Not Recommended
Charming voice acting buried in a slog
Detective Pikachu is definitely aimed at a much younger audience, and that shapes just about everything in it. I have been a Pokemon fan since the very first games released, so I wanted this one to land, but it would start making me nod off shortly after each time I picked it up. That is a hard thing for a game to come back from.
I saw the movie before playing the game, which is the opposite of the order they were released in, and I enjoy the movie far more. The game’s story is a lot simpler, and the movie deviated from it in a much better way. Knowing where the material could go ended up being detrimental to the game for me.
The puzzles are incredibly simplistic, and progress usually means being funneled through a lot of dialogue just to surface the exact clue the game is waiting on. The music is fairly repetitive but decent. None of this is broken, it is simply built for someone much younger than I am.
There is one real redeeming factor, and it is that every pokemon is voice acted saying its own name instead of using the mainline cries. It is refreshing, and it gives the pokemon in this game actual personality. That was the carrot that kept me moving forward, always chasing the next one I had not heard yet. Overall though, there is no replayability here, and the first playthrough is a slog for an older audience.