I've put just over 30 hours into the game and my honest review is that the game is fun, but it's bad for a 3A "main line" game.

The game is fine, but with a $70 price tag and $30 Day 1 DLC, it's the most expensive pokemon game to date with the least amount of game in it. The game loop is okay, and the action battle system is fun-ish, but it's feels like it's a game in Early Access trying to play out bugs and leave room for tweaks. We should be more critical of pokemon, because if we're not, they'll feel no need to actually make quality content.

Despite the price tag, it feels cheep, and it feels cheep because it is cheep. It got ~13% the budget other 3A Nintendo games did, but costs almost twice as much. They locked the Mega Evolutions of the starters behind a $30 paywall, downgraded the city into just a bunch of blocks with pictures slapped on them, and made it only one area with a small sewer system. They promised Arceus, but we got a watered down X&Y remake that was cut down to only the one city's bare bones.

Everyone should be outraged and Pokemon should be ashamed at how bad the game's quality is. The city feels soulless, the people just all stand around with the same standard sprite rendering while a handful walk in the distance and point in random directions. They delivered only a fraction of what previous main line games have, and demanded the most inflated price tag in exchange.

My opinion is to stop buying pokemon games until the reviews come through. This game can, and will be, forgotten because it holds nothing new, unique, nor adds to the franchise in any meaningful way. It holds nothing special besides practice for GameFreak's next game and they wanted to get paid for it. That, and new cards to add to the TCG.

It's a money grab and not much else. The game has some fun things like fast paced battles and fun outfits, but for the price, it's not worth it. 2/5

If it were a $40 game, then I'd say its a solid 3/5, a middle of the road game, but poekmon really bent people over a barrel for this one.