this game has a fascinating gameplay loop, either you can't lead the flock and cry as they fail to maneuver anything short of an automated mario maker stage or you're the dipshit in turn who can't construct anything

being of the latter variety this is what the sequence of events in an average playthrough looks like every once in a blue moon

1. involuntarily made shaman

2. proceed to try to link two planks together (they will not link)

3. switch to balloons (they flew away)

4. blast everyone out of the map with cannonballs

5. receive eight unanimous death threats in chat

6. uninstall game

the french still got it

love it to bits but also why is this game so weirdly imposing for what on paper sounds like a super chill concept

one the one hand you have oak with the passive hook that consists of "take some pics of pokemon as they frollick in their natural habitat, help me with my research" which quickly morphs into

"oh but it's on rails hop onto my rickety transportation module of questionable origin and go pelt the little shits with pester balls, they like apples oh ok here HAVE ALL THE APPLES x 100 drown them in the fucking apples I have for you today NOW CENTER THE SHOTS HNGGGGG UNACCEPTABLE DO IT AGAIN BITCH

BLOW UP THE ELECTRODE AND GIVE ME PERFECT SYMMETRY WHEN YOU COMPOSE THE SHOT OF THE BLAST"

and then somewhere along the way we ran out of places to visit so now we're revisiting all the old levels taking photos of optical illusions to then fight mew in a shadow realm with a bubble that's impervious to cameras or some shit but shhhh is ok just bask in the magnificence of the moment

certainly didn't help that I had the german version which only excuberated the terrifying nature of Oak's rants and I later found this was a common mistake for a lot of PAL region residents who had parents that mistakenly bought it for them as kids because it was poorly labeled