Even after all these years, I have yet to play a poor Pokemon handheld.
I started playing these games way back in the day, Pokemon Red was the first game I got during the release of Gameboy Color... Ya those were the days. After playing through Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Saphire, Ruby, Leaf Green, Fire Red, Emerald, Diamond, Pearl, Heart Gold, and Soul Silver, I figured by this point the formula is just seen its finer days.
I heard they were placing new monsters in this game, with none of the original monsters, and I'm not going to lie, the only monsters worth anything were in Red, Blue and Yellow. After reading a few previews and game reviews on sites, I wasn't sure if it was worth picking up. But I'm glad I did.
First off, this game takes longer to beat than any of previous DS titles *only if you really play through going for all the trainers and catching them all, exploring ect* I cranked out nearly 65 hours before I really decided to take a break.
Then, the monsters are pretty awesome. Most of them are pretty trashy, to animal like, but isn't that part of what made the original ones so cool, their resemblance to animals?
The story is more intense, was surprised to see a more anti hero approach to your rival "n"? Also was kind of shocked to see your friends dad abuse and control her, I mean, would you let your kids run all over the world with random strangers with nothing but some critters? Overall better than anything that's come up in the recent years.
Why it may not be the "best" or the "most original" it is certainly refreshing to see "original content" being put into the game, instead of recycling monsters and pretty much everything else from previous titles.
On another note, I have a DS Fat, Lite 2, and DSi, and out of the three, the game seems like it was specially formatted for the nintendo DSi. On the older DS systems it seems a bit squished and slower, looks perfect on the DSi. Just throwing that out there.