Pokemon Violet really made me appreciate Legends Arceus a lot more.
First, I'll start with the positives:
Paldea is a really cool region. While still just being a circle like Unova, there's a lot of verticality that makes traveling a lot of fun. You can always see the next Pokemon Center at a distance, which makes it easier to track your progress. It really is an "open" world, and fully upgraded Miraidon is a lot of fun, and just as intuitive as P:LA's mounts.
Paldea has a well-defined culture around the school and Mesagoza, which I appreciated. Getting the legendary at the beginning is a nice twist on the formula, and it's handled well. The final arc is excellent and I wish the whole game had that level of polish.
The Pokemon selection is stellar. There's always something new to catch and use, and could definitely see a lot of alternate potential teams for future playthroughs. Every new addition is fantastic. The translation/design team went absolutely crazy with some of their pun names this time, and I love it.
Difficulty was fine. I was actually a bit underleveled for the final bosses of the main three story routes. No exp. share has become normalized, so I didn't mind it. Let's Go mode made grinding easy for the little bit I had to do at the end.
My main gripes with this game are its performance and general gameplay loop.
I have nothing really to add to the conversation regarding this game's performance. Everyone knows it runs terribly. Pop-in is abundant, the camera doesn't function, and there's inexcusable amount of slowdown and graphical hiccups. The game even softlocked me before the fight against the Donphan titan. The battle just didn't start and I had to reset my game.
P:LA admittedly had its own issues, but none that really took me out of the world like in Violet. I care a lot about the immersion-aspect of Pokemon's environments (as I've mentioned in my previous game reviews for the series), and it's disappointing that I never really got that feeling here because Paldea is trying hard to not break at every moment. Additionally, I strongly disagree with the decision to go back to the old battle and catch system that was changed in P:LA. What I LOVE about P:LA is how FAST it goes. Everything is so snappy, which then in turn makes exploring much more fun. Since Violet is much slower (Oops! I touched a tiny overworld Pokemon, time to sit through 20 seconds of animations before I can run!!), I'm spending more time looking at the broken world, and the pacing really gets dragged down.
I did enjoy my time with Violet, but I couldn't help but think it would be better if it was developed fully after P:LA was finished. I'm excited to see where the series goes from here, it has a really strong base, and it will take a lot more than poor performance to stop me from being a fan.
First, I'll start with the positives:
Paldea is a really cool region. While still just being a circle like Unova, there's a lot of verticality that makes traveling a lot of fun. You can always see the next Pokemon Center at a distance, which makes it easier to track your progress. It really is an "open" world, and fully upgraded Miraidon is a lot of fun, and just as intuitive as P:LA's mounts.
Paldea has a well-defined culture around the school and Mesagoza, which I appreciated. Getting the legendary at the beginning is a nice twist on the formula, and it's handled well. The final arc is excellent and I wish the whole game had that level of polish.
The Pokemon selection is stellar. There's always something new to catch and use, and could definitely see a lot of alternate potential teams for future playthroughs. Every new addition is fantastic. The translation/design team went absolutely crazy with some of their pun names this time, and I love it.
Difficulty was fine. I was actually a bit underleveled for the final bosses of the main three story routes. No exp. share has become normalized, so I didn't mind it. Let's Go mode made grinding easy for the little bit I had to do at the end.
My main gripes with this game are its performance and general gameplay loop.
I have nothing really to add to the conversation regarding this game's performance. Everyone knows it runs terribly. Pop-in is abundant, the camera doesn't function, and there's inexcusable amount of slowdown and graphical hiccups. The game even softlocked me before the fight against the Donphan titan. The battle just didn't start and I had to reset my game.
P:LA admittedly had its own issues, but none that really took me out of the world like in Violet. I care a lot about the immersion-aspect of Pokemon's environments (as I've mentioned in my previous game reviews for the series), and it's disappointing that I never really got that feeling here because Paldea is trying hard to not break at every moment. Additionally, I strongly disagree with the decision to go back to the old battle and catch system that was changed in P:LA. What I LOVE about P:LA is how FAST it goes. Everything is so snappy, which then in turn makes exploring much more fun. Since Violet is much slower (Oops! I touched a tiny overworld Pokemon, time to sit through 20 seconds of animations before I can run!!), I'm spending more time looking at the broken world, and the pacing really gets dragged down.
I did enjoy my time with Violet, but I couldn't help but think it would be better if it was developed fully after P:LA was finished. I'm excited to see where the series goes from here, it has a really strong base, and it will take a lot more than poor performance to stop me from being a fan.