Maybe I’ve been spoiled by DL but the gacha costs seem high, and the rate of gaining currency seems low. You can get a 10-pull with a guaranteed 5 star for a limited time but it requires paid currency which is over $20 to get that deal. There doesn’t appear to be a pity rate for pulling 5 stars, instead you get your pick of a trainer if you pull 400 times in each period, but even barreling through the story that seems pretty impossible for free players (took me hours to get 10 pulls and the period resets next week), so I assume that’s mainly for free players but considering 10 pulls costs over $20, you’d likely have to spend hundreds to take advantage of that bonus. The gacha aspect just seems horribly implemented, and I know it’s early but it would take some heavy tweaking to make it even worth spending a bit of cash in it (unless you plan to whale, and it’s too early to determine if whales will stick to this game anyways, especially if the free to play sucks since that pushed away a lot of players thus making the game unappealing to whales). This especially holds true considering this game doesn’t seem to be focused on PVP, if it even has it (I haven’t unlocked such a mode yet). God I know I’ve played too many gachas now to know all this...

It’s at the top of the charts for the IP recognition alone, Pokémon is mainstream right now. The game is more marketed to core players than the Go players though, and it doesn’t seem to be good at that from what I’ve seen. I’m like 5 or 6 chapters in and hitting a grind wall where I need to level up specific trainer types to have a shot at it. I do hope they at least try to fix it, the battle mechanics were fun once I got the hang of it (though the way typings work is a little weird in this).