i'm a sucker..
the game is astoundingly rough! even when excusing the poor performance and issues, things like cutscenes that should-100%-be-voiced simply being silent is WILD for a franchise that makes this much money
AND YET
oooo game make me feel like a kid again.
it's equally as charming as it is rough and i couldn't help myself from smiling for most of my playthrough.
the characters are really fun, new structure and open world/no random battles is a fantastic step forward and overall the story was interesting enough and well written.
shoutout to larry, i love you man.
even the silly teraforming thing reminds me of those fake shiny sticker pokemon cards you would get when you went on holiday to turkey.
music is fantastic.
got online with the lads, trading, running about doing goofy shit and taking on raids.
tinkaton is a new fav mon.
yeah. POKEMON!

I think this is the hardest thing Iv ever had to rate. The performance should make it a 0 but the fun that is buried under the metric ton of jank and just pure garbage, broken elements is so enjoyable that I have to rate it more. This is the future of the series. It needs so much more polish and time but this is what the series should be. It takes the old things and polished them and shaped them into a fresh style. Gyms are still gyms but they have small twists, they are not the life blood anymore.

The story is actually quite touching, following the pattern of the odd number gens. It is leaps and bounds over sword and shields story, in large part to the fact that unfortunately swsh didn’t actually have a story. But there is a heart to this game. I just really wish that it didn’t play like pure garbage.


My issues with performance:
•Clipping
•Crashing multiple times when trying to load gym challenges
•1-5 frames per second
•Battles loading incorrectly
•general overworld jank


My other small issue is the none existent postgame. Sure we get more story this time but a battle tower and some other things to do would have been welcome. It’s completely obvious why post game was emitted, DLC…I’ll save my opinions for when that releases.

I don’t think any series has come and gone throughout my whole life quite like Pokémon has. Thinking back to 2019: I played through Pokémon Crystal with a band of friends, and it brought back a lot of my dormant love for it. We planned our teams together, helped come up with nicknames, and tried to each catch a shiny of choice before the end of the game. By the end of the game, not only did it have that usual special Pokémon feel like you really went on a journey with your lovingly raised lil guys, my other friend’s Pokémon had also floated vaguely through my mind. Pokémon’s natural strengths of telling little wordless stories through your playthroughs all seem to shine when you do it side by side with others. Recently I’ve been playing Dragon Quest 3 - I named my party after my friends, and was really endeared by how their classes naturally make them interact with each other. 2 of my other friends, who are besties, are a mage and a priestess, and the mage is frail so the priestess has to heal them a bunch. Gotta love how classic RPGs remind me of people, but I gotta love how Pokémon brings my friends together at least just as much.

And at this point, it’s fair to say that Pokémon’s natural social subtleties are proven to be more than theory or novelty. The iconic 90s Pokémon boom pushed the series so far into the collective consciousness that it made people fear it was a cult - and they were probably right. Those catholics laid in bed in a cold sweat despite the pistols in their wardrobes, because they knew that Zubat was an entity that could not be killed in as simple ways as bullet murder. The uniqueness of every person’s playthrough would prove to lend itself perfectly to internet content; nuzlockes and all their siblings spawning an endless stream of noise forever. Twitch Plays Pokémon proved to us that democracy is not real, only for Pokémon Go to prove that world peace might still be possible regardless. So when I tell you all of this, you have to believe me that 4 player co-op is the most natural evolution to the series since Scizor.

Scarlet and Violet arrives as the first games in the series with cooperative multiplayer, and well, I think they nailed it! Mind you it’s not true co-op in the sense you battle against enemies together, but more MMO-esque in that you all simultaneously exist together while the story goes by. I recall the first few hours of the game; me and 3 friends immediately came together to make absolutely no story progress, and just spelunk around looking for some of the new weirdos this game added. Pokémon’s social nature has always linked me up with people to have casual conversations suddenly interrupted by a “DUDE IS THAT PHANPY”, but this time, we were all screaming. Stumbling onto cool Pokémon spots feels particularly special when I’m bugging my friends to follow me so we can catch that Flamingo Pokémon.

One story that stuck out to me the most is one much further in. I bugged my friend to check out this giant cave I found, and they say they’ll search for the new rock Pokémon Glimmet in it before logging off. We spend like, literally an hour running around, trying to find this thing, and we just can’t. I came up with this plan on the spot: dude…what if we just make a bunch of sandwiches until one of them gives us a rock encounter buff. And I scroll through the unchanged 2000s interfacing of Serebii, and find out that the combination of bacon, watercress, mustard, jalapeno, and egg might do the trick. This game forced my hand into making bizarro sandwiches, and I obliged faithfully; not too long after succeeding, we found a little crevice in the corner of the cave where a bunch of them spawned. It’s kinda silly, but that moment felt special - Pokémon Scarlet had forced my hand to try strange tricks to find an equally strange obscure new Pokémon in its corners. Simulacrum of Pikablu-flavoured playground rumours waft through this game endlessly, and unraveling even the most incidental of secrets feels like a revelation. At this moment I had to equate Scarlet and Violet to a dungeon master, casually weaving scenarios for my friends to lightly problem solve together. But of course, in a game as big as this, superficiality isn’t absent.

So here we enter the “oh god oh fuck they messed up” section of this: this game launched like it needed at least another year of polish. I continuously thought while playing “how do i even like…talk about this game”. Rather than outrage or laughter, I’m in this middle of the road perspective where all I’m thinking is…I hope the people who developed this game are okay, it looks like a crunch nightmare. Seeing a composer of all people apologize publicly for a music related glitch broke my heart. I just tried to ask myself as honestly as I could: how much does this game’s launch state actually affect my enjoyment? And the answer is like, yeah, it hurts the game a lot. Where it hits the game the hardest is its pacing - you can really feel how vestigial Pokémon is of 80s game design. As my game sputtered and paused in battles, I really felt the slowness of the game reporting the weather, every individual stat’s increase, every little attack in a multi-hit move, and so on. It didn’t help that this game is lacking the ability to turn off attack animations or “would you like to switch your Pokémon” prompt, unlike previous entries. But anyone who has ever loved a low budget PS2 game like it was family knows that sometimes you don’t just love the game barring the jank, you roll with the jank.

When Nintendo announced this game would have no level scaling, fans took it as something worth controversy, but I saw opportunity. I inject difficult scenarios into these games more every time I replay them: just earlier this year, I did a Pokémon Yellow playthrough where I did the second half of the gyms backwards to fight the hardest ones early. I was ready to be my own dungeon master once again, and I kept my rules simple: no using items from my bag during battle, rely only on held items only, and no use of the new gimmick. I’ll be honest, it didn’t start out all great: I went through the first 2 gyms overleveled from all the catching I was doing, so I had to break out the heavy artillery. I started using 2 teams instead of one, so one could ferment in my box and be underleveled for any challenges I needed. The third gym I fought was the first serious challenge the game had thrown at me; its leader uses the game's gimmick to create a Pokémon with no weaknesses, and it was pretty tight with my team of trashy level twenties. This game has eighteen badges split across its three storylines, and I had challenged one of the Titans already - a boss fight against a giant solo Pokémon. I realized my team was perfectly fit to disable them with ease, having lots of attack and special attack dropping moves, so a thought came to my mind…what if I beat them all right now?

And well, I did it! My entire team was dead besides my Dachsbun, who managed to deal the killing blow to this level 56 Titan. Every titan gives you a new mode of overworld control, and so I had beaten the Metroidvania out of Scarlet to make the rest of my story progress breezy. It definitely felt like the biggest achievement I ever made in this game. Every Team Star boss fight except one took me multiple tries as well, they use special boss Pokémon designed around inflicting specific status effects on you. But I’ll admit, I felt like I would never have a Gym fight harder than that electric gym for the rest of the game after that. I just kept getting to them later than the game expected me to! Worst of all, my best ally had turned against me; the sandwiches I made gave all my Pokémon magic Power of Friendship dodges during story fights.
All things considered, I think this first run I did had decent success, but the amount of times I got to a gym overleveled only to be underwhelmed was a bit frustrating; there’s no indication of a badge’s challenge until you start the fight. Weirdo RPG difficulty obsessives definitely have a lot to chew on here, though - I can only imagine a more thoroughly planned run would be able to turn this game inside out. Especially with how none of the basic overworld trainers are mandatory fights, this game is basically a challenge runner’s dream: a Pokémon boss rush game where you can challenge level 40 bosses with level 10s without large amounts of prep.

The most interesting thing about Scarlet and Violet’s approach to open world is how fermented it feels. Only a few traces exist here of the tried-and-trash Ubisoft tower design, and this certainly isn’t Grand Theft Auto: Like a Dragon - the reality is that this game is basically an 8th Gen AAA NES RPG. Dying ligaments of game design ripped out of Miyamoto’s attic seem to cake both this game’s biggest strengths and flaws. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are the 2nd best Dragon Quest 1 remake, and they are a D&D session with all of your gay friends. While I see a lot of its core game design as inelegant, this game is all I could ask for when it comes to naturally conducting spontaneous storytelling. Pretty fun ostensible corporate trash to recommend your friends with eighteen asterisks.

I didn't originally intend to play this pokemon gen, but a friend brought the double pack and gave me one of his versions to try out. He also did breed the two starters i missed so i was enthusiastically starting the journey with my 3 starter + the flying pikachu team.

I have to say that i can't remember the last time i enjoyed a pokemon game quite like this one (must be gen 5 i guess). The freedom to just choose somewhere on the worldmap, put it into your google maps and just go JOLO. That's my kind open world play. In a level 9 area i found a 29 Vespiquen which i really wanted to catch, but my team was level 16. My fire attacks did little, and she had Roost and Swagger. The fight that followed was poisoning it with my grey wooper and stalling out for a lot of turns slowly wearing it down while trying not to get wiped out. doing stuff you are majorly underleveld for really deepens the mechanical side of the game more than ever.

Personally i didn't encounter major bugs yet, just some framerate drops here and there, and minor area glitches. I have autosave in options off so that probably helped. I regularly play retrogames, and i grew up with pokemon gen 1, so i didn't find this game that ugly. But i'm not a person that cares much in that department.

This game positively surprised me, the backlash feels a bit overblown and only looks at the technical side of things. If the game gets patched i might even bump the rating up.

Und mal wieder hat es Pokemon ohne Mühe hinbekommen einen neuen Tiefpunkt der Reihe zu schaffen.

Frameratedrops UND schlechte Grafik in einem.
Man kann Kämpfe nun automatisch ablaufen lassen.. Pokemonkämpfe.. das.. worum es in Pokemon geht, kann man nun skippen. Klasse!

Protagonist noch immer stumm, Story noch immer mies.

Man läuft stumpf von Icon zu Icon.

Alle, wirklich ALLE Leute, die das Gegenteil behaupten tragen die Rosa Rote Pokemonbrille und könnten euch nicht erklären, warum man nicht einfach Rot und Blau spielen sollte.

Gameplay is absolutely phenomenal, until you try swimming and you’re watching a slideshow. the game is very fun and addicting but the tech issues keep it from being my favorite Pokemon game. The story was surprisingly very cool, it drags in the beginning but they really did make it feel like an adventure. I liked Arven’s story and Nemona is the only rival post-asshole era that feels like a genuine and good character. The end of the game was definitely a massive lore dump, but it was genuinely really pretty and probably where all the graphics budget went. I would recommend this to any Pokemon fan, but for anyone that’s still not decided, I would wait until a patch to fix performance issues. Otherwise, a very fun and enjoyable Pokemon game. I will probably bump up the score if they ever do fix performance.

Ya solo juego esto por infancia y compromiso, y porque me gusta curiosear viendo los nuevos Pokémon y eso aún me diviérte, es algo muy mi pedo, pero desde quita, solo soy capaz de disfrutar la primera partida de las gens posteriores a la quinta por los nuevos pokes y me gusta formas mis equipos y hacerlos evolucionar. Nada más, en todo lo demás realmente no tendría motivos porque jugar.


No tengo mucho que aportar aparte de lo que todos han dicho ya. Juego flojo, feo, impresentable, etc, ya es perder el tiempo esperar algo de esta saga, así que solo me dedico a piratearla y a jugar competitivos en showdown, que es lo único que creo que vale la pena en si mismo. Aparte de diseños de nuevos Pokémon, pero nada más.

En fin. Que triste. Triste porque desde quinta. Pokémon a crecido demasiado para su propio bien. Tener que tener fechas ajustadas y sacar constantemente cosas sin necesidad, para estar al día con peluches, sacar dinero, anime, etc, la juega en contra.

Si técnicamente Pokémon siempre fue una saga anual en la corriente principal, entre secuelas, partes terceras y remakes, quisas algún año de descanso en el pasado, pero hemos llegado al punto de sacar 2 juegos grandes (arceus y estos) en el mismo año, bajan el presupuesto de los juegos, etc etc. No me imagino el crunh que deben de tener los trabajadores, dios que horrible. Ah este punto dudo tener salvación, aunque un juego venda menos, aquí donde más se gana es en cosas alejadas de los juegos de videos, llendo más al merchandaising, así que genuinamente no sé qué decir. Por mi parte, ya dije que hare, piratear y jugar showdown hasta el fin de los tiempos. Me cuesta dejar algo, una saga que tengo desde que era chiquito, pero prefiero no apoyar prácticas predatorias, y jugar solo si mi dinero no llega a Pokémon company.

This is really weird because I didn’t feel like I had as much fun with this game as I have with other Pokemon games, but this was the one I was the most willing to go through. Even with games I love there are points where I dont want to play it either for a while or at all but that did not happen with this game. My metric for reviews up until this point has been that if I wanted to finish a game all the way through throughout every moment I played it it was at least a 9/10, so I give it that. This game is absolutely wretched and is emblematic of all the problems with crunch and overworking employees but I still had fun with it and supported the problem by buying it. Im a terrible person.

"A delayed game is eventually good. A bad game will sell 10 million copies in 3 days" - Shigeru Miyamoto.

As a starter for this review i must preface that no Pokemon game without natdex would get more than a 2.5 from me.

That being said this game is comedic with how mediocre/bad it is in every aspect. Story is 3 different ones that felt under cooked and the fourth final story that ties them together does it in a really lazy way. Gameplay is just Pokemon which has mostly been stagnant for the past near decade since X and Y. Graphics are also terrible not even counting the constant visual glitches, without any actual style besides being cartoony/anime which is given no visual flair.

Saving the obvious talk about bugs, glitches, and performance issues last yes the game has many of them and in all honesty if it wasn't for the fact that it looked like garbage I probably would have not paid it any attention due to lack of natdex. I don't think i ever had a consistent frame rate the entire time I played the game, every where i went had many visual bugs, and about every 3 hours I'd restart the game so that it would run smoother again (smoother not smoothly big difference).

Now for positives in concept this could have been interesting, the open world can be fun to traverse but its not very interesting, The gameplay is fun for the basic Pokemon formula but it is again stagnant, And unintentionally was a great experience for me and my friend who isn't even into Pokemon as it constantly gave us a good laugh with how bad it is.

I won't give any pity points for it due to it being the largest media franchise, plenty of money could have been poured into this. Fans should only demand more and more but more often settle for less and less which is a shame really.

This game is okay. I don't really have anything overwhelmingly positive to say nor anything negative. This game was fun for what it was but the performance issues can really bog down your experience.

In regards to the story though, there are three different quest lines and while I felt that each individual quest line wasn't all too great, the finale chapter was surprisingly pretty good. Most of the characters felt forgettable but there were a few which did stick out. OST was largely okay. Paldea was alright, I do wish the devs made more memorable locations to explore seeing as this is an "open world" experience because once again, a large portion of this world is just forgettable. The only location which felt even remotely inspired was the final dungeon which is unsurprising given how good the finale was. Pokemon selection in this game was amazing though, you can make pretty much any team you want right out the gate and I appreciate that a lot. The new Pokemon in this region are also alright. Pokemon starters, save for Quaxly, are really good. Sprigatito and Fuecoco both have really good evolution lines. Charcadet absolutely stole my heart this generation and is by far my favorite Pokemon in such a long time. Additionally, while the Pokemon designs are appreciable, the character designs are just horrid this generation. I am not a fan of 99% of the character designs in this game, they're all just.. not good at all.

That's about it though, I don't think I've felt this neutral about a game in so long.

11/29/22: I finished the Pokedex and 100% this game literal moments ago and I can say none of my thoughts have changed whatsoever.

great game released about a full year too early to hit that sweet q4 holiday earnings report

very much the right direction for the series to take, and yet, one still feels an urge to perhaps do a little graffiti on a building owned by gamefreak

you have to look past 8 layers of crunch, but if you do that, you will notice that the developers (note: not the people in charge) actually cared about this game, which is a first for pokemon on the switch

Looks like shit and even mobile games run better without that many framedrops

Otherwise big step in the right direction for the series and breaking of the boring formula

They just need to make a game completlty build like the last act of the game (soul)

The second new generation of Pokemon on a console is usually the one that takes the series forward, is bold enough to experiment, and gives us more memorable characters and story beats and Scarlet/Violet delivers on all of these. Gen 9 has the ambition to take Pokemon into a fully open world for the first time after Legends Arceus experimented with open zones but is it a step too much for Game Freak to handle in their constant development cycles that sees them pump out new games every year?

Well the open world experience on offer here is fantastic. It works so well with Pokemon’s addictive core gameplay of catching and battling Pokemon that it’s so easy to spend hours hunting for Pokemon to add to your team, picking up the random items dotted all over the map. While the world itself looks uh not great, there is a good diversity of aesthetics on show, from grassy plains to snowy mountains, rocky caves to open seas, all fully of Pokemon shown in the overworld with no random encounters that you’ll find yourself being drawn to Pokemon you need for your dex and catching them. Unfortunately, none of the catching mechanics from PLA were brought forward here, it’s all the classic style of battling to weaken Pokemon and throwing balls through a menu. It’s a shame you can’t just lock onto Pokemon and throw a ball at them because that gameplay loop in PLA was so smooth and fast that it made catching Pokemon even more addictive. There is a lock on function here in Gen 9 but it’s limited to throwing your own Pokemon out to battle which sort of sums up my feelings with these games: two steps forward, one step back.

So, open world, you can go anywhere and do any task in any order. Gen 9 decides to give you 3 main objectives to set out upon: The gym challenge (standard Pokemon affair of defeating 8 gym leaders and earning badges to take on the Elite Four and Champion) The titans (defeating super sized Pokemon that are similar to Totem Pokemon from Gen 7 to earn Herba Mystica for your fancy Legendary Pokemon bike that essentially act as HMs like surf and rock climb) and defeating Team Star (kind of like the enemy team of the game but nowhere near as world ending threatening like your Magmas and Galactics)
And this is fantastic, it adds up to 18 challenges - one for every single Pokemon type to truly test your squads and you can do these in any order! That’s great right? Well unfortunately, the levels don’t scale for these challenges, so you could challenge something like the Ice gym, finding yourself up against Level 50ish Pokemon, training to overcome that challenge and finding that you’re incredibly overleveled for the rest of the game because none of these fights scale - the bug gym will always be around level 15 and the obvious place to start, so it’s like yeah, this is open world but there is still a set order to be doing things in based on levels and that’s a shame because this is such a great foundation for taking the series forward in areas where it has long stagnated.

Mechanically, there’s been a lot of convenience added to these games. All the stuff needed to build competitive teams, like bottle caps and items like flame orbs can be bought in stores for regular Pokemoney and that is another huge step forward in opening up the competitive aspect to more players. Breeding can now be done anywhere via setting up picnics. The new Tera Raids (replacing Dynamax raids from Gen 8) can be found all over the map instead of a dedicated area. Trainer battles are initiated by talking to a trainer rather than being seen by one. All little conveniences that add up to a much smoother experience for the player but then you’ve got the usual weird decisions…. Like why remove set mode? Why limit clothing to just four uniforms? Why not allow players to manipulate the time of day like Xenoblade does? It’s these little things that niggle away in the back of the mind, always reminding you, that yes, while this is a fantastic experience in so many regards, there are obvious places in which this experience could be closer to perfection.

The new gimmick of this gen is Tera Pokemon. Basically by pressing R in battle you can change your Pokemon into a crystalised version that can alter its typing if its tera type is different. For example, you could change your Electric type Pikachu into a Flying type, completely altering its weaknesses and resistances, flipping a matchup on its head. I genuinely think this is my favourite gimmick they’ve come up with but it’s woefully underutilised in the single player. Every gym leader has a Pokemon that doesn’t fit into their type (eg, the Grass gym has the Rock type Sudowoodo) and they change their Pokemon into the Tera type of that gym which means all they’ve done is switched a Pokemon’s weaknesses into a type you’ve already come prepared for. Imagine going up against the Grass gym and they terastallized their Grass type Pokemon into a Water type, completely resisting the Fire type you’ve probably brought to the gym. They could’ve been so unpredictable and truly shown off the potential of Terastalizing but unfortunately they picked the most predictable thing they could’ve done. Basically, a fantastic idea and one I can’t wait to see used in competitive fights, just not implemented well in single player fights.

The multiplayer component has been expanded upon here. You’ve got your usual battles, trades and raids but in addition now you can fully explore each other's worlds in a party of up to 4 players. There’s not much to do that’s actually dedicated to having multiple players, but you can all carry on with your own adventures while also having the company of your friends, seeing the same wild Pokemon and exploring together. It’s a nice addition and a welcome one. In fact, I’ve already seen people attempting to do Soul Link runs with having each other in the same world and that is such a cool thing that you can do now without having to do any unique modifications.

So storywise, once again the second new gen on a console steps things up and shows the potential Pokemon has at delivering something fun and engaging while also having memorable characters. Each of the three stories star a fantastic character, searching for their own treasure, whether it’s Nemona hoping to find a rival that can match her strength, or Arven, searching for the Herba Mystica to heal his dying Pokemon, the characters shine on a level up there with the likes of N in Gen 5 or Lillie in Gen 7. The culmination of all three story arcs is genuinely one of the best endgame stories done in Pokemon as you’re finally able to delve into Area Zero and discover the mysteries of the Paldea region and your fancy Legendary Pokemon bike. It’s incredible, it’s what I hoped that the Ultra Beasts story would’ve been like in Gen 7 and I’m happy to see Pokemon be ambitious with its story and characters again.

So yeah, with all this, despite a few niggles here and there, I would’ve put this game up there with Gens 2/5/7 as one of my favourite Pokemon experiences ever but now we come to the Donphan in the room…… The technical performance of the game. In all my years of playing Nintendo published games I have never played one that so brazenly does not hit the “Nintendo Seal of Quality” The performance of this game on a technical level is quite frankly embarrassing. There’s no excuse for a game that is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch and therefore BUILT WITH ITS LIMITATIONS IN MIND, to run like this. I am all for ambition, and to be fair to Pokemon, this open world does feature a good number of fully populated towns with no loading which must have been difficult to accomplish on Switch but…. Like it’s constantly stuttering, locking up at moment, background elements can run as low as 2fps, characters can pop in and out of existence, some wild tera Pokemon won’t load in despite the golden glow being there, there’s dev placeholder Pokeballs in some buildings and caves, the camera can clip through the ground during battles, sometimes catching Pokemon can cause the backgrounds to struggle to load and slow the game to a crawl, there’s areas where the framerate dips heavily like the lake and there’s just so much here that is obviously the cracks showing from the limited dev time Game Freak implements on itself. I can take a handful of issues and overlook them in isolation, like the framerate dips in the Master Sword area in Breath of the Wild, or the framerate dips in Erythia Sea in Xenoblade 3 - these are isolated events in ambitious and beautiful games that are pushing the Nintendo Switch to its limits. Pokemon on the other hand…. Looks nowhere near as good as these games and suffers these issues on a far more consistent basis that it’s impossible to overlook these flaws. When you’re playing a game where you are constantly aware that it could crash at any moment, then it detracts from the experience and that’s a shame because it’s obvious that Game Freak do care about what they’re making, they are listening to aspects and trying to take things forward but man, you can’t be pumping out games that need around 5 years development time in 3 years with half a team because the other half were working on your open zone experiment that released just 11 months earlier. I know this is a bit of a rant but I’m sorry, there’s a base level of functionality that should be getting hit and this falls way below that and it’s unacceptable, especially for something that is a juggernaut like Pokemon. These technical failings will come back to bite them eventually if they don’t do something about it and they are lucky that the core gameplay of Pokemon could carry them through this technical mess of a game.

So, Gen 9 every step forward the series has been needing in areas with a handful of steps back in others that, at its core is up there with series highs like Gen 5 but one ultimately held back an embarrassing technical performance that makes it hard to recommend on a general level because how much fun you will have with these games will come down to how much you are able deal with the issues you face while playing the game. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Paldea, I love the potential that open world Pokemon has but I am reaching my limit on how poor these games run and look compared to the rest of Nintendo’s offerings.