For the past few days I've decided to play the one mystery dungeon game I've yet to get my hands on, and I only now reached the credits. What are everyone else's thoughts? Here's mine:

I feel overall mixed on the game as a whole. The shift on balancing around item usage is interesting and puts more thought into combat encounters, definitely made the earlier game a lot harder comparatively, but that same early game they baby you so hard, to an unrealistic standard seen in previous games, both as a player and as the player character. The actual combat is fine though, I quite like it.

When it came to the story, the more I think about it, the more I become annoyed with it. Personally I am not a fan of [INSERT EXTERNAL FORCE HERE] as the conflict, didn't like it with Gates, doesn't work here. It just feels like there's a massive disconnect when it's not a pokemon, but just some physical manifestation of bad feelingsTM. I feel like they could've made things work had they done stuff differently while keeping the threat of pokemon turning to stone a real thing, it makes sense Yveltal should be the big bad or something, it literally takes the life aura of others and turns them into stone. What I found most damning was how pathetic they made Arceus look. He is showcased twice with other legendaries pondering and observing the actions going on in the world and gets stoned in the process, not having done anything. I feel like his inclusion in this should've been exempted, it could be better portrayed with the player pondering "where was arceus" during these events, could have it explained and showcased in a much better fashion when you do encounter arceus. I twists partway through the plot admittedly surprised me, but also felt so random. Also, the whole "we did this ago but fucked up" felt convoluted, while it made the twist of your partner's true identity all surprising, I can't help but feel it was shallow when you put the rest of the story and how it worked into context.