Pros:
-Very fun. So far, I haven't had a moment of boredom or wanting to immediately go to the next destination. And this is ultimately the main thing. Not an excuse to ignore the problems I'll mention in the Cons, but if it wasn't fun, I wouldn't be playing.

-Wild Pokémon are surprisingly active in the world. They're not just walking around aimlessly/lifeless. Some run away from you, while others run at you. And they are interactive with one another as well. Sometimes they take a nap under a tree, sometimes they go for a swim if a pond is nearby. They can travel between land/sea/sky in an area depending on their type (e.g. Magikarp can leave the water and splash around on land, pre-evolutions will sometimes gather around their evolved form if nearby). And more. SO... this has been a big highlight for me. It adds a LOT of life to the world, and the wild Pokémon are quite plentiful.

-The non-scaling. This will be mixed, most likely, but I like that each area from the wild Pokémon, the trainer battles, and what I presume will also be the gym leaders and other story-related battles, aren't being scaled for you like it's holding your hand along the way. I ventured into an area that was too high of level for me to really catch anything (without major challenges, not to mention they wouldn't listen to me even if I used them), and the trainer I challenged was nearly too much. This *can* limit where you explore, yeah, but it's not exactly stopping you either. It can be used if you want more of a challenge, for instance, and makes it feel more "organic" to me.

-Pokémon models are better than ever. Graphics are in the cons below, but that doesn't apply to the Pokémon models. They could have just brought over the older models, I suppose, but they did, at least, take the effort to make them look better here. Also, in the world, they look to be to scale. The Pokémon that are 1 foot or less really are in the wild, making them small/hard to spot sometimes. And I've seen some of the same Pokémon, when they're close to one another, differ a slightly in size, too, making it more "realistic."

-Tera raid battles are MUCH faster than the Dynamax raid battles in SW/SD. Unsure if I prefer the Tera forms over Dynamax forms (or Gigantamax forms) yet, but the additional typing adds another level of strategy. The competitive scene is going to be much more interesting since, I believe, any Pokémon can have any tera typing (I've seen 3 different tera typed Dunsparce for example).

-Quality of life changes. Optional trainer battles. I still battle everyone I see, but it's nice to have the option to choose when to challenge them. You don't need to go to a move tutor to remember moves, or worry about going back to a town or Pokémon center so much. And with the new TM crafting system, you can gain access to a more varied set of moves that might be unavailable for a long while. (You still need what look to be harder to obtain wild Pokémon fur, claws, etc., for the best TMs that are likely only found in higher leveled areas, but it's a good overall change. More options = better.)

-Day/night and weather system. Instead of matching your system's internal clock, the world moves between day/night cycles. I prefer this since if there are any Pokémon only out during different parts of the day, you just have to wait a short period for that to change versus actually playing when its that part of day in the real world. And the weather isn't fixed to a certain type for a day like in SW/SD. It rotates throughout the day, which, again, means that Pokémon that appear under certain weather conditions can be obtained in a single sitting versus waiting an unknown amount of real-life days for it to change in one area for that one Pokémon. It's a more natural way to do it. Your character also reacts to the weather (cowing, hunkering when a thunderstorm is happening, for example).


Cons:
-Performance issues (framerate drops being #1) aplenty. However, none of them have been game-breaking or horribly glitchy at least. But the camera moving inside the world if a battle is happening on an incline/cliff, etc. is glaring (even if it only occurs for a moment), big slowdown when many (a dozen or so) wild Pokémon are on screen is frustrating, and some of the text boxes are oddly placed. It does feel the game was released unfinished in order to make the holiday season, unfortunately. Patches, assuming they have any, can fix some of this, but I doubt they'll be able to (or willing to) fix the majority.

-Outdated graphics. Pokémon has always been behind the times here, and they don't affect the gameplay exactly, it just seems like they could do more by now. There are some areas that look "fine" (the trees sway, and the grass moves, so that's a plus now), but most of it always has me wondering why they couldn't have done a little more. Just a little!


And that's really it for the cons so far, but they are two BIG cons.

And in-between issue is the story so far. It's not bad, or good, but I'm very early in the game itself still since I just explore an area for hours to try and cover as much of it as possible to fill the Pokedex and train up the new Pokémon. I want to mention it though because I feel that once I progress some more, there's more potential here for one of the better stories in the series. We'll see. Not expecting some super-compelling story, obvious, but one that is interesting to follow (since there are three paths to complete at once) will be welcomed.

And I haven't played with online on yet to interact with other players in the open world. This will probably add to the performance issues, which has be a little concerned because I'm, overall, really enjoying it so far. But I know this is a big aspect of these games, so I'll enable it soon-ish and see if it changes anything. Because right now... I can largely ignore the performance issues.

What a review... Whatever you write, you always deliver quality...

So, my husband and I formed a group (just the two of us) so we could play together in the same world. Neither of us experienced any issues that we hadn't playing solo (framerate being the prevelant problem as before).

If you view the map, you can see where one another currently is, which is cool. And you can set a marker to guide you to them if they found a cool TM or item. The map/world is quite large. I saw someone post online that it takes around 40 minutes to walk from one end to the other, and another say it's ~15x the size of the wild area in SW/SD.

The day/night cycle and weather seems to be set to the person who started the group. But as I mentioned before, this isn't linked to your system's clock or anything now, so it rotates in a relatively short amount of time. (I'm guessing a 24 hour cycle, morning to day to night (and any in-between parts), takes ~30 mins in game maybe?)

The wild Pokémon spawns seem to be independent (what I saw wasn't always what he saw), but I'm not 100% sure that's how it works. And version exclusives seem to crossover into the other's game because I caught a Misdreavus which isn't in my version (Scarlet). So that's a really cool feature. If players with both versions are playing together, maybe it creates a sort of "hybrid" space where exclusives can be found in either version while playing. Lastly, the Tera Raid crystals (like the Dynamax dens in SW/SD) are specific to the player. Mine were mine, and his were his, both existing in the same world. I couldn't just go and solo any of his and vice-versa, they remain solo only if they are yours or invite only.

So it gives the games an MMORPG feel when in a group. And I believe connecting to the online server allows all sorts of players in a region/worldwide to see and interact with one another. I'm going to try this later today to see if that's where some of the bigger performance issue complains are coming from.