i have to say, this is a very fair review and i agree with a lot of your points that you've raised. overall, i'm happy that you enjoyed through this PMD and wouldn't mind playing through future titles! there are some things i'd like to add:
re: difficulty
difficulty is one of those things that's really hard to gauge in a mystery dungeon game. like you said, broadly it's more or less consistent what with the post-game dungeons being harder than the rest due to being 99 floors long than anything else, but it also depends on what kind of enemies you're facing in a particular dungeon. solar cave, for example, has perish song jynx which, if you're not careful, can one shot your whole entire team. granted, that's a post-game dungeon so that's... more or less expected, but during the middle portion of the game, it can get kind of.... i would say tedious more than anything because unlike the rest of the game you don't really have much of a break to purchase items (for spoiler reasons i won't get into). there's a few opportunities to restock items, but that's about it as far as the mid-game goes.
there are also dungeons that have enemies such as silver wind ledian, ominous wind masquerain, and i think a few times i got flame bursted by magcargo and hyper beam'd by gyarados. i could go on, but the gist of it is that in mystery dungeon titles you're pretty much at the mercy of RNG and whatever pokemon you come across in a particular dungeon and whether or not they know a full-room attack or an attack that can hit multiple members of your team or status you. it definitely isn't consistent for sure but one could argue that the non-consistency adds to the difficulty, perhaps in a more frustrating way than anything. but that is pmd for you, i suppose.
re: animations
the biggest issue i have with animations is how flying-type (and floating pokemon in general) are animated. next to my skitty, for example, i notice that butterfree is animated really awkwardly (hard to explain unless you play as it). i honestly thought this was just a butterfree issue until i tried playing as altaria and noticed something similar. :\ like, butterflies flapping their wings really fast makes sense, but a dragon flapping its wings super fast and awkwardly to keep up with grounded pokemon that seem to be moving/animated normally seems... odd? keep in mind this is
normal walking speed and these pokemon are moving as if they're going at marathon pace. it's weird to see.
re: bosses
i kind of get where you're coming from with this. personally, i don't think it's
necessary to use items in a boss fight. it certainly helps, sure, if you have something like a sleep seeds or totter seeds or the like. i agree with your broader point though that incapacitating the bosses is pretty much key, which is personally why i ran blizzard on my skitty. freezehax is
ridiculous in this game and although bosses are more resistant to it (meaning they break out very shortly compared to other enemies), it could buy precious turns that can be used to deal extra damage. that has pretty much been my go to strategy for every boss so far without fail (yet). i also try to be overleveled as i can, although levels don't really matter nearly as much in mystery dungeon titles as stats do, which is why vitamins are extremely useful. a level 50 pokemon with 100+ in all stats is definitely stronger than a level 100 pokemon with 50 in all stats. but this is getting on a bit of a tangent.
re: variety in missions
definitely see where you're coming from here. generally in pmd games missions have always come in a three different variations:
- escort missions
- rescue missions
- item delivery missions
that's pretty much it, i think. i'm not really sure if there really
can be room for variation. i think there were attempts at this in previous pmd games where you would escort a pokemon to a certain floor, but that's kind of just a spin of the already existing escort missions. in pmd sky, there were missions where you could fight "criminal" pokemon and defeat them, but they weren't a thing in the original games, so it's not surprising that it doesn't exist, here.
re: moves
kind of agree except there's an easy way to tell if a move hits around a corner: the yellow arrow next to the move itself. it basically tells you that a move can get around corners. there are long range moves like shadow ball, energy ball, flamethrower, ice beam, etc in which the game explains how many tiles away it hits and whether it hits around a corner, and others where you'll see the yellow arrow where it hits around a corner but it's more of an aoe (area of effect)-type move where it hits 1 or 2 tiles around the pokemon, including corners.
re: skipability
pretty much agree with this. as a pmd fan i'm used to this, but i can see how this would get annoying, especially as you take on a large amount of rescue tasks in a particular dungeon. if you take on several, you're gonna have to sit through the cutscene of each and every single "thank you". which is cute, but for players in a rush i can see how this can be bothersome. the pelipper thing i dont mind because it adds a cute touch i think of getting mail every morning, but i can see how impatient players might not like it. like i said, personally i dont mind it, but your mileage may very here.
overall, a lot of fair and agreeable points raised! a lot of the concerns that you've brought up are unfortunately just standard par for the course when it comes to pmd titles and i'm not sure if they'll ever really be "fixed" or anything like that. but nevertheless, i liked reading the review. :>
