Christopher Boucher

Disclaimer: I did not make it past the intro before turning the game off in bitter disappointment. This is an OK Pokemon game that is set in a poorly implemented open world. If you are expecting performance like Breath of the Wild you will be disappointed. This game's open world is outperformed by not only the wild area from SwSh, but the entire Legends: Arceus game performs better, and that one had noticeable stuttering. Now for the gameplay. Controls are stiff, every time a cinematic starts or ends there is a noticeable 2-3 seconds of non-responsiveness while the game "switches" between the gameplay and cinematic frames. I kept thinking my joycon was disconnecting. Any NPC or Pokemon more than a few feet away drops frames like nobody's business. I was in the university library and stood next to the student study booths. Just by turning my camera I had students popping in to the study booths right next to me. I can forgive the technical issues, since there is at least the hope that they will patch those out. But then I saw the cinematic introducing Koraidon. Oh man what a mess. In the cave scene where you get ambushed by a Houndoom, it is set up like a no-win battle, which is fine for narrative purposes, but the entire scenario design was so poorly implemented that I had to put the game down for a minute. Here is how they played this out: I get to click "fight". Then the game skips the "choose an attack" box altogether. A message popped up saying "Houndoom used Crunch" the game then did nothing for about 3 seconds as it switched to "cinematic mode" in cinematic, Houndoom uses Roar to send my Pokemon back. What. This is such poor scenario design I'm certain they had an intern set this up. I could have (and have in the past) made this scenario better in RPGMaker. If Houndoom is supposed to use Roar in a cinematic, why does it even know Crunch? Roar should have been the only move in its set, or better yet have the whole fight be a cinematic. It skipped half of my turn anyway so what does it matter? Sloppy the whole way through. Obviously they aren't going to patch out this horrid scenario set-up, since it isn't a bug, just sheer incompetence from the scenario designer. Played a little more, but turned it off after laughing at the pop-in NPCs in the university for a bit. 2/10 if this wasn't a borrowed copy I would be returning it. Planned on getting the duo pack with my wife, now neither of us want it. its not worth the time it took to borrow it, i feel truly sorry for anyone who spent money on this amateur mess, since most indie games i've played for half this price this year alone have higher production value.