3.75/5 Stars
As somebody who recently turned 20 and has been playing pokemon for the last 15 odd years, I'm not sure what to say, the story is mediocre at best which is honestly standard for most main series Pokemon games(besides Gen 5), and I feel the overall direction of the games becoming quite a bit easier over the years is a bit of a disappointment, however when I first stepped into the wild area, and then again when I entered my first raid battle, it was like I fell in love with this franchise all over again and after a week of playing I'm still enjoying shiny hunting and doing raids(even if the NPC trainers are complete garbage), even the battle tree is fun with the addition of rental teams that make it a bit simpler to just do a run through without having to already have competitive pokemon at the ready...even without a good number of our amazing friends making it into the game(rip national dex :( they are shaping up to be a fun casual experience