I have not been able to pull myself away long enough to post about it since the game dropped, lol.
The core open-world loop is incredible for the concept of Pokemon - around each corner is a new friend to catch, or an item, or a TM, or something completely unknown.
And like, I love that I'm getting lost when I go into caves - they aren't dungeons in the classic sense, but they're twisty and narrow and sometimes open up to grand views and it just feels. Incredible.
Battle difficulty has been hit or miss- on level wild mons will tear through your team while you desperately throw pokeballs, but I've never completely lost a fight yet - and more than a few I cleared by one-shotting the entire enemy team. (I'm also not switching between mons, and very rarely using clutch items to heal)
I do wish there were, like, more interesting interactive bits in towns and at points of note, but that's understandable. Just woulda been nice to have a bit more of a reason to stick around other than shopping and healing and the rare NPC quest.
The performance issues do exist but they haven't really impacted gameplay for me? Like yeah it's goofy to have my game clip through the floor but like. It's a Pokemon Game at Launch. I'm getting exactly what I expected lol. I did get the Choppy Sunflora from the English trailer but honestly? I found it more charming than off-putting. Looking forward to the first major patch to fix the memory leak issues that've hit some people - hopefully it's an overall performance enhancement.
Also GF/TPC needs to give Gen 10 at least an extra year of dev work >.>
Did a few raids with Zoe last night - and holy shit the new raid mechanic just feels so much faster and smoother, mechanics-wise, than SwSh's ever did, even over a wifi connection.
I'm love SO MANY of the Pokemon - there are so many cool friends that weren't in the official previews and aaaaaaaaaaa. More (and spoilery) thoughts when I finish - I'm at like 60-70% on each of the 3 stories
