The push mechanic being the most bothersome thing to ever be put into these games aside, gameplay wise this is the best PMD without a shadow of a doubt, but unfortunately the game is also littered with very clunky feeling movement and menuing that were never an issue in Rescue Team and Explorers.
The story itself is ok but unfortunately it lacks the memorable and very human characters Explorers had, this said, I think it is still worth a playthrough for the gameplay and just to see the cool shonen shit they cooked up in the cutscenes.

After having played this like 5 times over in the span of a month with 5 different builds, this is an amazing game but it really does need atleast a PC port or next gen patch for 60 fps, since the "30" (barely reaches 28/27 even on PS5) FPS lock really hurts to play combined with the motion blur you can't turn off anywhere in-game (and maybe changing jump from circle to L3).
Other than that while I very much dislike the beast bosses minus Ludwig and Gascoigne's phase 2, the atmosphere of this game is amazing, the areas are intricate and very well designed, the trick weapons are fresh and very fun to use and let this game shine when it comes to combat, parrying is a bit inconsistent but it is great that now bosses are way more involved with that mechanic, fuck Nightmare of Mensis tho.

After replaying this on Final Fantasy mode to get the platinum trophy, it became more and more apparent to me that this game feels like it was developed by two very distinct parties, one that wanted to make a really fun, over the top action game with a pretty good story, albheit formulaic, and the party that wanted to make the most boring game ever by littering it with braindead fetch quests and walking sections that slow you down to a crawl taking all control away from you.
If the "sidequests" budget went into other things I feel this game could be so much more, cut down the bloat, and make something more tight and compact, but hey this is modern triple A gaming, gotta get that target playtime by all means, otherwise it's not good enough.
I would score this lower, but the bossfights really are just that good tbh.

RePlayed on Challenge Mode with Set Mode and no items in battle.

While I still prefer BW1 for how much more Impactful the plot of those games is, BW2 takes the cake for being the best Pokemon Game on a balancing, content and difficulty front, this game is just perfect, and playing Challenge mode for the first time confirmed that idea to me, is it the hardest game ever? No it doesn't need to be, it's not even really hard per se, but there are multiple situations where you NEED to think "ok, how am I gonna get out of this".
Seriously play this game if you haven't already, it is well worth your time.