Very similar to horizon zero dawn but with much more interesting visual direction and more fun combat although like horizon the plot, characters, world exploration and missions are all forgettable with the open world traversal too scripted and realistic/weighty feeling, decent i guess but the worst suckerpunch game if u ask me.

Im just sick of open world games with ultra weighty feeling controls and gamey-ness getting lesser focus than the plot and gameplay feeling cinematic type games that are flooding the triple a western market.

Alot of the ideas and shakes ups to the pokemon formula are really cool and honestly just chucking balls at pokemon is pretty immersive and fun... jublife village and some other gen 4 callback songs are really good.

Alright bitching time: i really wanna love this game but the terrible first 2 hours of tutorials are a slog, the map is so barren and empty just flat boring terrains with pokemon in em not much to do or see from exploration aside from pokemon, getting items and doing boring fetch quests around said things, game is uggo, the story and characters are just kinda bland for the most part and too chatty at times when u consider those things.

This game is a legit great foundation for the series to go in and was moderately fun at times but this game was really underbaked in alot of areas to me personally but i do think its the best pokemon game ive played on switch (only one i haven't tried is gen 9) but thats not saying much.

Give gamefreak more dev time and budget assholes they aren't talentless you just gotta stop crunching em.