Just finished one (Sky) for the first time, so no nostalgia. Here are my thoughts:
The writing is a bit childlike and, well, bad at times (characters seem to be very dimwitted and slow, they take many lines of dialogue to fit two and two together when a conclusion would be reached by a ten year old instantly; there's a part where you're forced to watch a flashback of an event that occurred just a few minutes ago).
You're not allowed to evolve until way past the endgame for no obvious reason (portraits exist for every team Pokemon in the game, so it's not like they didn't have the budget or time to implement it before the conclusions of the main missions).
Combat's pretty uneven. Multi-hit attacks are very overpowered, so you can quickly be dealt hundreds of points of damage by lower-level enemies. Status conditions like stun and sleep are overpowered as well, leaving you unable to open up your bag and take medicine or command your partner.
Team commands were kind of buggy. Sometimes my partner would wander off randomly even though I told him to stick with me, forcing me to go into the menu, tell him to stay where he is, walk over to him, and then change his command back. Also, as far as I know, there was no command to tell my partner to "Stay behind me unless I get into a battle, at which point you can walk around to my side to help me out", which is unfortunate because that's exactly what I wanted him to do most of the game. The one called "Avoid the first hit" seems to imply it would have that effect, but didn't.
On that note, AI tended to be pretty dumb. If I step on a trap tile that deals me and my partner a ton of damage, he shouldn't walk onto the tile the moment I step off. Maybe there was a higher-level IQ skill to fix that. It's pretty obvious, basic behavior so it should be low-level and unlocked quickly.
Anyway, I loved the hell out of the game. I'm going to order Blue Mystery Team right now, and probably Etrian Mystery Dungeon when it comes out.
