One of the most content-packed games that I have ever played, I have still not gotten sick of it yet. Incredibly impressive attention to detail and full voice acting literally everywhere arouses my loser ass that cannot read attentively. I want Karlach to ignite my balls. I haven't been so genuinely engrossed in a game's plot or characters in forever and it feeds the little man in my brain who yearns for bedtime stories. My only complaint is streaks of personal bad luck except that contributes to comical failures that end up being fun regardless.

I finished my first playthrough with 150 hours and I am already planning for my 2nd and 3rd playthroughs.

Holy shit!!! Open world!!!
Holy shit!!! Nothing to do!!!
Without any doubt the absolute worst Pokemon game at launch, somehow. Littered with glitches, poor performance, and the slowest online interactions I've seen from any game in the past decade. Performance does have an easy fix, a fix that actually makes, rather saves, you money. All it takes is a decently beefy pc, a switch emulator, and a genuinely correct moral alignment.

Onto the game if it were played as intended, or rather without anything bad that could have been fleshed out given time or dedication or ((modern)) experienced developers who DON'T cut corners whenever possible.


Yessir yessir, first mainline open world Pokemon game!!!!! I wonder what crucial open-world aspects they'll leave out!
Good stuff first!
+ You can farm Chanseys at like level 10
+ You can complete the game at whatever pace you want, in whatever order you want
+ You can build whatever team you wanted straight from the gate (bar a few mons)
Haha...
- The world is really really really poorly made. The world. The world that is meant to be enjoyed, in an open world game where the world is open and meant to be explored. Specifically meant to be explored, openly, looks like shit.
- There is nothing non-redundant to do in the actual postgame, or even during the main storyline. No true sidequests, not much to explore, I'm not collecting all the fucking reddit karmas.


What's the selling point of monster collecting games? Could it be the designs of the cool and badass and awesome and I guess sexy if the monster catching game is of Asian origin???
Yessir the new mons!!!
Overall, I do not like them. A lot of them were VERY obviously low effort and a quick "How do you do fellow kids," but they took the expression literally and hired an actual child to make some of them. Like they hired a 13 year old with the qualification of 3 Reddit followers and thus LeChonk was created and named thusly.
+ The first form of all of the starters, every single one of them, great. Very cool, very nice, enjoyable.
- What the actual fuck
- These all evolve into shit
- I threw my Fueccoo in the trash for a random fucking Shroomish I found
- This is not bias I would do it with either of the other starters too
- There are 3 Pawmis in the pokedex.
- The entire Nacli line feels like a massive slap in the nuts followed by a little bit of nibbling that kinda hurts but kinda doesn't to the entire chemistry-related occupation community.
- Armarouge
+ Ceruledge
- Ceruledge is used by minors in raids and they keep fucking dying stop using Ceruledge in raids
- Bellibolt is an ugly bastard doujinshi protagonist
- Dundunsparce I can see was meant to be a funny "fuck you" to the people who wanted Dunsparce evolution but I feel like the execution makes it an unfunny "fuck you"
+ FUCK YEAH GRAFAIAI THATS WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT MORE LIKE THIS YESSIR YESSIR
- I mistake Bramblin for actual environmental terrain and then I'm reminded that they did not actually put any detail into the terrain when the battle starts because I walked into one
- I could not think of a worse possible contender for the cool as fuck Grass/Fire type combo than Scovillain. Holy shit this dude looks bad
+ Dung Beetle rep
- Dung Beetle rep is ugly as hell I came here for some bug holding an actual piece of shit not this bug holding a metaphorical piece of shit
- Espathra
- Wiglett
- Palafin is the exact fucking same as Finizen graphically BUT you also need either a friend or a NSO membership to fucking evolve it.
- The team star car isn't actually a usable mon
- Flamigo
- Flamigo accounts for two negatives this design is horrible in every way possible. "But it's neck is tied! it isn't just a flamingo" your neck is about to be tied shut the fuck up
+ Dodonzo is kinda okay? I guess? I think every single Zelda game that ever came out prepared me to think this kinda design is normal
+ The past paradox designs aren't bad, except for half of them
- The future paradox designs are pretty bad, except for maybe one of them
- Seriously they're so fucking uninspired and they're half the gimmick of an entire game. They are literally just Pokemon but robots; their names are fucking horrible "Iron Hands Iron Moth Iron Jugulis" how about you keep an iron these nuts
- Gholdengo
+ The four legendary dudes look on average pretty alright
- Where the fuck does four chinese dudes fit into anything remotely spanish
+ The box legendaries' designs slap pretty fucking hard; I saw a picture of humanoid Koraidon with some big boy big man exposed male breasts out and now I might be gay but I'm not sure?


And for the narrative bones under the overarching game genre meat and tendons, gotta talk about the storylines since theres like 4 of them.
Start off with gyms I suppose, decades old staple; everyone knows them, some people love them, some people love them but say they prefer whatever the fuck Alola did.
+ Pretty traditional, run of the mill gym sequence. Fight 8 dudes, rival stops you here and there to (consensually) battle, Elite 4, stomp them, chamption, kill, done.
+ The rival isn't bad? Nemona isn't really good by any means but they're really cookie cutter as of recently with no real like outstanding qualities
- The most forgettable teams to date, oh my fucking god. The gyms don't strike any fear into anyone, there is almost no major obstacle anywhere in the entire storyline. The hardest fight is with Ryme (ghost gym) and it's because you weren't expecting to be tag team double creamed BUT EVEN THEN who the fuck has a Mimikyu that only knows fucking shadow sneak and slash??? This is like the 6th strongest gym give her some moves.
- The gym challenges were AWFUL. The physics were too wonky to do the bug one properly, hide and seek is a joke, hide and seek for the second fucking gym in a row is also a joke, pressing A 3 times to get some tren or whatever the fuck the beefy ass water dude wanted you to buy is horrible. Larry's gym kinda fucked. I liked it. Larry's cool as hell. The psychic gym holy fuck. Yes, I would like to play 8 fucking minutes of "now lets do a silly one!" The button order doesn't even matter, pressing a wrong one has no setback; I got fucking sick of it halfway through and started mindlessly pressing all the buttons and completed it. The ice gym challenge thing shit had no programming put into it. The most botched attempt at trying to make a minigame out of some random shit that was clunky as hell.
- The Elite 4's teams are so fucking incohesive a child, an actual toddler, was able to join their ranks. The entire elite 4 can also be swept by any ice type with a little fighting coverage
- I failed the champions test like three times why the fuck is there a 20 question survey that you NEED TO GET A 100% ON included
- Worst champion to date, every other champion has at least some characteristic memorable and this one's is that you can invite her to your dorm room in one of the most sexually tense scene in any Pokemon game. Bar maybe whatever the fuck Penny does with your bicycle after the team star bosses.

Going off of the Team Star momentum, lets go with that now
+ I actually really liked the stuff before fighting them; completely brainless extinction of some random type of mon. It's easy, it's boring, and it takes one finger to complete: this is a true representation of the franchise.
- The boss battles are almost all the same
- The bosses are really ugly
- Penny becomes a victim as mentioned before
+ Maybe not a victim, if you see her dorm room she is textbook egirl; she probably consented at some point
- textbook egirl
+ She lets her Pokemon sleep on the bed that's commendable attention all people who let your pets sleep on your bed you are more humane than everyone else you are doing work that God himself would praise you for.
- The "boohoo" section after each team star leader is really unconvincing and even moreso plain; depthless... shallow?
- I had a consistent like 4 FPS during the entire fairy type team star segment

Masterchef Junior x Shadow of the Colossus x There's probably some Netflix show about some depressed gay teenager I don't know the name of; not quite in the audience for that as I am no longer a teenager.
+ I fuck w/ Arven, definitely the best character in the game. I like the homage to his queeritude by making him hold his Pokeballs upside down, as it's a well known fact that gay people do in fact hold balls upside down.
- Unpopular (maybe, I don't read other peoples' opinions) take, I do not care about the "boohoo my dog died" part. I get that they were trying to build something with it, but the execution was really really half assed. Is watching a dog eat a sandwich in THE EXACT SAME CAVE ENVIRONMENT THEY USED THE SAME CAVE ENVIRONMENT FOR EVERY POST-TITAN CUTSCENE supposed to make me feel sad?
- They used the same cave for every titan herb cave
- The titans were way too cheesable I knocked them all down with leech seed shenanigans before hitting like level 30
- The titans' field animations were generally unrefined. Bird with the gmod spawn gun spamming rocks.
- Back to it, how the fuck can a peak technology Pokemon restoration machine not heal a sick dog but a couple plants can?? Some essential oil-esque propaganda going on.
- I fucking hate daddy issues arc so very much, very much such much.

Daddy issues? Mommy issues? Depends on whether you got Pokemon Scarlet or if you're a sub who loves being topped big buff strong sweaty men.
Yessir Area Zero mentioning
+ Ohhhh fuck this segment of the game was nearly orgasmic
+ The music that plays there FUCKS
- I can't spam wondertrades or raids there so I can't have the music running in the background while I wait for the shitty online connection to load for 2 minutes per action.
+ I absolutely loved the interaction between characters, even if the interactions weren't good there is some organic feeling in conversations happening without the need of spamming A or dropping what you're doing, I really really wish this was done more.
+ I never knew how much I wanted Pokemon games to allow you to have another trainer or two accompany you, holy fuck I thought the anime would have had a bigger impact on my little baby man brain about this.
+ Not quite on-screen but YOOOOO very very direct reference to someone dying; I like the increase in maturity and I hope next is a bare ass uncensored sex scene to fulfil what Legends Arceus didn't.
- Right I mentioned Daddy Mommy issues earlier but I didn't put a minus for it so yeah
+ The final boss here actually had a little hype to it? Not necessarily on the edge of my seat full gamer mode drenched in sweat oiled up twerking but it was relatively high for modern Pokemon games
- The TRUE anime-style power of friendship whatever the fuck final final battle was really really really not good and it completely killed any hardness I had stockpiled
- - - - - Ed Sheeran playing during unskippable end credits


Now some nitpicking from a competitively influenced individual
- Fuck this generation
- What the actual shit is the balancing in this game
- You mean to tell me there is now a failsafe for hazard teams, that gets STAB hex on like 140 fucking base SpAtk??? Alongside some incredible typing???

tl;dr because this review was incredibly long I think:
Game runs like shit, it was not ready for launch. Open world was a great idea, and a good step forwards, but it was so barren and ugly and lifeless that it ends up losing any value it wanted to get from being open world. The mon designs were pretty shit overall, but had a couple really nice designs that I do like a lot. The three main stories were overall pretty below average, but the fourth act was absolutely incredible, a pinnacle for the series; at least in the decade. Pvp no longer exists and you will find me playing gen8 natdex ou.

Game Crashing Total: 3
Once while creating character
Once while getting a haircut
Once while putting on glasses

Oh one final, small gripe: your mons turn transparent with the camera app when you're within like 4 meters of them, you cannot take any pictures even close to them and I hate it.