>>49841788>>49841196What makes the game hold up in my eyes is that it focuses less on the exploration and "adventure" feel of the typical mainline games, and goes all out on the atmosphere and the battles. This understandably ruins it for a lot of people, and a lot of early reviews of the game say stuff like "It's just battling over and over again." The Shadow Pokémon add a new depth to boss trainers, as instead of sweeping their entire team with your starter, you actually have to use status moves, stat enhancing moves and barriers to survive while you try and catch their Entei or Suicune or whatever.
However I do admit there were a lot of mechanics that were objectively bad, like Shadow Pokémon being able to kill themselves or having a useless bitch that blocks you in hallways. These were all fixed in Ecks Dee, but that game has a boring and slow as fuck story. Neither of the games are perfect, but they hold up in my opinion just for being unique from the mainline games, while still keeping the usual formula. Also the music is great and the characters have interesting designs I guess.
