after pokemon legends: arceus i was worried that a return to the traditional pokemon formula was going to feel really tired and outdated, given how much of the series was innovated there in an INCREDIBLY positive way. good think we're never going back to traditional pokemon wooo

this game takes pretty much every positive change from PLA and applies it to a more traditional style pokemon game, but with the added bonus of the open world giving you side paths that don't follow the "fight 8 gyms, get the badges, challenge the league" to keep it fresh. as a result you actually feel like you're exploring a world rather than going on a guided tour - and the side paths are actually really neat! this game has IMO the best pokemon story since B/W and having significantly more stuff to do around the world helps it out a lot - the world feels very alive, the characters are great and the story you're being given gets shockingly out there for a pokemon game. it also does a good job of making you care about the other two paths that aren't the gyms & league, even if that's all you want out of the game - i got pretty attached to the characters and even if I only cared about beating the league and ending there, i'd probably have done the other two stories anyways just to see how they progress. while you don't need to beat any of the other stories to just complete one, you will need to beat all 3 to access the post game - playing them at the same time is the best experience of course but you can also just beat one and then go back and do the other two, and they'll be much easier as well

as for music, pokemon games rarely miss and this one DOES NOT dissapoint - pretty much every song in the game is an absolute banger and the vibes while exploring are great. for a few favorites, the Legendary Pokemon theme and ALL the songs that have to do with the "final battles" (if you've beaten the game, you'll know what i mean) are incredible

mechanically, it's an open world pokemon game - one of the few things that limited PLA for me was the pseudo-open world that was really just a couple of BIG areas, but this is just straight up what you'd expect from an open world. the world is really big, there's plenty of distinction between the areas within it and little hidden sub-areas that keep it feeling fresh (where an older pokemon game would have you go to the Designated Ghost AreaTM to find ghost types, now you seek out ruins hidden within the larger areas, etc etc). there's also plenty of stuff to find in the world that's not just more pokemon - without giving any spoilers, be on the lookout for weird glowing stakes and little friends with coins. if i had one wish about the open world it would be properly level scaling in some way - while i appreciate those moments of "oh shit i took a wrong turn why is everything 30 levels above me" it does make the "beat the gyms in any order" point a little misleading since only the first two are actually interchangable - you'd have to grind significantly past the level of one to reach the level of another. this is why going back and doing the other two stories after beating one is pretty easy, nothing adjusts up to your level - i get why it's done this way (hard to pick the level to balance a pokemon game played by both competitive tryhards and 3 year olds), and overall i'm pretty okay with it, but that would push the game to a whole other level if it was 100% open "do whatever in any order"

this gen also has the largest set of new pokemon since gen 5, featuring cool new evolutions for old mons (which RULES i love when they do that) and some of the most peak pokemon designs in a while (minor spoilers ahead, nothing from postgame just random wild pokemon) - Tinkaton and Maushold are easily top 10 little friends of all time, the whole Pawmi line is great too, and some of the more secret & postgame pokemon are equally great designs as well. there's also no bad choice for the starters, all 3 have great first forms and pretty great full evos too

because you can't talk about this game without mentioning it, yes, the game runs like absolute dogshit and breaks a lot. i personally didnt run into any of the really big bugs with player models while doing online with friends, but they very much exist and your mileage may vary (and for the record, none of the bugs i've seen get in the way of playing the game, they're purely visual.) the frame drops and general lag is bad enough to be noticeable even in handheld, and while the game looks pretty good i'd definitely have preferred more resolution drops over the constant 15-20fps periods the game has now

i found myself saying "there's so much game in this game" a lot while playing it - the three story paths, an entire big pokedex to complete, the postgame (which is really great), and the in-world school which SOUNDS boring until you realize the game uses it to teach you about pokemon mechanics that people might not know, introduce new pokemon & how to get evolutions for older ones, and deepen the world and its lore. this helps to solve the issue a lot of pokemon games can have with obscure mechanics (particularly around finding/evolving certain pokemon) where you really felt like you NEEDED to look shit up to actually get them - now you have them introduced to you naturally in game.

after PLA became my favorite pokemon game of all time, i was incredibly excited to see what they'd do with a real open world in a mainline game, and IMO they nailed it. i don't personally factor tech issues into reviewing games (performance problems and such can always be fixed, and unless they're REALLY bad i always like to focus more on the game itself underneath) but with how apparent it is that this game was crunched to reach its release date i'm leaving my review at a 4.5 now. when a patch comes out to address the performance issues i'll update this to be a 5 star review EASILY - this game rules, and it'll be even easier to recommend when the performance is fixed