Nexomon is basically a Pokemon clone, it copies the formula and makes some improvements or changes to some aspects of it that make for what is, in my opinion, a more enjoyable and less tedious experience for the most part.

Pros first:

• The sense of humour is fantastic and has made me laugh out loud multiple times - I love this games humour. It’s self-aware, smart, sometimes dark but always on-point.

• Graphics are great, old-school Pokemon vibes galore but with what feels like a more modern touch.

• I like the variety of Nexomon and so far I think they’re all pretty cool - nothing has felt like a straight up rip of a Pokemon yet, they just all feel very “inspired” by Pokemon.

• There’s some things that make catching new Nexomon more interesting than Pokemon - there’s a quick mini-game you can play to increase your chances of catching the Nexomon after you throw your Nexotrap (the games version of a Pokeball) and there’s also whistles you can collect, that stack on top of each other, for permanent increases to the likelihood you will succeed in catching Nexomon of a specific type.

• There’s a warp system that works great and helps keep the pace of the game moving much faster than any Pokemon game, and the warp system is accessible early on.

• There’s a real challenge presented here, the game isn’t really for the faint of heart - you will get it all handed back to you in Nexomon and be forced to have to level up or use your brain to think up ways to get around tougher challenges.

• There are side-quests.

• Characters are fun and expressive - there’s emojis being used throughout the entire game that helps reflect the characters feelings.

• When all your Nexomon die, you just instantly respawn in the room. You do lose the items you’d used during the battle - but you don’t end up being whisked back to some save point a hundred years ago or anything - it’s really quick to die and get back into it.

• On the topic of speed, animations mid-battle are fast and fluid - they’re pretty generic too, but what I liked most was that swapping Nexomon happens almost instantly. Opponents will swap Nexomon to counter your choices too. If this happened in a Pokemon game, you’d be there all day because of the tedious and frustratingly long animations - not the case with Nexomon. This gives it a more tactical feeling as you’re free to swap Nexomon to counter - as will your opponent - without feeling like you don’t want to do it because of how long it would take.

• There’s also this whole “core” system, which acts like held items for your Nexomon, I guess - but you can give them 4 each - also, you can synthesize these shards you collect from breaking certain rocks with your pickaxe to create new “core” items for your Nexomon. This system is super cool so far.

Let’s hit the cons then:

• Some people might find the difficulty too extreme - the first tyrant you fight, Nivalis, will beat the crap out of you if you’ve got the wrong types of Nexomon in your team or are a little under-levelled.. He’s hard and for me he was a huge challenge - I couldn’t overpower him - I ended up having to keep reviving the one Nexomon I had that was somewhat resistant to his attacks, and just face-tank him as best as I could. It took multiple attempts, but I got there and beating him felt FANTASTIC. This kind of challenge just doesn’t exist in the Pokemon world - but some people might not appreciate it. I see this as a pro, some will definitely see it as a con.

• At first, I thought since you can’t reorder the Nexomon in your team how you want, you can only set your “main” (first Nexomon into battle), that this was a bad choice, but then I realised it doesn’t matter since you’re asked to choose who you want to send in when one faints anyway.

• Gold/Coins are harder to come by than they should be - Nexotraps are pretty costly initially (although the costs can be reduced as you play) - this makes it hard to catch every new Nexomon you come across. This is somewhat amplified by the fact there are traders/merchants scattered around, and sometimes they’ll want some coins for their trade - in the earlier stages, you really do have to think about whether it’s worth spending coins on Nexotraps, or whether you should be doing the trades, you’re definitely not rolling in cash early on.

• The Nexomon are monotypes only. There is no duel types in the game. This means team-building is a less strategical than Pokemon. I would prefer it if there were dual types.

• The music doesn’t always match the vibe, sometimes it just feels like some totally random background music has been thrown on, it’s not bad at all, it just doesn’t always fit the location very well.

• There’s no multiplayer. For me this is the biggest con of them all - no multiplayer means unless the game receives constant updates and attention from the devs, then there’ll be no reason to play it after everything is all said and done. I really, REALLY hope they add multiplayer at some point. The game’s too good to not have something that will extend the longevity of it.

I’m super keen to get back into the game and play it through - these are just some initial impressions, so far, to me, Nexomon: Extinction is giving me a killer old-school Pokemon-like experience, and I’m enjoying it more than I enjoyed Pokemon Sword and Shield and the Let’s Go games.

It’s got its flaws, but it also makes so many quality of life improvements and additions to the Pokemon formula that the pros outweigh the cons in my opinion.

There's a vid on my YT channel (see name) that has some gameplay footage if you're into that kinda thing.

Keen to hear your thoughts!