capturing them.
The world of pokemon is vast, and filled with many. I will say It was sad to see that there were a lot of re-used pokemon for many areas, mostly shinx, bidoof, driftloon, aipom, and haunter. I wish there was a little more diversity there. I love watching out to make sure I didn't agro anything accidentally, and sneaking up on unsuspecting pokemon to capture them. I wish that they did more though with what they do. The most they really do is sleep, giving you a chance to capture them easier. I wish some pokemon were more-so in herds, some were hunting others, or maybe some using their environment ( Like Aipom climbing in trees, hippopotas or others drinking from water ). That definitely would have made it more immersive. Also, it really did bug me how a lot of these pokemon just lived in peace, even fighting alongside others against me, really weird. It was sad to realize that all there really was is pokemon. No cool things to discover besides some stone tablets.
The graphics I say are mixed. When you're looking directly around you, the distance where the game loads in the most, I'd say that I actually really love it. It kinda looks like a painting or something like that. Past that, I'd say it dips down a little, but it's reasonable. When you look really far though, the graphics become eye-jarring, distracting. Mountains look really bad, with blatant repeating textures Some places in the Alabaster region, you can go to the north and see where the mountains touch the water far outside the boundaries of the map, and that's the worst the game got. The framerate of pokemon will 100% go down when they get far from you. A lot of the textures on characters, or maybe all of them, are very obviously low resolution. You can see the pixels on the symbols of their outfits. Whenever the camera has to change view, you can see that the game very quickly loads in everything for that angle, mostly in Jubilife village. The animation quality here is pretty lazy. They re-use the same animations all the time, the same grabbing animation, awkward movement of the head whenever characters have to stare. Some characters just load on the edge of the screen in cutscenes. Also, black-out syndrome is everywhere. So many times does a bigger animation not get done in favor of the screen fading to black with some noises, or maybe when your character is given something the camera zooms up to their face, leaving out their hands as they grab it off camera. The performance when it comes to movement and framerate though, I'd say I had no issues.
The music I'd say is really great, besides the one that plays for the eating cutscenes, because that was annoying. The wild battle theme is one of my favorites in the series, and the earlier iterations of jubilife village was really calming. Some of the area music were absolute bops as well. I will definitely say that a lot of the ost is playlist music.
I'm not a story man myself. I play games for the gameplay and immersion into the adventure and world. I skipped through a lot of boring dialogue just so I can get back out and start capturing and battling some more. I didn't like any of the characters, non of them at all. The story could've had more, for what I did read. Why couldn't there have been more important things to do in the clan villages? Maybe make it so you can choose to do more missions with either the diamond clan or pearl clan, that then deciding the ending. What struck me terribly is the "twist" they try to pull. The galaxy corps commander kicks you out because you are suspicious for appearing out of the sky. COME ON..... I became the best trainer in the entire region, one of the only ones to have the will to adventure, when they themselves say that the danger of pokemon makes people not want to be with them. The commander really has the mind of an 8 year old, thinking correlation equals causation. All you do to win his trust back is battle his weak pokemon that I was already 12 levels above, and then he kneels to you. Finally, the final final boss was one of the palm ones. It was easier than the two before it. I was expecting a second phase, but no, story ends there.
It was just after I beat the main game that I decided to put the game down, and write a review, because I really wanted to get my own feelings down. This game is like a 6.8/10. For the first half of the game, until you get to the cobalt coastland area, I had some of the most fun pokemon gameplay ever! It was rich with content to do, and it wasn't too easy at that point. I really was not trying to get destroyed by the marshland pokemon. After that though, it gets worse and worse, becoming too easy, and you start flying through the areas, going to the area palm bossfight super quickly. I would recommend this game still, for people who have played pokemon before and want a fresh of breath air... before it quickly starts to turn into straight carbon monoxide.
Minus points for not being able to pet your pokemon ;(
