It’s an amazing game! I never felt pressured to collect all the beasts, but at the same time looked forward to trying to level the cassettes up! If they ever do sequels, I hope they figure out an alternative solution to what is now Pokemon’s massive design strength/flaw.
Yes, this was exactly how I felt when playing Fire Emblem Engage. God. I hated how the hub world basically sucked an equal amount of time for each map I cleared. Sure, the mini-games are optional,But so is brushing your teeth.
I may be getting older but it feels like a lot of games are just padding their runtime with gameplay that doesn’t mesh well at all.