Probably the worst Pokemon has to offer. A short game that's filled to the brim with the most annoying and intrusive story I've seen. Of my 20 hours of playtime in this game, I'd wager over half of that was spent mashing A to get through dialogue and cutscenes. The structure of the game is also weird. On release I didn't mind the trials, but on a replay I think the majority of them are very annoying to sit through. The game was only difficult at all because I chose not to evolve my starter, didn't fight most trainers, and used a monotype team. I cannot stress how awful the story is. On top of being intrusive like I said, the actual content of the story is terrible. It's all over the place with tone and has no buildup to the climax. For like 2 hours before the climax, you just get a complete break in the story and go fuck off somewhere else for a while. The first 10 hours of the story are spent doing nothing that has any impact on the last few hours of it, and it honestly felt like a massive waste of time. This game would have been better if they had decided to rely less on a shitty story and more on fleshing out interesting trials and islands. Bad game.