Instead of doing what Zelda has always done and innovating with their structure and design concepts, for the first time in the 37 years of Zelda games, I feel like Zelda team bought into its own hype after BotW. Marrying a more classic structure to BotW's lush world and free systems could have yielded the best Zelda game ever made. Instead, the only major change made to BotW is the addition of more stuff TM, with no attempt to innovate or create something new like Zelda always has. And for me, this structure is infinitely less charming on the second go around. Probably the single most disapointing gaming experience of my adult life made worse by the fact that all anyone can do is call it the greatest game of all time, apparently.

It's...okay.

This is the pokemon game everyone puts on a pedestal nowadays, and so I had a lot of hype finally playing it, but that likely hurt the experience for me a lot. The narrative was really underwhelming to me after years of hearing it talked up- I find Sun/Moon's message to be more unique and emotionally poignant, which despite both games having similar narrative shortcomings gives it a huge leg up on BW in my personal opinion. The ending did hit the notes it was striving for however, and if I had grown up with this game instead of SM, I'd likely adore it narratively, because there is a lot to love- just not much for my adult brain to sink its teeth into that I haven't seen done better elsewhere.

Gameplay wise it's pretty messy too. The small pokedex makes me really feel limited in my teambuilding options, which is more forgivable for the first two generations where the actual number of pokemon was lower and they were still finding their footing, but I wish they had had the same epiphany that they did when they attempted the same "Only new pokemon" thing with RSE and filled out the pokedex with relevant pokemon from past gens after realizing the variety was too low, while still putting the new ones in the spotlight. The evolution levels are also just as strange as they appear, with many pokemon evolving at or after the elite four, which feels strange and unsatisfying to me.

This is likely a controversial stance that will bring me heat, but in my mind, this game is akin to XY: It is a functional pokemon game that exists. Not the peak of the franchise, but playably fun. I still have the postgame to play, but I'd be doing it out of obligation at this point, because I feel ready to move on.

For every step forward, there is a parallel step taken backwards, leading to a middling experience. I like this game, I enjoyed this game more than not, but only just. If we were still doing third versions, Pokemon Verdant or whatever it would be called would have the potential to be the best Pokemon game of all time-But in terms of the game we actually got, there needed to be a few more months of development time and more thought and consideration for certain design elements if it was ever going to be something approaching great.