LogFAQs > #962203420

This is NOT a regular ass pokemon game, for better or worse. It's very different. It's honestly closer to pokemon snap than the mainline games. The fun of the game is exploring areas to find unique pokemon to complete more research to get more stars to be able to craft better balls and catch/control stronger pokemon. I've got 6 stars (lets you catch/control pokemon up to level 80) and just now did kleavor. It was kind of funny to see this "scary frenzied beast" at level 18 get obliterated by my level 60 alpha alakazam (this has nothing to do with xp share, I caught him at level 60) during the parts where you can actually fight it.

I despise exp share in the mainline games but it being on here doesn't matter, because it's used to evolve/level your horde of pokemon to complete more research. This isn't a game where you carefully craft a well balanced team of 6 to take on difficult trainers. The only real reason to even have stronger pokemon, is to weaken and catch other strong pokemon. You build your team to hit type weaknesses for research and have good moves for catching pokemon (false swipes, thunder wave, hypnosis, etc).

If you go in thinking of this as a possible step forward for the pokemon series, you are going in with the wrong mindset. This is not a mainline game, this is a spinoff like mystery dungeon or snap. You can catch 3 pokemon in 2 seconds without entering battle. You can drive by snipe a gyarados out of the air with a feather ball. You can dodge roll a charging rapidash and backstrike with it your pokeball to start the battle off with a free turn for you.

It IS a lot of fun IMO. They could also stand to bring some of these things into the main series. The way you walk around, the way battles aren't a separate screen but happen in the overworld (and you can even still keep walking around if you want to), the way you catch pokemon in general, the research tasks and sidequests. All of that stuff could easily work in a mainline pokemon game, although many of those elements could use some improvements.

Speaking of that, while a lot of these elements are fun, theres significant room for improvement in a lot of them. The research tasks could really use a bit more variety. There's only like 10 tasks total and each pokemon has like 5-8 of em. The number of times to max some of these out is beyond tedious. I really gotta kill 40 geodudes, 20 with grass, 20 with water, in order to max out those 2 things, and catch another 25 IIRC. That's a total of 65 geodude encounters to just max out geodude. Of course, you don't have to max all the tasks, once you've got 10 research levels on the pokemon, you get a bonus 100 points. You could get by just going for that pretty easily (it's probably what they intend). I would have loved more unique tasks with more clever ways of achieving them. Like luring one pokemon with baits into another pokemon they wouldn't normally encounter or intimidating one to flee from battle by sending out it's natural predator.

There's room for these to be really creative and fun and it's not used well enough. Instead it's basically, catch em, catch em unaware, battle em, kill em with a specific weakness, see em use X move X times, evovle em, catch multiple forms, possible side quest. There should be room for some basic puzzle solving on each pokemon. By the time I finish, I should feel like me as a player understands that pokemon and how they behave and what sets pidgey clone #7 apart from #5.

Open world movement is solid but it does have the skyrim mountain climbing physics where you can sorta waddle yourself up things you really shouldn't be climbing.