Kien Nguyen

Pokemon continues its decline in what is another technical and artistic failure of a game. ZA threw out everything that made Arceus innovative and interesting. Instead it adopted a watered down version of Xenoblade's combat that is buggy and unresponsive. The city looks like it's constantly in the middle of rendering textures, with painted on balconies and windows/doors. No wonder the game ran great, because there's nothing to load. Worst of all, the lack of story cohesion and voice acting makes this an abysmal experience to trot through. The drawn out tutorials and silent cutscenes added to this general feeling of disconnection to the world and characters. It's amazing that Pokemon is a multi billion dollar franchise and yet so little budget has been put towards creating a quality product. Instead of focusing on their own games, Nintendo instead used that to engage in useless legal battles with much smaller indie games like Palworld. Worst of all, this game is still going to be a financial success for them, purely because Nintendo has mastered the art of recycling nostalgia and cultivating a rabid fanbase mindlessly loyal to their brand that will support anything remotely Pokemon adjacent. If you're a diehard Pokemon fan, this game may be fun. There are good things to it, like the new Mega designs and the derivative but different battle system. However, ask yourself whether this game is worth $70. In my opinion, the answer is no.