My 3DS picross itch was not scratched when I beat the Zelda one back in like January. After 10 months or so of playing the training modes EVERY day and spending 4 bucks on 800 points in-game to unlock stuff, I have FINALLY beaten the last puzzle in this game.

It's a picross game, and it's a fine one, but the F2P parts are really what make or break it as far as I see it. The main Pokemon aspect to this is that you can bring a team of the Pokemon you "catch" (i.e. solved their puzzle) into a puzzle and can use a special power that that type of Pokemon has to make the puzzle easier (trips a certain pattern of blocks, freezes the clock, highlights hints). Each puzzle also has missions you can achieve during them to win points that you can use to unlock more areas (out of 30), expand the number of Pokemon you can take on a mission, or extend your recharge timer (you can place one new block of puzzle every minute after you start depleting the number of your default 200).

The powers and missions often meet as you need to use a certain power to complete a certain mission in a level, but that means to get the points for that you HAVE to make it easier, even if you just wanna play it like a normal picross puzzle. That on top of the absolutely GLACIAL pace of unlocking more areas (it's usually about 10-14 days of playing the training mode as your only interaction with the game) that make it a bit of a hard sell as a F2P game. It's fine if you wanted to just pay for the stuff, and that also means you don't need to care about the missions as the points they earn you are meaningless as you've effectively already unlocked everything.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. A bit too slow-paced for a F2P game, but it is technically entirely completable free. It's a neat distraction, but your money would probably be better spent on something like 3D Picross Round 2, which also has several hundred puzzles and in the neat 3D spin-off of picross :3