Picked it up today. There was a short line of people waiting outside of the Asobit store in Akihabara when I got there at about 9:45, by the time they opened at 10 the line was pretty long. I was watching TV earlier before I left, and apparently people in Shinjuku and somewhere else had been waiting in really long lines since earlier in the morning.

Anyway. In Pokemon tradition (and there's a lot of it so far in the game), the game card itself is different than most other games. The label is shiny and somewhat holographic, and the Nintendo DS Identification bars are black. Most other games ID bars are white, with Ouendan being the only game I own (and that I know of) that has black bars as well.
I've only played it for about 2 hours, because I left Dragon Quest in sleep mode all day yesterday and didn't charge it, so the battery ran out when I was on a 2 hour train ride.

I seem to have gotten past the basic tutorial. My starter (the fire monkey Hikozaru) is lv 10, a little electric lion (looks like Kimba) called Korinku is lv 9, and the new 'Pidgey' called Mukkuru is lvl 8. I just caught the new 'Rattata' called Bipper and some plantlike thing (looks to be a grass/dark type) called Subomi, both level 4. So I'm really not very far. I picked a girl character and called her 'Haruhi' (in katakana), named after 2 of my new favourite anime characters who have the same name.
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Things I've noticed:
--The professor's name is weird: Nanacamodo or something like that.
--There's a Wii in your room.
--There seem to be 3 active characters from the start: You, the other 'Hero' from the opposite gender, and the Rival. You bump into the rival several times as normal, and the opposite gender Hero so far has been in charge of the tutorial stuff. The opposite hero chooses the monster that you're strong against, and while I haven't seen the Rival's 'mon yet, there's only the other one left.
--The opening animation is pretty long, and hints at something pretty sinister.
--The way the touch screens are used seems to be pretty optional in the more important functions, like in menus and battle. You can still use the face buttons/dpad to do the actions, but the touch screen is definitely faster.
--Bag has 8 pockets. I think that's more than it's been before.
--Day/Night feature is back
-The pokedex thing. On the screen that shows you where the 'mon are located, you can drag the icon of the sun/moon around to demonstrate ''morning, day, night'. Some pokemon only appear at certain times, others actually move around during the day. On the 'battle cry' screen, you can play around with a few things. You can use the stylus to pan the sound around, slow it down, add a bit of echo... just novelty stuff i suppose.
--The only 'old' pokemon i've encountered are Abra and Magikarp. Everyone else so far has been using brand new monsters.
--You get a fishing rod pretty early, but i've fished about 10 times in different places and nothing has happened yet. Perhaps i need to use bait or something, i don't know. My japanese is pretty limited.
--The graphics look like one of those pop-up books. It's a little odd at first, but it's pretty cool at the same time.

In all, so far it's prety familiar Pokemon. Like I mentioned, my japanese isn't so hot (especially reading), so I know I'm missing some of the little intricacies here and there. I saw some interesting things while skimming through the instruction book, but i've no clue what they are. I'm gonna play it some tonight, see if i can evolve my main guy at least, and go out and see if I can battle some people before I go back to my english speaking country.

The games scored 35/40 in Famitsu.