It is both refreshing and damning that the game had to relinquish most of its control in favour of the player in order for a pokemon game to have good pacing

On replay a few months down the line from release, with an all bug team for added challenge, I am kind of astonished just how much this game works for me in ways that the other entries in the series (which I have been playing since I was 10 years old) kinda dont. Part of it is the novelty certainly, I have replayed Fire Red, Platinum and Emerald far too much to enjoy them without some insane challenge run condition.

I am almost hesitant to admit how much I credit the enjoyment of this game to its transition to an open world format when this very trend has become fairly tiresome in contemporary videogames, ruining the appeal of previously strictly linear and tightly designed games in favour of a miopic "bigger = better" attitude.

But it really is the case here! And on replay I think I have realised why in ways that are quite damning to the franchise. First and foremost : praise be to whomever decided to make trainer battles optional. I hadnt realized just how much of my playthroughs of these games are slowly sapped of energy by the insistence of forcing you to fight boring, slow, uninteresting battles in sequence. There is nothing to them! Admittedly I think most fan games go too far in the opposite direction, making even early game teams be squads of 6 perfect IV mons with all sitrus berries to make everything even more drawn out. They do however at least recognize that there is a problem in need of fixing! And yes, I do know that pokemon is a childrens franchise but this isnt even a matter of difficulty really.

Another thing that the open world rid of random encounters in favour of overworld ones is just how much it enhances the core appeal of inhabiting a sort of monster safari, the interactions between pokemon and humans are admittedly underexplored but they make up for it in a sort of documentary naturalism that was lost in the originals for me. Its hard to explain why. But the inherent abstraction and separation of battle and gameworld in the previous games (I havent played gen 6 or much of 7) made it harder for that to really sink in, especially cause the way the games were built made me view the pokemon in wild areas as mostly purely mechanical i.e exp, items etc. This carries over a bit especially with the autobattle mechanics and associated grinding of pokemon loot drops for TMs (lets not even get in to the implications).

I'll give an example : in gen 5 there is a sewer the game forces you to go into for story progression, in it there are random encounters with zubats, grimers etc. What did I think about this when I played this section? Nothing, I was there for a checklist, grind exp, defeat a rocket grunt, maybe catch a good pokemon if it randomly appeared (this was not likely as stronger and rarer pokemon had low odds of appearing) and thats it, leave and never come back. Hell, I might buy some repels to minimize how many encounters I got.

Compare this to an experience I had in pokemon Violet when I was exploring at night after a team star raid and spotted bright spotlights in the distance, reminiscent of the lucky 38 in New Vegas. I traveled near it, catching pokemon along the way and battling 0 trainers. As I got near to the bright and bustling metropolis I spotted some items near the coastal outskirts of the city, which is seemingly partly built on a platform above the water level. There were a whole bunch of grimer everywhere! "Hmm, wow I guess the sheer amount of energy this city needs creates a bunch of pollution huh?" I thought. Thats the experience that pokemon SHOULD be all about, but imo has never been able to fully deliver.

The soundtrack is excellent and now seemingly the most glaring technical flaws have been ironed out (the game didnt crash, huzzah). On a second playthrough the story is a bit less interesting and still only good by pokemon's abysmal standards but other than the clunky team star storyline the rest of the game is convincing in this aspect. A note on rivals in pokemon : theyre all bad except for Nemona, I will not be accepting questions at this stage. Well, the first rival is okay in what he was meant to do, and N was a... good effort attempt? At what that story was trying to do but honestly I think Hugh is more compelling.

Anyways, see yall when the DLC drops, maybe.

This game has pretty inexcusable technical issues, the framerate is insanely choppy, It crashed on two occasions and Bugs are very present in the experience. On the other hand this is the most fun Ive had with a pokemon game since I was a little kid playing gen3/4, so Its only fair to give it 8/10.

The open world really does suit pokemon, and breaking up quests helps the pacing massively. In fact in contrast with the godawful story in Swsh and the slog of bullshit that is SuMo, I actually found myself giving a slight amount of shit about the characters in a pokemon game! For the first time in... ever basically.

Arguably the game could have used some scaling (imo I would have made 3 tiers of Boss trainers, and given them 3, 4 and 5 pokemon respectively based on badge order) but in all honesty I was never absurdly overleveled except for thew bug and electric gym basically.

At the end of the day though, Ive really enjoyed my experience with these games, other than the two times it crashed (which is pretty embarassing for a massive multibillion dollar corporation to output, and no Gamefreak isnt an indie studio)