And you had to scour forums with dubious links to find official or unofficial patches.

Maybe, I found this image saying it’s still above Hello Kitty, but not sure about the validity - https://imgur.com/ZEORgkV

Worth more than gold. Pokemon is the single highest grossing IP of ALL TIME

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises

As respectfully as I can say this, so what? I don’t care about it trying to be a mass appeal GOTY art piece that pushes boundaries. I want an AC game with the stupid silly robots blowing shit up. Anything that tales me out building said robots or blowing said shit up is a negative for me. If anything having more bloat with cutscenes and dialogue and exposition detracts from the experience.

What do you mean by branch out? They set out to do an action game like they did 10 years ago where the story is entirely secondary to the gameplay and mechanics. If anything having a super cutscene heavy character development drama would be branching out from what the series is all about.

I find it funny how many reviewers complained about the story, it’s a From game. It is the equivalent of complaining about dialogue in porn.