The opening section of this game is atrocious. Why they feel the need to vomit two dozen characters on us in the span of 10 minutes is beyond me. Could the leader of the whole galaxy thing and mom cyrus really not be condensed into the same character? I would be fine if any of these opening characters felt consequential and interesting, but they don’t. It really only needs to be diamond person, Pearl person, galaxy person, professor, the other playable character, and I guess twink Cynthia salesperson. Even then that’s still a lot!
Also, as others have stated, it feels very weirdly stilted and cheap going back and forth between all these conversations and the only sound effect being the noise of your A button press. I have never really felt a need for Pokémon to have VA stuff in the games before, but something about this adventure makes me feel like it’s missing. Like, I don’t even want full voice acting, just some sort of simple noise or a “hey!” when you talk to someone.
HOWEVER the moment you get across that bridge and mostly exit that one hour button mashing fest, the game really takes off. You get to be alone and explore as you like and… wow this gameplay loop feels really fun! I love sneaking around and chucking heavy balls at Pokémon like I’m a spy doing backstabs. I love challenging alpha Pokémon and getting my keister handed to me by wild shit like icy wind bibarel. There’s a really great sense of discovery to this game and it has me hooked. I didn’t want to go to bed, I just wanted to keep playing.
Also: I think the Wrydeer mount is totally broken lol. You can scale most slanted walls that look far more intended for the climbing mount by just dismounting Wrydeer mid jump, getting cozy on your human feet, remounting, and jumping. I think I accidentally sequence broke areas that way and got really confused why the Kricketunes in the swamp were level 44 while the Volo trainer battle was level 20. I then proceeded to do it far more intentionally and ended up scaling up an area filled with level 45 luxray and staraptor. Now I’m off to whatever part of the bog that bibarel lady wanted me in with a team of level 45 Pokémon.
Very much enjoying it so far!