Beat the story and post game plot on sunday. took me roughly 35 hours to complete it. Ive let it sit and after all is said and done. Im not as upset as I was before. But I would still rank it the lowest out of the generations so far. Heres just a few issues I had with the game.
The online interactions are the worse theyve ever been. The appeal of Max Raid battles feel lost, because I can either never find a party or join a party, and the one tine I did form a squad, first guy 1 Hit KOd the thing.
The cutscenes that are a bit more cinematic...they really needed voice acting. It felt like they put a lot of effort in the characters movements, camera angles, tone, but to have a mute character to audible crowd cheers like the very intro of the game, just felt weird.
The wild area leaves a lot to be desired, its like beyond diet BOTW. The game still imposes limits on you that I feel are unnecessary, encountering very strong pokemon but not even giving you the slightest chance of catching it. The games already have a system in place so high powered pokemon wouldnt obey you, this just seems like an extra step backward. I avoided a lot of the wild area like a plague once I found out, I didnt want to chance a Shiny and fail at catching because I couldnt even get the change, have mercy on someone that does.
They add "eye candy" to the wild area like BOTW that makes the explorer types want to go there, like that ruined tower, but theres nothing to interact with, no flavor text or anything like that, its just there.
Of course when online, the wild area runs like butt.
The linearity of Dungeons, theres really not much exploring in them or in routes. A lot of the items they give you seem useless due to it. Never had to use escape rope, whats the point of Repel now when its so easy to avoid pokemon now?
The story was bare, but this is coming from someone who loves Gen 5 as thats my favorite of them, mostly due to story but also other contributing factors.
I will ask, for anyone that actually cares or has theories on this, because its the only lore interest i have currently, given that the game does not, to my playthrough, make any mention of Mega evolutions existing at all, does this imply t
hat SwSh are back in the original Pokemon timeline, or yet another branch?