>>52860691The increased emphasis on catching and lack of gym battles may filter some, but to me PLA felt the most like the journey through the wilderness that is advertised. The novelty of crafting your own supplies like pokeballs and using methods of catching pokemon that aren't just the long and tired "Start Battle, hit pokemon until red, maybe use spore, chuck balls until it stays in, repeat" are pretty neat and save time. I like being able to feed wild pokemon and chill out with some without starting a battle, and pokemon trying to attack (You) directly adds to the danger of not owning a pokemon yourself like how the games always stress about. There's a lot of shit to do and the research tasks aren't that intrusive, most come from natural gameplay and you dont need to grind out all the tasks if you dont want to. The mainquest&sidequest system makes keeping up with each of them a hell of a lot easier, and I miss the landmark stickers (Gamefreak why the FUCK are they not in SV?). I really think that future pokemon games should be standalone titles instead of duo acts that always require a trade or online shenanigans or some shit, PLA lets you catch all the pokemon in a single game including the starters without needing a second party, so you could trade it up or get every pokemon yourself. Battle system is pretty ass and you can't interact as much with your own pokemon, but the animations are definitely a step up compared to other pokemon games (it's still basic shit when comparing other games, but being basic shit is an achievement for modern pokemon animation, lol).
There's some more I missed but TL;DR: It is the future and it should've been now 10 years ago. Please keep some of PLA as a permanent feature for the next installments instead of throwing out the kitchen sink every 2 years.