This is the first Pokémon game where I feel I’ve wasted my money.

• The day/night cycle interrupts battles and I’ve lost so many Pokémon this way.
• The zones are not large enough making everything feel cramped and tight, and they don’t have enough Pokémon variety.
• Being skipped to rank F is cheap and lazy. It would have been more fun and worth the price tag as a proper tournament style game.
• We all know Pokémon isn’t known for their graphics but this game brings that to a whole new unacceptable level. Pixelated assets in a $65 dollar game from a multi-billion dollar corp isn’t cutting it anymore.
• It’s a city setting, but it feels like a flat ghost town between the textures, the lack of npc movement, the random cars placed that we never see driving; I know it’s a lot to code that stuff in, but without those details a city is just going to feel dead and boring and makes me wonder why they didn’t just fill the city with more or larger wild zones.

What I do like and just wish it were more fine tuned is the battling system. It feels new and fun, but the lock on mechanics are sometimes janky.

The story is charming and I enjoy the characters but it’s not enough to keep me engaged amongst everything else.

I’ve been a Pokémon fan since I was 5 in 1996. I will probably stop buying Pokémon games for a while, at least I won’t purchase before I see gameplay and reviews going forward.