I really, really wanted to love this game so badly. This is because while the new pokepi characters exclusive to this game are fantastic, the atmosphere and world design is excellent, and the music is great, it is let down extremely hard by very bland human characters in comparison to the pokepi cast, and the humans make up about 80% of the story in the game, with the pokepi being purely relegated to side missions a lot of the time. Personally, I feel that this is extremely stupid for a Doko Demo Issyo game, because the series is about pokepi communication first and foremost, but these human characters are really draining my motivation to beat this one halfway through it (on Chapter 5 out of 9 now). But at the same time, I can't slam it completely because with the few parts that really use the pokepi well, it is truly some of the best stuff in the entire series, especially with Chapter 1. So, if you really want to play this one, I'd reccomend just finishing Chapter 1 and ending there (also because Chapter 2 is probably the worst Chapter in the game)

This was the first game I ever played in the Doko Demo Issyo series, and I do think it is an excellent introduction, along with having the most in-depth, continuous story in the entire series with a lot to unpack, even if it may start a bit slow. However, I only give it 4 stars instead of 5 because of the requirement to have to do a match-3 puzzle stage to even get to have a conversation with the pokepi, as some of the puzzle stages can be outright devious later on in terms of difficulty, making what was a simple button press to coverse in prior games difficult at times, even if it does have some of best match-3 gameplay in the genre. Alongside that, I feel like a few of the edgier aspects of the series were a bit sanded down for this entry in comparison to prior games, such as how pokepi like Pierre aren't nearly as suggestive as they were before, and Kuro isn't nearly as immature (though for Kuro he has very good, spoilery story reasons for being more mature compared to prior entries). For a better introductory game, I would reccomend Doko Demo Issyo on PS1 or PSP, or Toro on Holiday. Though, you'll need a translation tool such as Google Lens to play them if you don't know Japanese.