I know how you feel, but I also felt that way about a lot of popular games within the last couple of years.

Apparently it hasn't released in Japan yet, so it might get better. Maybe.

That's how it's supposed to feel. All the popular mobile games are like that. If they were complex and had any depth they'd turn around literally millions of possible customers. Casuals want to be able to play and fully enjoy all aspects of the game 3 minutes after downloading it. Even the normal Pokemon turn based battle formula which boils down to 'press A' would be too complex for them.

>>12160
It's Ford Driver shit- but like >>12162 mentioned, the design is intentional given the mobile market. Otaku/nerds/hardcore gamers/whatever don't even own smartphones. There's no reason for them to have one. Marketing the game towards a more serious audience than a bunch of normies that want to run around town with their phone out talking about Pokémon would be a mistake.

>yet it's so bare bones it feels like it's still in the alpha stage
Like others have said above, that's how it's supposed to be. You just go around collecting stuff. The appeal of it is that it is easy to get into and is simple. The Pokemon brand is also a large factor in getting the game to explode as I can't think of any other brand that is able to do this if swapped.

I'm having fun with it myself. I believe the Japanese version releases today? Would be real nice if I could go there to play.

Pokemon Go is very overrated but fun not going to lie.

I don't understand why this is so insanely popular. I mean I get the appeal of Pokemon IRL but you can't really do anything with them. You can't teach them moves or train them any other way than catching more of the same Pokemon and repeatedly trading the lower leveled ones for candy that's all specific to that Pokemon and its evolutions. It's fun for like a week and then you just get so sick of catching and discarding 500 magikarps so you can get a gyrados which kind of ruins the point of having magikarp in the first place because it's so obvious to new players that it's going to become something really badass.

>>12200
>It's fun for like a week and then you just get so sick of [it]
Which would explain why the number of players is plummeting already.
It's funny though, the devs don't seem to be doing much to prevent it. I understand why the game was designed this way but now that you hooked some people you should make an attempt to actually try to get them to stay. I think making the game a bit more complex would turn away some of them but many others would stay for this depth. At this rate people will forget this existed by November.
Not that I care either way; hell, it's probably for the better.

Best thing of POKEMON GO is the human npcs.