I may be 100% biased here as a DC fan, but to me this is the most fun Lego game to me. Not just because it has some fun action, but it has the most interesting cast of playable characters in any Lego game to date. I never thought we’d get so many niche DC characters to play that most people would have never known about outside of the DC fanbase, if only actual Lego gave DC this attention as well, or hell even DC itself at this point. This game also gives us a fantastic character creator since that was the whole marketing of this game, having your own custom character as the main character. To me, Lego DC Supervillains also takes the cake of the best hub world we’ve had in any Lego game I’ve played to date. Believe me, I do think the New York City hub-world is iconic in Lego Marvel Superheroes, but something about mashing Gotham and Metropolis next to each other is such a fun idea having the two drastically contrast each other. I will say despite this being my personal favorite Lego game, I do still prefer the older Lego games that didn’t use voice acting and just did mumble. I heard Skywalker Saga brought that back in some way so I’ll be interested to finally check that out sometime. Honestly I just hope that sometime in the future, we might get another Lego DC follow-up both in video games and real sets.

I really don’t have that much to say about this game, as it’s literally just a sequel that manages to follow up and evolve on the first game excellently, with a few exceptions. I’ll start with the problems I have with the game over the original. The story was much smoother in the first game, especially with the main villain not even showing up until almost the last minute. There definitely felt like there was less agency to the plot. Despite that criticism, Team Plasma during the early story felt like it had more of an antagonistic play into the game than the first. Another complaint I have is the gyms. The challenges that they offer over the originals feel much more bland, like looking at the electric gym or dragon gym, they’re way more straight forward and lack puzzles, because instead you just walk forward and fight a trainer. It’s really underwhelming.

With my problems aside, this is more than a worthy follow up to the original. I wish Pokemon did more sequels to their games than just this one game. Legends Arceus is the only game after this that even remotely tried to emulate that, and I’m not counting the Switch games DLC. This game takes everything else the first did, and cranks it up. The animations are smoother and even more vibrant with life. The 2D spriting is phenomenal and it really makes me wish that they kept doing it. I understand why they didn’t because the 3DS was just around the corner, but I would’ve loved to see a 2D-sprited Kalos. The music goes just as hard as it did in the first, that DS soundfont will forever be held in my heart. The existence of Colress as a whole. And of course, they fixed people's biggest complaint with the first, the dex is way more expansive this time. While I didn’t have too much of an issue with that in the first game, it was honestly a breath of fresh air being able to just choose whatever I wanted in this one. This led to a pretty dynamic team that I honestly got closer to than I thought I would. I tried to limit myself from repeating any Pokemon I used in previous games, but come on I had to use Lucario. He's just so cool, I couldn’t not use him.

Cerberus the Lucario (Greek mythology) HE’S BACK BABYYY
Toph the Flygon (Avatar)
Wisteria the Shiny Roserade (Flower species that is purple)
Nyx the Zoroark (Greek mythology)
Cerebro the Beheeyem (X-Men)
Samurott (forgot to nickname boowomp)
Sealed away in the box of despair forever:
Boeing the Unfezant (fly HM user before getting Flygon)
Aperture the Ampharos (temporarily came back from Johto to help!)
And some legendaries I didn’t care to use lmao

I don’t really have much else to say about the game, just a very pleasant sequel that was fun to play. Oh wait and Black 2 doesn’t have Reuniclus, so it’s immediately inferior. Hey I don’t make the rules here, I just state the facts.

If I were to ever introduce someone to the Pokemon franchise, Black and White (and Black2 White2) would be the ones I’d recommend. They feel like a great entry point to the franchise that helps get you to figure out how Pokemon is. Every single gym felt like it was full of life and embraced its typing as much as it could with the limited dex, with the exception of the first gym because that was a little lame. Everything that any past Pokemon game had set up in the past, finally got a clean slate for a new beginning with this game and its sequel. A whole new dex with no returning Pokemon (until post-game) and a great new story to tell. Really cool 2D-sprite visuals that make the Pokemon world feel more lively than past entries with an energy that gets you to actually be excited for playing the game more than most, along with some 3D cutscenes that, while rough, for the time and console were pretty neat for a Pokemon game. The entire idea of an ice cream cone as a Pokemon (it’s peak and I won’t hear otherwise). A soundtrack that goes unbelievably hard in all ways, through both battle themes and overworld themes for the first time in my opinion.
Now how about we destroy all that for shitty 3D models because the sequel undersold a little🤪.

If I had one problem to list with this game, it would have to be the limited dex and the starters being sort of lame. While it’s not a massive problem for me since I love most of Unova’s Pokemon, I can completely understand why someone would not be thrilled at the idea of not getting their favorite Pokemon outside of the generation. I was able to get through fine though, and I ended up using a little bit of a different team than I normally would, so here was what I ran with (once again curious to know what you think about the Pokemon I picked and their nicknames):

Dr. Fetus the Reuniclus (Super Meat Boy)
Amaterasu the Chandelure (Japanese mythology)
Leatherhead the Krookodile (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
Poseidon the Simisage (Greek mythology)
Orochi the Hydreigon (Japanese mythology)
Mothra the Volcarona (Godzilla franchise)

HONORARY MENTIONS:
Greaseball the Emboar
Stoner the Pansage
Aviator the Unfezant
Scoliosis the Scolipede
Zekrom the… well the Zekrom

You’re probably noticing the lack of something in this team listing compared to previous ones. That’s right, Pokemon finally did the based thing and made most HMs. NOT. ESSENTIAL. It’s insane how the franchise went from forcing 8 whole damn HMs down your gullet just to 5, with only 2 really being needed through the whole game. Even then, two of them are still really solid moves anyways that are good to have on your team. Something about all these little quality-of-life boosts to the small things in Pokemon really matter to me, and I feel like most of them that I listed overtime kind of went missing or got scrambled. The switch to 3D models definitely takes a lot of that blame, plus switching out of the DS soundfont was something I wasn’t a huge fan of and mostly still not am. I will wholly blame that on Pokemon XY as our scapegoat, you are innocent ORAS. To me, this replay just proves that Gen 5 is still on top as the most fun games with the most polish, with Gen 4 probably coming in right behind it. I cannot wait to play the second game, which if you sort my played games by "Time Played", I think you have a good idea on how I feel about it.