This is the first Pokemon game where the whole country is open from the start, so you ride a legendary dragon across deserts and mountains and tackle the challenges in whatever order you feel like. Three separate storylines run at once, one for gyms, one for hunting enormous boss creatures, and one for confronting a gang of students. Friends can drop into your world and explore alongside you, though the game does stutter and look rough in busy areas.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
Overall
The ambition here outpaced the engine, and while the open-world freedom is genuinely exciting, technical issues took real shine off the release.
Moment to moment
Letting you tackle gyms, titans and Team Star in any order gives real agency, even when frame drops and pop-in interrupt the flow.
Art and atmosphere
Paldea's rolling hills and ruins have real charm on paper, undercut by a level of visual roughness that felt behind even for Switch standards.
Worth your time?
Co-op exploration with friends is a nice new wrinkle, and patches have smoothed things over since launch, but this remains one for patient fans rather than newcomers.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
This is the first Pokemon game where the whole map is open from the very beginning. After a short introduction you are given a legendary creature to ride, and it can sprint, climb sheer cliffs, swim, and eventually glide, so you can head in any direction across a huge country inspired by Spain. Wild creatures wander the fields in plain sight, so you choose your fights rather than getting ambushed in tall grass.
Three separate storylines run at the same time and you switch between them whenever you like. One is the traditional path of challenging eight gym leaders. One sends you after enormous boss creatures guarding mountains, and beating each one upgrades what your ride can do. The third has you confronting a gang of students at their hideouts in fast, chaotic battles. Nothing scales to your level, so you can stumble into an area far too tough for you, which makes the world feel real but occasionally ends a session abruptly.
Battles are the classic turn-based menu format, with a new mechanic that lets your creature take on a crystal coating that changes its type mid-fight, which opens up genuinely clever tactics. Up to three friends can join your world and wander it with you, sharing picnics and raid fights. The main story runs about thirty hours and its final chapter is one of the best the series has written. The honest catch is technical. It stutters, distant objects pop in, and towns can look rough. If that will bother you, know it going in, because the game underneath is one of the most enjoyable in the series.