Kairosite
2019
It's genuinely disheartening to see so much production thrown at such an incredibly bland story. This could be forgiven if the gameplay itself held up, but it doesn't. The difficulty curve is all wrong, resulting in an early grind that flatlines to a pushover of a final boss. The sound and visuals are great but cannot carry a game with no substance. I don't understand why this game is rated well, but its left me disappointed
2019
Best theming for a Pokemon game - styling it after sports championships with giant arenas and fans is really fun and a smart choice. Dynamax goes hard, the music is great, and it's visually gorgeous - I can't understand why that's critiqued. The story however feels very much incomplete, there's a number of potentially interesting things in there but it feels rushed out. Gameplay is still too easy, I needed to swap my team around constantly to not overlevel and ruin the fun - but that's how every modern Pokemon has been, it needs fixing but this game is not uniquely bad for it. The postgame is entirely lackluster, the trend unfortunately seems to be DLC as a replacement. The Pokemon games need to lengthen the development cycle again, there's something really special here but it's not given the time to reach full potential