Pokémon rarely makes significant changes between generations. It can do whatever it wants because it is the biggest media property in human history and, as a result, has never seemed anxious to follow the rest of the business.
It’s hard to believe that Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, released in 2016, are the first completely open world games after 26 years of gaming and two decades of 3D game dominance and saturating the market. For some, it would have been sufficient to simply create a classic Pokémon game in the conventional style, which would have sold amusingly well. However, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are not like that. It feels like Game Freak is stretching its muscles in the main series for the first time in a very long time.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet deliver three games’ worth of ideas in one package, with changes to a 25-year legacy that feel like a team taking to heart the frequently repeated idea that Pokémon doesn’t change, in contrast to Pokémon Sword and Shield, which felt like an attempt to simply get a Pokémon game out on the new hardware and iterate later.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is bursting at the seams with ideas, even if it does feel like those ideas are a little ahead of the aging platform that houses it. It has a ton of content, a sizable environment to explore, and an incredibly interesting post-game (details of which we can’t reveal).
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet feature three primary story lines as opposed to a single main goal that mostly entails obtaining all eight gym badges and taking on the Elite 4. One path is devoted to the conventional Gym system, another has players chasing after giant titan Pokémon (similar to Arceus’ Noble Pokémon in Pokémon Legends), and a third path requires you to battle a swarm of 30 Pokemon while rushing through an enemy base.
You are effectively given free reign to pursue any of the three main questlines in any order after an establishing opening scene and a bit too lengthy exposition of the universe at large. If your team was strong enough, you could do whatever you wanted right away, although there does appear to be a light guide as to what order you should do things in, primarily based on the level of the local wild Pokémon.
The most conventional of the different story modes is Victory Road, where you battle through eight gyms before facing the top four. Since each gym is type-specific, having at least one Pokémon with a type advantage will make quick work of them.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is overflowing with ideas, even if it often seems as though those concepts are a little ahead of the dated platform on which it is housed.
The third route has the player destroying Team Star bases spread out across the game’s map. Although the term “enemy team” may be overused, you seldom ever see the members outside of these events out and about in the same numbers that you used to see Team Rocket back in the day.
These bouts are different from regular Pokémon battles in that players send out three of their Pokémon to automatically engage hordes of adversaries with the goal of eliminating 30 of them before the timer runs out. It’s new to run alongside your three strongest Pokémon in an intriguing twist on the formula, but they’re all fairly simple and use a similar strategy.
The benefit of having these three distinct paths is that they give you the impression that there is always something fresh to encounter. Want to look around the map? It is completely open from the beginning, so go ahead. Do you want to destroy gyms? Try it out. Want to compete with Pokémon trainers that are far more experienced? From the beginning, you can locate them in the wild.
It feels incredibly liberating. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet trust the player considerably more than previous games in the Pokémon series, which have a history of giving players too much guidance and preventing them from putting themselves in situations where they’re condemned to fail.
With a team of Pokémon in their mid-20s, we were exploring a location around five hours into the game when we unexpectedly came across a level 75 Pokémon in a cave’s random side path. Although we were quickly defeated, the knowledge that there were ultra-difficult encounters hidden throughout the world adds a sense of excitement and danger to exploration that has been lacking in games from the main series.
Terastallizing, a new mechanic that enables Pokémon to assume a new, completely different additional type, gives combat an intriguing new twist. Should a water type like Quaxly be discovered with that Tera-type, it could theoretically adopt the type advantages and disadvantages of a Fire-type.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have a greater level of player trust than previous games in the Pokémon series, which have a history of giving players too much guidance and preventing them from placing themselves in defeat-inducing situations.
The NPCs you encounter on your voyage do a fantastic job at describing how the new concept can bring depth to conflicts, which adds a new element to combat. We hope that this mechanic doesn’t end up being dropped after one generation like Mega evolving, Z moves, or Dynamaxing.
Another deviation from custom is how Miraidon or Koraidon, the game’s legendary Pokémon, are handled in the box. The Pokémon is first introduced to you within the first hour and then handed to you shortly after. There is a catch, though: the legendary Pokémon can’t be used in battle right away because it is seriously hurt.
However, since it transforms into a bike, glider, dinghy, and rock climbing equipment, you can use it as a mode of transportation. Despite the unfortunate fact that Koraidon and Miraidon are the legendary Pokémon that receive the least amount of attention, their significance to the overall plot makes them feel like a much larger part of the game than the way that box legendaries often feel like little more than fluff you catch to complete your quest.
Their traversal abilities are gradually increased, which also influences how the game recommends players investigate the environment. If you can’t get there because you don’t have the necessary movement skills, it’s undoubtedly inhabited by Pokémon that will annihilate your team.
Scarlet and Violet, however, seem overly ambitious, even for the Switch, as was alluded to at the beginning of this article. We were quite dissatisfied with the games’ performance on the Nintendo Switch hardware during our time with them. The small worlds of earlier Pokémon games did a lot to obscure the fact that they were never technical wonders.
To the games’ credit, there aren’t many loading screens; instead, you may move about and see most of the rest of the globe right away. However, this also makes any technological issues stand out more.
The draw distance is agonizingly close for both the world and the Pokémon that appear in the wild. When you watch distant stretches of country fade in and out of existence and whole towns vanish as you pass by them, you lose perspective on the size of the planet. There are several high vantage spots spread out around the area, which makes it unpleasant to stare out across panoramas of what seems to be incomplete land. What’s worse is how this impacts Pokémon found in the wild.
“How they function on the hardware of the Nintendo Switch really let us down. Pokémon games have never been technically perfect, but the previous games’ small worlds did a lot to hide that”.
Being able to see Pokémon in the overworld seems like a move that has to be permanent moving forward in the series. It increases the sense of immersion, makes the Pokémon feel like they belong in the environment, and amps up the excitement of searching for them. In contrast, standing even a small distance away from a Pokémon would force its model to switch to a low-poly version, turning round Pokemon into jagged octagons and causing its textures to disintegrate into mush in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.
When the player is far away, many games use low-poly models to save on rendering stuff you can’t see, but in this game, it’s so obvious that it destroys the immersion. To determine the precise distance the game spawns in the appropriate models, you can practically walk back and forth in any open field.
The framerate of the game is also very erratic, with certain combat resembling slideshows and other open-world portions giving the impression that the game is close to crash. Similar to the low-resolution Pokémon issue, there is a distance beyond which the Pokémon no longer animate at their maximum framerate, making Pokémon that flap their wings appear to be malfunctioning robots.
While the actual cast of new and returning Pokémon is a wonderful mix, and our favorite new class of Pokémon since Ruby and Sapphire, these technical problems let down the notion that these are real creatures that exist in this world alongside humans.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet do so much in terms of gameplay and plot exactly correctly. The game’s technological features, however, require the same care, particularly given that the franchise is probably moving to new hardware by the time of the next generation.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are like a prototype for Pokémon’s future. The series, which is rapidly approaching 30 years of domination, is unable to return to the charming small villages and infrequent meetings of the past.
Scarlet and Violet never make a bad choice. The vast expansion and changes to the single-player campaign are fantastic, the world’s size and the joy of exploration are the best in the franchise, and the new Pokemon and battle mechanics all work beautifully. But it’s hard to help but wonder how much more enjoyable the game would be if it ran smoothly on Switch or on more powerful hardware.
Pro
- Great new Pokemon
- Three story paths are a fantastic change
- The open-world hunt for Pokemon is engaging
- Exciting post-game
Cons
- Terrible performance
The gym challenges, brief side tasks that players must accomplish to access the gym leader, are returning from several of Pokémon Sword and Shield’s gyms. Mini-games like rolling a huge olive into a basket or asking locals for help in solving a riddle are examples of these. Although they’re entertaining and have a recognizable cast of gym instructors, your time with them is all too fleeting, as is generally the case.
Your character in The Path of Legends hunts a number of enormous Pokémon that have allegedly been spotted all across the map. This typically entails moving to a new area of the map and being called by a figure who informs you that the enormous Pokémon are nearby and that you should go hunting for them.
These encounters are comparable to the Arceus Noble Pokémon. Although they are entertaining enough, it is far more intriguing to see how these Pokémon fit into the overarching narrative of the region. Although a few of the Titan Pokemon require a little more work, we would have preferred these hunts to be a little more involved. For a few of the Titan Pokemon, we simply entered the area, and it was just standing in front of us.
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