Why do people hate these games again? Story is serviceable but probably the worst thing about the game, but the new items are great and just have this soulful feel unlike the previous gen, expeditions are a fine gimmick and add some much needed strategy, and they fully embrace the gimmick, making an entire chapter be focused on them, there are more interesting rivals, the evil team is more interesting than any previous ones, it had almost all pokemon at the time and they made new sprites of every pokemon, and theres the exp share. Luckily, you can turn it off whenever you want, so you can have it on to help a low level team member out a little bit and then turn it off after youre done so you arent as handholded and overleveled. Theres so much to read, including a lot of unskippable cutscenes. The last quarter of the game is just scrolling through pointless dialogue and discovering some plot twists, and there’s tons of agency with that. In addition, the pacing is great. And I haven’t even touched on the amazing third version or postgamr yet