Answering several posts below. Thanks again all for your keen thoughts and suggestions!
Thanks man. Ranger sounds kinda fun and up my alley but can anyone vouch for it? Is it a good game? Metacritic seems mixed to slightly positive.
Thanks for the info, xenoboy, I appreciate it.
Something put me off about Mystery Dungeon. It's randomly generated. I dunno if that would be compelling enough for me. I usually don't prefer randomly/procedurally generated levels. It doesn't feel too random?
So who exactly are you fighting in MD vs. Ranger?
Yeah, I was wondering if those PokePark games are any good. Again, if anyone has tried them I'd be eager to hear. Trailer looked fun but Metacritic was more "eh, not very good, might be ok for young kids." Thanks for the info, BTW. Didn't realize HYP was that good. Faster turn based battles and Pokemon having their own agency is more appealing to me relatively speaking. It's the slowness of the turn-based battles in the main series that I can't get into these days.
Thanks man. I think I played it as a kid, along with the real life TCG, but maybe I'll check it out on VC sometime...probably a bit too turn-based for me though.
I don't know HYP that well but my impression (as a kid or teen I think) was that there wasn't much to it? Regardless I doubt there's any easy way for me to play it. I enjoyed Pokemon Snap, Stadium, and R/B/Y a lot as a kid, but with Snap, don't you have to hit some Pokemon with certain kinds of Pokeballs to stun them to get a better shot?
Oh, no. Just to clarify. I do play plenty of games with conflict in them (nearly all E-rated, to be fair). It's not that I want a conflict-free game I suppose. I should have worded it differently. I just am not interested in fighting fellow (friendly) Pokemon, not as playing as a human who orders Pokemon to fight each other. I dunno. Just rubs me the wrong way somehow and doesn't appeal to me.
Great idea. Thanks Joe, I really appreciate it.