Great game, While graphically unimpressive the gameplay is wonderful! The game really opens up once you do the tutorial, and the alpha pokemon are a fun challenge to fight while doing the story they act like optional boss fights and are really well paced for each area. Trying to survive an onslaught of of attacks while sprinkling in your pokemons attacks makes for a great battle system overall. While the game was still on the easier side of gaming they still gave some good challenges throughout, while still letting players make it easier with the use of xp candies. The online has been fun to do with very little problems usually everything is perfect for the entire game, if something does go wrong its at the beginning of a match if someone doesn't have a good connection. There were some problems that left me giving it a 4 star though.
Graphics - Everyone knows, most exaggerate how bad it is, didn't really bother me during my entire playthrough.
Controls - The controls are generally okay, but there are some issues like how you can't roll while targeting (minor issue honestly) or some moves, eg. Dig will have the user become un-targetable making it impossible to use protect against the move unless you can target something random like a rock.
The pros to the this game though greatly outway:
-Fresh and Fun new battle system
-Following pokemon
-Fun online battles
-Major ease of access to competitive items, once past main story
-Including the EV reducing berries
-Can easily afford vitamins to ev train
-Can easily buy items like Focus sash, Life Orb, etc.
-Mega evolutions is now more of a choice to make since you can still just boost a move using some of the mega energy (More relevant for online matches)