Pokemon Quest is another one of those free to play games that I've been dipping into occasionally off and on since its release (in this case, May 2018), and I thought I would collect my thoughts on it. At its core the game is an auto battler where you collect and train Pokemon from the original generation, and in a lot of ways the game reminds me of the Pokémon Rumble series (I've played through all of those, and the last one was the now-defunct free-to-play Pokémon Rumble Rush on mobile). For me Pokemon Quest's main draw is its cute blocky art style (NintendoLife called it, "a cuter version of Minecraft"), and unlike many other free-to-play games, in this one the paid content is pretty nonessential and unobtrusive.
As with many mobile games such as this, there's not a ton to do day to day. Pokemon will visit your island somewhat randomly which you then recruit, or you can "cook" and combine particular items together to increase the chances of certain types visiting. You build up your Pokemon by taking them into battle or sacrificing lower levels ones to level up and learn new moves. You can also equip HP or attack increasing items. Once your team is ready, you choose three to take on quests. Here you can either let your Pokemon auto battle three waves of enemies and one boss, or you can interact minimally by managing selecting your Pokemon's attacks (a maximum of two moves each) and managing their cooldowns. It's all pretty mindless, but the usual "gotta collect 'em all" mechanics and seeing your team rating gradually increase provide the usual cheap thrills.
It looks like it takes some 30+ hours to beat the main game, and Pokemon Quest definitely wasn't ever going to hold my interest for even a fraction of that amount of time. This is a game that I may continue to chip away at every once in a while over time, but with so many other daily F2P games to play I don't see myself ever doing much more than that. It's nice that the paid content is pretty much a flat cost, and there are definitely worse alternatives out there, but there are also many better ones as well. Even though it apparently made $8 million in its first month of release, aside from its art style Pokemon Quest isn't one of the more memorable Pokemon spin-offs and I doubt many people stuck through with it all the way to the end.