Genuinely the worst in the series so far, I’d rather play Platinum again if I ever wanted to go through Sinnoh again. First time I’ve ever used the amie features because it’s forced and it genuinely felt like cheating, I wiped Cynthia’s team not due to skill but because my Toxicroak survived 3 1HKO earthquakes because “it wanted me not to worry”.
The underground being a main selling point is bullshit, it’s only useful in post game and even then the encounter rates are so low for what you actually want there’s no point bothering.
Sticky controls make navigating the thing/trying to avoid Pokémon in the underground a genuine slog, things you should normally walk over like a small leaf are solid objects.
The Ramnas park shit could have been fun if it wasn’t tied to the hell hole that is the digging mini game, hours wasted on walls that are all rocks and iron bars with two small orbs in totally opposite corners.
I’ve had the game force close on me multiple times, once when starting a Grunt battle, another after I’d just finished the Hall of Fame/just before the credits.
There’s no point to being able to play online in the underground as you can’t talk to anyone. The closest you’ll get is being raided by random sledgehammers on your screen whilst digging, it does nothing to your wall and is just distracting.
Going through your item bag sounds like hitting a pile of jellyfish with a bag of hammers.
The shiny charm is just as hard to obtain but has been nerfed meaning there’s nothing to gain from actually finishing your national dex.
The trainer animations in battle, both you and your opponents look stiff and badly animated. The overworld art style doesn’t fit the whole story of Sinnoh at all, hard to take Cyrus’ plan of ending the universe serious when he looks like a starved baby sim.
The one thing it actually does have that I liked a lot is the battle backgrounds.
2/10- just play platinum.
