Yeah the orb makes the games progress very linear, but at the same time it was really fun to get all the pokemon in it. Prob would not go and do it again though. So I don't really mind the orb too much, but the fact that there was no actual bulletin board did suck. I really miss grinding quests to obtain items, now I can just buy all the reviver seeds with gold from rank ups, so yeah it is a bit too structured and lacks the rng.Yeah, it's not bad, but I kind of dislike the idea of connection orb. I mean, it's cool in general but it would've been nicer if they still had the bulletin board. I loved checking for random missions and finding some obscure ones. The randomness of the first two games is what really gave it a mysterious, surprising feel, I enjoyed that aspect. But PSMD, despite being a great game, just lacks a bit in that department, it feels too... structured? I am not sure how to describe that. And why for the love of god did they have to take away the ability to nickname Pokemon? That just makes me feel like my 2 main ones are out of place and I don't feel encouraged to play anything besides those 2.
Also the storyline was painful, I just wanted to get over with it ASAP. The endgame is very nice, though.
And yeah the story was really bad, it's weird how they decided to go toddler level with the whole preschool drama nonsense, but I still absolutely love the game. The gameplay of it matches the PMD feel while adding a bit more to it and I was really craving for some new pmd gameplay. Replaying the same games gets boring eventually. I also like how you can actually 100% the game now, even though it makes the game a bit too structured.