There are two basic types of Pokemon fans: those that play the games for the battling aspects (I'm including stuff like team building, breeding, and online play in here), and those that play it for the catching and collecting mechanics. I fall pretty firmly into the latter camp, which is probably the reason I enjoy games like Snap and Legends Arceus as much as I do. It's also the reason why, despite its laundry list of flaws and nonexistent difficulty, I had a great time with Scarlet.
I'll start with the negative stuff, just to get it out of the way. The game runs like shit. The game looks like shit (except the models for Pokemon and major characters, those are actually kind of okay). The only interiors in towns are gyms and sandwich shops, both of which use the exact same template regardless of the town they’re in. Even though there are way more options to customize your trainer's face, the clothing options are worse than every other game in the series with character customization. The forced EXP share coupled with the more open nature of the three main questlines basically forces you to handicap yourself (I cycled through like 20 Pokemon, switching them out once they were five levels below whatever my limit for obeying me was) if you ever want a trainer to take out even one of your own Pokemon. The overworld catching mechanics from PLA are gone, so even if you just want to throw a quick ball at something and run away if it doesn’t work, you need to start a battle. There’s no more fishing because Pokemon appear on the overworld, even though SwSh did the same thing but still gave you a fishing rod to use in a few places. Shiny Pokemon don’t have an indicator like they did in PLA and since some of the newer shinies are nearly identical to their original colors, it’s possible for a shiny Pokemon to spawn without you even noticing. There really isn’t any kind of battle facility in the game, but that could possibly be added in a patch like how the Eternal Battle Reverie was added to PLA, or more likely in the inevitable paid dlc that in accordance with TPC’s unshakable release schedule will probably release some time in 2023. The only minigames in the game (the Emotional Spectrum Practice thing in Alfornada and the Snow Slope Run at the Glaseado gym) are way too simple, and they don’t even involve your own Pokemon. The thing that made side modes like the Pokeathalon or contests so interesting to me was that they gave you reasons outside of combat to raise and train up Pokemon, while also just being fun to mess around with and play. Yeah that kind of stuff has been absent from the series for a while (the contests in BDSP were a simple rhythm game kind of thing and a lot simpler than their gen 3/4/6 versions), but even Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon had the surprisingly fun Mantine Surfing minigame, and Legends Arceus had the shooting gallery minigame and the balloon popping races. Most of these issues add together to make a region that feels kind of lifeless. It’s less like an actual place and more like a theme park that exists just so your battles have cool backdrops. That’s basically what the world in every Pokemon game is, but there was at least the illusion of more depth to the world than there is now. Simple things like being able to go into people’s houses or seeing how people and pokemon interacted outside of battles really helped with that, so even though they’re not integral parts of the Pokemon formula, their absence in Paldea is pretty noticeable.
Despite all of this, there are actually a lot of things I really enjoyed. I thought the soundtrack was great, especially compared to SwSh’s lackluster music. The story was surprisingly good even if I would have liked to see Team Star have some kind of presence outside of their bases, and the major characters were all really charming. The Paldean Pokedex has a lot of great designs in it, and I didn’t have any trouble with finding new pokemon that I actually wanted to use unlike in SwSh. The terastallization mechanic is a lot more interesting than Z-moves and dynamaxing were, and although it isn’t quite as cool as mega evolution it can still be used in some pretty creative ways to round out a team. Making dumb sandwiches out of nothing but eggs and watercress is way more amusing than it should be, and since it uses actual models instead of images, the whole process feels way more involved than the curry making from SwSh. Koraidon actually felt pretty good to ride around on once it was fully upgraded, despite the complaints I’ve seen from other people playing the game. I wonder if this is an animation thing since most people are playing Violet and Miraidon seems to be floatier than Koraidon, but I don’t know. The thing I enjoyed the most about the game, however, was the way it distributed the Pokemon in its dex throughout Paldea. Every field, cave, and mountaintop was home to Pokemon I hadn’t caught yet, and my drive to complete the Pokedex (I have about 260 species caught at the time of writing this review) kept the world feeling fresh, even when there really isn’t that much to do other than battle underpowered trainers and participate in mediocre raid battles. Constantly finding new Pokemon encouraged me to explore every nook and cranny of Paldea’s otherwise empty landscape, and managed to create a sense of adventure and exploration on par with Legends Arceus. If I was someone who only caught Pokemon I actually wanted to use and ignored everything else, I could see how Scarlet wouldn’t be any fun, but that goes back to the statement I made at the start of this review.
Pokemon as a series has been shifting towards appeasing the collecting side of its fanbase ever since Pokemon Go, and some could argue that Gamefreak was doing so even before that with things like the DexNav in ORAS. This is at the cost of cutting out things like the Battle Frontier, or coming up with a new gimmick every generation instead of fleshing out the mechanics that are already in place. The only thing people who play Pokemon for battling really have left is multiplayer, and Pokemon Showdown already fills that niche even if it is unofficial. At some point Game Freak or The Pokemon Company should probably put out another game like Stadium or Battle Revolution that’s almost like a hub for different battle modes if they’re going to keep shifting the focus of the main titles away from the battling side of things and towards just collecting Pokemon. Or they could just bring the Battle Frontier back but everyone knows that’s never going to happen.
Also Clodisre is the best I love this dumb guy so much it’s unbelievable.
I'll start with the negative stuff, just to get it out of the way. The game runs like shit. The game looks like shit (except the models for Pokemon and major characters, those are actually kind of okay). The only interiors in towns are gyms and sandwich shops, both of which use the exact same template regardless of the town they’re in. Even though there are way more options to customize your trainer's face, the clothing options are worse than every other game in the series with character customization. The forced EXP share coupled with the more open nature of the three main questlines basically forces you to handicap yourself (I cycled through like 20 Pokemon, switching them out once they were five levels below whatever my limit for obeying me was) if you ever want a trainer to take out even one of your own Pokemon. The overworld catching mechanics from PLA are gone, so even if you just want to throw a quick ball at something and run away if it doesn’t work, you need to start a battle. There’s no more fishing because Pokemon appear on the overworld, even though SwSh did the same thing but still gave you a fishing rod to use in a few places. Shiny Pokemon don’t have an indicator like they did in PLA and since some of the newer shinies are nearly identical to their original colors, it’s possible for a shiny Pokemon to spawn without you even noticing. There really isn’t any kind of battle facility in the game, but that could possibly be added in a patch like how the Eternal Battle Reverie was added to PLA, or more likely in the inevitable paid dlc that in accordance with TPC’s unshakable release schedule will probably release some time in 2023. The only minigames in the game (the Emotional Spectrum Practice thing in Alfornada and the Snow Slope Run at the Glaseado gym) are way too simple, and they don’t even involve your own Pokemon. The thing that made side modes like the Pokeathalon or contests so interesting to me was that they gave you reasons outside of combat to raise and train up Pokemon, while also just being fun to mess around with and play. Yeah that kind of stuff has been absent from the series for a while (the contests in BDSP were a simple rhythm game kind of thing and a lot simpler than their gen 3/4/6 versions), but even Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon had the surprisingly fun Mantine Surfing minigame, and Legends Arceus had the shooting gallery minigame and the balloon popping races. Most of these issues add together to make a region that feels kind of lifeless. It’s less like an actual place and more like a theme park that exists just so your battles have cool backdrops. That’s basically what the world in every Pokemon game is, but there was at least the illusion of more depth to the world than there is now. Simple things like being able to go into people’s houses or seeing how people and pokemon interacted outside of battles really helped with that, so even though they’re not integral parts of the Pokemon formula, their absence in Paldea is pretty noticeable.
Despite all of this, there are actually a lot of things I really enjoyed. I thought the soundtrack was great, especially compared to SwSh’s lackluster music. The story was surprisingly good even if I would have liked to see Team Star have some kind of presence outside of their bases, and the major characters were all really charming. The Paldean Pokedex has a lot of great designs in it, and I didn’t have any trouble with finding new pokemon that I actually wanted to use unlike in SwSh. The terastallization mechanic is a lot more interesting than Z-moves and dynamaxing were, and although it isn’t quite as cool as mega evolution it can still be used in some pretty creative ways to round out a team. Making dumb sandwiches out of nothing but eggs and watercress is way more amusing than it should be, and since it uses actual models instead of images, the whole process feels way more involved than the curry making from SwSh. Koraidon actually felt pretty good to ride around on once it was fully upgraded, despite the complaints I’ve seen from other people playing the game. I wonder if this is an animation thing since most people are playing Violet and Miraidon seems to be floatier than Koraidon, but I don’t know. The thing I enjoyed the most about the game, however, was the way it distributed the Pokemon in its dex throughout Paldea. Every field, cave, and mountaintop was home to Pokemon I hadn’t caught yet, and my drive to complete the Pokedex (I have about 260 species caught at the time of writing this review) kept the world feeling fresh, even when there really isn’t that much to do other than battle underpowered trainers and participate in mediocre raid battles. Constantly finding new Pokemon encouraged me to explore every nook and cranny of Paldea’s otherwise empty landscape, and managed to create a sense of adventure and exploration on par with Legends Arceus. If I was someone who only caught Pokemon I actually wanted to use and ignored everything else, I could see how Scarlet wouldn’t be any fun, but that goes back to the statement I made at the start of this review.
Pokemon as a series has been shifting towards appeasing the collecting side of its fanbase ever since Pokemon Go, and some could argue that Gamefreak was doing so even before that with things like the DexNav in ORAS. This is at the cost of cutting out things like the Battle Frontier, or coming up with a new gimmick every generation instead of fleshing out the mechanics that are already in place. The only thing people who play Pokemon for battling really have left is multiplayer, and Pokemon Showdown already fills that niche even if it is unofficial. At some point Game Freak or The Pokemon Company should probably put out another game like Stadium or Battle Revolution that’s almost like a hub for different battle modes if they’re going to keep shifting the focus of the main titles away from the battling side of things and towards just collecting Pokemon. Or they could just bring the Battle Frontier back but everyone knows that’s never going to happen.
Also Clodisre is the best I love this dumb guy so much it’s unbelievable.