Game is short and has a lot of the charm and replayability of Beeny. I'd appreciate some more restriction and stuff to do in-game.

They were aware of the size of their levels and made it so it was fun to move around in them quickly. Good objectives and variety in the levels, and environmental stuff. I liked revisiting all the levels at the end and in a second playthrough. They probably could have reused some more things later, especially from level 5.

There are a lot of nitpicks that I feel like wouldn't have been huge problems to add to the game. There's no menu to manage save files or exit the game without Alt-F4ing. I also didn't know about crouching until I completed the game and hit Ctrl, that's not mapped on controller and there's no obvious way to remap controls.

Some harder improvements I'd appreciate in another game are camera cues and ways to make the movement not-as-free to sequence-break in the tower or tall-wall levels. I played the game twice, but in later playthroughs I need to restrain myself from climbing the walls so much in some levels.

I'll gladly play a sequel to this game to see what they can do with more levels.

It was definitely a comfortable and good gameplay loop and I took extra time to mess around before progressing the story in each area. I got less patient with the areas later on, especially since the fast-traversal* methods are so hacky and easy.

The story really dragged down the experience for me, I could not care about the characters' interactions and just let the text drone on after about 2 meetings with the department head, and I felt like I got the gist. And yet it still feels like they threw in a lot in the last hour or two of this game. I don't care that I didn't get the "true ending" for not doing post-game. I did everything I wanted to with Pokemon in the field, beat the end and got credits, so by my count I was done with the game.

The amount of grinding and options for Pokemon to use in the field feels borderline overwhelming. I wanted to be pretty loose with who would end up on my final team, but by the end I was getting bored, so I had to lock in to my team and do a little running/grinding to get the story overwith. I do like the idea of going out and fully completing a Pokedex entry or getting those done in a region as busywork. That would be the reason I turn this game back on. I won't go in expecting an optimal path through picking my final working team for that kind of task. That can be tough since for me, the bells ring in my head if I'm using a "bad" Pokemon. I definitely won't start a fresh file when I first revisit this.

The controls can be a bit much, every button does something and I'd hope for some more robust actions and quick menus instead of a lot of mapped actions. Idk, maybe I should play a Dark Souls to get it.

Overall I still like what they did with the concept, it's definitely what my friends and I were dreaming of on the bus as kids for "the next Pokemon game." You go out into the wild and hunt/catch Pokemon, run away, and still have Pokemon/RPG quest elements. It's fun for the amount of hours I put in, and I wish the story and bloat would not be a barrier for me wanting to replay it or pick it back up.