I wanted this game to be so good. This hits all of my pleasure centers: open world! collecting! Pokemon!

But dear god. I think I have a pretty good ability to get past annoying UI and performance quirks but I think this is the first game that had so much friction that I had to bail out. I generally scoff at peoples’ complaints about this in the mainline games — perhaps there, the mechanical rust is part of the nostalgic charm for me — but I could not get a grip on any sort of muscle memory even after ten or so hours, and the minute-long tax transitioning from area to area was just too painful for me to bear.

I hope they keep experimenting with this format — the title suggest they will. Getting a non-embarrassing company to do this exact game justice would be a dream come true for me.

★★