Just beat Alaka island! Thoughts after the break:
Noooo… You give me a cool, fast bull and then give me a meticulous item-finder. Why hasn’t this crap been made more intuitive? Finding hidden items sucks. You could do away with them entirely and I wouldn’t lose a wink-of-sleep.
Delighted to see they took the training wheels off a bit! Not constantly healing my team made things more interesting and I had to heal myself a number of times. At one point I went so long without anyone healing my team or using a Pokemon Center that I was running out of PP for moves. Speaking of which…
Thank you, Poke Pelago! An easy and simple way to grow berries (like Leppa for PP)! Nice to get beans without having to buy drinks at the cafe too. Don’t care for the Pokemon count necessary for developing islands, though. I’ve never liked anything that required catching lots of Pokemon.
As soon as I got the flight ability I went back to the first island hoping to find some higher level trainers in the water areas. Nope, still all way below me.
The framing of the island trials are nifty, but they’re all ultimately just fighting. Any kind of puzzles present are no different than what you’d have seen in Pokemon Gyms. I really expected more here or else why change things at all?
Now that I can zoom in a decent amount, taking pictures is fun! Why wasn’t this default?
Feeling kinda railroaded here. I didn’t know saying yes to go with the guy would take me from the resort to a full tour of the Aether Paradise with no ability to move on my own.
Geez, why don’t you be a little more on the nose about it? All the subtly of… well, a Pokemon game. Speaking of which…
There certainly is a lot of talk about death in this game, between the graveyards and the frank discussion of animals being animals. I mean, it’s always been there in Pokemon. But this is a lot more in-your-face than even Gen 6 went.
The between island scenes are nice! I’d like to see more of these in the future!
I really like Hau! Gen 6 was kinda weird in that your rival was mostly benign instead of a thorn in your side. But Hau is actually likeable!
Holy crap, Hau! You’re the first trainer who’s Pokemon are the same level as mine! Of course, you only have 3 so I still stomped you into a mud-hole, but I no longer have to suspend disbelief that you’re managing to clear the same challenges I am.