Reviews VideoGame / PokemonScarletAndViolet

VideoGame A Delightful Disaster

I have some complicated feelings around these games, so let's list them as a nice little bulleted list:

The Good:

• The new Pokémon are some of the best we've had in years, including cross-gen evolutions galore. As a Dragon-type fan, I haven't been this delighted since Gen V. Roaring Moon, Miraidon, Koraidon and Baxcalibur quickly became some of my all-time absolute favorites.
• The story and characters are quite good, particularly Arven and the storyline around his Mabostiff and his parent. The characters have a lot of dimension and development to them, and it all comes together for the final leg of the story.
• The open world is a much-welcomed breath of fresh air. I hated Gens VII and especially VIII for their overbearing linearity, so it's great to be able to explore freely and do the gyms and objectives in any order you want.
• Co-op play is fun! It's a new way for players to come together and share in the experience.
• Let's Go is a great way to not just re-introduce walking Pokémon, but also have them act as helpful partners when they do so.

The Bad:

• The bugs, glitches, and poor optimization. Modern Pokémon games are all held together with duct tape and paper clips, but holy hell do Scarlet and Violet take it to a new level. Constant slowdowns, crashes, glitches, softlocks, you get the drill. You've probably heard this from every single other review of the game so I won't spend too much time elaborating on it.
• The graphics. A lot of the Pokémon and textures look nice up close, but that's the only positive I have to say about the graphics. Everything is piss ugly and becomes a hideous low-poly texture if it isn't right up in your face. There's an early cutscene where you and Nemona get a "stunning" view of Mesagoza from atop a lighthouse and I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't just seeing Peach's Castle from Super Mario 64.
• The emptiness of the open world. Sure it's fun to explore, but once you've seen it, there's nothing really new. You can go around collecting items and looking for the Tunak Tunak Tun quartet's stakes, but compare this to a game like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom where there's something to do around every corner and lots of new characters, sidequests, nooks and crannies to discover.
• The lack of innovation in the battle and catching systems. This is especially disappointing after Pokémon Legends: Arceus shook things up. It also makes it a lot less fun to catch Pokémon and shiny hunt compared to that game.

Overall, I had fun with Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet (yes I played both). They have that "Pokémon magic" that always makes the games addictive and worth coming back to, and the open world is really enjoyable and addresses one of my biggest gripes with the series. But these are not great games. They are a complete mess, and sometimes I wonder whether the reason I enjoy them is merely because I hated Pokémon Sword and Shield so much that they make SV look great in comparison. Game Freak really needs to find a way to break free of the Executive Meddling that forces them to rush out barely-functional messes every year so that they can push all the new toys and cards for the holiday season; I truly believe that if Scarlet and Violet spent more time in the oven (and incorporated more elements from Pokémon Legends: Arceus), they could have been excellent games and even among the best in the series.

VideoGame A good game hidden under a mountain of technical problems

Allow me to begin with a disclaimer: I did have fun with and enjoy this game. I completed two full playthroughs in a week and a half. Anything negative I say in this review should be taken more as disappointment that this game is not what it could have been than outright hatred of the product we got. I should not have to give this disclaimer, but the white knighting for the billion dollar corporation that is Gamefreak is REALLY bad right now so please be civil in the comments.

First, the elephant in the room: from a technical standpoint this game is absolute trash. I was fortunately spared the worst of the glitches, since different players experience different levels of jank due to unknown variables. However, I still experienced a few such as the shading on Rika's face not being stable during the interview part, an Ultra Ball randomly being on the floor of Herba Mystica caves during cutscenes, and the first 15 seconds of the Elite Four theme looping. However, one thing that seems to be consistent across all copies of the game is that the textures are very low-quality and the framerate struggles to consistently reach 30 FPS. From a technical aspect, this game is of unacceptable quality for a franchise that makes as much money as Pokemon. I would tell you to not buy this game as an act of protest, but it's a bit late for that considering it already made bank. Still, if a game having terrible graphics is a turn off for you, Scarlet and Violet is not the game for you.

From a gameplay perspective, Scarlet and Violet is probably the best game in the series. The open world is extremely fun to explore and the new Pokemon are almost all amazing. It says a lot that the hardest decision of my second playthrough was whether I forgo fan-favorites Gardevoir and Lucario to run the Fairy/Steel Tinkaton. The game also gives you lots of incentive to explore, with most of the strongest Pokemon, T Ms, and Items tucked away in the various nooks and crannies of Paldea. However, a major knock against this game is that there is no level scaling, meaning that this game is open world in name only. If you try and do the late-game story events early, you'll be beaten out by sheer statistics, and if you grind levels to match them, the early events won't have their levels raised to compensate and as a result become an absolute snooze fest. Still, if you follow the level curve you'll find there are a few boss fights in this game are reasonably challenging.

As for plot and characters, this game has the most well-written characters since Gen V. And while that's a VERY low bar to clear, this game manages to earn that distinction not just by technicality. It's no exaggeration when I say Arven is competing with N for being my favorite Pokemon character of all time. And while the tutorial is really long, lasting a full two hours, afterwards there are very few cutscenes for the rest of the game, and the ones that exist are mercifully short. However, the game's main antagonist feels shoehorned in. They just kind of show up at the end and don't feel terribly connected with the rest of the plot outside of one of the Titan Badges.