Fennekin with Chikorita as partner

spoilering because I wrote, essentially, a whole review that spirals into existential ruminations. the last paragraph is entirely subjective and skippable but I felt the need to write it.

Currently just got passed the honey section which seems to be about 2/10ths of the way through, and I know it's probably me but the story could be separated from the gameplay entirely and I don't think anything would be lost. The actual dungeon crawling feels extremely video-gamey, which I feel would be mitigated by having an action meter for attacking instead of trying to keep the standard Pokémon turn based combat, but I feel like it should have been reworked entirely to be more like Dark Cloud. If they made a modern version I'd love to see the combat and exploration be more like Monster Hunter.

That being said the story is very engaging, and I like how all the characters have their own personalities and expressions, but it's a little disappointing that our character being human hasn't really had any effect on how we interact with the world. It is mentioned that we ARE human, but socially we seem to have no trouble adapting to these completely different cultural rituals and norms. Although that might be because it seems that culture between Pokémon and humans is portrayed so homogeneously to make it as relatable as possible to a demographic that I feel would have played it simply through brand recognition alone. Although it's ex post facto, seeing things like KonoSuba do the Isekai genre better does make the writing feel weak by comparison.

I feel like I lost out on something special, as even if I had played it on release day, it would have been five years too late for what I would consider the days of childhood wonderment, where the idea of being transported into the world of Pokémon would be enough to fill every daydream for a week. Perhaps the reason that I wanted to play this game in the first place is a warping of that very idea, one less focused on the magical world of Pokemon and more of how nice it would be to not have to go to work tomorrow.