Largely, the issues with the game are something really only diehards would care about. If you're new to the series or simply a lapsed fan, you will not notice the majority of them. Pokemon has a strong core that would take, like, deliberate self-sabotage to screw up.
I absolutely understand that, but if the issues were so much of big of a deal that people even starting talking about boycott, making hashtags, harassing others that simply showed interest in buying these games... heck, even people that got the job to inform news about the game, I really thought that would be a disaster (for Pokémon sales, at least). But nope, not even reviews were much affected at all ~
I think it's worth noting that widely-regarded the worst Pokemon generation, XY, currently has the highest score on Metacritic (sort of a Dark Souls 2 situation) so this is just one of those series where the minute details are so important that it's tough for critics that aren't hardcore fans to really navigate.
That being said, it is notable that this is the lowest scoring mainline entry since at least the GBA, and maybe ever, even if an 80 OC isn't bad by itself.
OK.. the metascore isn't an actual metric, so where is the game in fact stands? If being one the worst one in the series (supposedly) gets a 80 on MC, I think the expectations aren't as high some make it sounds, isn't it?
I mean, yeah, Pokémon is the biggest brand in the world, basically.. but the games are still done in a almost yearly basis, so when they have such (bad) habits in development, I think everyone should have their expectations in check
Well, it looks better than an HD 3DS game, but it honestly plays exactly like the 3DS ones with more QoL features. The main issue, and the reason why those 3 points don't seem to be factors, is that pokemon games are regularly not compared to other games on their systems or to other JRPGs.
The core gameplay loop of catching pokemon + raising/battling is fun enough that people seem to gloss over their other shortcomings.
It's graphically underwhelming compared to other JRPGs, the writing is objectively worse than I think any other game series I've played, and you as a long time fan you can see the features that were removed/regressed for seemingly no reason other than to appeal to kids lower attention spans because of smartphones (which is literally a reason the director used to justify cutting features)
Oh, don't get me wrong, I do think it looks better than a 3DS game and that's why I said it was beyond my personal expectations; But also agree that looks objectively worse than any other JRPG (1st party or no) on Switch; but again, despite of how much money Game Freak makes of this franchise, making games with depth and looks on par of a Xenoblade game was never realistic to me.
