A fresh new start for the Pokémon franchise, but falls a little short still. This game brings new mechanics and a new opportunity to see the full potential of a Pokémon game on Nintendo Switch after the horrendous Sw/Sh.

Story and Gameplay:

The game starts with the protagonist being brought to the past, in the old Sinnoh(Hisui) region, and with the mission to seek all pokémon. For the very fist time you're going to CREATE the pokédex, in my opinion this is what makes this game interesting and if you want to play it you have to keep this in mind because it's STILL a pokémon game.

If you've played Brilliant Diamond and Shiny Pearl or the original versions, you're going to find a lot of references, which I unfortunately didn't get since Diamond/Pearl is in my backlog to be played sometime.

The gameplay is somewhat interesting and new to the Pokémon franchise even though this game is a spinoff. You can sometimes "choose" to battle wild pokémon or catch them in a simple stealth system, where you have the tall grass, smoke bombs and sprays.

I felt that the game was considerably hard, I say that having in mind Sw/Sh and Let's Go, so for the first time in a long while I felt the need to have some strategies for some fights and not only spam a specific move.

The game has around 120 missions, being around 20 for the main story and 100 for side quests, those side quest are unlocked as you progress the main game and your pokédex. I did enjoy all the missions, but I think some of them were only easier because I was really focused on getting level 10 in research for every Pokémon. So, if you're not focused on completing your Dex, in the last main mission you're going to have a really bad time because you DO need to catch'em all (no need for research level 10).

Just a quick info: the only Pokémon I didn't get was Darkrai, but that didn't stop me enjoying it and finishing the game since mythical Pokémon don't count for this Dex.

The Alpha pokémon are kinda cool, but poorly used, they're strong but basically just big since the IV and EV system was remade on this game. Only Nature and EV will affect the progression of your pokémon's attack, speed and etc, both of them are easy to control with new items (you can even change nature in mid-late game). This made the Alpha pokémon have only some EV already trained, being bigger and having specific moves which can also be obtained by paying for it in the Training Grounds. Plus, there is no breeding in this game.

The boss battles are repetitive, you'll use your pokémon but the focus will be on you yourself fighting the Guardians so it's always the same formula: you throwing stuff on them until they grow tired.

Final Thoughts:

It's fun, if you're a completionist you're going to take some time (took me 56h) but have in mind that this is still a pokémon game so it's silly sometimes.

The gameplay is refreshing, needs updates to fix some visual bugs, but could be better with a richer and better open world, more nature diversity (trees mainly), more pokémon AND wild random encounters that this game lacks.

Plus, it kinda pissed me off that I needed to catch all pokémon to get the true ending, because if I wasn't doing it since the beginning the final mission would be a pain.

Play it if you are tired of the new pokémon games but want some nostalgia.