If this moved you in any way, please call your reps and demand they reject the KOSA and SCREEN Acts plus the other bills bundled into the Online Safety package! It's going to make it exponentially harder for sex workers and nsfw artists like myself to earn a living.

bsky.app/profile/dies...

All said, I'm just bummed out that my initial worries with the early trailers ended up being confirmed. I wanted to be proven wrong again.

I already have access to the DLC so we'll see if it changes my mind or gives me something that is able to hook me. (6/6)

The lack of unique visuals combined with the tiny scope of this game's world made exploring it feel flat. I appreciated the scant sections where I actually got somewhere new to look around but that only emphasized how miniscule the wild areas felt.
Completing a dex has never felt more dull. (5/6)

But aside from its shifted focus, I can't shake the sense that I don't really see what the extra time gamefreak had, had manifested in. The visuals are still underbaked and the world scope is smaller than ever.

The homogenized set dressing made every bit of the city feel like any other. (4/6)

I wish I felt otherwise, but the base game has been quite underwhelming in my eyes.

It's not entirely unexpected given that this game focuses more in the battling aspect rather than the catching. It quite literally wasn't built with someone like me in mind. (3/6)

experimentation than exclusively making them about the history of the pokemon world. (Even if I find that to be a more interesting angle)

Though, it's been a few weeks since I've fully 100%'d it and did a little shiny hunting and I have some feelings I'm still sitting with. (2/6)

All in all I had a "middle of the road" time with this game. Though, I feel like I walked away from this game wanting to play less of it, not more. Which is a shame because, otherwise, I had a lot of fun with the previous 2 gamefreak developed pokemon games.

Last gripes:
Why are there only 2 music tracks for traveling the city? I am utterly exhausted of hearing Lumiose daytime. Shuffle between a couple or have whether variants, I beg you.

The 1k battle grind for the shiny charm was criminal.

Forced online competitive play for megas is horrendous

Maybe more of that time was put into the inevitable gen 10 game. I just hope that catching pokemon doesn't feel as weightless and uneventful in that one as it does in this game.

This was the first time that completing a pokedex felt generally very boring.

I am happy that GameFreak are still making experimental games but I still think Z-A comes up short for the extra year of time they supposedly had on it. It looks just as underbaked as I've come to be used to but now at a miniscule scale.