Updated review. Have about 120 hours in it now. Still love this game. While this review is going to sound negative, I just wanted to address my faults with it since I feel that's easier than addressing everything the game does right.
My main gripe with the game is it's soooo grindy. Even with how much the game showers you in egg vouchers, the egg grind is immense. There's hundreds of starters and 4 egg moves to unlock for each of them meaning it's going to take hatching the same pokemon at least 4 times in the best case scenario and it's likely to take much more.
If you've never played, these egg moves are often incredibly powerful and can make or break a pokemon. The main issue is that after you hatch that pokemon again, there's a chance you just roll the same egg move again and get nothing. For example, I got a legendary egg and hatched a Terapagos that got Moonblast as an egg move then I got another legendary egg only for it to be another Terapagos that didn't even roll an egg move. This is really frustrating since it can take hundreds of eggs to get another legendary egg and rolling the same pokemon and not even getting a new egg move is basically a wasted egg. The easiest way to fix this would just to make it so you get a new egg move every time you hatch it. This may take away from the grind too much so even just making it for just epics and legendaries would suffice.
Another major grind of the game is the passives. These are powerful second abilities that usually synergize with a pokemon's main ability. They require a large amount of candies to unlock that can be obtained from using the pokemon or catching copies of it. The problem is that you get these candies so slowly, that it will likely take you 2-3 runs with each pokemon just to get its passive. It gets to the point where unlocking all the passives is not a feasible goal. The only fast way to unlock them is by catching shinies in endless. In a deep enough run you can max out shiny charms making shinies pretty common. Each one you catch nets a large amount of candies. However, this is a whole new grind just trying to get a good endless run going. After 120 hours of playing I've only unlocked 3 passives.
The last gripe I have is the runtime. An average classic run takes 4 hours. This is a large time commitment when losing means starting over. You can play perfectly and still lose because of an untimely crit or a crucial attack missing. After a while I just started savescumming because losing a run in the lategame is soul crushing when it means losing out on a large amount of egg vouchers. To be honest I wish classic ended on round 150 or even 100. 200 feels like too much padding.
Overall, I still really enjoy this game, but I wish they'd make changes to help alleviate the grind. It's demotivating how little I've gained in 120 hours.
My main gripe with the game is it's soooo grindy. Even with how much the game showers you in egg vouchers, the egg grind is immense. There's hundreds of starters and 4 egg moves to unlock for each of them meaning it's going to take hatching the same pokemon at least 4 times in the best case scenario and it's likely to take much more.
If you've never played, these egg moves are often incredibly powerful and can make or break a pokemon. The main issue is that after you hatch that pokemon again, there's a chance you just roll the same egg move again and get nothing. For example, I got a legendary egg and hatched a Terapagos that got Moonblast as an egg move then I got another legendary egg only for it to be another Terapagos that didn't even roll an egg move. This is really frustrating since it can take hundreds of eggs to get another legendary egg and rolling the same pokemon and not even getting a new egg move is basically a wasted egg. The easiest way to fix this would just to make it so you get a new egg move every time you hatch it. This may take away from the grind too much so even just making it for just epics and legendaries would suffice.
Another major grind of the game is the passives. These are powerful second abilities that usually synergize with a pokemon's main ability. They require a large amount of candies to unlock that can be obtained from using the pokemon or catching copies of it. The problem is that you get these candies so slowly, that it will likely take you 2-3 runs with each pokemon just to get its passive. It gets to the point where unlocking all the passives is not a feasible goal. The only fast way to unlock them is by catching shinies in endless. In a deep enough run you can max out shiny charms making shinies pretty common. Each one you catch nets a large amount of candies. However, this is a whole new grind just trying to get a good endless run going. After 120 hours of playing I've only unlocked 3 passives.
The last gripe I have is the runtime. An average classic run takes 4 hours. This is a large time commitment when losing means starting over. You can play perfectly and still lose because of an untimely crit or a crucial attack missing. After a while I just started savescumming because losing a run in the lategame is soul crushing when it means losing out on a large amount of egg vouchers. To be honest I wish classic ended on round 150 or even 100. 200 feels like too much padding.
Overall, I still really enjoy this game, but I wish they'd make changes to help alleviate the grind. It's demotivating how little I've gained in 120 hours.