LogFAQs > #931412263

I have played through it all now and made myself a living dex missing only Zamazenta and Type: Null, both of which I'll trade over when I get Shield. It wasn't nearly as much effort as it has been before due to dexit and wild area. I'll sum up my thoughts.

Positives:
It should be mentioned that I love Pokemon, so it has overall been a very enjoyable game. There's no point in listing all the returning things I like, so it might seem like I enjoyed it less than I did.

-The gym challenge.
They managed to keep the classic format while keeping it fresh. Most of the gyms were also fun in themselves. I enjoyed all but the final two, which didn't have much substance, we'll get back to that. It was cool to see how getting the regional badges actually made you a known trainer in the region. I liked having sport outfits mostly because it harmlessly made no sense to change clothes and talk about being exhausted from a Pokemon battle where you just stand and name moves.

-The league
Very cool alternative to the elite four, even if it was obvious who you would face. I didn't mind it being interrupted quite a bit either in itself, this is a very welcome addition.

-The pace
I didn't really know what to call this, but what I mean it that it was a lot smoother to go through dialogue, which was a major issue in gen VII, where it took forever to get through the first island compared to what it had and I really appreciated that. Also really appreciated the Rotom Dex not being able to talk. This will make a billion times better to play through again.

-The New Pokemon
I think this is a solid bunch. Toxtricity is among the best they ever made imo and there are a lot more up there. There's also less than usual I dislike, so very good job overall.

Negatives:
Most of these can be summed up to "Not enough developement time", but there are some other points.

-Lack of substance in the overworld in latter half of the game.
Suddenly, the world was just much less pretty and there was a lot less to do. The early routets and citys had very cool backgrounds and it was pretty to look at. I don't care that the graphics are way below average for a Switch game, it looked good to be. But that sure wasn't the whole game. Early on you could also visit at least most houses. I see no point of these big citys if it's just a cover and they don't actually have anything at all. Wyndon and Spikemuth in particular were bad here.

-Lack of story and things to do.
As much as I enjoyed added focus to the gym challenge, this was a major step backwards. There was kinda sorta a story going on at times, but you were excluded from it until the league where it honestly sucked and yet I almost enjoyed it because we finally got something. The whole plot to get to Leon and Rose's meeting in particular was bad.

-Dexit
We spoke about this for many months before the game came out, but that doesn't make it better, especially when you consider the above things. I honestly doubt we'd have that much worse a game if they ported all the Pokemon. We know they straight up lied about the models and look at how they created them all from scratch back in XY and made a game with as much substance otherwise. It didn't have to piss me off that they removed so many Pokemon, but they handled it so horribly. Some of the moves they removed also sucked.

-Catch rates
I don't understand the slightest bit why this was necesarry. It is so easy to level up anyways, it's not like it would be broken to get something a level higher than your own Pokemon. The was extremely frustrating on a lot of new routes.

-Dynamax
This might be controversial, but I really think the gimmick this gen failed. There's a fine idea in there somewhere and I do appreciate how any Pokemon can use it and without use of an item, but it's severely broken. It's no fun at all. Smogon is probably banning it already. In game it was awful as well, it's a shame it probably took too much focus in developement. There's no fun in it really, not helped by how it's extremely predictable. Why do the gym leaders always have to use it with final Pokemon. I get they want to show off the Gigantamax forms in most gyms, but could they at least then not necessarily use the Pokemon capable of that as their last one? It's also insanely time consuming, being the only real flaw in the otherwise great pace. All in all, I have not enjoyed it at all.

-The creation of TR:
Something I haven't seen mentioned a lot, but this was to me a great step backwards from where we got to in Gen V. Most TMs are completely worthless, the good ones come very late and they aren't that good. The TRs are all the things you want, but they're locked to the wild area where it's tedious to search for specific ones, because it depends on you finding and beating the right raid if it's there, or hoping that one of the sellers are there. But their prizes are ridiculous for you until you become champion.

Some ambivalent things:
Some things I'd like to talk about I don't think I can call neither good nor bad.

-The rivals
I appreciate having more than just one rival and that was fun. I also appreciate them trying to give the tival some storyline of his own, but Hop was pretty terrible honestly. I enjoyed Hau mostly last gen, but Hop was mostly just annoying, same thing with Bede. Marnie was fine enough.

-Raid battles
I love the idea in principle, but it sure doesn't work as I had hoped. It's fun if I can get to do raids with my brother and two roomates since that's local, but online functions horribly and playing alone hands you the worst teammates you can imagine. There's certainly room for improvement if they keep this feature around and dynamax wouldn't really have to stay for this to stay, they could simply handle it Pokemon GO style.

-Wild Area
I appreciate the idea of making a lot more Pokemon available early on, but I also think the Wild Area is a big reason for lacking routes during the rest of the game, so it doesn't feel as too much of an addition honestly. It's a shame how many things are exclusive to some specfic weather. In particular two of my favorite Pokemon, Clefable and Mimikyu, being locked to postgame was a darn shame. You can change the date to no negative consequence, but that's really just a simply exploit and not something they intended to do. Also, for as wide as it is, it's very empty. A lot of areas have close to nothing unique to find and the raid battles didn't have to be distributed to this much space really.

All in all, I really just hope the next games will have had the necessary developement time more than anything, then I can look past everything else. If that means no Pokemon games in 2020, then that's fine with