when i was younger this was always my favorite of the GBA power ranger games, but unfortunately it just...does not hold up on a replay. the combat is boring as (unless they're part of a mission) you can just ignore all enemies, and for the sake of your sanity i'd recommend doing so because it just gets mind-numbing not doing so after a while. there's a larger focus on platforming and completing objectives than in ninja storm, but most of the objectives generally follow the same formula (hit a certain amount of specific objects until they break or kill a certain amount of enemies), so you're pretty much out of variety by the time the first boss rolls around.

speaking of the bosses, they're...fine? i guess? there's not a whole lot going on with them and fighting them generally just involves spamming the aerial attack (your best friend in this game btw) until they die. now the megazord boss fights, on the other hand, are genuinely enjoyable bouts and the only real highlight of this game. you can even customize it with additional zords to replace the tyrannozord and tricerazord you have as your default weapons, though you have to play a minigame every few stages to actually obtain those zords. unfortunately though, as enjoyable as the megazord fights are they really don't make up for the mediocrity that is the rest of this game, so i'd recommend not bothering with it unless you're a really big dino thunder fan

i grew up with this and dino thunder/SPD on the GBA as a kid, and i was very pleasantly surprised when i replayed this one. it's a simple, but fun timewaster of a beat em up especially since there's three sets of playable characters in the wind, thunder, and samurai rangers. while they do share the same melee weapon their ranged weapons are both largely better and also have more variety, with the wind rangers (red, blue, and yellow) having a rapid-fire projectile attack, the thunder rangers (crimson and navy) having a chargeable projectile attack, and the samurai ranger (green) having a surprisingly long (at max power) flamethrower attack. they also all have different special attacks to use by pressing R, which all generally deal similar amounts of damage, increasing or decreasing depending on their range.

anyway, as i said it's really not a bad game at all (both dino thunder and SPD are unfortunately mediocre though, but those are topics for separate reviews), so give it a shot if you've got a couple hours to waste and wanna play a quick beat em up while hearing some surprisingly good GBA tunes

a good part of this game is fun albeit pretty flawed, the enemy design can be outright atrocious at times (shoutout to you, mastiffs) but it's at least fun cutting shit apart

but of course the bosses are what really shine here. even the first few bosses in this game are so good that they'd genuinely fit in with some of the best bosses games have to offer, and then they only get better from there until you hit the fucking incredible climax of a boss fight that is armstrong and have to deliberately hold yourself back from screaming the lyrics of it has to be this way

boss fights as an artform peaked in this game and it's genuinely a shame more don't take after it

as someone who kinda fell off from the official pokemon games after SM (i barely remember anything from USUM, dropped LGPE, and just skipped SwSh entirely) this was a surprisingly fun experience

while i would recommend playing renegade platinum over this, if you're seeking out an official sinnoh experience it's either this or platinum and both have their pros and cons, though i think plat wins out for the most part

i'd say the most major thing BDSP has over plat is the lack of teambuilding restrictions thanks to HMs being entirely separate from pokemon now, but at the same time there's only the DP dex available outside of the grand underground which i feel was a very bizarre and shoehorned-in design choice. don't quote me on this, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were bizarre rules and regulations ILCA had to stick to when developing this game and that was one of them

oh, and while the game as a whole is a lot easier than plat, the E4 actually gave me a really solid challenge on set mode and without using items. whoever at ILCA was in charge of the teambuilding in this game deserves a fucking raise

all-in-all, i think if you really want to play sinnoh physically and don't want to spend absurd amounts of cash on a secondhand copy of platinum, this is a great option. hell, it's probably the best pokemon game to release since sun and moon or even black 2 and white 2

this game is probably the best megaten i've played

now the story is kinda mediocre but i don't come to megaten for the story i do it because gameplay is very cool and awesome

and this game's gameplay is very cool and awesome, there are two gripes i have though

1. map is kinda dogwater but it only gets annoying in like the third area
2. new game+ options are gimped back to IV's shitty options instead of the wide variety of options there were in strange journey redux

that's about it the rest of the game cums and i can die happy after hearing the million fucking amazing battle themes in this game