completed the game after 97 hours.. completed the galar pokedex and also my first ever live-dex!

from my POV who is not a competitive player, i think this is one of the best pokemon game that i played, after gold/silver (i played the game since 2000 and only missing black/white version). the wild area is massive and i get all sort of excitement watching pokemons roaming freely in the overworld. also got super excited watching the likes of machamp, gengar and steelix just doing their own business in the wild!

totally worth the money!

you will need to return to the wild area quite often because:
- the level of pokemon that you can capture is being limited by the number of gym badges that you own
- different weather will cause different pokemon to appear
- wild area is your main source of exp for your team and for advance players, this will be the source for EV train (the hard way).

from my experience, 5 star raids have higher failure rate to capture the pokemon. especially those gmax mons. just use your ultra balls and hope for the best.

last time, i failed 6 times in a row to capture ditto from 5star raid. damn!

fyi, treasures you find in the overworld (those shinies you found on the ground) restocked everyday. so, if you are short on pokedollars, you can farm the treasures everyday.

regarding raids, the game was released nearly 2 weeks ago and most player already completed the game. most of the time now, people will only be interested to join 5star raids only. which explain why there is nobody participating with you on lower star raids. furthermore, you can actually beat 4star raids and below on your own. 5star raids is quite difficult though.

locked 5star raids is simply because the pokemon in the raid is either a ditto or the gmax version of a certain pokemon. i also saw people selling 5star raids for gmax for certain pokemons