Forgot to log this earlier in the year. Going to give this a shorter review as a result as I haven't played since March and can only remember the general experience. TLDR? Pokemon Legends Arceus is probably the freshest Pokemon game we've gotten since the XD: Gale Of Darkness. The changes to the battle system, mission structure, and catching are generally speaking a nice change of pace but I have some reservations with a few design choices. The noble Pokemon boss fights and stronger emphasis on catching is neat but both are kinda too repetitive to be a the large portion of the play time they are. Presentation-wise I'm also sorta conflicted on being incentivized to catch multiple of the same Pokemon for Pokedex completion especially with the true ending being tied to it. It kinda reduces the whole "bond with your magic pet" ethos the games are built on even if you ignore the negative externalities to gameplay. Music and sound design is good but not particularly rememberable and graphics/character design is generally pretty awesome (the new hisiuian forms are dope, UI is good and readable,)... with two exceptions: framerate and cutscenes. Framerate can start to chug and make Pokemon look like a slideshow from afar. Meanwhile a lot of in-game cutsenes look like badly staged puppet shows with the amount of unexpressive animation in them. Ashame given this IP was launched off the back of a successful animated show in the west. This could've used a few more months in the oven...so its a modern Pokemon game.