its A HEAVILY heavily flawed masterpiece
It's optimized well enough to where you can play it the whole way through without getting into game-ending bugs or anything like that, but the framerate is so bad sometimes and the crashes that other ppl experienced are hard to ignore and its actually disgusting if gamefreak will go through this gen without rectifying the optimization issues this entry in particular has been facing...... "so why the fuck is it a 4.5/5 game"
uh because whats there is actually Really fucking good
let me explain, having a truly open world pokemon game is the shit. the pokemon variety is off the charts in this game and thats always something i look forward to when playing these games. The characters are all fun and even though theyre not bastions of depth, they have enough personality to make me really care about them and even worry for what theyll think of certain story events following in the tail end of the game. Pokemon does Not do that often for me.
The quality of life changes here are also something to take into account, the mints being easier to find and even bottlecaps of all things are able to be fuckin found before the postgame or even some kind of a championship thing occurs. It really feels like every type of pokemon fan thats enjoyed either the totem pokemon of alola, the freeform battle engagement and camera movement from Legends, the good old gym battle system, and taking down an adversarial team... its ALL here
Maybe not completely how everyone wanted 1:1 but you cant deny that this game has heart to it
While i think auto level scaling shouldve been utmost priority for making a game like this, I think that in a way it makes certain tasks that much more engaging to accomplish. I remember going into a titan's den that felt way out of my element, but I kept going because shit the game autosaves anyways and I might as well try my hand at something.. and OH MY GOD.. that feeling of barely winning with your team by the tip of your tit. THATS good shit. that's a feeling that the past few generations have really been lacking in barring a couple occasions.
Now dont get me wrong, exp candies are still rampant as fuck but you still Do Not have to use them and you can even sell them iirc. I played in whatever order i pleased and sometimes blew through entire towns only glancing at the gyms and what the area had to offer and then kept pursuing my goal. Some baddies, some gym, going on a catching spree, then some more gym and some titan shit, "oh wow theyre super strong, ill swing by this a liiiiiiiiiittle later or if i can find a pokemon that can whoop their ass soon in a different part of the region"
This line of thinking breathes so much life into the series and it isnt even a New way to look at the game. It's every bit the adventure it wears on its sleeve and yeah there's no Cyrus distortion world or Idiot maxie and archie having absolutely zero hindsight that their ambitions are planetfucker bad, or an immortal man wandering the planet for a millenia for a sentient flower
But it doesnt need that, it proves itself that this is an absolute evolution of the franchise and even though a lot still needs to change at Gamefreak HQ, its been a while since this much emotion was brought out of me from a mainline pokemon game (not counting legends arceus anyways).
So yeah the game is great, the new pokemon are great, the gyms are cool and gamefreak has solidified that they finally know how to make cool final bosses
btw not spoilers but geeta is like cynthia but with no balls to back it up and """"convergent"""" species not counting as "regional variants" is the most infuriatingly stupid naming convention since mythical pokemon to legendary pokemon.....but god damn are there some fun ones in the mix.
It's optimized well enough to where you can play it the whole way through without getting into game-ending bugs or anything like that, but the framerate is so bad sometimes and the crashes that other ppl experienced are hard to ignore and its actually disgusting if gamefreak will go through this gen without rectifying the optimization issues this entry in particular has been facing...... "so why the fuck is it a 4.5/5 game"
uh because whats there is actually Really fucking good
let me explain, having a truly open world pokemon game is the shit. the pokemon variety is off the charts in this game and thats always something i look forward to when playing these games. The characters are all fun and even though theyre not bastions of depth, they have enough personality to make me really care about them and even worry for what theyll think of certain story events following in the tail end of the game. Pokemon does Not do that often for me.
The quality of life changes here are also something to take into account, the mints being easier to find and even bottlecaps of all things are able to be fuckin found before the postgame or even some kind of a championship thing occurs. It really feels like every type of pokemon fan thats enjoyed either the totem pokemon of alola, the freeform battle engagement and camera movement from Legends, the good old gym battle system, and taking down an adversarial team... its ALL here
Maybe not completely how everyone wanted 1:1 but you cant deny that this game has heart to it
While i think auto level scaling shouldve been utmost priority for making a game like this, I think that in a way it makes certain tasks that much more engaging to accomplish. I remember going into a titan's den that felt way out of my element, but I kept going because shit the game autosaves anyways and I might as well try my hand at something.. and OH MY GOD.. that feeling of barely winning with your team by the tip of your tit. THATS good shit. that's a feeling that the past few generations have really been lacking in barring a couple occasions.
Now dont get me wrong, exp candies are still rampant as fuck but you still Do Not have to use them and you can even sell them iirc. I played in whatever order i pleased and sometimes blew through entire towns only glancing at the gyms and what the area had to offer and then kept pursuing my goal. Some baddies, some gym, going on a catching spree, then some more gym and some titan shit, "oh wow theyre super strong, ill swing by this a liiiiiiiiiittle later or if i can find a pokemon that can whoop their ass soon in a different part of the region"
This line of thinking breathes so much life into the series and it isnt even a New way to look at the game. It's every bit the adventure it wears on its sleeve and yeah there's no Cyrus distortion world or Idiot maxie and archie having absolutely zero hindsight that their ambitions are planetfucker bad, or an immortal man wandering the planet for a millenia for a sentient flower
But it doesnt need that, it proves itself that this is an absolute evolution of the franchise and even though a lot still needs to change at Gamefreak HQ, its been a while since this much emotion was brought out of me from a mainline pokemon game (not counting legends arceus anyways).
So yeah the game is great, the new pokemon are great, the gyms are cool and gamefreak has solidified that they finally know how to make cool final bosses
btw not spoilers but geeta is like cynthia but with no balls to back it up and """"convergent"""" species not counting as "regional variants" is the most infuriatingly stupid naming convention since mythical pokemon to legendary pokemon.....but god damn are there some fun ones in the mix.