I actually ended up playing this for free with the 7 day PS Now trial, in preparation for Doom Eternal. It was much better than I was expecting.

Pros:
+The action is so fast paced and explosive. It's some of the most fun single player FPS I've ever played.
+Menu shows total amount of collectables in the area so you can know if you’ve missed anything
+Constant upgrades left a great feeling of progression, speaking of which:
+The difficulty curve was perfect. I always felt I had the same level of "just right" challenge. This is partly due to the upgrades mentioned above, and also the introduction or more and more enemy types.
+The weapons for the most part don't suffer power creep. Thanks to the upgrade system, even the starter shotgun was useful to me well into the end of the game.
+Multiplayer is fun, even if it doesn't do much to stand out from every other FPS multiplayer.

Cons:
-The map is absolutely horrible. If you're using it to try and find out where the collectables are, you're going to struggle through the lack of any indication of where walls are, making the different rooms and floor levels impossible to tell where you can get to room A from room B. You also can't zoom or pan much further than where your icon is, so if you're trying to look for where that one collectable you missed is, you're out of luck.
-Some levels have arbitrary point of no returns, which goes against the entire of exploring every nook and cranny for secrets and upgrades. It wouldn't be so bad, but thanks to the huge open-nature of the stages, and the horrible-to-read map, it can be hard to know exactly which parts you can get to at the current moment, and which parts will be locked out if you go through this door and it locks behind you.

Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro/con:
~I ended up with a glitched trophy that didn't pop, preventing me from getting the Plat without playing the entire game again. While a glitch is a clear con, the fact it only affects the trophy system, which isn't technically part of the game, means I can't give the game a con for it.

Pros:
+While not revolutionary, the game has some quality turn based RPG gameplay, which for me is a fun way to play despite it being a bit ancient.
+Soundtrack is lively and fun.
+Enemy designs are creative and varied. I actually got pretty excited to get to a new area and find new enemies.
+The 2D side-missions (as well as full 2D optional mode) were a nice callback, even though I couldn't truly appreciate them as this is my first Dragon Quest game.
+There's some decent quality of life stuff, like if you're missing purchasable items for forging, you can buy them right there instead of having to go to a shop.
+All the different prep power animations look gorgeous. Also prep powers in general having unique teammate set ups adds some personality to them.
+Toriyama art style. As a huge Dragon Ball fan I had to add this.
+There are a whole bunch of costumes you can find to dress your characters, ranging from silly fun ones, to story-related ones, to downright cool looking ones.
+There's a few times when you get specific moves or skill trees based directly on the happenings from the plot. Like Jade learning Re-Vamp, or Rab's Pearly Gates.
+The main cast are all charming and fun.
+A toooon of content, even post-game. Hell, especially post-game.

Cons
-The way items are managed in this game is awful:
-You can't use any item from the bag in battle. You have to specifically equip it to a character. And it's not like a "Battle bag" either, you have to give each individual item to each individual character. I honestly just gave up on this about 5 hours in and never used an item in battle all game.
-Items don’t merge in a characters bag. If you give a character 5 potions they'll take up 5 slots, which just looks messy and cluttered.
-If you steal from an enemy, it goes into the characters personal inventory, meaning you have to manually remove every single one (there is a way to remove all non-equipment at once, but that would mean removing all the items you want to keep on them)
-The battle music gets overused too much. I don't mean "there's too many battles", but like during the last lap of a horse race it suddenly starts to use the battle music and it feels so out of place.
-When you're looking at a list of items in a shop or forging you can't compare them to your parties current equipment. It'll show only ONE stat of the new item and whether it's lower or higher than the same stat on your party. I bought or forged so many items only to realise the other 5 stats provided are lower than my current one.
-There's too many invisible barriers everywhere. Can't just jump over this little fence to take a short cut, gotta go the long way around.
-The silent protagonist is common in RPGs, but as the story gets more and more involved, and spoken dialogue becomes more common place, it makes them look really out of place. It's so distracting for this huge story to unfold around the main character as he just stands there silent, emotionless. There's one point where he actually starts crying and I was so taken aback because I just can't see him as a character.
-There's no way to find out battle information on enemies like their weaknesses or their immunities. It led to a lot of trial and error, or more likely just avoiding using any status moves and powering through with my strongest attacks rather than waste time experimenting and wasting turns with things that might not even work.

Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro/con:
~Tactics always being the first option that comes up in battle. It’s very very minor but it slows things down a bit for every fight. Since pressing X already brings up the tactics menu there’s no need to have it be the default as the amount of times I didn't want to change my tactics every battle far outweighed the ones I did.
~The variety of rideable enemies you find are fun, but they're so limited and are often just there to solve an easy "puzzle". It feels less immersive when only one out of the thousands of other enemies of the same type you find can be ridable.

Neutral/Notes:
•The game doesn’t pause when using menus. It doesn't really matter at all, it just feels weird to me.
•There's an option for "Heal All" and "Handy Heal All" in the menu. The first option heals your party to full health, the second one does the same thing but "in the most optimised way". I just don't understand why I'd ever want to use the option that heals me in a way that isn't the most optimised.
•The Slime Slot Machine feels way too overly complex for a mini game...

Pros:
+The Colossi look amazing
+Riding around on one, especially the flying ones, is cinematic and incredible-feeling
+The environment looks incredible
+The puzzle elements of the boss fights feels rewarding to figure out for the first time
+The soundtrack is epic

Cons:
-Despite the amazing looking scenery, the world itself is devoid of anything, making going through it 16 times in a row a huge slog, which is made worse by the two following cons:
-The horse controls like crap
-The camera is pretty bad, but especially so while riding the horse
-The fact you need to raise your sword and draw power before you stab makes the CONSTANT losing of grip due to the Colossi moving around unbearable
-Same with trying to climb around the Colossi, as you often manage to make zero progress because your character keeps swaying for like 30 seconds straight
-Too much of the boss fights is just playing the waiting game
-Being knocked down takes way too long to get back up. Especially annoying in fights where the enemy will knock you down, then as soon as you start getting back up they knock you down again, over and over and over.

Mixed:
~The sword acting as a homing beacon is a neat idea, but the vagueness of it just leads to dead ends.

Hard mode DLC for Mario Bros. With too many unfair versions of difficulty, like invisible blocks.

Almost everything from this game is straight from the first game, from sprites to music. Even the less than perfect physics are still here, except now they're worse because the game demands even more tight platforming.

Also the amount of BS looping levels has increased.

I'll start by saying that this high rating is purely because I am a massive Dragon Ball fan, so I enjoyed the game far more than I would have if I wasn't. It's also given with the hope that the many bugs that plague the game are patched out, since it's still only 1 week since release. I don't feel like it's an unfair reason to rate the game highly though since regardless of the bias reasons, I DID get a ton of enjoyment out of the game, and that's what they're for.

Anyway... The presentation of the game I found really neat. It comes out as if it's a real "playable anime", with each arc of DBZ getting it's own little preview and title card. The feeling of truly playing the show is made more apparent by just how much detail goes into the cutscenes. While it obviously doesn't fit in all 291 episodes, this game goes out of its way to tell the full story of Dragon Ball Z, rather than just using the basic footnotes as most other games do in order to get you from fight A to fight B. This can be a bit of a pain in some times though, as you go through 20+ minutes of cutscene and dialogue in a run, which happened mostly in the Boo saga. Cutscenes themself vary in quality, some of them, like Vegetto vs Boo, had outstanding animation and action, while others felt stiff.

The controls definitely feel unconventional at first, but after getting used to them, flying around the map feels as natural and fun as ever. I do like how easy they make it to traverse the world, since slow and tedious journeys in open world games can often be a problem for me.

Subquests provide a ton of fun. Some of them are funny, some help fill in plot holes or missing story sections and some of them actually develop characters (Chaozu's sidequest in this game provided more character than he's ever had in the series). Some of them even have recurring game-only characters, like the cook who keeps getting attacked or the tourists. Unfortunately the majority of quests are just "Fight these robots" or "Gather these things", with a handful implementing the mini-games of driving, baseball and fishing. One other problem with these was the lack of enemy variety, as they used the same basic pirate robot enemy every single time, just with a new coat of paint in some cases. There's even one mission where Pilaf threatens you with his new machine, and I was expecting to fight the Pilaf Machine from Dragon Ball, but nope, just more pirate robots. A huge wasted opportunity.

The combat isn't at all deep or combo-oriented, but it's just so fast paced and is more focused on timing and rapid actions that I found it really enjoyable. The fact that there's so few playable characters actually allowed them to go all out and make villains feel like real boss fights, with moves that would be game-breaking under the players control, while in most DB games the enemies are restricted to the human-controlled movesets.

While there isn't a whole ton of amount to do relative to some bigger open-world RPGs, there is a constant sense of progression after finishing each saga as more options are added to the intermissions, which serve as the times you essentially get free-roam of the world.

One thing I absolutely loved was the community board. I spent hours and hours mix and matching the icons of characters to try and find the best results. I hope every franchise-based game gets something like this. It's surprisingly addicting and unlocking a new emblem was far more exciting than it should be.

The game has an "instant victory" mechanic where if you're way above the level of an enemy while dashing into them in the overworld, you just win the fight and get the exp and rewards. I thought it was a great way to prevent monotonous fighting while still letting you get the rewards. A nice bonus for those who go out of their way to get as much exp as possible.

Post game has some great content for you too, with a huge chunk of side missions and a secret boss.

I finished everything in the game, including filling out the Z-encyclopedia, getting all community boards to max and the emblems to max friendship, and in all that time I never got bored. The only time I even felt overly frustrated with the game was the crappy controls for the robo-walker time trials (which luckily are fully optional).

A fun game that has a really great set of dialogue choices, and characters full of personality and diversity. Especially the companions you can recruit, all with their own little quest-lines. In fact their quests are probably my favourite in the game, as they all provide much different experiences than normal quests; it's not all about taking down corporations and saving the universe, you might just need to help your companion go on a date.

On the other hand the many factions in the game can get a bit repetitive and blend together as they all seem to follow the exact same plotlines. I loved it in the first world, as I learned about the first town, and then the deserters and had to make a choice about which one to side with. But then a similar situation happens later on, and by that point I had met so many factions and been through so many sidequests that I couldn't even remember enough about what made each one unique.

Also while I enjoy the story, I do wish it was a bit more subtle at times. The theme of fighting the big bad corporation is interesting, but sometimes they just shove it in your face that "These are the bad guys" as you read computer terminals and read countless "Screw human life. Acquire money" messages.

The game is also let down by some missing quality of life stuff. Cursors on the map speed are slow; you can't sort consumables by effect despite there being hundreds of them but only a few actual given benefits between them; can't sort weapons and armour by power/defense when equipping them to companions - which is insanely weird because you can do so in any other situation; legendary/unique weapons don't really do enough to tell you what makes them so special other than having an actual name.

Otherwise tight controls, great companions, excellent dialogue and characters, rewarding level up system all make it a worthwhile RPG to play.

The game genuinely made me terrified in my first run thanks to Mr X, something few games have managed to achieve these days.

It's a short game that survives solely off replays. I ended up doing 7 playthroughs and got the plat, and I still didn't manage to actually 100% the games in-game objectives. It does get a little stale doing it that many times in a row however, and certain lines that always come out can get grating (Hearing that guy shouting for help near the beginning of the game comes to mind)

I love how many quality of life stuff there is in the game. Having an in-game map that shows when you've collected everything in a room is just pure bliss. Having the ability to combine herbs and gunpowder even when your inventory is full avoids backtracking.

The objectives, for those who want to complete all of them (I ended up doing 74/87) can provide either extra challenges, or brand new ways to play. Doing a no item box challenge in particular was the run I found to be a huge breath of fresh air as it changed my gameplay style completely.

There are a couple of extra modes. 4th survivor which came out with the game is like a more arcadey type game where you have to get from point A to point B with only the resources on you. I actually found this to be harder than both of my hardcore playthroughs. That unlocks more and more variants of the same mode, which I wasn't in a hurry to play.

There's also some DLC stuff, which seems to take an hour according to youtube videos. I haven't tried it out yet, but I'll probably at least give it a shot, even though I'm dying to move onto another game after playing through this one so many times.

So overall great game, survival horror at its scariest. Replay-ability is high, but also relies on it far too much.

The 100+ levels in story mode, with their different themes and gimmicks and objectives, already provide a fun 2D Mario experience. While it may verrrry bare in terms of plot, the little things like hidden characters with extra jobs help give it personality. Plus it gives an important role to coins again, something which in most Mario games are ignorable collectibles that seem to just be there since they’ve been a staple since the start.

But then there’s the meat of the game. Making levels, playing user created levels, playing versus, playing co-op, playing speed runs. There’s literally endless fun to be had.

I had 50 gold Nintendo points that were about to expire, worth 50p. I decided to just spend them on the cheapest game on the E-shop, which was this.

For that price I can’t really knock it with regards to the amount of enjoyment I got out of it. It's nothing special, but it has that addicting runner gameplay. I just couldn't really recommend it to anyone except those obsessed with runner games, or anyone else who is going for the cheapest possible game, in which case you could do worse.

It's pretty short; There's 5 different themes, and each one has 3 towers to climb up and run back down. They do all offer a lot of variety in terms of hazards and visuals. The last world in particular looked pretty cool.

The game handles well and is responsive, although there's a distinct lack of feedback when changing lanes, and I often couldn't tell which lane I was in.

The purpose of this game is clear. Back when the only way to play Pokémon was on a tiny, black and white screen where the sprites barely resembled the Pokémon they were trying to portray, Pokémon Stadium came along and said “Bring your battles to full 3D on the TV". 3D wouldn't even be introduced in the mainline games until generation 6, way over 10 years later. Basically if you wanted to battle with friends back in the day, doing it via Pokémon Stadium was THE way to play.

Along with that, it helps boost the original games by having a built-in gameboy player, allowing you to play the actual games on the TV, complete with unlockable speed boosting options. And all those pesky Pokémon you needed to trade with friends to complete your Pokédex, like the multiple Eeveelutions, the fossils and starters? Well they're now rewards you can obtain in this game, meaning this was a great way to complete the dex without relying on finding people willing to give away their one-of-a-kind Pokémon in their own game.

While this game fixes some of the battle glitches from the OG games, the game is still let back somewhat by the fact it still has many of the antique game play mechanics that disappeared immediately after gen 1.

The games full potential was definitely tied to owning the original Red/Blue/Yellow games and having the transfer pack (which I believe came bundled with the game?), but it still offers something for brand newcomers who want to catch up on pieces of Pokémons history. The game has two separate single player modes. The first is Gym Leader Castle, which is essentially just fighting 3 random trainers, then a gym leader from the game. Do this 8 times for each leader, and then beat the elite 4.

The other mode is the stadium, which consists of 4 different rulesets. Unfortunately the idea sounds great, but they differ so little. The Poké Cup and Prime Cup literally only differ by one having level 50 Pokémon and one having level 100 Pokémon. There's a cup that only includes un-evolved Pokémon, which is a neat idea, and then the last cup sets all the Pokémon to level 15, which sounds like another variation of the first 2 cups, but this means you can't use Pokémon that evolve at a higher level. Although Pokémon that evolve via stones or trades can be used, since you could get them in-game at level 15. It's kind of like an in-between of the petite cup and the prime/Poké cup in that regard. Some lines can only use their first forms, while some let you use strong Pokémon like Alakazam. Unfortunately that does also make it the least balanced.

My main issue with the whole stadium thing is that the Poké and Prime cups have 4 levels of difficulty, and they can't be skipped. That means you have to go through a total of 8 rounds just to complete two of the cups, which is made worse by the fact that the easier difficulties are SO easy that getting through them is a mindless slog.

There are no 6v6 battles outside of free play mode. In fact the only time in “story mode” you can use all 6 team members is against Mewtwo in a 6v1. While 6v6 in every single battle may have caused the game to drag far more, it should have at least been a thing during the champion battle in Gym Leader tower to mimic the real game. And maybe make it one of the rulesets in the stadium, to help differ the Prime and Poké cups.

Lastly there's the minigames, which many would say are the best part of the Stadium games. I love the idea of using Pokémons unique characteristics in ways outside of battling. Like using Ekans and Diglet as a ring toss game, or using Lickitung in a sushi eating game. It's so rare to get to directly control Pokémon in games, so these minigames add a great way to do that.

My favourite non-karting Mario sports title. And I don't even like football/soccer.

It's just so fast paced, chaotic and feels good to play.

It's full of personality too. Every single character you can choose to put on your team is different. You've got different stats obviously, something like 4 different categories, but each team captain has their own unique item, each sidekick has their own unique special shot, each character has different theme music that plays when they score a goal, and different dodge animations (which itself is different per character class, with some being more offensive, some being able to bypass the goalie with the right timing etc). It just really helps feel like every character you pick makes your team personalised to you, rather than just generic characters with a Mario skin.

My main issue is with the super strike mechanic. While this also plays into the idea of the game making each character unique, by giving them characteristic animations during the move, it is way too powerful and slows the game down every time it's used. I think it would have been fine if it was just limited to once per match, including the set-up screen, so that if you tried to use one at a bad time, you're out of luck. It'd add a lot more strategy and give it a huge risk-reward factor, while right now it's just no reward-reward.

Luckily you can turn Super Strikes off, along with many other things like stage gimmicks, via "cheats" you can unlock by doing challenges, or winning awards for things like most goals in a cup. These only work in standard vs mode however, so the regular single player "story" will have to be beaten without any help. Speaking of which...
The last cup in single player mode is pure BS. The AI so blatantly cheats to disgusting degrees. All 4 of the enemies team will act like fully controlled characters, esentially turning the game into a 1v4, this results in things like the opponent ALWAYS covering your characters, so that you'll never find the chance to use a super strike or power shot, or when a stage has a gimmick that can knock characters off, the AI team will be able to control all their players to dodge it while the characters on your team you're not in control of with just run into the hazard like a blind chicken. This cup also has extreme amounts of input reading.

Basically this game is a fantastic multiplayer game, and the single player is great for the first 2 cups, but the last cup is pure and utter shit. The challenge mode adds an extra bit of single player content for those looking to master the game and unlock more cheats/gameplay variables.

A huge improvement over the first game. It solves so many of its issues, from fixing things like bugs, frame rate issues and adding quality of life changes.

The lack of a map is still a bit of a problem, but this time around the locations seem more forgiving as far as dead-ends and the like go. At least until the third map, that thing had so many boxed off areas, that you'd take ages finding a gap to get in, and then once you've navigated around the labyrinth inside, you gotta find your way back out. The sheer amount of these often means you'll be driving along a few miles across a fence while you look for a bit of access to keep following the arrow.

Gun combat was improved significantly. No longer did my bullets seem to just pass through the heads of NPCs, everything felt very on-target and much better overall to play, meaning the more combat-based missions in this game weren't a problem.

I did like the inclusion of each stage having 3 gangs that you can build up loyalty to, to unlock harder missions for that gang, or piss off one of them so that not only are you locked out of their missions, but they'll attack you on the street, with increasingly dangerous weapons. It really adds something to the player experience as you choose a group to partner with and an area of the map belonging to their rival gang becomes dangerous.

Although the missions themselves all seemed pretty similar regardless of the gang you chose, it does help add a bit of personality to them, instead of just being random phone calls as they were in the first game. Each gang even gives you their own nickname.

The game was a lot shorter this time around however. While it still has 3 maps, you only play each one once, as opposed to twice like the original game. In this game you only need a total of 8 million points to beat the game, while in GTA 1 you needed, I think, 15 million.

Getting points also feels a lot easier now for one reason: The tank. I easily racked up millions of points at a time when I got into a tank. I'm not saying this is a problem with the game, as its completely option if you wanna cheese it this way, but it's a thing in the game, and one that I used and found myself shocked by just how buffed it was.

However all that's not to say this game has less replay-ability though. While the minimum amount needed to beat the game is less (which admittedly, is all I did), I'm pretty sure there are more missions and kill frenzies per stage, so if you wanted to 100% it, it'd probably even out.

They also added bonus stages, I only tried out a couple of them - I was only in this to get a good feel of GTA's history, don't judge me - they were essentially just standalone missions you could do for fun.

So basically this is just taking the first game, fixing most of its issues, and adding a bunch of little extras. The only problem I have with this version is the lack of a map still, and the third map (which I guess is 1/3rd of the game, or technically more since it's the level that needs the most points, but still)

This is the perfect example of why I say on my profile that ratings given to games I haven't played in a long time are unreliable. I had originally rated this 3 stars based on my 20 year old memories.

To be fair to this game, it isn't just an outdated version of GTA as we know it, it has its own unique arcade-y style. The goal is to get a certain amount of points on any given level, you can get small amounts via causing damage and crimes, but the only real way to win is to do the missions. And for every mission you complete, your points multiplier goes up. You have a set number of lives, so death has more of a consequence than it does in later entries, and getting busted by cops will drop your multiplier.

One big issue I had with the game comes from the lack of an in-game map. The only guide you'll ever get for getting to and from locations is an arrow pointing you to the objective. Unfortunately this arrow is context-blind, so it constantly took me to the edge of water, only for me to have to spend 5 minutes finding the right bridge to cross so I could actually get on track. This combined with a timer for many missions made the game annoying. The birds-eye view camera doesn't help matters, as the speed the cars go leave you little to no time to react to the screen, causing multiple collisions to slow you down, and you'll occasionally get your view blocked by things hanging overhead. The amount of times I bumped into a pole I didn't even realise was there due to the camera angle.

The game feels unpolished as all heck. One of my favourite moments was when I got into a parked bus, and in this game getting into a parked vehicle starts a mission during the early stages, so I waited for the arrow to come up so I could know where to go, then the bus explodes and THEN I get the mission text at the bottom telling me to keep the bus above 50mph (it must have been a mission based off Speed).

The game takes the "Grand Theft Auto" title a lot more literally than later entries, as most of the game revolves around car missions. This is for the best as the shooting mechanics are pure shit. I swear I could just shoot directly at a guys head multiple times and none of them register. My best option was always just spray like a maniac with a machine gun and hope to kill. On the downside, the last stage has a ton of gun fight missions.

I suffered serious frame rate issues through the game, particularly in later stages.

On top of being unpolished, there's just a ton of glitches - or at least I hope they were glitches. Like one time at a x6 points multiplier, I completed a mission and my score went up by 3 million, easily putting me above the goal for that stage. Later on, with a x10 multiplier, I was barely getting a few hundred thousand per mission. Lots of other little bugs littered throughout too.

There's 3 maps in the game, but all feel more or less the same. The latter two do differ a bit more in terms of visual variety, and funnily enough they have less dead ends than the first map, making them easier to follow the arrows in, which seems like the opposite direction the difficulty should have been. But the first map has this really neat jump over a broken bridge, it's the only thing that really tries anything unique with the level design and it only happens in the very first map.

There are a few secrets in the maps, like a tank is hidden in each one, so it can be rewarding to find them (even though the amount of points they give isn't too great).

I feel like the game could have been more fun if it was just based on getting points by causing mayhem, evading police and the like. Instead all the flaws of the game just make trying to get through the missions a huge pain in the ass.

Despite the huge controversy involving this game, I really enjoyed it. Obviously it's still Pokémon, if you've enjoyed Pokémon at its most basic level, I see no reason you wouldn't enjoy this.

I absolutely love what this game does with gym battles, turning it into a huge competition. Everyone starting at the same time means you get a true feeling of progression, and as you go on you hear of more and more challengers who had to drop out due to it being too tough. The way it starts out with you registering with everyone else, then going to sleep at a hotel before waking up to see a crowd of people gathered to cheer you on creates such a huge scale of excitement.
It does kind of die down near the end unfortunately. By the 5th or 6th gym the challenge is treated almost like any other game, until we get to the finals, which once again bring up the scale far above anything seen in past games.

So overall I really enjoyed the story, even if it was simple. Just you, the player, on a quest to become the greatest trainer of all time. It's what all the games have technically been about, but this is the first one that truly made me feel like the game took it seriously. I also liked the little sub plots it caused, like Bede being disqualified and then picked up as the fairy type gym leader.

The difficulty in this game is a somewhat weird one. While I do feel like the game is scaled to exp share, the Wild Area makes trying to predict player levels a mammoth task. A player could skip the Wild Area completely and maybe be under-leveled, especially if they don't catch or beat any wild Pokémon. On the other hand a player could spend hours and hours in there before even getting their first gym badge. By adding so much freedom to the player without dynamic scaling, finding the sweet spot is difficult. I had a really weird experience myself, for the first 3 gyms I was slightly ahead of the gym leaders, then the 4th gym had a big boost and caught up to me, but after that, despite me not changing my play-style, I skyrocketed ahead of the rest of the gym leaders.

This weird level curve is especially prevalent in the "champion cup" as its called. It's essentially a long stretch of story which, while technically possible to take a break from and grind, isn't encouraged at all by the way it pushes itself forward. But when I started this section I was about 10 levels ahead of the first opponents Pokémon, then by the time I got the champion I was actually slightly under-levelled. The game essentially makes it that you have to be over-levelled for most of the climax to stand a chance against the final boss; it's such weird game design.

As for the Exp scaling, the game uses the method of giving less exp the higher level you are compared to your opponent. This works pretty well for the most part, but there's one major flaw: Wild Pokémon. For some crazy reason the wild Pokémon in this game are far above even the trainers in their area. Hell I ran into a few wild Pokémon that were higher level than me! Since a huge part of Pokémon has always been to "catch 'em all", naturally I did try to catch a bunch of Pokémon on my journey, but because they were all buffed to crazy levels, the idea of getting less exp for beating/catching lower level Pokémon kind of became futile. If they just lowered the levels of the wild mons it would have done so much to improve game balance. Of course you could just ignore them to not get the exp, but if your idea of game design is to not play as much of the game as you can, there's a problem.

Presentation in this game is definitely a step above anything we've seen in the series so far. Gym battles alone are a great example of this, as now there's no transition between the pre-battle dialogue and the battle itself. Instead the opponent and your character with get into position and it flows into the start of battle seamlessly. Add in a bunch of Mid-battle dialogue and it really helps make these battles stand out from the rest, whereas in previous games the only real difference between a gym battle and a regular battle was the music and a slight difficulty increase. Unfortunately it's not all great, a lot of the animations and cutscenes still look cheap. It's a shame because the very early cutscene of the starters showed such great promise, but nothing like that ever really came up again.

Going on to the things that make this game unique over other Pokémon games, let's start with Dynamax. Personally I hated it. Mechanically it just feels like a mish-mash of Megas and Z-Moves, but both of them done far worse. And from a practical point of view, trying to imagine these Pokémon fighting each other at that size is just ridiculous. I would have much preferred to just have no gimmick at all over this.

The Wild Area is decent. It's not super deep or anything, and the weather effects changing from area to area look janky as all hell, but it does a pretty good job of showing off a bunch of Pokémon walking around, making it feel alive and active. Raid battles are also a fun addition, even though I don't think they have the staying power I think Gamefreak wants them to. But the amount of rewards you get every time you clear one is bound to set off those happy chemicals in your brain that make you want to keep playing.

The gym challenges before the gym battles themselves are very hit or miss. On one hand we have creative ideas, like trying to gain points by catching/defeating Pokémon while also having to deal with an NPC trying to sabotage you, we have things that give a unique gameplay mechanic that we've never seen before in Pokémon, like the spinning cup thing, or Wooloo herding. Then we have ideas that aren't necessarily bad, but aren't new, like the water maze feels very similar to past gyms with switches/levels to control water flow. But then the last 2 gyms just gave up completely and made the pre-leader challenges just a bunch of trainer fights. Even the fairy gym, which is done in the style of a quiz - not a new concept, but they try to make it feel fresh by adding stat boosts/debuffs depending on your answer - feels worse than old versions as the questions no longer test your knowledge of Pokémon and instead just ask dumb questions about the gym leader that feel like they're purposely set up to trick you. Overall it's a promising concept that just wasn't utilised very well outside of a couple of gyms.

I had fun with the game, and other than a certain lack of undeniable cheapness in certain scripted events, which give the impression this was a 3DS game, it does its job just fine. What's wrong with it is what it doesn't have, because there's so much damn potential in this game just begging to come out. This could have easily been the best game in the series if they just put in some extra effort.