I really had fun with this one and I feel to me this is the best main Pokemon game since Gen V.

The open world and the objectives in it were good and well implemented, the Pokedex is quite expansive which makes team building full of good options.

The story this time around is actually pretty good and a vast improvement over S&S's, with a few good plot twists here and there and well developed characters.

It's overall a great time that is only hindered by its technical issues and glitches and by having the most obnoxious rival in the series (Nemona)

Some of the pokemon designs here are fucking excellent. The story actually displays some level of competency in terms of utilizing, get this, CHARACTERS. They're basic, but they actually have like, arcs. It tells a story. However, man, this game's open world fucking sucks. It is so boring, and so pointless. It's a waste of time. It's ugly, it runs like trash, it is genuinely not worth engaging with the open world.

This game saves its hand for Area Zero, which I think is the most interested in Pokemon I've been since Gen 5. Everything about Area Zero is fantastic--the presentation, the dialogue, the fact that you have a party, the ways its brighter below the fog barrier than it is above it, the music, and the pokemon you find there. The AI professor at the end of the game is a fantastic boss fight too. Excellent stuff all around. It's a shame you have to slog through like twenty hours of a completely meaningless open world to get to it.

30 dollars for the DLC was too much also. No fucking chance I'm playing that shit for more of this game's mid ass open world.

Barely worth playing, and only for the huge peak that is Area Zero. otherwise a dreadful experience. the battle gimmick, however, was actually pretty cool, and shows a level of design competency far greater than any of the previous gimmicks. Such a shame it makes the game run even worse.

The game manages to be everything it should not be:
Ugly, slow and bugged.
I'll give credit where credit is due, the world has some interesting aspects and the final area of the game is my favorite place in any pokemon game. The story is pretty good here too and they took a lot of risks.
On the other hand, the game has barely any content. Once you finish the main story you have about 3 hours of gameplay remaining, tops, the rest is grinding.
The game will inevitably crash, run at <20 FPS frequently, has a lot of visual bugs and overall looks really bad.
Truth is, this game is unfinished, and will never be fixed, unlike Cyberpunk 2077. Had it stayed in the oven for a year or so, it could easily be the best Pokemon game ever, but it has so many flaws that it is barely playable in my opinion.

I can't really explain what it is about these that I don't love. I remember enjoying when I played it, and I completed the dex and everything, but for some reason it just didn't stick with me. The new Pokémon are cool, the region is fine, and terrestrialization is a much better mechanic than I expected. But it's just forgettable to me, I didn't retain much about the story or content outside of certain cool mons. Maybe replaying I will enjoy them more, but nothing is really given to motivate a replay. I'm sure I'll revisit them at some point, I'm still excited for what's to come with Legends Z-A. Gen V remakes for Switch please.

i think i've completely given up on pokemon by now. the last one i finished was sun and moon, and i enjoyed it back then. on rare occasions i would get the itch to play a pokemon game again and play several romhacks, but at this point i feel i've grown tired of those too. there are romhacks that are genuinely good but at the end of the day they're still based on old pokemon games, and those have things you cannot change like the slow gameplay.

so i picked up scarlet and even modded it to my liking, making the game more challenging. fuck i even added shaders to make the game look a bit better since it's so ugly.
but it still kinda sucks... there's some things i liked, i thought the characters were entertaining, like nemona and the guy with the dog, and i think some of the new pokemon look really sick. the music's great too, there's some really good tunes here as usual with pokemon games.

another thing i really liked is how huge the variety of pokemon you can get is right at the beginning. the turn based combat is still slow though, which is weird when legends of arceus had a more fast paced combat. and unfortunately, even with the shaders i used, the game is still ugly as sin. i think i would've kept playing if it wasn't for that.

ALSO ONE THING THAT DRIVES ME INSANE IS HOW THEY REMOVED SET MODE? THEY EVEN REMOVED THE OPTION TO TURN OFF BATTLE ANIMATIONS, WHAT THE FUCK! THESE HAVE BEEN FEATURES SINCE THE FUCKING GAMEBOY!
this is genuinely baffling to me. everytime i remember that it pisses me off. fuck this stupid game i was gonna give it 3 and a half stars but im giving you one half star for that alone