One of my all time favorite childhood games, love the music and characters. Unfortunatley this game has aged badly like many early 3D games from the late 90's & early 2000's. Momentum during many of the speed & mech levels is constantly killed by the archaic camera system & janky collision detection with environments, and they somehow made the treasure hunt levels even worse with a gimped radar compared to the first game. The best levels are still a lot of fun to play in stage select but the story mode overall is a one & done for me. Battle mode & chao garden are also great additons that made for a lot of memories growing up with siblings & cousins. Overall still a very fun game but that story mode can be very rough at many points.

One of my all time favorite childhood games, love the music and characters. Unfortunatley this game has aged badly like many early 3D games from the late 90's & early 2000's. Momentum during many of the speed & mech levels is constantly killed by the archaic camera system & janky collision detection with environments, and they somehow made the treasure hunt levels even worse with a gimped radar compared to the first game. The best levels are still a lot of fun to play in stage select but the story mode overall is a one & done for me. Battle mode & chao garden are also great additons that made for a lot of memories growing up with family & friends. Overall still a very fun game but that story mode can be very rough at many points.

This game is still one of my favorite Zelda entries despite it's glaring flaws. Ironically it's artstyle is what has allowed it's visuals to age so well over the years despite the initial disdain from fans. Gameplay is solid, but unfortunatley the Great Sea as an overworld can be rather lacking compared to the side content in other entries. The Triforce Shard quest is also still as much of a pain as you remember, they definetley had to rush the ending to cover for the dungeons they weren't able to add (the gimped fire & ice dungeons). If you're playing on PC with Dolphin, I recommend using the BetterWW mod (Better Wind Waker); this ads all of the QOL improvments from WWHD and allows you to use custom models from GameBanana. This will work with the cheats & textures from Dolphin Wiki. Otherwise you can also just play WWHD on Cemu, as I don't recommend the vanilla Wind Waker experience to anyone.

Gen 5 is the 1st Pokemon generation that I would say truly stands the test of time from a gameplay experience. Game Freak has been releasing more & more QOL improvements with each new Generation since, but this is the 1st where everything seems to finally come together well. Great story, good challenge, and a great variety of Pokemon to choose from. Biggest improvment would have to be with moves themselves, TM's are now infinite use and many new moves were introduced to breathe new life into Pokemon old and new.

As someone who has played this game for 10+ years throughout their childhood into adulthood, I cannot recommend newcomers play this game. Developers refuse to double down & improve their bread & butter games in a timley manner, and instead put their time & money into countless side projects that don't go anywhere. The core gameplay experience is centered around farming for aestherics or spending real life money on aesthetics. Most players resort to botting software to automate the monotnous gameplay loops that offer no real challenge outside of testing your sanity.

Many of us who still play do so for nostalgic reasons, and have been aronnd since the first year or two when things were still fresh. Best part of the game is the community of passionate fans & talented artists; if you want to at least appreciate the artwork of the cosmetics you can just follow the twitter pages & AQW Reddit. I always find myself coming back to check in just becasue it's the MMO I grew up with, but it's undeniably in a sorry state.

Despite being a massive improvement over GSC with the Gen 4 QOL improvements (Physical/Special split) and a fully realized Kanto Region for the postgame, the level curve is still a massive issue that wasn't properly addressed. Even if you go out of your way & backtrack to battle every single overworld trainer after you get surf, you will still be strugling to beat the gym leaders after Morty if you plan on a team of 6 before postgame. The Pokegear is a poor substitute for the VS Seeker, and makes EXP. grinding a real chore. You can somewhat finesse by gringing the elite four without healing items over & over (make sure you spend your money or deposit it) but it's still not ideal. Despite all that though, HGSS shines through as one of the best Pokemon games ever made, with tons of content & personality to enjoy.

Do not bother with Diamond & Pearl, just play Platinum. The game engine is atrociously slow, especially during battles & surfing. The Physical/Special split is not enough to save this game, especially when most of the new Pokemon are locked to postgame which in itself is also bland. We excused the flaws back in the day when this game dropped since it's all we had at the time, but in hindsight the flaws are simply inexcusable. This is the one Pokemon game that feels like a beta version rather than an actual product ready for release to the masses.

This is what Diamond & Pearl should've been to begin with. Gen 3's engine still has better performance overall, but Gen 4 is no longer molasses when it comes to it's speed. The Pokedex is a massive improvment and all of the new Pokemon are available during the main story. The Physical/Special split can now be fully realized with previously gimped Pokemon now able to take full advantage of their assets. Single use TM's are still a real pain, and make attempts to build a competitive team for online and the Battle Frontier that much more brain numbing. Sinnoh is arbuably one of the best regions in Pokemon, loaded with charm & personality from the incredible soundtrack & environmental storytelling. Like with Emerald this feels like the complete story compared to Ruby/Sapphire & Diamond/Pearl; Platinum really does Sinnoh & Gen 4 overall justice, and is a top-tier Pokemon experience.

Massive visual improvment over Gen's 1 & 2, GBA really felt like you had SNES quality games on the go. Unfortunatley many Pokemon are still useless due to the lack of physical/special split, and this probably has the weakest postgame in the series till this day. Improves somewhat over Ruby & Sapphire in terms of content, the postgame is still very weak but not quite as much. I would give points for the Battle Frontier but no one in their right mind is making a competitive team without cheats, and even then the AI can still cheese the hell out of you. Priotitizes "top tier" Pokemon within archaic combat mechanics by todays Pokemon standards. Overall Hoenn is still a great region with many memorable locations & Pokemon, plus the legendary Gen 3 trumpets leading the awesome soundtrack.

(Good luck if you pick Treeko)

First entry of the PMD series starts of fairly strong, but heavily depends on the Pokemon you choose at the beginning. Many of the main story dungeons & bosses can be very unforgiving depending on the Pokemon you choose, and unless you want to rely on RNG you'll use a wondermail generator to insert items & TM's into the game to help you out. Thankfully these games are a bit more forgiving when it comes to stats & matchups compared to the mainseries; you can improve & tweak your Pokemon with: Gummi's, linked moves, and stats can be boosted much further than in the mainseries titles. (Being able to put the map on the top screen immediatley ranks it above Red Rescue Team)