decently fun game! the gameplay loop is pretty good - certainly a breath of fresh air relative to the mainline games - and figuring out and adapting a strategy for each battle was fun too (shoutout to gengar, hitmonchan and alakazam for carrying me)
HOWEVER there's also not really anywhere near enough variety in any of the gameplay here to justify a 12 hour length from start to finish. i get that there's 8 badges here because the mainline games have 8 badges but it just makes for such a slog when there's nothing to this game but battling other trainers over and over and it just makes me wish there was anything else to do here. lowkey i got so burnt out on it that i took a multiple week break after getting 7 of the badges to recover and do something else with my life
still - what's here is pretty decent, just not anything great to play through as a whole. certainly worth checking out if you're interested but it's far from an essential playing experience
(also it's really funny how Ronald does like nothing the entire game but they still gas him up as if he actually matters at all)