This game would've been an 8 if it wasn't for the performance issues. These are the best mainline pokemon games (not counting Legends Arceus) in exactly 10 years, since the ever so brilliant Black and White 2. The battling is as good as it has ever been and is the hardest game since gen 5. It's nice to see it being at least fairly difficult again. The new mons, while not all amazing, are fairly decent. Some are pretty memorable. A couple new favorites are: Scovillain, Cetitan and Tinkaton. The traversing is really fun and the legendary mount is such a good addition. The open world itself does everything a pokemon world should do, although I wish it was maybe even more stacked. I hope they utilize this further in the next games, because I think this is something that could work really well for the franchise and I feel like it's something that it desperately needed. It's a fun game with a very enjoyable campaign, that consists of three equally cool story paths. I would've liked there to be more side quests, however. But yes, my biggest problem lie in the performance. It's pretty bad, and I really hope they fix it down the line. It drags down an otherwise great game quite a bit. It's clearly not in a finished state, while everything else seems to be. It's unfortunate to say the least and I really hope Game Freak can get their shit together in this department. But I'm mostly positive about these games and they have potential to grow on me even more.