"Played Arceus, Here are the Pros and Cons, IMO."

I’ll try to keep this short. This won't be every pro and every con. It's just the ones I feel stand out the most. I will not be discussing the performance of the game as that's very hard to determine given the environment I played it in. I’ve marked this thread with a spoiler tag so please leave if you don’t want them.Pros:Overworld shiny Pokémon (also shiny sprites in party and pasture [your "bank"])Agile/Strong battle system is amazing. Imo, this is better than any gimmick they've ever added to the battle mechanics, including Megas. I really enjoy the pacing of battles and how you can potentially sacrifice a turn to do more damage or do less damage in order to get two turns in a row later on. The battles feel fluid. Swapping Pokémon and using items doesn't also mean you'll get attacked immediately. It feels the way battles always should have been. Ever watch the anime and wander why you couldn't command your Pokémon to attack twice in a row like they do in the show? Now, you can.Wild Pokémon, not just the Alphas, are strong. Without many trainer battles, wild Pokémon seem to fill the void of difficult encounters. Speed of the Pokémon determine move priority and there have been time where I'd start a fight with a wild Pokémon only for it to attack right away, OHKO my Pokémon, and then immediately OHKO my next Pokémon. Typing matters a lot. A level 20 can OHKO your level 30+.Throw everything. See two Pokémon you want? Throw two pokeballs. While those are waiting to be caught throw a Pokémon at a tree to collect berries and another Pokémon at some ore to collect stone. You aren't limited by waiting for one mechanic to finish before starting another. This helps make the game feel like you're in control and not hindered by some arbitrary mechanic that says you can't have more than one activity going on at once.Pokémon move pools. I haven't seen this one discussed much but I absolutely love the way moves are handled in this game. You still only have 4 moves at a time, however, you replace moves now, you don't forget them. At any time outside of battle you can click on your Pokémon, select "Change Move", and swap in and out moves from previously learned moves.Crafting. This could be expanded upon but it's a nice addition.Evolving Pokémon / learning new moves. You decide if and when you want to evolve Pokémon and when they learn a new move. After they reach a certain level they won't try to evolve right away, you need to allow it to evolve. This is nice as you don't need to worry about cancelling evolutions constantly or needed everstones. Moves are learned and then can be "activated" whenever you like. You don't need to replace moves immediately upon learning them.More mature themes in certain aspects of the game. This brings back the old feeling of Pokémon games where Pokémon were considered dangerous. This isn't a game of rainbows and unicorns where everyone lives in a big happy family with their Pokémon buddies and they all live forever and death doesn't exist like most recent games. Death is referenced a lot in this game. I once spoke to someone who said something along the lines of "Time allows us to learn and grow, but it also causes us to age and eventually die. It's good to remember this". You're also constantly reminded that Pokémon can and will kill you.Cons:Graphics. I know this has been repeated over and over again but it really does distract, and detract, from the game. There are a lot of cut scenes in this game so even if you're out and about and not focusing on the graphics much the game will eventually force you to. Draw distance sucks and often times I lost my chance to sneak up on a Pokémon because the tall grass 10 feet away hadn't rendered in yet so I didn't know it was there to sneak through. There isn't a single round object in the game. Everything is pixelated. This looks like a 3DS game. Anyone who's played the game and says the graphics aren't that bad are drinking the juice. That doesn't mean the game is bad, but I would like to demand more than this from Pokémon. This is an impactful scene from BotW and this is a similar scene from PLA. It's embarrassing.Story. Personally, Pokémon stories have never been good and this one doesn't do much for me. The story is all about two clans that hate each other because they don't believe in the same god in the same way. It's pretty much RL religious intolerance except in Pokémon it's perpetuated by indoctrinated 10 year-olds who believe their way of worshipping Sinnoh is the correct way. The story feels cliché and, honestly, with all the bad things going on in the world I just don't feel like we need a retelling of it in a Pokémon game.Gameplay loop. The loop can get very repetitive. The best comparison I can make would be like playing Assassin's Creed, the first one. At first everything is new and it's super fun but then you get to the second area and you learn, "Okay, I need to do everything I did in the first area again". It's still new so it's still kind of fun but then you get to the third area and now you know that this is going to be the rest of the game. It basically comes down to "do these specific things in one region, then when you're done go to the next one and do the exact same thing. Repeat".Your Pokémon, and thus you, don't feel very strong. Plenty of times I've encountered a low level Pokémon, 10-20 levels lower than my own, just have it take 90% of my Pokémon's HP with one move or to get OHKO'd immediately by a non-critical/super effective move. Don't get me wrong, I love the difficulty and the challenge and I've always wanted Pokémon games to be harder but I'd be lying if I said that having Pokémon at a significantly higher level and not feeling like they were any stronger than Pokémon 10-20 levels lower can feel a little bit of a bummer.Crafting again. With the amount of materials the game throws at you it can feel very arbitrary. I understand GF didn't want to add in PokeMarts but there are materials everywhere. You never feel like you're in danger or that you're running out of items and you're always like two clicks away from getting more.Noble Pokémon (like Kleavor) fights are underwhelming. You literally spend 10 minutes chucking bags of blended up food at it to "weaken" it enough to pacify it. The battle and the dodging mechanics are nice but the whole "throw infinite bags of food" part is just... weird.Maps are huge but feel empty. Don't get me wrong, there are Pokémon everywhere but outside of that there's no reason to really explore. You'll be disappointed if you were hoping to look for cool secrets or easter eggs in the world because there aren't any. And since the world looks terrible, it's makes it that much more unenjoyable.Evolutions and learning new moves isn't intuitive. Sometimes you might go 10 levels without realizing that a Pokémon learned a new move or is ready to evolve. While I did mention these things are positives about the game, they could have put more thought in how they updated the player.Summary:PLA is a fun game that can take you a long time to play and complete, especially 100%. This is a great direction for the franchise and a welcome breath of fresh air on the Pokémon series. I hope that Agile/Strong moves stick around for a long time and get further built upon because those were great. However, this game is not the current gen, much less a next gen, game that it should be and we should all be demanding more. This doesn't "look good for a Pokémon game" because it just doesn't look good at all.I remember playing BotW and constantly thinking "How did they do this and how is it running on the Switch?" because I was blown away by things like being able to see objects on the map from one corner to another across the entire world. In PLA, you might not see the tall grass 10 feet in front of you. Whereas BotW felt like it was a true "next-gen" game, PLA feels like it could have been released on the Wii/3DS.Overall, I'd probably give the game a 6 or a 6.5/10. It's fun but there are a lot of negatives about this game that have absolutely no reason to be there in 2022. I might edit the post throughout the day if I can think of anything else. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/3nVUfW1