>>723567025 (OP)
It felt like it took four hours for the tutorials to end, but PLA was the same way. It's very jarring, though, because IIRC SV turned you loose pretty early.
The story and characters are not very compelling, but you have no choice but to sit through interminable dialogue scenes.
Also, the presentation (not just the graphics) is very, very bad. Most of the animation is lazy, and the cutscenes are not directed very well. Example: there's an important story cutscene where a pokemon unexpectedly drags the player character onto a roof. Here's how that is conveyed:
>shot from player character's POV of the pokemon lunging at him
>close-up shot of the player character flinching
>screen goes completely black
>wide shot of character standing alone on a roof
>dialog saying "It pulled you up onto the roof!"
It's unbelievably shit. They could have absolutely just animated the thing dragging you up to the roof, and it would've been cool. The people over at Game Freak were either unable or unwilling to do it, and it's hard to tell which, because both of those possibilities are baffling.
Honestly, I don't even think a flop, or multiple flops, would ultimately help the series at this point, because there's a clear pattern now of the games selling well in spite of how mediocre they are. If the next one flops, I think GF and TPC will try to fix the wrong thing.
