no "thanks for playing" message, just a hard wall. fine, at least I'm fucking done. this is as much of a game as it is a checklist. every side mission is either trading a pokemon, giving someone an evo stone, or giving someone a health item. every "riddle" is a stealth section, every "adventure" some wacky boardgame. the ultrawormhole raids are mainly for getting starter eggs, but more importantly every one you find nets you another crafting recipe. same goes for catching criminals. and we're not talking extra shit like being able to craft iron or protein, no if you don't look for raids or criminals you won't be able to craft revives or great balls. hey you know that feature in most games where you hop on rocks, usually across a river? actually you need a separate hm for that, so have fun backtracking. you also hop on a rock, 1 sec pause, hop again, 1 sec pause, it's so fucking slow. you open a chest, ooh that's a 5 second zelda holding item up animation. oh fuck wait a second, sorry bro, you tried opening a great ball chest before owning a super key, guess you'll have to remember where that is until you get the key, on this route that all look the same as the next. oh cool you got the super key you can open every chest now...except the ultra ball chests...or the master chests.
speaking of balls, trying to catch pokemon (which you have to do to get more recipes) is impossible. even the basic pokeball takes 3 separate kinds of apricorn, great ball takes 4, and while you get 10 per harvest it still takes an actual 30-40 minutes irl time for that shit to grow. and again, you have to balance that out with growing the other berries so you can have super potions and revives. There isn't a story to talk about, you do the gym tournaments, you fight your rivals, hugh save his sister's cat from NEO plasma, and N is a fucking nigger as always. this game had a kind of interesting setup in that team plasma runs the region, but then they just do neo plasma and nothing changes and suddenly the rivals are stone until you hike up a mountain and do a sick fortnite dance on a stump and only cheren wakes up. I hate the french, I hate overworld spawning being used as actual walls to waste already scarce resources, I hate shitcord, this isn't a game it's a trap for people that can't help but get every little sidequest done. at least vanguard has the decency to have speed up and be entertainingly schizo, same with empire. fuck this shit