I've been back in my hometown for the last few days (did anyone miss me?) and we have played some Pokemon Go on her phone. Overall, I'm fairly unimpressed. The gameplay feels entirely grindy with no real goal or purpose at the end - you level up to get better stuff to level up some more, to catch more pokemon, and that feels like it's really it. I was impressed by a few things - even in my dinky hometown there's about 5 gyms and 20+ pokestops, although most are right in the city centre with the residential areas being mostly empty. Small villages around also have 4-6 pokestops and often a gym. I was expecting the game to be a lot more empty in less urban areas but they've done a really good job populating the world with stops and gyms. I'm sure it isn't perfect but hey, it's pretty good. The chance to catch pokemon feels really low - I'd often have to hit rattatas and pidgeys with 3+ pokeballs, even ones with just 10 cp, and after using a Razz Berry as well.
And man the rarity of pokemon is just... ugh. I'm sure that Rattata + Pidgey + Spearow + Weedle + Zubat makes up about 85% of pokemon encounters. The nearby pokemon feature would normally be full of just these 5 pokemon, plus the occasional Drowzee and Eevee which probably makes up another 5-10% of pokemon. That means of the 151 pokemon in the game - well probably more like 146 discounting legendaries and stuff - the majority is just way too rare. Yeah, I know it has to be uncommon to give the game some longevity, but it feels way too much, and its really repetitive. My sister has been playing about two weeks and has only caught just over 40 different pokemon - less than 1/3rd of available ones, after two weeks. Even sillier is the levelling system feels backwards - catching rarer or harder to catch pokemon gives no real reward over common ones, except the first time bonus, so once you've caught one e.g. Hitmonlee, catching a second one is probably a waste of balls, unless you want to power it up. Maybe the plan is that once gen 2+ comes out it'll mostly be the common pokemon whose catch rates are dropped, and the rare pokemons appearance rate is based on what they'll need to be with all seven gens - but who knows?
Also, battles and gyms. The game seems to give really bad info on what each move does, and really the only way to know is to use it and work it out. Battles feel pretty bland, and gyms just feel kinda pointless. We only found out today what it actually does to have a pokemon in one - so basically the gym game is, go take 1 or 2 gyms over if possible, hit coin bonus button, not care about gyms at all for another day. Um yay?
In short... yeah, I don't feel like there's really too much here that's interesting. I'm not surprised the game gained traction - it's a really fun, cool idea. But I had no interest in playing before, and having messed around with the game, I can't say I'm interested in downloading it myself.