I'm at the very end of it (I think) - have beaten the 5 main lords anyway.
It's such a tough game to review, I don't envy the reviewers. On the one hand, it is pathetically behind the times in almost every element.
- The graphics are truly horrific much of the time. Other open world games on Switch look miles better. There is an almost total lack of animation on human characters and even some visual glitches like when characters are in caves and get surrounded by pixel dither. It feels both technically limited but also low effort. The poor draw distance really hurts the gameplay when you can't see pokemon way off in the distance - which is the whole appeal of this game.
- There's no voice acting at all. This is a basic standard in other games of this type.
- The story is as terrible as most pokemon stories - although the main setup of "what is this time rift and where did you come from" is at least a decent mystery. The dialogue and writing are so poor that you'll just mash through it.
- The open levels have nothing to truly discover outside of pokemon. They are just open height-map style levels. There are like two settlements in these maps, and each is just five tents in a circle. It's pathetic. You don't come across any emergent behaviour or gameplay. There's only a couple of people out in the wild to give you basic quests - 95% of quests are given from the town.
- The missions are so basic. "Catch this pokemon for me". "Fill out this pokemon entry." The pokedex entry completion is the same. "Catch 10 of these. Use this move. Defeat 10 using a super effective move." There's never any unique challenges like, for Starraptor "Staraptor and Braviary are natural rivals. Find and defeat a Braviary with your Starraptor." Nothing like that. Every pokedex entry is basically the same.
- The boss "battles" where you just dodge simple moves with laughable animation and throw junk at a glowing yellow version of a pokemon are laughable. No other game would get away with core gameplay in boss battles like this.
- Each pokemon is functionally the same in the wild. They are either skittish and run away, or they are aggressive and will come investigate you if they hear you and fight you. But even if they attack, it is trivial to run away. You will never die in this game unless you really screw up. But the pokemon just feel all the same, but in different "skins". That sucks.
- The game borrows its aesethetic and map traversal from BotW and it "village->hunt->village" game design from Monster Hunter but falls so far short of both in almost all areas.
But, having said all of that...
It's fucking fun. It IS fun. Just running around, seeing a new pokemon and challenging it or sneaking up on it is fun. Putting together a team is fun. Randomly seeing a shiny in the wild and worrying you won't catch it is fun.
The new changes where pokemon battle in the field with no transition is great. It has to work this way from now on. Sure, it's a simple thing, but as a long term pokemon fan it makes a huge difference. The new turn order and agile/strong style moves are a welcome addition, and more interestingly the removal of hold items and abilities really streamlines and simplifies the game which in the single player is actually a blessing. No interminable weather messages followed by ability messages here.
The levelling progression in the game is outstanding. You can easily run into areas where you're overlevelled and your pokemon will get hammered. Alpha pokemon are a proper threat (to your pokemon, not to you - it's too easy to run away). I had a level 55 pokemon one-shot by a level 30 alpha.
I mean, I just made it to the top of this (absolutely horrendous looking) snowbound temple and at the top got ambushed by an alpha Gallade (which I didn't even know was in this game) which was level 70. My highest pokemon was 62. After an epic battle which decimated my whole team I managed to catch it. That kind of moment is great.
So, a whole ton of people are going to buy this and enjoy it. So... does that mean it's good? Or does the fact that it falls short of basically all of its major competition mean its bad? You figure it out.
The scores are amazing! But reading some reviews reveals they are pretty damn false scores.
Gameinformer gave this 8.75 and Monster Hunter rise 7.75 for context. There is a very clear attempt in these reviews to inflate how good the new aspects of the game are. Things like "the open world is enthralling to explore" is a laughable statement when compared to similar open world titles of the last 5 years.
Every review ends with "this is a great new direction for pokemon", just because its going in a new direction and you like where that is heading does not mean that the current game should be scored highly on that basis. Reviews should score the game that is being played, not on the future potential of the series. If this is a 8-9/10 then I expect Palworld and DokeV to be 15/10, thats how it works right????
Honestly guys nothing to see here, just another Fifa/CoD/Pokemon review. Same scores year on year on year, without innovation of marked improvement. The mainstream review industry is corrupt as fuck!
Wait for independent reviewers.
And here's the problem. The suggestion that this game is anywhere near MH Rise in quality is laughable. But pokemon only gets compared to itself so it never reviews too poorly. It's a disgrace.
