My favorite thing in the whole wide world? Poison does no damage outside of battle, only during battle moves

The rare pokemon finding mechanic is interesting if slightly frustrating (it's like the pokeradar)

If you get in a fight before the spot, though, you lose your shot at the rare pokemon which is moy frustrating

Team Plasma definitely feels very much more menacing and as said before gym leaders are way more involved in shit

Araragi is amazing too, she's always out and about, doing shit, taking names. I love her

The bugs in this game are surprisingly beatass, although some of them are still 4x weak to fire so lolfail

Major minus? There is so far really ... almost no branching, honestly

You go to route 1, then 2, then 3. I'm after gym3 and I'm only on route 4

There are a few little side paths and caves and things that are generally dead ends

Aren't there only 18 routes in the game?

Yup

One of the other interesting things is that it appears that most of the routes, once cleared of trainers

can walk between the town without touching any/little tall grass

I hear there's a lot more stuff to wander off and do postgame but.

Yes, it does appear that that's the case, however it's very yei/boo