It’s interesting to see Gamefreak’s ability at crafting little open worlds evolve so quickly as they rapidly iterate and release new content so quickly. This is one of the best of these worlds yet, designed as a wheel with a tall, dense mountain in the middle and several biomes as the spokes, each with containing one of the “Six Wonders of Kitakami” which hilariously range from a circle of rocks to an unremarkable pond. The Kitakami region also contains elements pulling from the aesthetics of the Japanese inaka, reminiscent of aspects of Hisui and Johto in quite a few ways that I found delightful as a fan of those regions specifically.

The fact this is meant to be played in the post game, where players have Pokémon in the level 50+ range leads to a flattened level curve which allows you to go anywhere in the world and have a roughly equivalent experience, with a handful of trainer battles and actually putting me on the back foot and making me use items to stay alive, even in instances where my party outleveled the opponents by quite a bit.

The story also impresses by Pokémon standards, drawing parallels from the ancient regional myth of Ogrepon and the contemporary problems of the loner adolescent Kieran. It’s not deep by any means but it navigates its themes in a way that I just don’t expect from this series anymore. I think it fumbles the bag a little bit at the end, with a scene featuring Kieran that made me lose it laughing, and a cliffhanger for the second DLC that makes this end on an abrupt note.