This game is great, but it could've been perfect if they'd taken the time to work on a few little nuanced things and not paywalled the final update. It's still one of my favorite games and something I return to with no small amount of regularity.

--- Nitpicking follows ---

The editor for the final update in terms of house decor and the areas outside of villager houses could've been worked into the main island by loading only certain sections of it and would've made editing/decorating your island more fulfilling as doing it one block at a time can very quickly lead to burn-out.

The crafting is one item at a time instead of allowing for multiples like others in the genre and is slowed down by a slew of dialog boxes.

Overall, a lot of the items are wonderful, but even if they hadn't added major content patches in the future it's disappointing that they discontinued it so soon instead of simply adding minor patches with new furniture later. Unfortunately, Pocket Camp will always be the priority for this sort of thing as they can't get you to pay micro-transactions in NH for special currency. Honestly though, I think I'm mostly sour they only added one variation of cactus outside of potted varieties - Suguaro are nice, but they're not the only kind of cacti you can find in the southwestern areas of North America!

They also failed to add back some of the fruit from previous games! They could've made the cooking list all the more exciting if they'd added JUST bananas in addition to the other farming stuff! And grapes! Grape vines would've been wonderful decor for my island!

..Anyway. I'm passionate about the series because we went so long without a proper installment it seemed like a lot of oversight missing out on these details.

(Since the game needed an actual review, and not people using it as a personal message board...) I'm really enjoying it so far albeit with the caveat it ha(s/d) potential to be much better if GameFreak wasn't trying to push a title every single year to capitalize on the Holidays. It has a lot of great ideas and is the first (modern/recent) title of the series to not derail you every few steps to explain some mechanic or plot to you and does not railroad you into a set goal in a predetermined order - you are expected to complete every path afforded to you, but the order in which you do so is up to you.

If the game gets its bugs/optimization issues (lag, crashing, insert twitter thread or video of numerous glitches here) fixed it'll be a passable title worth the money albeit it's currently evidence enough of an overworked development team rushing another title to market before it's ready.

Without the polish it's still doing better than SWSH, which isn't too hard in retrospect, but I'd call it an accomplishment. The bar is low, but they did meet the expectation here.

Would I suggest getting it? If they patch out all the issues, maybe. You're not missing anything terribly adventurous but if you stopped playing Pokemon Games when they started really holding your hand and if you enjoyed Breath of the Wild or Skyrim you'll probably like it well enough.

Am I satisfied with the money I paid? Mmm. No, but I knew I was buying an unfinished buggy mess before I walked into the building, so it's par the course for me.

Am I enjoying the buggy mess? Yes! For what it's worth, I've had a lot of fun running around and adventuring. I've been playing it almost nonstop since release and still haven't beaten it, which is a nice change of pace from previous titles.

Is it good enough for there to be justification for being a completely unfinished game? Oh, absolutely not; I wouldn't recommend anyone spend money on a game that isn't finished. In a few months after they've dumped a few patches into it, maybe. If you have children who won't really notice the quality, sure. If your expectation is to be entertained and you like Pokemon, you'll probably be fine.

I played this game for around 15 years and don't intend to return to it.

WoW always had a grind, but the modern version of the game is especially easily described as a giant hamster wheel. You've gotta log in almost daily to keep up with your reputation and currency grinds and there's not a lot of forgiveness in place for those who fall behind until much later in the expansion where QoL stuff is added to help boost morale and sell the next expansion.

"It'll be better next time - we'll really listen to the players this time!" They say, but they never have and never will. It took me altogether too long to try another MMO because I was so deeply controlled by a Sunk Cost Fallacy from years of buying mounts and paying for game-time that when I mustered up the courage to try out others in the genre like GW2 and FFXIV it hurt my heart to know how badly Blizzard has treated its fans especially in the last decade or so. I'm only ashamed to know it took a massive lawsuit to finally make me put it down for good.

My only hope is the playerbase recognizes the continued abuse and stops supporting the company and lets WoW fade into obscurity - it was fun while it lasted, but no king rules forever.

Blizzard Entertainment as a whole in its current state non-withstanding, this was a game I enjoyed quite a bit during its peak. I'd never really played the genre before and it was certainly fun during the earlier days of it. I enjoyed the simplicity of not having to worry about items and that the game could still be won from the losing end of a hero match-up if the map's gimmick was ignored by the "better" team.

However, I can only say so much about HotS without addressing the fact that the modern, pre-lawsuit BE had a habit of taking other games' concepts and making a prettier version of the same idea before abandoning it and HotS was no different. They had horrible balancing issues that took ages to patch and eventually the game was relegated to a few new maps and dozens of new heroes when Overwatch was first announced and then quietly snuffed out.

Currently, I believe the game is still playable but will receive no major future updates.

Really neat concept with regard to the ability to make your own assets and upload them for other people to see & I met some of my longest known friends on this game.

Unfortunately, it's fallen very much behind on the times and relies almost entirely on income from a constant slew of new avatars to stay afloat. This has caused no small amount of bitterness in the remaining community which makes it difficult to advertise the game to new players. Additionally, all of the parental protection features built into the game are pretty easy to work around and there isn't really anything that'll truly protect a minor from encountering someone unsavory.

The people in charge don't advertise it hardly at all and most of the promised updates from their Kickstarter 10+ years ago haven't been implemented. There are updates here and there that give the diminishing playerbase some semblance of hope for a better tomorrow, but really the game just needs to be bought out by a dedicated fan who can do it the justice it deserves.