I'm about 5 hours in now, and I'd love to give my first impressions.

Here’s the good for me:
-The music. There’s gonna be great lofi videos using the music from this game
-The graphics are gorgeous (more on this under bad)
-I am having a lot of fun building my team, exploring the city, and discovering new things. The city is way more diverse than I was thinking. The demo made the game feel smaller and I am glad not everything is so tight.
-The shiny sound is back!!!!!! I have found 2 shinies today.
-We can go inside buildings again!! (not all of them though!)

Neutral:

-Dunno how I feel about the battle system yet. I am pretty bad at it, but I think I need more time with it. I think I'd miss turn-based if they made the change permanent.

Bad:
-The graphics ARE good BUT there are some instances where they're horrible. Some stuff you can see up close is super low resolution. A lot of things are a flat 2D texture rather than being modeled. Some parts of the city are very empty and feel lifeless. Other parts are alive.
-I wish the wild areas we're a little bit bigger.

As I mentioned, I am having a lot of fun exploring the city and chatting about the game with friends online.

My team so far is:
Chickorita
Vivilon
Litleo (shiny)
Heracross

Agree with everything you said.

I like the verticality of climbing the buildings and having environments to explore on the rooftops, but it would've been super cool if they also had a 'sewer' or underground tunnel system as well. Would have added just a little bit more to explore and had more variety for the environment.

My team atm:

• Chikorita

• Scatterbug

• Spinarak

• Binacle

• Fletchling

• Soon: Espurr (want to catch in Luxury ball)

21 hours ago, pokejungle said:

Agree with everything you said.

I like the verticality of climbing the buildings and having environments to explore on the rooftops, but it would've been super cool if they also had a 'sewer' or underground tunnel system as well. Would have added just a little bit more to explore and had more variety for the environment.

My team atm:

• Chikorita

• Scatterbug

• Spinarak

• Binacle

• Fletchling

• Soon: Espurr (want to catch in Luxury ball)

I have been in tunnels!
Not huge ones, but there's quite a few of those. :)

I’ve been playing quite a bit but have only finished the first 3rd of the story I think. It is just too much fun running around and battling!!

Some of the mechanics aren’t the smoothest but nothing has been so distracting for me that I’d count off for it. Overall I’ve really been enjoying my time and cannot wait to unlock more Megas!!

My team is still a work in progress but I do have some mainstays: Emboar, Ampharos, Simisage, and surprise to me: Clefable!! I also have an Alpha Sharpedo and Aurorus, I really like them but don’t know if they will stay long term on the team.

3 hours ago, ConglomeNERD said:

I’ve been playing quite a bit but have only finished the first 3rd of the story I think. It is just too much fun running around and battling!!

Some of the mechanics aren’t the smoothest but nothing has been so distracting for me that I’d count off for it. Overall I’ve really been enjoying my time and cannot wait to unlock more Megas!!

My team is still a work in progress but I do have some mainstays: Emboar, Ampharos, Simisage, and surprise to me: Clefable!! I also have an Alpha Sharpedo and Aurorus, I really like them but don’t know if they will stay long term on the team.

That's where I get hung up -- I get so distracted just running around lol. I have a hard time focusing on the main story

15 hours ago, pokejungle said:

That's where I get hung up -- I get so distracted just running around lol. I have a hard time focusing on the main story

For real, it is so easy to do! I’ve begun to focus more on the story now that I’ve discovered certain Megas I want aren’t accessible until later in the storyline 🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️ darn my favorites!!

I am 80 hours into the game and i am just now towards the end of the game. The tower looks so pretty!!! I am expecting the fights to get harder & harder, so I wanna EV train soem but unfortunately some of that is locked behind end game stuff

I love that you made a collage of photos, and I adore that you took a selfie in front of that Tsareena picture 😂

My first impressions after a few hundred of hours are:

Good things

• The battle system feels like an improvement.

• Your Pokémon finally follow you all the time instead of being static (Legends Arceus) or returning to the Pokéball when left behind (Scarlet / Violet)

• The story is good.

• Having multiple levels on the city makes navigating through it interesting.

Not so good things:

• Being limited to the city is not a good thing. I'm not talking about having the entire region of the game but it sure could've had a few areas around the city.

• Most wild zones make no sense, specially in the post-game. Most of them are just streets filled with wild Pokémon.

• The city is big, but not really big enough. A bigger city would've allowed bigger parks and more varied wild zones.

• Some parts feel like puzzles. Reaching certain rooftops is amusing the first time, not so much the tenth.

• Despite being kinda small I miss not being able to use any kind of mount. Taxis are basically useless. Not being able to fly (you should in the post-game) also sucks.

• Camera mode sucks. It basically hides de UI and that's it. Your Pokémon will follow you everywhere you move to make a good photo and good luck taking a photo in first person of most alpha Pokémon.

• The game is truly a Pokémon game, npcs are static in the same place. It truly makes it not feel like a living place. And there's really no excuse for this since 90% of the npc are filler. I could understand if npcs with quests were static but, the rest? GTA3 did a way better job twenty years ago.

• The roster of Pokémon available doesn't include Arcanine. Unforgivable.

• A bunch of Mega Stones are locked to timed events. In a game where you can't make backups of your savegame. That's surely not a recipe for disaster.

• Pokémon pathfinding is atrocious. Sometimes Pokémon get stuck in gates where they should be able to walk by. And, for some reason, they look like they love to attack street furniture.

• The cut and dry switching from day to night. It could be more bearable if they didn't triggered while you are battling wild Pokémon. Specially annoying when they do it while trying to capture an alpha.

• Not enough boxes. And no HOME compatibility yet. How I'm supposed to get the DLC when I have no room for anything and I need to make up space for every new shiny I find without it?

• The game is so cheap there are still people in the post-game talking about the Prism Tower as if nothing had happened. They couldn't bother writing like, 10 extra lines of dialogue.

• The third floor in the museum never gets unlocked. They teased us with the rope stanchions, but it doesn't get expanded or anything.

• Nor the game or the DLC gives Arcanine a Mega Evolution while giving it to Pokémon like Malamar or Scovillain.

I agree with you @Arcanine that taking photos with alphas is kinda tricky. Also, walking with a flying Pokémon like Charizard is challenging because I can't see where I go most of the time 🥲

I also tried to walk with an Alpha Beedrill, but that's too scary, especially when mega evolved 😂

2 minutes ago, Teo said:

Also, walking with a flying Pokémon like Charizard is challenging because I can't see where I go most of the time 🥲

Walking with Mega Dragonite turns 80% of your screen into Dragonite.

Edited December 24, 2025Dec 24 by Arcanine

1 minute ago, Arcanine said:

Walking with Mega Dragonite turns 80% of your screen into Dragonite.

In this specific case, I totally love it since Dragonite is one of my favourites ever yes, you're right!