This review contains spoilers
Everyone is calling this a breath of fresh air for Pokémon, which is true, but it's a shallow breath that can't even help the game get to its own finish line before it's exhausted itself of everything there is to do.
I'll start by talking about what I like though. There's a fantastic flow when in the field of this game. You can be throwing a Pokémon at a wild mon while throwing another of your mons at some resources and it's all so quick and fun. Plus getting a back strike on a wild mon feels so satisfying.
The game does a great job at matching locations in the game to where they are in the modern Sinnoh map, as well as putting in some bonus details, like showing how the Spear Pillar got destroyed.
Ride Pokémon somewhat make a return from Sun and Moon, unlocking a new one after each area, so you can explore more and more of the terrain. It is fun to go back to old areas with the ability to cross rivers or climb up mountains. There's a few niggles I have with the system though, like for some reason you can ONLY throw Pokéballs on Basculegion, so if you're riding Wyrdeer you have to keep getting off every time you want to catch something or gather material. It's a small thing since getting on and off is as fast as a literal button press, but it's still pretty immersion breaking.
The game did what is basically expected of most modern mainline games (except you, BDSP) of adding new forms and evos of old mons. Some are a miss, but there's a lot of ones I love, like an actual evolution of Ursaring. Not even a regional Ursaring, just a regular old evolution. I hope at least that stays in future games.
There's a whole bunch of sidequests here. While most of the quests are nothing too special, and most of the rewards you get from them are just general items you can farm, one thing I loved was how beating a quest keeps updating the town. If you do a quest involving giving someone a Pokémon, you'll see them around with that Pokémon from now on. It gives a sense of progression to the world and really makes you feel like you're helping out. Some of them are also pretty fun story-wise. I particularly liked the one where I had to find a guys Spheal that had rolled down a hill, and at the very end of the quest it rolls down again. So yeah, quests are a little repetitive in terms of being fetch quests or just "show me this mon", but they have some fun elements around the storytelling of the quests.
The battle system is something I'm very mixed on. It's completely different from the other games in many ways. The first is the obvious agile and strong style moves, which funnily I found were the least impactful addition. Like I never seemed to get extra moves from agile style unless I was so high above the enemy I'd be guaranteed a one shot anyway. On the other hand I'd ALWAYS lose a turn from strong style, which was never worth the 10-20 extra base power unless I knew it would kill.
Stat buffs have also been changed. Anything that raises offense or defence raises both now, meaning calm mind and bulk up are the literal same move, rather than being tailored for special or physical. From what I can tell each buff can only be applied once too, so no more stacking 6 buffs - and they also run out after a few turns.
Some status effects like sleep and freeze have been changed.
The entire damage formula seems to have changed this time, I don't know exactly what it is, but things seem to hit harder, regardless of level. It's not unusual to be able to one shot something with a type advantage when you're 10 levels lower.
Another thing is the fact that turn order isn't reset when a new mon is sent out. If the opponent has had their turn and killed your mon, it will be your turn next no matter what (unless they used agile style or something). It's very strange and ultimately makes trainer battles even easier than they've EVER been because it's just a roundabout of you sent out a mon to hit their mon, they sent out a new mon to kill yours with a SE move, then you get a free chance to kill theirs etc. And that's only if they can even kill you since it's so easy to over level in this game. The only challenging fight in the entire game is a post-game one and only because it's essentially an 6v8, so those free turns your opponent gets can really turn the battle in their favour.
Alpha Pokémon seem terrifying at first, but with all the battle changes above, they're really not scary at all. Sure they'll one shot the first mon you bring out, but since you're guaranteed some turns anyway you can easily take them down with some super effective moves. This is a stark contrast to past games which would have a level 40 sweeping your entire level 20 team by out speeding it every turn.
All these battle changes, along with stuff like the removal of abilities, items and a huge list of moves, generally make the game very unga bunga and just hitting each other hard. It's fast paced but zero depth, which I guess was the point to match the pace of catching mons.
It's fine for this game, but I really really hope they don't keep this system in future games.
And that's not even all the changes in battles - that's basically just the actual mechanic ones. For example you can now walk around in battles and freely control the camera. This is...basically pointless because you can't DO anything while controlling your character except flee the battle (which can be done anyway - plus that reminds me, fleeing is a guaranteed escape now so you'll NEVER have to worry about whiting out as you can just run on your last mon). You can't even get hurt from enemy attacks despite them clearly hitting you. It'd have been so much cooler if you had to manually move out of the way of the fighting Pokémon attacks to avoid your trainer blacking out, or be able to position yourself behind a wild mon to get a back strike in battle.
This would at best just make the feature fun and immersive but pointless, but in fact it hurts the animations a lot. Pokémon has never been known to have good animations in the first place, but some of the stronger moves, and especially signature moves made good use of a forced camera to make them little cutscenes. Now everything has to be shown in real time making all the moves animations feel very lacklustre. Basically everything now is on the level of generic moves from other games like rollout, razor leaf, water gun etc, even if it's the god damn God of Pokémon's special move, Judgement. I understand that it's faster, but I think there's room for both. Like having the fixed camera angles for important battles to make them feel more grand.
I really enjoyed the system of having a movepool you can constantly switch between on the fly. The games have basically got to this point anyway with the room reminder being free, but it's nice to not have to travel to do it. Although getting new moves is a lot easier now, just having a guy in the hub town that will teach your mons anything on his list for a small fee, and less rewarding than exploring and finding TMs to strengthen your team. Kind of ironic really that this game boasts exploration as far more of a selling point but generally had less rewards FOR exploring.
There are some things I think are just straight up bad. The most obvious is the graphics. EVERYONE has talked about it so I won't go into too much detail, but it's beyond just bad, it's straight up ugly as shit and has some really weird things (like white pixels around your character in caves).
The locations all feel very barren of anything interesting. They're almost all just some theme with the same hills, mountains and rocks everywhere. The only one I found to be a slight exception was the coastlands, which had a few differing points of interest, like a beach, a haunted shipwreck, a wide open sea, a volcano, and a memorial for the old noble Pokémon on top of a cliff. Pretty much every other area is just boring to explore and you'll probably never care to realise where you even are on the map unless it's something like a rare Pokémon spawn. I did also think this area had the best story for its noble battle.
Speaking of noble Pokémon, they do something very unique with their battles. In the sense that they're not Pokémon battles. Huge missed opportunity there to have real boss battles in Pokémon akin to the totem mons. Instead you get a lame bag throwing minigame where everything you've trained doesn't matter because you'll have the same "move set" and same health for every one of these encounters.
They could even use alpha Pokémon more sparingly to be boss battles instead, but nah they're just plastered around the world, with a dozen guaranteed spawns, so you can easily get a team 30 levels ahead of the current area.
Catching Pokémon, while fun at first, does become quite an old and boring process long before the end of the game. And by the time you get razz berries and ultra balls you can basically easily catch anything, including alpha Pokémon, in a single throw. It doesn't help that the game tries to get you to do this up to 25 times per Pokémon to 100% the dex. This is far from a requirement, but research tasks in general just seem way too bloated and clearly exist to try to force extended play time. Not to mention that unless you beeline for the story (which the game doesn't necessarily encourage by giving you a huge checklist of shit to do with every new thing you find and catch), you're going to very overlevelled way too fast. Not that it really matters when the game gives you so few opportunities to use the Pokémon you train in an actual battle.
Between a very worn out catching system, and a battle system, which you rarely even get to use, but that exists to get you through it as fast as possible with sheer unga bunga, I really hope this ISN'T the direction the games go in in the future without a huge overhaul. It's kind of fun at first, but by the end the whole process becomes so monotonous and you realise how simplified it is that it can't carry itself with such little content. Keeping the general idea here and the catching system, but bringing back the old battle system and making trainer fights more prominent would definitely help.
I'll start by talking about what I like though. There's a fantastic flow when in the field of this game. You can be throwing a Pokémon at a wild mon while throwing another of your mons at some resources and it's all so quick and fun. Plus getting a back strike on a wild mon feels so satisfying.
The game does a great job at matching locations in the game to where they are in the modern Sinnoh map, as well as putting in some bonus details, like showing how the Spear Pillar got destroyed.
Ride Pokémon somewhat make a return from Sun and Moon, unlocking a new one after each area, so you can explore more and more of the terrain. It is fun to go back to old areas with the ability to cross rivers or climb up mountains. There's a few niggles I have with the system though, like for some reason you can ONLY throw Pokéballs on Basculegion, so if you're riding Wyrdeer you have to keep getting off every time you want to catch something or gather material. It's a small thing since getting on and off is as fast as a literal button press, but it's still pretty immersion breaking.
The game did what is basically expected of most modern mainline games (except you, BDSP) of adding new forms and evos of old mons. Some are a miss, but there's a lot of ones I love, like an actual evolution of Ursaring. Not even a regional Ursaring, just a regular old evolution. I hope at least that stays in future games.
There's a whole bunch of sidequests here. While most of the quests are nothing too special, and most of the rewards you get from them are just general items you can farm, one thing I loved was how beating a quest keeps updating the town. If you do a quest involving giving someone a Pokémon, you'll see them around with that Pokémon from now on. It gives a sense of progression to the world and really makes you feel like you're helping out. Some of them are also pretty fun story-wise. I particularly liked the one where I had to find a guys Spheal that had rolled down a hill, and at the very end of the quest it rolls down again. So yeah, quests are a little repetitive in terms of being fetch quests or just "show me this mon", but they have some fun elements around the storytelling of the quests.
The battle system is something I'm very mixed on. It's completely different from the other games in many ways. The first is the obvious agile and strong style moves, which funnily I found were the least impactful addition. Like I never seemed to get extra moves from agile style unless I was so high above the enemy I'd be guaranteed a one shot anyway. On the other hand I'd ALWAYS lose a turn from strong style, which was never worth the 10-20 extra base power unless I knew it would kill.
Stat buffs have also been changed. Anything that raises offense or defence raises both now, meaning calm mind and bulk up are the literal same move, rather than being tailored for special or physical. From what I can tell each buff can only be applied once too, so no more stacking 6 buffs - and they also run out after a few turns.
Some status effects like sleep and freeze have been changed.
The entire damage formula seems to have changed this time, I don't know exactly what it is, but things seem to hit harder, regardless of level. It's not unusual to be able to one shot something with a type advantage when you're 10 levels lower.
Another thing is the fact that turn order isn't reset when a new mon is sent out. If the opponent has had their turn and killed your mon, it will be your turn next no matter what (unless they used agile style or something). It's very strange and ultimately makes trainer battles even easier than they've EVER been because it's just a roundabout of you sent out a mon to hit their mon, they sent out a new mon to kill yours with a SE move, then you get a free chance to kill theirs etc. And that's only if they can even kill you since it's so easy to over level in this game. The only challenging fight in the entire game is a post-game one and only because it's essentially an 6v8, so those free turns your opponent gets can really turn the battle in their favour.
Alpha Pokémon seem terrifying at first, but with all the battle changes above, they're really not scary at all. Sure they'll one shot the first mon you bring out, but since you're guaranteed some turns anyway you can easily take them down with some super effective moves. This is a stark contrast to past games which would have a level 40 sweeping your entire level 20 team by out speeding it every turn.
All these battle changes, along with stuff like the removal of abilities, items and a huge list of moves, generally make the game very unga bunga and just hitting each other hard. It's fast paced but zero depth, which I guess was the point to match the pace of catching mons.
It's fine for this game, but I really really hope they don't keep this system in future games.
And that's not even all the changes in battles - that's basically just the actual mechanic ones. For example you can now walk around in battles and freely control the camera. This is...basically pointless because you can't DO anything while controlling your character except flee the battle (which can be done anyway - plus that reminds me, fleeing is a guaranteed escape now so you'll NEVER have to worry about whiting out as you can just run on your last mon). You can't even get hurt from enemy attacks despite them clearly hitting you. It'd have been so much cooler if you had to manually move out of the way of the fighting Pokémon attacks to avoid your trainer blacking out, or be able to position yourself behind a wild mon to get a back strike in battle.
This would at best just make the feature fun and immersive but pointless, but in fact it hurts the animations a lot. Pokémon has never been known to have good animations in the first place, but some of the stronger moves, and especially signature moves made good use of a forced camera to make them little cutscenes. Now everything has to be shown in real time making all the moves animations feel very lacklustre. Basically everything now is on the level of generic moves from other games like rollout, razor leaf, water gun etc, even if it's the god damn God of Pokémon's special move, Judgement. I understand that it's faster, but I think there's room for both. Like having the fixed camera angles for important battles to make them feel more grand.
I really enjoyed the system of having a movepool you can constantly switch between on the fly. The games have basically got to this point anyway with the room reminder being free, but it's nice to not have to travel to do it. Although getting new moves is a lot easier now, just having a guy in the hub town that will teach your mons anything on his list for a small fee, and less rewarding than exploring and finding TMs to strengthen your team. Kind of ironic really that this game boasts exploration as far more of a selling point but generally had less rewards FOR exploring.
There are some things I think are just straight up bad. The most obvious is the graphics. EVERYONE has talked about it so I won't go into too much detail, but it's beyond just bad, it's straight up ugly as shit and has some really weird things (like white pixels around your character in caves).
The locations all feel very barren of anything interesting. They're almost all just some theme with the same hills, mountains and rocks everywhere. The only one I found to be a slight exception was the coastlands, which had a few differing points of interest, like a beach, a haunted shipwreck, a wide open sea, a volcano, and a memorial for the old noble Pokémon on top of a cliff. Pretty much every other area is just boring to explore and you'll probably never care to realise where you even are on the map unless it's something like a rare Pokémon spawn. I did also think this area had the best story for its noble battle.
Speaking of noble Pokémon, they do something very unique with their battles. In the sense that they're not Pokémon battles. Huge missed opportunity there to have real boss battles in Pokémon akin to the totem mons. Instead you get a lame bag throwing minigame where everything you've trained doesn't matter because you'll have the same "move set" and same health for every one of these encounters.
They could even use alpha Pokémon more sparingly to be boss battles instead, but nah they're just plastered around the world, with a dozen guaranteed spawns, so you can easily get a team 30 levels ahead of the current area.
Catching Pokémon, while fun at first, does become quite an old and boring process long before the end of the game. And by the time you get razz berries and ultra balls you can basically easily catch anything, including alpha Pokémon, in a single throw. It doesn't help that the game tries to get you to do this up to 25 times per Pokémon to 100% the dex. This is far from a requirement, but research tasks in general just seem way too bloated and clearly exist to try to force extended play time. Not to mention that unless you beeline for the story (which the game doesn't necessarily encourage by giving you a huge checklist of shit to do with every new thing you find and catch), you're going to very overlevelled way too fast. Not that it really matters when the game gives you so few opportunities to use the Pokémon you train in an actual battle.
Between a very worn out catching system, and a battle system, which you rarely even get to use, but that exists to get you through it as fast as possible with sheer unga bunga, I really hope this ISN'T the direction the games go in in the future without a huge overhaul. It's kind of fun at first, but by the end the whole process becomes so monotonous and you realise how simplified it is that it can't carry itself with such little content. Keeping the general idea here and the catching system, but bringing back the old battle system and making trainer fights more prominent would definitely help.