>>45388081>Story6/10 pre-Macro Cosmos (I liked that the gym challenge was the biggest focus of the story, and how much spectacle they put on it. I'm tired of all these bullshit Chosen One multiverse anime plots in Pokemon games. Leon and Hop feel like broken records though, and it gets old.)
1/10 post-Macro Cosmos (ROSE LITERALLY CAN'T A SINGLE DAY TO POSTPONE A CALAMITY THAT'S 1,000 YEARS AWAY, FOR WHAT REASON)
>Game Design5/10 (It's yet another by-the-books Pokemon game, but with a lifeless and tedious open world area that's only fun for the first few hours. Weak "dungeons" and very little in the way of optional exploration, which I guess is the norm now. Dynamax and Max Raids suck, and are too slow.)
>Difficulty5/10 (The devs try more aggressively than ever to pamper the player and make the game mindless, especially with the new Exp. Share mechanics. You have to go far out of your way to gimp yourself if you want anything remotely resembling a challenge. I'll be more generous with my points here though because Pokemon shouldn't be Dark Souls hard to begin with.)
>Post Game3/10 (Sordward/Shielbert were amusing specifically because GameFreak showed an odd level of self-awareness with them, but like other new Pokemon games, there's hardly anything to do after the credits roll.)
>Character Design4/10 (The sports uniforms ruin almost every gym leader design, and there are very few side characters to flesh out the world.)
>Monster Design7/10 (I like gen 8's Pokemon a lot more than most people, but I still can't shake the "these look nothing like Pokemon" feeling a lot of the time. Most of the Galarian forms are great. The starter trio is REALLY bad.)
>Gameplay3/10 (The game is the same on-rails cutscene-fest as SM/USUM, but it's only slightly sneakier about it. Even the big climax of the game is riding up an elevator while fighting against underleveled steel-type specialists as Hop babies you the whole time.)
>Total4.25/10, I don't like it.
