Fhujeth Rawr

Gonna say what I liked, hated, and thoughts, as a long-time fan and gamer. PLA is a fun POKEMON experience that fans will find refreshing in a lot of ways. You're running around an open world that has the same aesthetics and freedom as games like Genshin and Breath of the Wild. You can traditionally challenge Pokemon to catch them or attempt to use food, stealth, and tact to catch them. The quest system is similar to that of most open-world RPGs. You are given a location and a task and told where to go, and you can go there however you'd like to go. Filling the Pokedex is a little extra work, since you need to see Pokemon do different things to fill in the data. Unfortunately, that is where it stops. The game feels extremely incomplete and leaves you wanting so much more that, with my experience with the franchise, I will never get to see. The animations of wild pokemon are fairly limited. Although cute to see them sleep, the majority of the animations are recycled from Pokemon GO and other 3D games. Crafting feels like a pointless chore (you make enough money through the main story research to buy what you need from shops). Quests are repetitive, and usually, just involve filling out a Pokedex entry to show an NPC or catching a Pokemon. The graphics are extremely subpar. When going fast on any of the mounts, the world turns into this flat surface. It feels void of life at times, yet very full and vibrant in other parts. It is exciting to get ganged upon by a lot of Pokemon and have to run for your life. In short, it was a fun experience that as a serious Pokemon fan, I really respected and enjoyed. It was not worth the price tag and if it was not a Pokemon game I would have given it 0 stars. When you're trying to emulate games like Skyrim, Genshin Impact, and Breath of the Wild, you can't skimp out. This is a fresh experience for Pokemon but when compared to other games of this genre it would not even hold a candle to anything out in the last 15 years. This feels like the Alpha version of a game that someone is trying to pass off as a full experience. I heard there is DLC for this so I can only hope that it'll give us a more satisfying experience.