We haven't gotten too far in, but this just feels like a really watered down Lethal Company in nearly every single aspect. The environments, while a cool idea, are so bland and boring that everything meshes together into a labyrinth of pure headaches. I'm sure it was on purpose, but it's not much fun to deal with when everything is so grey. In Lethal Company I can at least have fun exploring the depths of the mansion map or go to Embrion during eclipse for shits and giggles to keep things fresh, this doesn't really have anything to keep it from getting stale. One thing this does have over Lethal Company would be the emote system, which is something that the former desperately needs outside of modding at this point. I know I shouldn't be comparing this too much to Lethal Company, but I couldn't help but do so the entire time we played. Maybe it'll get better as we play more, if we do.

I went in completely nostalgia blind to when I played the ever-living crap out of the Wii version when I was a little kid (83 hours from that alone), and if I'm being completely honest, it still mostly holds up. Well, the hero campaign does at least. The concept of the villain campaign is so cool, but it is the most irritating experience I've had with Lego ever since The Complete Sagas vehicle missions. There are so many cops and SWAT members spawning to the point that it's super irritating and really drags out a missions length-time, since one punch from them causes you to stop focusing on whatever puzzle or build you were just doing to fight the enemy. I'm glad this is something they fixed in the later games, because it just becomes an annoying nuisance. Also the vehicle missions do suck in this game, that's a common complaint I've heard across the board. The thing is I actually enjoyed the first vehicle mission, it was kind of fun. But the moment I got into the boat mission, I remembered why people hated them. Overall still a good experience, but I don't see myself playing this one again over other Lego games. Case in point, I 100%'d Lego Batman 3 for the fourth time before even finishing the villain campaign for this game.

How do you take one of the most simple card games of all time and make it a barely functional mess where people are booted from games left and right because Ubisoft can't correctly optimise their games? There were so many hoops I had to jump through just to OPEN the game, and when I went in I found out they removed a lot of custom features from the game, such as profile pictures and cards. And other features that weren't removed were turned into 'DLC' that you had to pay for despite the fact you already payed for the barely functioning game in the first place. You'd be better off keeping your $10 and just using the web browser version of the game or Tabletop Simulator.

I decided to skip a Johto game for now since I don't have very fond feelings towards the structure of those games, but man I love Hoenn's dex. It has probably the most stacked starters out of any of the regions, like for crying out loud there's MUDKIP, my goat. Everything they do new in Emerald compared to Ruby and Sapphire is also very fun, while also allowing you to catch what were previously version exclusives. Even Platinum didn't let you do that. My only problem is that Hoenn is a jagged mess of a region design where you kinda have to look up a guide on where to go. There were so many cases of backtracking, especially around the 4-5th gym areas. It might've been the first time I actually used the map in one of the games outside of for flying. Overall, a good Pokemon game, Wallace is king, and no I'm not doing Battle Frontier.