Credit where credit is due, they experimented with a lot here, but I think there was a lot to improve on in the experiments. It's a game where the BOTW sense of "what could be around this next hill" exploration-danger-excitement is paramount to maintaining its velocity and its flight. The fact that the majority of mons you find are ones you've already seen before as a Pokemon fan doesn't hurt this, really; in fact the uncanny recontextualization of "bunch of animals you make do moves" in all other Pokemon games into "wild animals that can hurt you" is quite effective. I really like the idea of literally building the Pokedex, playing the role of a researcher, but there are so many repeated, boring metrics for every entry ("number you've caught" etc). My suspended disbelief that I wasn't just filling in a premade spreadsheet was broken through pretty early, and the sense of discovery turned to a sense of chore.
As a 3D action game, there's again a number of interesting ideas and as many lackluster decisions. The pokeball throwing was interesting and I liked the sense of picking the right tool for the job, until I got a Great Ball which was flat out better than the interesting tradeoff ball. The aforementioned sense of spatial mystery really waned once I got the first mount pokemon, Wyrdeer, and was suddenly able to bolt across the map, jump significant heights up terrain, and look around with a zoomed-out camera that really hurts your sense of place and scale. (Ursaluna's riding behavior was much better than Wyrdeer's as a gameplay flavor, but it's a specialist, not your main mount.) The vibes of the game beg that pokemon are recognized as wild, unwieldy animals –under your control, they never are.
That extends to combat as well, which has some interesting alterations from the norm but has no sense of spatial play to it (despite your inexplicable ability to walk around the arena area during a fight). Multiple pokemon at once can challenge you, but your mons just stand in the middle doing whatever you tell them to. Agile/Strong move styles are quite a cool idea, and variable action orders are a cool idea. But in battle, it never plays and behaves as something recognizably new. It's just Pokemon. There is a little sense of space and analogue movement in the unfortunately shallow boss battles... but your pokemon aren't involved in that feeling at all.
This is not to say the game completely undercuts itself creatively, but the highs were not outweighing the lows for me. Also, the usual "opposing teams arguing about ideology" story content gave me a headache. It's literally just this tweet.
As a 3D action game, there's again a number of interesting ideas and as many lackluster decisions. The pokeball throwing was interesting and I liked the sense of picking the right tool for the job, until I got a Great Ball which was flat out better than the interesting tradeoff ball. The aforementioned sense of spatial mystery really waned once I got the first mount pokemon, Wyrdeer, and was suddenly able to bolt across the map, jump significant heights up terrain, and look around with a zoomed-out camera that really hurts your sense of place and scale. (Ursaluna's riding behavior was much better than Wyrdeer's as a gameplay flavor, but it's a specialist, not your main mount.) The vibes of the game beg that pokemon are recognized as wild, unwieldy animals –under your control, they never are.
That extends to combat as well, which has some interesting alterations from the norm but has no sense of spatial play to it (despite your inexplicable ability to walk around the arena area during a fight). Multiple pokemon at once can challenge you, but your mons just stand in the middle doing whatever you tell them to. Agile/Strong move styles are quite a cool idea, and variable action orders are a cool idea. But in battle, it never plays and behaves as something recognizably new. It's just Pokemon. There is a little sense of space and analogue movement in the unfortunately shallow boss battles... but your pokemon aren't involved in that feeling at all.
This is not to say the game completely undercuts itself creatively, but the highs were not outweighing the lows for me. Also, the usual "opposing teams arguing about ideology" story content gave me a headache. It's literally just this tweet.