Lurker > FridgeBeard

Better than Fallout 3 Primal

Galaxy 2 is legitimately one of the best Mario games but gets slept on because Galaxy 1 was higher profile. All the fat was trimmed for a TON of great new levels with fun gimmicks all over the place. It's probably one of the purest gameplay experiences in modern times. It's a shame it hasn't been re-released (except as a Wii U download).

Where did you come from

It's very doable to complete the Pokedex in the newer games, but YMMV on if that's considered "rewarding" to you as a player because, for the most part, the actual reward(s) usually aren't.

The lone exception might be Legends Arceus because it's a requirement to actually battle and catch Arceus itself.This is probably the easiest game to catch everything in too, possibly because of that, and without ever needing to go online too. No version exclusives, rarer Pokemon show up in these random warp events, and evolutionary items have been added to replace trade evolution requirements. That said, catching all the Pokemon here doesn't technically count as completing the dex as now there are research levels for every creature: these consist of using certain moves, battling with that Pokemon a certain amount of times, catching that Pokemon a certain amount of times, and so on.

For mainline titles, starting with SM, they neutered the dex so that it only consists of Pokemon in those games/regions, making it a lot easier to complete. You still have to jump through all the usual hoops to do it, just not as much, but generally you're able to complete like 80% of the dex without needing online/trading. Also, if you're willing to do a little research and don't care about legality, the Switch games have tons of Pokemon generators out there.

HG is probably the last game I really put my nose to the grindstone to complete, kind of like what you're experiencing now.

PowerOats posted...

Then they moved the release date CLOSER, releasing in July

It actually switched places with Splatoon 3, likely due to some last minute bugs or issues. That's why the CE for the game still released in fall separate from the original version.

But yeah, it was awesome getting it the year it was announced. I'd much prefer announcements for sooner upcoming releases vs. these little teasers for projects that have barely been started. I feel like the latter puts undue stress on the dev team too because if they start taking too long then people never shut up about it (see Cyberpunk).

Kind of surprised by the opinions for XB3 here though, I loved it. It felt like a big apology letter for 2 and really what it should've been. The ending didn't really land and the villain team and connection to the other games was weak, but the actual gameplay and moment to moment stuff was great.