This type of game is not for everyone so it baffles me that someone that doesn’t like the genre is reviewing it. Pretty much every reason you said made you dislike the game is something that make me like the game more. I like complicated games.

Maybe, not sure, but I do know that I played Ingress for little while and the only gyms and stops around my area also in Ingress.

I think that the US society is way too “color conscious” (I’m not sure how I else to put it). I moved from Puerto Rico to the US a couple of years ago for work. Back in PR I had black, white and in between friends and family and I never gave a second thought to their skin color, I just never noticed. Now I’m not…

This probably stems from the fact that is using the same info that Ingress uses, Niantic’s other game, and that is based on urban areas. Hopefully they change the data to be pokemon specific some time soon.

Yeah, I don’t get why they didn’t use Google maps place data ( I assume that’s available for developer use).

The game is using user submitted places from Ingress, Niantic’s other game. The list of places they allowed to submitted included churches.

Actually it’s using user submitted places from Ingress, Niantic’s other game. The list of places they allowed to be submitted included churches.

The game is using the same landmarks as Ingress and those landmark where user submitted. The list of sumbitable places it used included statues, landmarks and churches. Seeing as its a lot more common to find churches in small town that big statues or other landmarks it’s not unexpected.