TL;DR: These would be the best Pokémon games easily if they didn't run like a PowerPoint presentation. If this gets a patch that at least makes it run at a stable framerate, even just 30 fps, I would bump this up to a 4.
-Review here-
I want so badly to recommend this generation of Pokémon, but I can't because the games run so horribly and there's no excuse for it whatsoever. While there are points where it almost seems like the game runs fine, most of the time I was out exploring it felt like the game was running in slow motion at the best of times and 10fps at the worst. The game also does not look visually pleasing at all in the overworld, although some towns looked fine and one area even impressed me enough to stop and take a couple pictures. It's immediately obvious to anyone that these games needed another year or two of development time before they would be ready to release, though.
Despite all that though, I did find a lot to like. I liked most if not all of the new Pokémon, and I liked the way the new Gym format utilized the towns for the Gym tests rather than being inside and having some arbitrary puzzle based on the Pokémon type; I also feel like this allowed the Gym Leaders to be more expressive and personable than ever (the Normal-type leader just being some random businessman named Larry is absolutely hilarious). Terastalizing is the new battle mechanic of this game and I think it might be my favorite since Mega Evolution and I liked the depth it adds to raising your Pokémon; although the game is so easy that I rarely felt incentivized to use it at all since I could one shot almost everything. The story was one of the best in the series, and I enjoyed each character you meet, with a surprising amount of depth to some of them. I also enjoyed that there was more to do aside from going to each town, complete the gym challenge, and become champion. While collecting gym badges lets Pokémon listen to you as usual, it also lets you catch Pokémon easier, too, but I also liked how the other two stories also utilized the new gameplay mechanics of this game, namely the new traversal with this game's mascot robot dinosaur and the Let's Go mode where you send your lead Pokémon out to roam around and defeat wild Pokémon for you (which also nets you exp and material used for crafting TMs, another system I liked). Hunting Titan Pokémon to upgrade Koraidon/Miraidon's traversal capabilities was a cool idea, and you get a BotW-esque sense of freedom once they're completed. Team Star requires you to use Let's Go to defeat 30 Pokémon sent out in hordes before you can fight the boss at each base. Unfortunately, I have one more complaint to make, and that's the lack of any dynamic difficulty scaling, which this game desperately needs, because it's not fun to go around one side of the region, then end on the other side and find that everything is back to being level 20 and below — including Gym Leaders, Titans, and Team Star — and just steamrolling all of it because nothing can stand up to my Tinkaton and her massive hammer. I have to give a lot of praise to the music though, as this is one of the best soundtracks in the series (I even liked the Ed Sheeran song, but I barely knew who he was before this game and that shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me).
Game Freak, please fix your damn game and spend more time making them. You could have had something special here, possibly even a GOTY contender. Even though I gave this a mediocre score, I did still personally enjoy it a lot.
-Review here-
I want so badly to recommend this generation of Pokémon, but I can't because the games run so horribly and there's no excuse for it whatsoever. While there are points where it almost seems like the game runs fine, most of the time I was out exploring it felt like the game was running in slow motion at the best of times and 10fps at the worst. The game also does not look visually pleasing at all in the overworld, although some towns looked fine and one area even impressed me enough to stop and take a couple pictures. It's immediately obvious to anyone that these games needed another year or two of development time before they would be ready to release, though.
Despite all that though, I did find a lot to like. I liked most if not all of the new Pokémon, and I liked the way the new Gym format utilized the towns for the Gym tests rather than being inside and having some arbitrary puzzle based on the Pokémon type; I also feel like this allowed the Gym Leaders to be more expressive and personable than ever (the Normal-type leader just being some random businessman named Larry is absolutely hilarious). Terastalizing is the new battle mechanic of this game and I think it might be my favorite since Mega Evolution and I liked the depth it adds to raising your Pokémon; although the game is so easy that I rarely felt incentivized to use it at all since I could one shot almost everything. The story was one of the best in the series, and I enjoyed each character you meet, with a surprising amount of depth to some of them. I also enjoyed that there was more to do aside from going to each town, complete the gym challenge, and become champion. While collecting gym badges lets Pokémon listen to you as usual, it also lets you catch Pokémon easier, too, but I also liked how the other two stories also utilized the new gameplay mechanics of this game, namely the new traversal with this game's mascot robot dinosaur and the Let's Go mode where you send your lead Pokémon out to roam around and defeat wild Pokémon for you (which also nets you exp and material used for crafting TMs, another system I liked). Hunting Titan Pokémon to upgrade Koraidon/Miraidon's traversal capabilities was a cool idea, and you get a BotW-esque sense of freedom once they're completed. Team Star requires you to use Let's Go to defeat 30 Pokémon sent out in hordes before you can fight the boss at each base. Unfortunately, I have one more complaint to make, and that's the lack of any dynamic difficulty scaling, which this game desperately needs, because it's not fun to go around one side of the region, then end on the other side and find that everything is back to being level 20 and below — including Gym Leaders, Titans, and Team Star — and just steamrolling all of it because nothing can stand up to my Tinkaton and her massive hammer. I have to give a lot of praise to the music though, as this is one of the best soundtracks in the series (I even liked the Ed Sheeran song, but I barely knew who he was before this game and that shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me).
Game Freak, please fix your damn game and spend more time making them. You could have had something special here, possibly even a GOTY contender. Even though I gave this a mediocre score, I did still personally enjoy it a lot.