A fantastic game that absolutely bucks the trend set by past recent Pokemon games, and opens up the formula for so many new and fascinating ideas. The gameplay is tight, borrowing in a lot of ways from Breath of the Wild but still feeling like fundamentally its own thing. They had a clear vision going in and they nailed it.
Catching is a blast, being able to explore around in the world and catch Pokemon without needing to go into a battle, lure them with food, interact with them loosely depending on how they react to humans, and battling, while still the same, does have more options opened up due to how they've changed some moves and status effects, as well as with the addition of turn actions and strong/agile style moves.
The areas, while some more basic than others, are fun and feel like areas where Pokemon live, though the lack of detail with some of the plains in the early areas is a bit of a bummer, and this also applies to some of the muddy textures. This isn't a thing that bothers me too much, considering the Pokemon look so nice, but more than that are some of the animation glitches. Considering the strength of the gameplay, the exploration aspects, and the gameplay loop as a whole, I'm more willing to let the muddy textures slide, though I hope for any potential sequel, these (especially the animation glitches) get cleaned up massively.
The music is also great, with plenty of good remixes inspired from generation 4, as well as plenty of strong songs that were thoroughly enjoyable, and at times not too overstated compared to the serene exploration of the world.
The story is a pretty simple Pokemon story in many ways, but there are some neat twists and turns, and I enjoyed how the endgame weaved around, as well as the how it continued so long into the post game. There's plenty to do between the story, the requests, and the research tasks, and it really felt like Game Freak went all out with it. Even if I've finished for now, I can still see myself going back to do research tasks and continuing to catch Pokemon.
If this is a test to show what Game Freak can do to change up the franchise, I'm all for it, and I hope to see more from a Legends series, because I truly loved it and I think there's so much room for growth and improvement for an already fantastic game.
Catching is a blast, being able to explore around in the world and catch Pokemon without needing to go into a battle, lure them with food, interact with them loosely depending on how they react to humans, and battling, while still the same, does have more options opened up due to how they've changed some moves and status effects, as well as with the addition of turn actions and strong/agile style moves.
The areas, while some more basic than others, are fun and feel like areas where Pokemon live, though the lack of detail with some of the plains in the early areas is a bit of a bummer, and this also applies to some of the muddy textures. This isn't a thing that bothers me too much, considering the Pokemon look so nice, but more than that are some of the animation glitches. Considering the strength of the gameplay, the exploration aspects, and the gameplay loop as a whole, I'm more willing to let the muddy textures slide, though I hope for any potential sequel, these (especially the animation glitches) get cleaned up massively.
The music is also great, with plenty of good remixes inspired from generation 4, as well as plenty of strong songs that were thoroughly enjoyable, and at times not too overstated compared to the serene exploration of the world.
The story is a pretty simple Pokemon story in many ways, but there are some neat twists and turns, and I enjoyed how the endgame weaved around, as well as the how it continued so long into the post game. There's plenty to do between the story, the requests, and the research tasks, and it really felt like Game Freak went all out with it. Even if I've finished for now, I can still see myself going back to do research tasks and continuing to catch Pokemon.
If this is a test to show what Game Freak can do to change up the franchise, I'm all for it, and I hope to see more from a Legends series, because I truly loved it and I think there's so much room for growth and improvement for an already fantastic game.