I often feel like Gen I is misunderstood. Sure, it's a disgusting, glitchy, aged mess of a game, but I've always appreciated its simplicity. There is no "end of the world" plot. Everything you encounter has happened because you, the player, adventured where nobody else did before. Kanto, as a region, doesn't really have a linear design like later games do, which allows the player to explore a big portion of the game however they wish, with the player unlocking more and more of the world simply by going off of the hints and vague direction-pointing that the game offers. It creates a very rewarding experience when the player really has managed to find a certain item or go to a certain place. Played this one tons of times and will play again...

i really wish i enjoyed this game as much as everyone else does (or people said i would).

for a game described to me as "metroidvania with precision platforming meets Dark Souls," it really comes out feeling like less than a sum of those parts. in terms of the world design and exploration, the game is great at matching the joy of breaking into every tiny crevasse to find secrets and lore that Dark Souls does. the characters and lightly revealed lore that's steeped in mystery is great. the platforming is serviceable, but whenever the game decides to flip the switch to try and turn into Super Meat Boy (sometimes quite literally with buzzsaws) it feels very disjointed and out of place.

the combat (mainly by way of the bosses) by comparison feels like a chore. even by the end of the game when i had gotten a lot better at maneuvering in fights, most of the boss fights were not engaging or challenging beyond "hope you get the good pattern that allows you to heal". in addition to this, why not be more generous with benches in regards to boss placements?

it's small decisions like this that continued to baffle me as time went on. you get more movement options as the game unfolds, but trekking between areas connected by stags still feels arduous enough to dissuade me from wanting to explore more. i enjoy the lore of the stags, but would fast travelling between benches break the game so much to prevent it from being included?

it's things like this that makes me feel like the game is bloated. this may be a problem of playing the game now that there's 4 extra content patches (give players a way to play the launch version pleaseeeee), but there's just so much in the game that feels like Content For Content's Sake. the game like a love letter to the old metroidvanias the developers loved that has been weighed down by AAA games' addiction to More. i can see the mechanics (literally) taken 1-to-1 from Super Metroid, but i don't see the tightly crafted world, simplicity, or elegance of it. i see a checklist of things to waste time doing rather than a curated experience.