I have changed my opinion on this game so many times, and it's still hard for me to form a proper opinion given that Pokemon Pearl has almost an even split of good and bad qualities. This game's environment and world-building are stellar, with fun characters, and an extremely colorful main story with Team Galactic. While Pokemon isn't necessarily known for its terrific writing, Team Galactic seems like a genuine threat throughout the story, and the endgame where Cyrus and the numerous other Galactic Commanders are fought is thrilling. And, at its most fundamental level, Pokemon Pearl has charm pouring out of every corner with the characters mentioned above, the Poketch providing apps to use in-game, and again, the incredibly dynamic and thoughtful routes, while just providing a baseline level of quality for Pokemon games up until this point. Even your rival in the game, Barry, is full of character and spunk, contrary to many of the rivals in modern titles, who've grown to just be boring and lifeless husks of characters.
But oh my god this game has its fair share of issues. Firstly, multiple factors contribute this to being extremely boring for me. I'm not a big fan of the slower pace of the game at all, on top of the occasional overworld hazards (mainly swamps and blizzards) and many sections of this game just aren't fun at all, especially if you're stuck in multi-turn moves (bind, wrap, leech seed), or any of the Pokemon on the field are inflicted with a status move; battles, while they function very well, often move excruciatingly slow. This game lacks variety as well; the memes of Pokemon Pearl players having the same team are alarmingly real, as there is only a small handful of Pokemon to choose from in the first half of the game and a slightly bigger handful added in the second half. Pokemon Pearl lacks variety in its environments as well, whereas even the most polarized games in this series at least have variety in its locations, but there are a total of 5 types of locations that I can think of: grass (which is the majority of the game), blizzards, water, and the occasional beaches. I don't believe that taking the same routes and adding an obnoxious mud gimmick adds variety to the swamp areas. Not to mention this game's balancing is atrocious, with an awful level curve in the middle of the game, and there only being 2 fire types in the whole game. Not to mention, the REQUIREMENT to use every single HM toward the end of the game is genuinely obnoxious and wastes valuable move slots. Pokemon Pearl is a fine game, but compared to some of the better entries in the series, it has too many shortcomings for me to really consider it "great."
But oh my god this game has its fair share of issues. Firstly, multiple factors contribute this to being extremely boring for me. I'm not a big fan of the slower pace of the game at all, on top of the occasional overworld hazards (mainly swamps and blizzards) and many sections of this game just aren't fun at all, especially if you're stuck in multi-turn moves (bind, wrap, leech seed), or any of the Pokemon on the field are inflicted with a status move; battles, while they function very well, often move excruciatingly slow. This game lacks variety as well; the memes of Pokemon Pearl players having the same team are alarmingly real, as there is only a small handful of Pokemon to choose from in the first half of the game and a slightly bigger handful added in the second half. Pokemon Pearl lacks variety in its environments as well, whereas even the most polarized games in this series at least have variety in its locations, but there are a total of 5 types of locations that I can think of: grass (which is the majority of the game), blizzards, water, and the occasional beaches. I don't believe that taking the same routes and adding an obnoxious mud gimmick adds variety to the swamp areas. Not to mention this game's balancing is atrocious, with an awful level curve in the middle of the game, and there only being 2 fire types in the whole game. Not to mention, the REQUIREMENT to use every single HM toward the end of the game is genuinely obnoxious and wastes valuable move slots. Pokemon Pearl is a fine game, but compared to some of the better entries in the series, it has too many shortcomings for me to really consider it "great."