Frustrating Pokémon entry that reveals a lot of the series' potential with much-needed innovations – at the cost of being a technical mess.
+ great sense of exploration with an immediately open and lively world
+ excellent Pokémon mount that gradually becomes more useful
+ many convenient changes in gameplay and UI (seamless battles, auto healing, easy fighting move adjustments, open Pokémon centers, etc.)
+ down-to-earth writing in both the main plot and side stories
+ varied roster of well-modeled Pokémon
+ enjoyable TM acquisition (searching and crafting)
- half-hearted battle animations with needless pauses afterward
- interesting bonus objectives brought down by repetitive execution
- comically bad cooking mechanic
- sad cities filled with copy-pasted store fronts instead of explorable buildings
- atrocious performance given the poor graphical fidelity (hideous textures, constant pop-ins, low FPS animations, etc.)