The greatest Pokemon game ever made that is just screaming out to have a follow-up because of it's deficiencies. The game is simply just too easy. I wish there was a mode in here akin to BOTW's master mode but even that wouldn't fix everything. The fact is that Pokemon are not nearly scary enough to justify the narrative and marketing for this game. This is supposed to be a world before humans and Pokemon lived together, where Pokemon are dangerous wild animals. But you can instantly back out of any encounter, or dodge encounters completely with the VERY FIRST mount that you get. What's more odd is the random difficulty spikes that make no sense. You can breeze through most of the game but there are a few fights towards the end that are unreasonable considering how the rest of the game plays. Also, anyone who says this is Pokemon + BOTW is straight up lying to you. This is an open areas game not an open world game, and it is not nearly packed in with as much meaningful content. Grinding the pokedex is also pretty tedious. The controls are unintuitive. The resource economy is frustrating because it can't keep up with the pace of game (you have to grind resources more than you have to grind the dex, meaning you'll have to explore areas with no real reason to catch or battle pokemon). That all being said, the change up to the battle system plus stealth action sniping of wild pokemon and the grit system easily puts this above any mainline entry. I am very critical of this game, but at the end of the day its pokemon with a bunch of innovations that are very welcome.