Something that has become increasingly common in online discourse is the idea that if a studio makes a game with a certain feature or quality, another studio with a lot of money can easily, and is in fact expected to, replicate that success, delivering on a product with that and more. It's a truly baffling take, for a variety of technical and creative reasons, but more fundamentally, that viewpoint ignores that money isn't the only resource at play in the games industry: time is also in short supply. Between console cycles, trends, holiday seasons, to name a few, it's rather common for a project to be more pressed for days than it is for dollars.
No series demonstrates that better than Pokémon: it is the largest media franchise in the world, which proves to be both a blessing and a curse. Not only are they bound to all the aforementioned time constraints, but also, new generations are tied to new anime seasons, new card game packs, manga, all sorts of merchandise... All of which led to the puzzling decision to release the ninth generation on November 2022. That's less than a year after Legends: Arceus, with whom the new games share most of their staff, making it highly likely that they had less than a year of full-steam production.
The result was the most chaotic release in series history, games that were clearly unfinished, with broken features and a myriad bugs ranging from funny to game-breaking at release. There's still some lingering issues months later as Game Freak no doubt shuffle to manage patching and live ops while working on the DLC. This situation, understandably, led to a lot of frustration, but since Pokémon has been the internet's favorite punching bag as of the last couple of years, it got blown way out of proportion, with every texture and animation scrutinized and even emulator glitches farmed for clicks, not unlike what happened to Legends: Arceus.
It's that vitriol that kept me from writing about the game for several months now, the discourse surrounding the series having become exhausting to take part in (and puzzlingly, frequently dominated by people who haven't played Pokémon in years). But hey, if only to get this off the way, please indulge me as I get into why I'm personally disappointed in Pokémon Scarlet. As you may have noticed from the score, it's not "this is bad and this series is dying", it's "this game had so much potential and it pains me that it will never fully realize it".
SV introduces an open world to the mainline series: a real open world this time, unlike Legends Arceus, which had a series of open maps to explore. Paldea is a contiguous map that can be explored from edge to edge, no loading screens at all. It's also... barren. It features rather bland environments, defined only by the color of the ground and vegetation density (ranging from sparse to none). That it looks nothing like the actual Iberian Peninsula is a given, but that wouldn't matter much if not for a lack of natural beauty and a near total absence of landmarks. It's hard to even understand what Paldea's areas are meant to be, not to mention remember them in the long run.
That said, even though the map is clearly the weakest part of the game, it's possible to see some positives. The biggest irony is that, because so much of the world feels generic, it's very easy to get lost in, which is a feeling I hadn't had since the sprawling caves of Johto. It's common to take some random detour and wind up somewhere entirely different where there's something cool to find, with no idea how you got there -- a situation that yields a sense of adventure that was slowly lost as the series' graphics improved and its design became more focused and linear.
Of course, because this is Pokémon, exploration is almost always rewarded, if not with some useful TMs, with new Pokémon. The Paldean dex has a nice 400 of them, a regional dex count that has been more or less stable since Alola and that mixes old favorites with new mons at a ratio of about 3 to 1. These 400 mons are spread around the region in a way that you'll be finding uncaught creatures all the way to the end of your adventure, but also, because there's no linear path to follow and multiple areas close to the starting area, there's also unprecedented variety of Pokémon to catch while still in the opening hours. I suspect this will earn SV a higher replay value in the long run.
It's clear there was a vision to the map design, as even though biomes are not well defined, the shape of the terrain is, with the idea behind the game being to navigate that with your partner, Koraidon. Koraidon is introduced still in the prologue, and it also joins the player's party at that point, serving as a mount that is the main mode of transportation for the entire journey. As the game progresses, Koraidon gains more abilities, from jumping higher, to swimming, to flying, meant to open up new areas and change how the player approaches the map. And it works: the map feels daunting at first, but later on, Koraidon feels unstoppable. Revisiting locations from earlier on is also made rewarding as there are plenty of optional areas and items that can't be reached at first but become accessible the right abilities.
Because this design is successful, Koraidon is also a success. In fact, due to being so inseparable from the way the game plays, as well as being deeply tied into the narrative in a way that's almost poetic, and having lovable and expressive body language, sound design and overall behaviour as a creature, Koraidon is the best cover legendary to ever grace the franchise, and it's by a long shot. For many of the series' entries, cover legendaries feel bolted onto their entries and/or not developed past "whoa, it's the legendary thing!". Nebby, then later Zacian and Zamazenta, attempted to remedy this by being present from the beginning of the story, but this little sandwich-loving, drooly, motorcycle fellow won over my heart in a way none of the others ever did.
Cover legendary is not the only category SV achieves a best of in: it's also home to the best rivals in franchise history. There are three of them: Nemona is an enthusiastic young woman who's been successful as a trainer and is eager to have a new rival to battle with; Arven is the son of the region's Professor Sada, and also has a penchant for cuisine; finally, Penny is a young introvert who, along with you, gets pulled into the fight against Team Star. Nemona, Arven and Penny are my precious children: they're well developed characters that help propel the narrative forward and make the time in Paldea all the more worth it.
Each of the three is tied to one of the main quests, which you are free to pursue in any order, but are most likely to do more or less concurrently. The most prominent story is the Victory Road, the traditional eight gym gauntlet before facing the Pokémon League. Nemona keeps an eye out for you as you travel the region gathering your Gym Badges, with the occasional battle here and there to keep you on your toes. Much has been said about Paldea's Pokémon League and its Chairwoman being boring and bureaucratic, but that's actually the point: SV's take on the League is that of an exam, a bureaucracy, with the real spark being your growth alongside your friends. It's a refreshing take that nevertheless does not change much about the rest of the quest, with Paldean Gym Leaders being a diverse and fun bunch, ranging from cheerful artists to soul-crushed criticisms of our result-obsessed society.
Speaking of criticisms of society, since the flop that was Team Flare, Game Freak has been upping the ante when it comes to their antagonist teams, giving them a deeper meaning than just grunts to fight with. On that note, Team Star is up there as one of my favorites. Starfall Street is another main quest that has you visiting the strongholds of Team Star and fighting their five leaders in intense contests of strength, leaders who are not only extremely noteworthy character designs in a series known for having excellent ones, but are also, much like the rivals, fascinating characters on their own. Team Star's story is a relatable and emotionally charged one -- just as much as the third main quest.
Arven's Path of Legends closes out the starting trios of quests with his pursuit of Titan Pokémon around Paldea and the rare spices that supposedly made them that way. During that quest, you'll get to learn more about Arven's motivations for his search, his history with his mother and the origins of Koraidon, the latter of which is also the focus of the endgame. Once the other main quests are complete, Path of Legends gives way to The Way Home, the final quest, that looks into Professor Sada's research and how Koraidon came to be loose in Paldea. The Way Home is the best endgame questline we've had in a Pokémon game since at least the Delta Emerald arc in ORAS, cashing in on some setups that had been enacted still in the prologue. I won't detail any of it because it deserves to be experienced blind and firsthand.
And I didn't even get into how the faculty at Naranja Academy all get their own sidestories, or how much resolution is offered to other characters even after The Way Home is complete. The harm done by the evidently rushed quality of the titles does not stop SV's plot and characters from being unforgettable... but it has to be said, it's felt regardless, and one has to wonder just what heights could have been reached in a truly polished game. A similar feeling pervades the postgame content, i.e. raids and competitive play, and to talk about those, let's first discuss yet another best of achieved by SV in with Terastalization.
Since Gen VI, every generation has had its own battle mechanic, and Gen IX is no different, with Terastalization allowing a trainer to change the type of any of their Pokémon once per battle. Like with Dynamax, I had no faith in Terastalization from the moment it was announced, thinking it looked gimmicky and stupid. Like with Dynamax, boy was I wrong: Terastalization might not look as exciting as some of its predecessors, but it is the best generation mechanic we've had yet, adding unprecedented flexibility and strategic depth to Pokémon battles. It can be used offensively or defensively, it can make unusual picks completely viable, and it has kept the meta shifting constantly since the games' releases.
Terastalization also contributed to making raids much more interesting, though this is also owed to other changes more suited for a PvE mode. No longer can you just Zacian your way to victory every single time, with each raid demanding specific strategies and typings, motivating the player to keep a roster of different Pokémon builds. On that note, Scarlet and Violet have the most accessible Pokémon training yet, further enhancing the improvements brought by SWSH on that front. Almost every relevant competitive item can now be bought with in-game money or exchanged for easy to find items, from TMs to held items to even Nature Mints and Bottle Caps -- for us who suffered through Gen III/IV breeding, getting competitive or raid ready mons is unbelievably fast.
It would have been the best era for online play... but of course, it wasn't that simple. Raids were flat out unplayable at launch. They have since been patched, but event raids still have issues due to bad raid configurations being pushed to players, signaling a lack of a forced update mechanism as well as deficient live ops tooling -- yet another consequence of development crunch. On the competitive front, PvP battles are even more unstable than SWSH -- an accomplishment, no doubt -- leading to serious issues during tournaments that in themselves already suffer from the lack of a spectator mode. Let's not even mention the complete fiasco conducted by TPCi with the Asian region tournaments, which will no doubt further sour large swathes of the player base towards the game.
And that-- that's what hurts so much about Gen IX. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were meant for the favorites' list. Had they been given six more months, maybe a year had Legends: Arceus gotten pushed forward too, these versions would have been set up to be the best Pokémon games yet. Instead, they're just... fine. Excellent ideas marred by an execution that came way too short, that will probably harm the franchise in the long run. I have no doubt about the creative vision behind it nowadays, but their technical roadmaps and release schedules need to be reviewed if the franchise is to be remembered by the young players of today as well as it is by us adults that started with earlier gens.
No series demonstrates that better than Pokémon: it is the largest media franchise in the world, which proves to be both a blessing and a curse. Not only are they bound to all the aforementioned time constraints, but also, new generations are tied to new anime seasons, new card game packs, manga, all sorts of merchandise... All of which led to the puzzling decision to release the ninth generation on November 2022. That's less than a year after Legends: Arceus, with whom the new games share most of their staff, making it highly likely that they had less than a year of full-steam production.
The result was the most chaotic release in series history, games that were clearly unfinished, with broken features and a myriad bugs ranging from funny to game-breaking at release. There's still some lingering issues months later as Game Freak no doubt shuffle to manage patching and live ops while working on the DLC. This situation, understandably, led to a lot of frustration, but since Pokémon has been the internet's favorite punching bag as of the last couple of years, it got blown way out of proportion, with every texture and animation scrutinized and even emulator glitches farmed for clicks, not unlike what happened to Legends: Arceus.
It's that vitriol that kept me from writing about the game for several months now, the discourse surrounding the series having become exhausting to take part in (and puzzlingly, frequently dominated by people who haven't played Pokémon in years). But hey, if only to get this off the way, please indulge me as I get into why I'm personally disappointed in Pokémon Scarlet. As you may have noticed from the score, it's not "this is bad and this series is dying", it's "this game had so much potential and it pains me that it will never fully realize it".
SV introduces an open world to the mainline series: a real open world this time, unlike Legends Arceus, which had a series of open maps to explore. Paldea is a contiguous map that can be explored from edge to edge, no loading screens at all. It's also... barren. It features rather bland environments, defined only by the color of the ground and vegetation density (ranging from sparse to none). That it looks nothing like the actual Iberian Peninsula is a given, but that wouldn't matter much if not for a lack of natural beauty and a near total absence of landmarks. It's hard to even understand what Paldea's areas are meant to be, not to mention remember them in the long run.
That said, even though the map is clearly the weakest part of the game, it's possible to see some positives. The biggest irony is that, because so much of the world feels generic, it's very easy to get lost in, which is a feeling I hadn't had since the sprawling caves of Johto. It's common to take some random detour and wind up somewhere entirely different where there's something cool to find, with no idea how you got there -- a situation that yields a sense of adventure that was slowly lost as the series' graphics improved and its design became more focused and linear.
Of course, because this is Pokémon, exploration is almost always rewarded, if not with some useful TMs, with new Pokémon. The Paldean dex has a nice 400 of them, a regional dex count that has been more or less stable since Alola and that mixes old favorites with new mons at a ratio of about 3 to 1. These 400 mons are spread around the region in a way that you'll be finding uncaught creatures all the way to the end of your adventure, but also, because there's no linear path to follow and multiple areas close to the starting area, there's also unprecedented variety of Pokémon to catch while still in the opening hours. I suspect this will earn SV a higher replay value in the long run.
It's clear there was a vision to the map design, as even though biomes are not well defined, the shape of the terrain is, with the idea behind the game being to navigate that with your partner, Koraidon. Koraidon is introduced still in the prologue, and it also joins the player's party at that point, serving as a mount that is the main mode of transportation for the entire journey. As the game progresses, Koraidon gains more abilities, from jumping higher, to swimming, to flying, meant to open up new areas and change how the player approaches the map. And it works: the map feels daunting at first, but later on, Koraidon feels unstoppable. Revisiting locations from earlier on is also made rewarding as there are plenty of optional areas and items that can't be reached at first but become accessible the right abilities.
Because this design is successful, Koraidon is also a success. In fact, due to being so inseparable from the way the game plays, as well as being deeply tied into the narrative in a way that's almost poetic, and having lovable and expressive body language, sound design and overall behaviour as a creature, Koraidon is the best cover legendary to ever grace the franchise, and it's by a long shot. For many of the series' entries, cover legendaries feel bolted onto their entries and/or not developed past "whoa, it's the legendary thing!". Nebby, then later Zacian and Zamazenta, attempted to remedy this by being present from the beginning of the story, but this little sandwich-loving, drooly, motorcycle fellow won over my heart in a way none of the others ever did.
Cover legendary is not the only category SV achieves a best of in: it's also home to the best rivals in franchise history. There are three of them: Nemona is an enthusiastic young woman who's been successful as a trainer and is eager to have a new rival to battle with; Arven is the son of the region's Professor Sada, and also has a penchant for cuisine; finally, Penny is a young introvert who, along with you, gets pulled into the fight against Team Star. Nemona, Arven and Penny are my precious children: they're well developed characters that help propel the narrative forward and make the time in Paldea all the more worth it.
Each of the three is tied to one of the main quests, which you are free to pursue in any order, but are most likely to do more or less concurrently. The most prominent story is the Victory Road, the traditional eight gym gauntlet before facing the Pokémon League. Nemona keeps an eye out for you as you travel the region gathering your Gym Badges, with the occasional battle here and there to keep you on your toes. Much has been said about Paldea's Pokémon League and its Chairwoman being boring and bureaucratic, but that's actually the point: SV's take on the League is that of an exam, a bureaucracy, with the real spark being your growth alongside your friends. It's a refreshing take that nevertheless does not change much about the rest of the quest, with Paldean Gym Leaders being a diverse and fun bunch, ranging from cheerful artists to soul-crushed criticisms of our result-obsessed society.
Speaking of criticisms of society, since the flop that was Team Flare, Game Freak has been upping the ante when it comes to their antagonist teams, giving them a deeper meaning than just grunts to fight with. On that note, Team Star is up there as one of my favorites. Starfall Street is another main quest that has you visiting the strongholds of Team Star and fighting their five leaders in intense contests of strength, leaders who are not only extremely noteworthy character designs in a series known for having excellent ones, but are also, much like the rivals, fascinating characters on their own. Team Star's story is a relatable and emotionally charged one -- just as much as the third main quest.
Arven's Path of Legends closes out the starting trios of quests with his pursuit of Titan Pokémon around Paldea and the rare spices that supposedly made them that way. During that quest, you'll get to learn more about Arven's motivations for his search, his history with his mother and the origins of Koraidon, the latter of which is also the focus of the endgame. Once the other main quests are complete, Path of Legends gives way to The Way Home, the final quest, that looks into Professor Sada's research and how Koraidon came to be loose in Paldea. The Way Home is the best endgame questline we've had in a Pokémon game since at least the Delta Emerald arc in ORAS, cashing in on some setups that had been enacted still in the prologue. I won't detail any of it because it deserves to be experienced blind and firsthand.
And I didn't even get into how the faculty at Naranja Academy all get their own sidestories, or how much resolution is offered to other characters even after The Way Home is complete. The harm done by the evidently rushed quality of the titles does not stop SV's plot and characters from being unforgettable... but it has to be said, it's felt regardless, and one has to wonder just what heights could have been reached in a truly polished game. A similar feeling pervades the postgame content, i.e. raids and competitive play, and to talk about those, let's first discuss yet another best of achieved by SV in with Terastalization.
Since Gen VI, every generation has had its own battle mechanic, and Gen IX is no different, with Terastalization allowing a trainer to change the type of any of their Pokémon once per battle. Like with Dynamax, I had no faith in Terastalization from the moment it was announced, thinking it looked gimmicky and stupid. Like with Dynamax, boy was I wrong: Terastalization might not look as exciting as some of its predecessors, but it is the best generation mechanic we've had yet, adding unprecedented flexibility and strategic depth to Pokémon battles. It can be used offensively or defensively, it can make unusual picks completely viable, and it has kept the meta shifting constantly since the games' releases.
Terastalization also contributed to making raids much more interesting, though this is also owed to other changes more suited for a PvE mode. No longer can you just Zacian your way to victory every single time, with each raid demanding specific strategies and typings, motivating the player to keep a roster of different Pokémon builds. On that note, Scarlet and Violet have the most accessible Pokémon training yet, further enhancing the improvements brought by SWSH on that front. Almost every relevant competitive item can now be bought with in-game money or exchanged for easy to find items, from TMs to held items to even Nature Mints and Bottle Caps -- for us who suffered through Gen III/IV breeding, getting competitive or raid ready mons is unbelievably fast.
It would have been the best era for online play... but of course, it wasn't that simple. Raids were flat out unplayable at launch. They have since been patched, but event raids still have issues due to bad raid configurations being pushed to players, signaling a lack of a forced update mechanism as well as deficient live ops tooling -- yet another consequence of development crunch. On the competitive front, PvP battles are even more unstable than SWSH -- an accomplishment, no doubt -- leading to serious issues during tournaments that in themselves already suffer from the lack of a spectator mode. Let's not even mention the complete fiasco conducted by TPCi with the Asian region tournaments, which will no doubt further sour large swathes of the player base towards the game.
And that-- that's what hurts so much about Gen IX. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were meant for the favorites' list. Had they been given six more months, maybe a year had Legends: Arceus gotten pushed forward too, these versions would have been set up to be the best Pokémon games yet. Instead, they're just... fine. Excellent ideas marred by an execution that came way too short, that will probably harm the franchise in the long run. I have no doubt about the creative vision behind it nowadays, but their technical roadmaps and release schedules need to be reviewed if the franchise is to be remembered by the young players of today as well as it is by us adults that started with earlier gens.