A higher-resolution 3DS game that shed a lot of the roster for no apparent reason. Each of your three rivals has something of an arc, which is charming, but the story is otherwise a series of unconnected bullet points.

A cash grab that had to harm the story to fit the mascot Pokemon into it. However, it did have some neat stuff like the Ultra Necrozma fight and the Battle Agency.

When you get down to it, the only thing dragging this one down is cutscene spam.

XY but hype.

If you play one Pokemon game, make it this one. Chock-full of Pokemon and activities. Black Tower/White Forest is probably the best idea the series has ever had.

XY is in a weird position where it was really cool at the time but is pretty barebones in retrospect, and also feels like the start of a decline in quality.

Pokemon hasn't told a story like this before or since.

There's a weirdly sharp level curve around the time of the last gym to the Pokemon League. Going to Kanto after the League is pretty neat, but there's not a whole lot going on there. Otherwise, a solid entry.

I think I've played this five times now.

My second Pokemon game. I played it three times to transfer all the starters to Pearl, but oddly enough I don't remember it all that well.

A beautiful world with a jazzy soundtrack, but very clunky. 5/5 in my heart, but didn't age very well.

Somewhere in Anor Londo I realized that the game was just fucking with me.

Everything good about this game is offset by bad design or Rockstar trying to wring money out of you, then offset again by an unforgivable number of bugs. I only picked it up, and only enjoyed it, because I happened to have a group of friends playing it regularly. We're all pretty burnt out now, though; after the current outlaw pass concludes, who's to say if the Dirty Dan gang will ever ride again?

Is it more tactical than the main game? Technically yes, but unfortunately that's achieved by swamping you in an unbelievable number of enemies. The fights were just plain exhausting.

Leans more into the RPG side than the strategy side of its strategy RPG family, but in this case that's hardly a weakness. A buffet of characters and stories. It also has the least restricted unit building in the series, so you can really go ham in customizing your army. Repeat playthroughs are encouraged, but the first half is the same for all routes and gets old very quickly.