My first impressions of this...were not positive. I didn't get a second Pokemon in my party until I was almost to the second Gym; the selection along the earlier routes was horrendously restricted, and I was not going to use that horrible elemental monkey either. I thought things looked nicer, but it didn't really count for much with me. I got very bored, and it took me a long time to really get into it. I started to warm up to it once I started to build my team up, but it took far longer than it has with any other Pokemon game; for a while I thought I was going to go through the entire game with just my starter...which, interesting as that might have been, would have sapped the fun out of catching and training a new variety. All the fifth gen Pokemon I liked were on later routes, so it was a bit of a struggle for me initially.