Pros
- There are some pretty cute cutscenes and dialogue.
- It's cool that some of your partners can attack from behind you with a longer-ranged move like Quick Attack.
- Being able to level up moves is nice, since having a limited amount of PP is always annoying. See the con bullet below for how it happens way too quickly and easily, though.
- There's a nice twist in the storyline about the main baddies, which I can appreciate. :)
Cons
- You can only do one quest in a dungeon at a time! Ugh! You used to be able to collect all the quests for one dungeon and only have to go through it once or twice. Now, you can easily get 5 quests for the same dungeon, but now you have to go 5 separate times! Why on earth was this implemented?
- It feels like every other in-game day, you're advancing the storyline. This is because the storyline advances based on the number of in-game days played, not what you've done. That's somewhat fine and all, but the game prevents you from doing any dungeons or quests of your own accord each time this happens. What's the point of unlocking dungeons when I'm not allowed to enter them except for the tiny, one-day spaces in between endless parts of the main quest?
- You become powerful way too quickly. You start at level 7, which I imagine is to give you some starting moves to fit with the Pokémon lore and don't entirely suck, but you too rapidly expand your team and gain a too-good companion that completely owns everything. This, combined with the above bullet, really takes a lot of fun out of the game. It feels like I have to forcibly handicap myself and not use that Pokemon to be able to have a challenge in the game.
- Going along with the above bullet, you gain way too many shops and friends at one time. It feels like you barely go through a cutscene or two and all of the sudden you've increased in power and progress in the game by 250%.
- You can't skip cutscenes, which is especially bad because the text doesn't move very fast and you can't make it go faster. Really, how could this have been overlooked?
- Along with the former bullet, there are cutscenes that repeat constantly throughout the game that neither speed up nor stop, even if they're starting to drive you crazy. And why do I have to speak to Azumarill every time I want to go into a dungeon, going through multiple lines of dialogue each time as if I've never spoken to her before?
- Your moves don't power up more when fighting stronger enemies or less when fighter weaker ones. This means you can just grind on the weaker ones without ever running into any problems, and takes a huge chunk of any challenge that was left in the game (not much to begin with) out.
- You don't stop dashing when your partner gets hit, leading to pretty sticky situations if you like to dash to save time and aren't always next to your partner.
- If you play for what it deems is too long, the game cautions you that "You've had a great adventure and should rest before playing more." Not a big fan of being babysat by a game, and I don't think children would be, either. Do they really think they would listen to that?
- The game doesn't automatically highlight the most desired option in pop-up boxes. For instance, when saving, the "do not save" option is the default instead. It also defaults your answer to "No" when you clearly walk toward and want to enter a cave. I can see this potentially being useful in some ways, especially if you're a careless person, but it overall causes a lot of D-pad fiddling when there really doesn't need to be, and feels really unnecessary.
- You gain a few too many items too quickly for the number you're allowed to hold. I understand only being able to hold 3 screens' worth of items in a dungeon, but making you find 2+ items per floor in a dungeon is a bit much. It seems there's a lot of time spent being choosy, and a trip to the deposit box is necessary after almost every dungeon run.
- The requests on the request board change a lot, seemingly every time you return from a dungeon. I'm not a big fan of this because I'm sort of a collector, and like completing all of the possible missions. This consequently makes me only do the ones with the highest reward now, since I can't do multiple at once nor can I complete one later unless I save it before it gets erased.
- You're shown a down arrow above your character when your stats are lower than normal, but no up arrow when they're higher. This would be useful since there are panels on the floor that get rid of both good and bad effects, and knowing when you have higher or lower instead of just lower would be helpful.
- Confuse Ray is very overpowered in this game. It regularly lasts for 5+ turns!