Anyone else think that when the Minezumi appear, it looks like you can now do double battles against wild pokemon? This is something I'd always wanted, as it seemed silly to introduce double battles, but then only let you experience them against other trainers. There's a lot of strategy to them of course, but unless you do a lot of online play, they're sort of rare. Having them happen against wild pokemon (maybe this is just a new option on the Pokémon menu?) would be awesome, and definitely help with grinding, too, since some Pokemon aren't really geared to dish out damage, and function better as supporters all along. Training those used to take forever, but if they introduce double wild battles, then things should go a lot more smoothly.
All in all, I still think the in-game sprites look a bit blocky, but the animations are smooth, and the rest of the game looks fantastic, despite what all the haters say. I really don't have any beef with any of the new set "not looking like Pokemon," as every generation tweaks the designs into a new, but related, aesthetic. Moreover, the game needed innovations after the last few generations were more than slightly stale in that department. It looks like they're really attempting to modernize the franchise, and I'm especially impressed with the amount of new online features, which are rare for Ninty platforms and handhelds.
With that in mind, I'm also really excited about the Dream World. The Pokewalker has actually been one of my favorite parts of Gen IV, even after I lost one and all of my watts were reset back to 0 (which was a terribly frustrating and counter-intuitive design choice on Gamefreak's part, but it's not like it's the first
). The ability to take one's critters away from the DS gives the whole thing a very (light) ARG feel, which is fun. The Dream World seems like an even more intuitive way to do this, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about it. My Japanese is a bit rusty after three years away from college--could someone explain a bit more fully what's going on during that sequence?