First of all, let me say this is my first Pokemon game since the original Blue, on my GameBoy Color... many, many years ago...
That being said, I jumped to the game with some expectations about it. After all I had many memories of playing it in my youth and did not want to ruin all that.
Graphically the game struck me very positively, it's a tottaly different experience to actually travel around Kalos is a 3D world, the details are very good and the design style retains that "Pokemon" feeling extremely well. The battle is where the difference is most noticeable however, with animations and very nicely made lightning effects.
One negative remark I have to make, which felt very displeasing to me, is the steep framerate drop when the 3D screen is turned On... the choppiness is a shame really.
Sound is average. Does not impress by any means, why not more variety of musics?
We have basically two battle musics, one for regular enemies, and one for bosses... thats it. And the open world music seems to change little between towns and zones.
Gameplay retains the same magic it ever did, battles did not change much except for the new Mega Evolution. But I cant help but feel it could have been much more... Eventually I felt that I did not need to activate the Mega Evolution to actually make a difference.
The new Fairy type pokemon allow for some different strategies, but this game is everything but hard.
Story struck me as very "juvenile" and light, which is nothing to be surprised about. It's a Pokemon game... who expects an intricate web of lies and deceptions? So I won't hold it against it offcourse.
All in all it is a very pleasing experience and brings back alot of good memories.
I would recommend this game to anyone who wants a lighhearted, relatively easy game. Mostly Pokemon fans, but everyone can certainly enjoy it, as long as they don't expect a deep RPG.