Honestly... for all its flaws, I absolutely LOVE Pokemon Scarlet. I was delighted the entire time I played. I kept laughing giddily and saying stuff like "I can't believe this is a Pokemon game." The open-world aspect is fantastic, and the story is wonderful... definitely a jump up from Gen 8's. I very much enjoyed the new Pokemon, too-- although I wasn't big on any of the starters.

I understand that it's a buggy game. But the core gameplay loop and story work, and that's what's important to me. Bugs can be fixed later, whereas those other elements can't, really... and that's why it beats out Sword and Shield in my mind. It was just FUN TO PLAY, and hopefully the issues will be fixed with time.

That said, I don't appreciate the crunch Gamefreak is under. This game should have been allowed more time in the cooker, that way it could have been even better. They shouldn't have had to choose between a fun/ambitious game and a glitchless game in the first place. But I appreciate what they did with the time they had. I think they made something really, really wondeful.

My only complaint is that the environments are a little samey and there's not much to do in the postgame. Overall, though, I loved it, and I hope the series continues to go in this direction... at least with regards to its gameplay. The development cycle aspect could 100% use some work.

I was pleasantly surprised by just how much I liked this one! It seems 2D Kirby has come a long way since I last played it as a kid. I loved the foreground and background exploration, even if I never actually felt the desire to use the 3DS's 3D capabilities. The story was fun, and I love Sectonia and Taranza... although I'm not a big fan of 'pause screen lore' and how it's implemented. It's too easy to miss. Dededetour was an awesome extra game mode, and absolutely a way to spice things up as opposed to just doing Metaknightmare again. Great game overall! My favorite copy ability was Beetle.