>>40785711Defense:
This is the most polished Pokémon game we’ve ever had visually. EVEN WITH shittree. The player characters and NPCs are the most expressive we’ve had, even with the reused animations. The particle effects on attacks look better than ever. The scale of buildings is grander than ever. The colors fix the desaturation effect so many Pokémon had last gen. It is NOT up to other switch games’ par, but it IS more than we’ve seen before - plus being playable on my home TV are enough for me. Gen V had some fantastic 2.5d in areas, but the region felt too much like “here’s a grassy route and now you’re in a desert, have fun”, lacking balance. Gen IV also was polished, but the battle animations were not great and moved too slowly. Those things matter to me, visually, and I want to give this game a shot.
In addition to that, I genuinely like many of the new Pokémon. On a scale of love it to hate it, including Galarian forms and other forms (gender, legendaries, etc), I love 16 and like 41. The pseudo, Cramorant, and Cursola may be some of my favorite Pokémon to date. Granted, it also includes my new bottom five least favorite Pokémon (Alcremie, the base apple, Galarian Weezing, Drizzile, and worst of all, Blipbug), ALL of which overtake Mankey, my least favorite Pokémon since forever. But I’ll take the wins.
Lastly, I’ve wanted a traditional game with overworld encounters forever. I’m curious to see how they work in terms of shiny hunting and with the fluidity of PC movement (or lack thereof).
I will also buy the Gen IV remakes that, based upon the distribution of Pokémon left out, SEEM inevitable.
Five of my top six Pokémon didn’t make it into this game, and 400 feels like a slap to the face, but I am excited to try out what we get. Worst case, I’ll sell the game back to the game store and that’ll be one future copy of the game where the proceeds don’t directly affect GF. Best, I’ll like and keep it.
