Set inside a single city being rebuilt, you catch creatures in real time by sneaking through alleys and parks and throwing a ball yourself. Battles happen live rather than in menus, so you move around, dodge and time your attacks. Night brings organised street battles that push your team harder.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
Overall
Catching creatures in real time within a single living city is a fresh way to approach this series, though the smaller setting means less variety than past entries. Sneaking through alleys and parks to throw a ball yourself feels more active than usual.
Moment to moment
Battles happen live rather than through menus, so you move around, dodge and time attacks yourself. Night brings organised street battles that push your team harder.
Art and atmosphere
The city setting is dense and detailed for the series, and its sounds shift between quiet daytime streets and busier nighttime battles. It is a smaller scale world than a full region map.
Worth your time?
There is plenty to do if you enjoy building a strong team of creatures. It suits existing fans of the series as well as newcomers curious about a smaller starting point.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You walk through a single, dense city rather than a series of separate routes, and creatures wander visibly among the streets and parks rather than hiding until you bump into them. Approaching one and throwing a capture ball is done directly with a button press while you are standing right there, no separate screen interrupts you, and sneaking up on a creature from behind or through tall grass makes the catch easier. Within the first ten minutes you will likely have thrown your first ball at a small creature just outside your front door.
The goal is the familiar one of collecting and raising creatures, but battles now play out live in the same space you are walking through, so you send your creature out with a button, move it around with the stick, and time its attacks rather than picking a move from a still menu and waiting. As you progress the city opens up further and night falls on certain days to bring organized street battles that pit your team against tougher trained opponents in a more structured contest. The switch from turn based menus to live movement changes the pace noticeably if you know earlier games in the series, asking you to think about positioning as much as move choice.
A session can be spent wandering a few blocks catching whatever crosses your path, or focused entirely on preparing for one of the tougher organized night battles. It suits longtime fans curious to see the series try something more active, and newcomers will find the catching and raising ideas easy to pick up even without prior knowledge. The honest drawback is that the live battle format takes some adjustment, and reflexes matter more here than in the traditional turn based games, which may frustrate players who preferred a slower pace.