this game sucks so much ass.

-game freak animations (in AND outside of battle! the pre-animated scenes look decent but there's like 5 of them)
-bugs everywhere!! One actually caused me to skip an entire section of the game which saved me like 10 minutes of just walking which is pretty sweet
-probably the lamest story in the franchise that is disjointed for no fucking reason at all
-worst open world in a video game and not done well in this game AT ALL
-runs at 10 fps despite the graphics not even being good

do not play this insipid piece of garbage "video game"

(I still need to go back and get the 4 Chinese Pokemon but otherwise I basically have a Living Dex in this and just want it off my "Playing" list haha)

Gonna keep this short since I don't have anything unique to say.

Sad to see how it looks and runs, but it's Pokemon so I will 100% it no matter what. Yeah if this wasn't a Pokemon game I wouldn't like it as much, but it is a Pokemon game. (also genuinely like a lot of the designs in this one)

while at it's core Pokémon Scarlet and Violet was a fun, enjoyable romp of an adventure a handful of technical issues keep it from being the definitive Modern Pokémon experience,

with the issues being but not limited to pop in, textures flickering in and out of existence, the really bad Tera Battle Search feature that hardly works half of the time, can be super choppy and some of the textures can look super blurry up close, but technical issues aside the only other things I didn't like we're the shitty evolutions certain Pokémon had, particularly the "Walk 1000 Steps with the Pokémon" kind of evolutions, and how the game I shit you not sometimes hides Pokémon out of bounds, you can circumvent this by using the camera button to get up and close but it's still super shitty all the same, but aside from that I do think Scarlet and Violet are genuinley great games,

I loved the open-ended nature of it, how you can go where ever you please and tackle what ever challenge you wish in any order, even if they nudge you in a particular direction, but it's just advice on the games part so you can still do what you wish,

and I loved the games story and characters, I found them to be really charming and likable and I hope we can see Penny, Arven and Nemona in a different piece of Pokémon Media,

and I love the idea of Terastallizing Pokémon, either powering up there current type or switching there normal type to a different one to turn the tables on your opponent,


really if all the bugs and visual hiccups we're fixed I would consider this to be a very great game, damn near excellent, but alas this isn't the case, the glitches are the main reason I gave S&V a 3 out 5 stars, if they weren't here it would have been 5/5 stars on my part,

but yeah if you can stand a Pokémon game that can be sometimes visually unstable and hide Pokémon out of bounds I recommend this, but that is a VERY cautious recommendation, just know what your getting yourself into,

Ich bin hin und her bei diesem Spiel. Ich mag das Gameplay, die Musik und die Storyansätze (wenn auch nicht gut ausgebaut) gefallen mir sehr an dem Spiel. Das reine Fangen und Kämpfen ist halt die Größte Stärke von Pokemon.
Jedoch schwankt immer der Rest zwischen nette Idee bzw. solide Umsetzung und absolutes Minimum bzw. Faulheit, weshalb überwiegend das Spiel hässlich aussieht, vieles nicht schön animiert wird, die FPS in den Keller gehen oder auch diverse Ruckler und Slowdowns, sowie es auch sonst nichts zum entdecken oder erleben gibt.
Es ist das absolute Minimum und gerade von so einer großen Marke wünschte ich mir gerne mehr, weshalb dementsprechend die Bewertung härter ausfällt.

I really thought this was going to be it.

"Holy cannoli Batman," I thought, "Pokémon is releasing an open world game! I can't wait to explore this massive, vibrant new world, with the same fluid movement as Legends Arceus had!"

I was a fool.

Somehow, the movement was worse than a game that had come out 11 months prior.

The game was an absolute blast to play through the story (except for when my game kept crashing when I tried to enter Cascarrafa). But once I had beaten the story, I felt lost. Doing the gyms again didn't really appeal to me. Literally all that was left was just. Battles. I had no desire to get the shiny charm, because shiny hunting was already really easy with the help of sandwiches.

Is this the best 'proper' Pokémon game (read: not legends arceus)? Absolutely. But is the best one?

So I finished it...and yet, when it comes to rating it, I feel conflicted. Don't get me wrong, the game is fun. In some aspects, miles better than Sword and Shield was. The story idea being a treasure hunt was a lot more interesting than the same old generic Pokemon story. Sure, you have to do all three story paths to get to the endgame path, but each story was good in their own ways. Team Star was probably the weakest storyline since it's a lot of tell, not show and the identity of the big boss of Team Star is incredibly obvious.

Path of Legends ties into the final story, while Victory Road was your standard "beat 8 gyms and the Elite Four" idea that we've seen for 8 generations now with the exception of Gen 7. The gym tests, while pretty easy, were a nice changeup that made the formula fresh. On one hand, however, this game lacks level scaling. Once you're let off the leash, you can wander into an area where Pokemon far above your weight class are casually walking around. Gym leader levels are also fixed, so there's a sort of order you should do, but can realistically avoid.

Even though this isn't exactly Game Freak's first outing with an open world, because Legends Arceus exists, I would say the exploration is pretty nice once you can ride your bike Pokemon around the world. Getting the movement upgrades like dashing, gliding, and swimming made getting around better too, and it was a nice way of adding to the range of places you could explore.

Meanwhile, as much as I didn't like the endgame of Sword and Shield being a "interrupt your final battle for an end of the world scenario," the last story being at the very end feels like a much better place to put the finale with the Area Zero things. We get a bit of info on our major players and learn the real professor actually is already dead. Death, in a Pokemon game, am I right? A rare subject they like to avoid like the plague. Having an endgame trainer who only used the Paradox mons was interesting too, as it was different from most evil leaders or final story parts. Being able to finally use Miraidon in it's battle form for the final battle was nice too.

However, this is where my confliction comes into play. This game was released in an abysmal state, to the point that it is utterly unacceptable for a 2022 Nintendo game to release in such a state. As fun as the game was, I cannot ignore the blatantly awful way this game was released. Camera issues, NPCs moving at 5 FPS, a memory leak, an RNG seed in online battles that led to problems on turn 6 along with certain move combos allowing OHKO moves to always hit, lag in raid battles. This game needed more time in the oven for sure, and people were rightfully mad about these issues.

Say what you will, but I think a game releasing in this state should have points taken off...but, therein lies the problem. I don't like doing half stars when I give ratings. It should either be all or nothing, but this is a special case. The game is fun, the story is good for Game Freak standards post Gen 5, competitive teambuilding is easier than ever, but the sheer fact they actively released the game the way they did must have points taken off.