I'll come out and say it immediately. There's over a year until this game comes out, it's the very first announcement, and people are already saying it'll be bad because the framerate in the reveal trailer looks bad. We've still got a long time waiting for it, things can change. It's an open world game on the Switch, I don't think it's gonna be perfectly smooth and run like butter.
Now that that's out.
I adore the concept. I'm so glad that it looks like they're willing to go out and try something new again after you could argue they went back to the same formula in Sword and Shield by doing things like re-adding gyms. It's a fantastic breath of fresh air and open-world Pokemon is something I'm surprised they haven't tried doing yet. I don't enjoy the trend of Nintendo making their series open world because they're getting stale, but if anything could benefit the most from it, it's Pokemon. But since it's an open-world game, it's going to have a lot of the same issues the genre has for some people. It'd either be too big or too small depending on your tastes, could feel empty, or stuff like that. But honestly? It's way too early to tell.
To me, it seemed like the Wild Area was their approach at making open world Pokemon but being too scared to actually make that change, and now that Legends exist, it makes me feel like the wild area was just their warm-up for it. Like they were just waiting for something bigger and this was it.
The setting is nice. The idea of going into the past is something Pokemon's never really done (correct me if I'm wrong) but Sinnoh being rich in mythology and history makes it the best region to do that in. I'm curious where Arceus and the other legendaries will come in, likely into the game's story, so I'm excited to see that.
My hopes? This is feudal Sinnoh, and I hope they're not using that excuse to just make it look super different as if it's a new region. It's still Sinnoh, it should still look like Sinnoh. I want there to be more recognizable areas than just "Here's Mt. Coronet in the middle!".
Besides that, super excited to hear more news on it. A game like this makes me happy to be a Pokemon fan because announcing it along with the DP remakes shows they keep going with the series formula, but are also willing to do something new and hey, they're at least somewhat listening to fans, right?