Handily the best Pokemon gen since at least HeartGold/SoulSilver, and if I'm being honest the only two things holding it back from me declaring it the best core Pokemon game period are 1. the technical issues, which don't really bother me but do hold the open world back from feeling legitimately immersive, and 2. the fact that I'm playing this as a jaded 34-year-old instead of a wide-eyed 12-year-old. They managed to even get me to care about the plot, which has genuinely never happened before with a Pokemon game.

Performance issues aside, this is pretty close to the dream Pokemon game I always thought about as a kid and, after the half-assed piddly nothing that was Sword/Shield, simply assumed was beyond Game Freak's talents and resources at this point. It's imperfect, sure--it would be nice if the world felt a little less empty, and if the school Persona-lite stuff was better integrated into the core gameplay, for starters--but between this and Arceus, Pokemon feels fresh and new again in a way it hasn't in a very long time, probably over half my lifetime ago, and I'm willing to overlook quite a bit in exchange for the series no longer feeling like a fossil. It's just a great game, something I didn't think I would ever be saying about a new Pokemon gen again, and it's very frustrating that a loud corner of perpetually angry fans would apparently rather have bad Pokemon games with polish than interesting ones that happen to be rough around the edges.