This game is a great game with new and innovative ideas held back by greedy requirements having to be met by corporations and restrictions placed upon it by Nintendo's hardware. Going into this game, be prepared to remain anywhere from 15fps to 30fps on a good day. The pokemon concepts in this game were cute, but not standout, and I actually prefer the previous gens new mons. The music is great and never outstanding at any point, and the new terastilization concept is cute but meaningless in the end other than the type change, which cannot really be taken advantage of until the post game. Honestly I felt this game was polarizing, because I enjoyed it due to it simply being pokemon, and sometimes I felt there were many poor decisions made, such as no level scaling or proper guide map on the overworld. Being able to tackle what you want when you want is great... until you realize that nothing is scaled to your level, meaning if you jump into gym 4 at some point you may be heavily over leveled or under leveled and sweep the match. I thought it silly that the game allows you to do anything, as it does not really. I would prefer if the game is still formulaic, and has a pattern of Gym, titan, star battle, gym, titan, star battle, to keep you at pace with the game. It is not fun to accidentally stumble upon a team star match, and get through 15 min of gameplay only to have a boss being 15 levels over yours and sweep your team. On the other hand, area zero was great, the conclusions to all three of the branches of the story were pretty touching, and the titan bosses were a great concept entirely! It was fun to see massive Pokémon taking over the overworld. The concept of ancient pokemon and the time machine was great too, with the new paldean versions of pokemon being pretty great. Koraidon is a much better legendary than the legendary dogs from the previous gen, and raid battles were a good time. Ultimately, its a great pokemon game, that is a decent game in general, held back by the lack of quality or polish placed in this game. Popins and screen tears are extremely common. I look forward to the dlc.

This game was disappointing, to say the least. I was really excited for Gen 9 especially since it had a Spanish influence. The nonlinear open-world aspects were a nice change of pace and all the new Pokémon were cool. Despite those better aspects, this game is disappointing because of this many flaws: there were tons of bugs at launch, the story wasn't very interesting, and most importantly it didn't advance the franchise in any meaningful way, instead it felt like a soulless cash-grab entry. I'm a huge Pokémon fan but I think this game has killed some of my enjoyment: I didn't catch all the Pokémon and haven't played the DLC. If Gen 10 is anything like this game I might be done with the series.

Video games are supposed to be fun. And despite its best efforts, Pokémon Scarlet is a lot of fun. It's Pokémon at its absolute best, and despite the pitiful performance and graphic job by Game Freak, the core series has never been better.

I won't beleaguer the point too much as everyone has already made it. But the performance is dreadfully bad. Thankfully, my entire (~100 hour) run with the game I never experienced any severe errors like crashes or resets or lost/corrupted data. But many did. And that's an unforgivable scenario for a company the size of Game Freak and a media titan that's as powerful as Pokémon. The relative scale of the media laid against the variety of crucial errors for a game as graphically unimpressive as Pokémon Scarlet/Violet make this a considerably larger debacle than Cyberpunk.

Frame rates are terrible at their best case and drop into the single digits at times. Pop in and draw distance is shockingly bad and some textures in the game are genuinely PS2 quality. The poor technical performance is jarring given I played this immediately after finishing God of War Ragnarök and when compared to other Switch stalwarts like Breath of the Wild and Xenoblade Chronicles. The technical load and ambition of Pokémon Scarlet/Violet is just so minimal and unimpressive even if fully-realized that the shockingly bad performance is not just unacceptable but embarrassing.

Putting the scathing remarks to bed, it's all the more frustrating that Pokémon Scarlet is damn fun anyway. The Pokémon designs this generation are some of the best the series has ever had with true, universally praised, standouts like Dachsbun, Smoliv, Charcadet, Bossmastiff and Pawmot. There are some duds of course like Revavroom, the starters, Cyclizar and the box legendaries, Dudunsparce. But overall the design quality, a core component of a successful Pokémon entry, is about as high as its ever been and represents a return to form after a poorer quality generation in Sword and Shield.

The open world design is a triumph for the series. Its implementation is still fairly threadbare and basic when lain across the gaming landscape, but as a first in the mainline franchise the open world is very fun. You can traverse end to end without a loading screen, encountering scores of Pokémon along the way and ultimately given you a Breath of the Wild-esque sense of wonder and exploration by giving you a world with very few hard limits. Unlike Breath of the Wild, there's not always a lot to discover along the journey but that doesn't discount just how fun that journey is to take. And with so many different wild Pokémon in the overworld you feel like you're swimming in content and opportunities as you trawl these routes. Sure there aren't as many Korok style secrets to overturn but the mysterious stakes, hidden items and the Pokémon themselves offer plenty to do at every turn.

The lack of storyline scaling does severely undermine this open world, however. The execution is half-baked at best leaving the experience more Fidough than Dachsbun. I started the game by following Nemona's advice and traveling west to Cortondo Gym to start the gym challenge journey. After beating the gym I could double back and head eastward to do the Titan challenge as Arven had suggested, or I could continue westward to the nearest next gym. I chose to do that. Along the way the level curve felt noticeable but not difficult. I battled some trainers and wild Pokémon as I continued westward and encountered my first Team Star base. I defeated the base without too much trouble and continued on to Cascarrafa Gym. The gym and its associated challenge gave me a bit of struggle by outside of using a potion or two in battle I was able to move through it quite easy.

It's at that point I realized what felt like a comfortable but engaging level curve was not at all the intent of Game Freak. I had taken on what should've been the fourth gym as my second. I had defeated what was to be the third Team Star base as my first. And I eventually defeated what was to be the fourth Titan as my first. I destroyed the level curve without any intent to do so. I broke the game for myself. From this innocent beginning I found myself wildly overleveled for much of the rest of the content without even attempting to do so, and even with shuffling teams I'd far outpaced the intended progression.

It certainly was no attempt of my own but this sort of thing is almost encouraged by the game. Allowing such freedom of exploration and rewarding it with XP encourages the player to take on the challenge of progressing through an area only to find out it was never meant to be challenging and now other areas will be a breeze. This sort of encounter is impossible in a semi-open world like God of War Ragnarök where areas that are meant to be accessed later are simply closed off. Ultimately, the experience of finding your own path and staking out your own adventure falls to pieces when you realize through just playing the game as you like you destroy the entire challenge of a turn-based tactical JRPG.

And that's something I think gets lost with Pokémon. We treat it with kid's gloves because it's a game for kids. But other JRPGs don't do this, even those aimed for younger audiences like Kingdom Hearts. A turn-based strategy game which should objectively have slow and in-depth combat choices is made trivially simply not only from early design but from how the game encourages and enables you to blast past the expected leveling progression. With almost no intentional grinding you can make the entirety of the game's combat system irrelevant throughout the rest of your experience. And that's a shame.

But, it is still fun. The new designs are fun, it's fun to evolve and collect them. Being able to access your Box in the field, a QoL change from SwSh, is significant in keeping the game quick paced. While many have complained about the lack of interior buildings and the new 'music-festival-merch-tent' style Pokémon Center and PokéMart, I quite enjoyed how the game kept you focused on the adventure. There was never much delight for me in talking to every single poorly written one sentence of nonsense NPC in every PokéTown. In Scarlet you're always kept right in the action in the center of everything. In a world that doesn't have may NPCs but is teeming with Pokémon.

The updated breeding system is incredibly welcomed. You can make very many eggs at once, across breeding pairs, without needing to double and triple back on trips or stash your Pokémon in the Day Care. Eggs hatch exceedingly fast making it supremely user-friendly to shiny hunt, or build your Living Dex, or hatch out some OT versions of Pokémon you've traded for. Fishing for hidden abilities or getting egg moves have never been easier in the franchise and it's just another example of Game Freak ridding Pokémon of its more tedious parts over the last three generations. Being able to forget and re-learn learnset moves on the fly is also an incredibly welcomed change. Being able to build TMs at any Pokémon Center in the game, on-demand, is also a fantastic innovation, especially when the means to do so is directly linked back to the game's battle mechanics. In many ways Pokémon Scarlet feels more interconnected and cohesive than any Pokémon game has in quite a long time.

Some battles, like Arven's final battle near Poco Path Lighthouse, are quite challenging and engaging, standing among the franchise's best. The two battles against AI Sada were delightfully challenging. Some other battles are quite sad in their lack of challenge, like every battle against Nemona, the battle against Penny or the battle against Geeta (who has to be the weakest E4 champion in the history of Pokémon). The difficulty is wildly imbalanced though leans heavily on being a total cakewalk for 95% of instances, regardless of your type imbalance.

The story is maybe the best we've seen in the franchise, but it's still not very good. The bar for a passable storyline in a mainline Pokémon game is so low it might as well be a jump rope. Still, there's at least an attempt at writing here which puts Pokémon Scarlet/Violet alongside Pokémon Black & White as the best written generation in the series. Arven's story is genuinely quite good and heartfelt, the story beats work great at the macro-level even if the moment to moment dialogue is pretty terrible. Nemona is an enjoyable rival even though her story is plenty shallow and her writing, also god awful. Team Star is thoroughly unlikable despite the attempt to write them as something heartfelt and their story is far too contrived, even for a JRPG, to feel relatable. The bullying victim storyline should be an easily realistic storyline to deliver in a game for kids and there could've been much more to drive home how touching the story wanted to be, but truly it's all such a mess. It especially doesn't help that the Team Star bases are maybe the worst idea any Pokémon has ever had for required content. They're boring, tedious and easy.

But the game is somehow better than the sum of its parts. The online components are as easy and user friendly as they've ever been, though I wish we could get a return of the GTS from Gen V. The raids are the same as they were from SwSh but that's okay because they work better and are more fun now. Trading is simple and available early, co-op play is barebones but it works, PvP is as easy as ever. Designs are great, the game doesn't move anywhere near as slow as the last several generations did. Cutscenes are still poor and annoying but they're not half as obtrusive as they were in SwSh.

Despite all of its flaws, Pokémon Scarlet is a very fun experience. Pokémon is a winning formula. It's the pizza of video games. Even bad Pokémon is still good, and this just isn't a bad Pokémon game. It's a poorly performing one. But it's a damn fun one. The open world and fresh new UI, new map and new Pokémon put the franchise on its best footing in years. And while the graphical performance is quite terrible, at least the game is more fun than its predecessor, Sword and Shield, which also suffered from poor graphics and terrible technical performance.

After having been on the fence about even bothering to pickup Pokémon Scarlet, after how poor I felt Pokémon Sword and Shield were, I am very grateful that I did. It's been plenty of fun, and I look forward to what other content Game Freak is looking into pushing for the franchise. A thought that was quite far from my mind after their Switch debut a few years ago.

did I enjoy this game? sure. are there some good ideas somewhere in here? sure.

is the fact that I had fun indicative of the fact that the game is not awful? no!

ive never been too much of a graphics-oriented person but even I have my line in the sand. this is an embarrassing product to release in 2024. but of course they got my money anyway so what am I if not complacent with (or actively encouraging) the entire problem

I have a weird relationship with this game. I had a lot of fun with it when I played it, and some of the things it did are exactly what I'd been hoping for with Pokemon. The way the story is broken up is pretty interesting, and though it has the same basic structure as any other Pokemon game, it's enough of a break in the formula to be refreshing. Plus the climax is miles ahead of any other Pokemon game's. Compared to Sword and Shield, which I could barely bring myself to beat, this game is miles ahead.

However, there's also a lot of things that suck about the game. You can see ways that it was rushed, bordering on unfinished, even from a casual playthrough. Even if you don't encounter any major bugs or crashes (which I did), it still feels hard to call this a finished product. And though the game does try to give you things to do once you beat the main story, I pretty much lost interest as soon as my Pokedex was complete. There's just not really any reason to continue raising Pokemon if you're not interested in online battling.

As for the new Pokemon, I generally like their designs a lot. The past paradox Pokemon, especially, are a great combination of the concepts behind Ultra Beasts and regional forms (I find the future paradox mons pretty uninteresting). I also like the evolutions for old Pokemon, like Dudunsparce and Kingambit. I sorely missed these types of mons in generations 6 and 7. It's my preferred way to give more spotlight to mons from previous generations.

Overall, I can't say I would "recommend" this game. But I did have fun with it. But it's not worth the price. But........you see what I mean?

Sinceramente, eu acho que preciso parar de confiar na opinião das pessoas quando o assunto é Pokemon, porque esse jogo aqui me proporcionou a melhor experiência em um jogo de pokémon que eu tive na vida.

Eu não sabia como eles fariam um jogo mundo aberto da franquia, e sinceramente acho que o quesito de exploração foi trabalhado de forma excelente. Não é um jogo perfeito, claro. No console ele tem diversos problemas de otimização que eu confesso que não tive que enfrentar. Mas, com isso de lado e analisando apenas a experiência que eu tive jogando e completando a dex (pela primeira vez, diga-se de passagem) posso dizer q esse é um dos melhores jogos de pokémon que eu já joguei.

Un juego que marca un claro camino a seguir en la franquicia, pero que probablemente habría abandonado por el camino de no ser por las bondades de la emulación y el modding.

Pros:
- El mundo abierto es enorme y está lleno de recovecos que explorar.
- El sentido de libertad ayuda mucho a la sensación de comenzar una nueva aventura en mundo ajeno desde cero.
- La dificultad del mod SV+ incentiva a minmaxear a tus Pokémon, ofreciendo una experiencia muy muy superior al juego original.

Contras:
- Es un adefesio a nivel gráfico. Resulta insultante encontrarte un juego con tan poco cuidado en este apartado. Las limitaciones técnicas de la consola y la cantidad indecente de bugs tampoco ayudan.
- El mundo se siente muy poco vivo. Los Pokémon simplemente spawnean por todas partes, pero ni interaccionan entre ellos ni con el entorno que les rodea.
- Por suerte no son muchas, pero la mecánica de captura de bases es un ejemplo de cómo hacer algo mal en un videojuego. Me parece alucinante que algo así tuviera el visto bueno de la compañía.

Não serei hipócrita, eu adorei. Essa foi provavelmente a geração que eu tenho mais horas jogadas, um jogo de pokemon de mundo aberto com liberdade total e com os monstrinhos espalhados pelo mundo de acordo com seu ecosistema talvez seja o que os fãs sempre sonharam, mas infelizmente o mesmo peca em aspectos bobos cuja uma franquia desse tamanho não se pode dar o luxo de pecar.

O jogo é graficamente pobre, tanto tecnicamente quanto criativamente, os cenários são esquecíveis e genéricos, vastas planíces sem nenhuma vegetação, desertos e montanhas sem nenhum elemento icônico, tudo muito genérico e sem inspiração. A Área Zero é o único local que aparenta ter sido criado com mais atenção e carinho porem a mesma se localiza apenas no pós game.

O mapa de Scarlet e a forma com que os ginásios e desafios foram distribuídos é provavelmente o pior problema do jogo, já que, devido seu formato circular a probabilidade dos seus pokemons ficarem overlevel na metade do game é bem grande.

Por fim concluo que Scarlet e Violet tinha potencial para ser disparado a geração mais icônica e amada da franquia, finalmente a Game Freak entregando aos fãs o que sempre pediram, mas infelizmente não é o caso. Aponto que todos esses problemas foram resolvidos nas DLCs o que me deixa bem esperançoso para o jogo da próxima geração.