(7-year-old's review, typed by her dad)

[Dad: What score are you thinking]

[CatTheCutest: A five!]

[Dad: A five?? Are you sure?]

[CatTheCutest: Well, a four. A four-point-five!!]

Okay. So first up, you start off as Gollum, and if you look at him, he's kind of creepy and horrifying. Then you see some... beautiful image. But then Gollum shows up! GRRR! And also it's very dark, so it's kinda hard to find things, especially those VINES. It was just so dark. There was only like teensy bits of fire and that was your only light. And be careful, or else you'll accidentally fall off a cliff! Cuz I did.

✔
GameFreak cooked, but they probably should've left it in the oven a little longer. That's precisely how I'd describe this title. This is gonna be a longer one than usual, so grab a snack and get comfy.

Pokémon Scarlet is probably best described as my Cyberpunk 2077: a video game broken at launch that I had such a fun time with, even though the flaws are so obvious to me that I won’t be defending those. I’d like to preface that the bugs I dealt with were minimal at best. I didn’t get any crazy glitches or anything. I just got graphical bugs and the occasional weird goofy thing. The Switch could absolutely run this game no problem, but the fault is with the developers who didn't give the game enough time to get properly optimized for the system it was running on.

The gameplay is largely the same as most Pokémon titles. Catch, battle, and do what you have to do to be the very best. One of the big hooks is that you're running around in a big open world. While I do like the freedom this allows, I think this also causes the routes and paths the game takes you on to lose some of that Pokémon sparkle. Even Generation 8, as bad as Sword and Shield were objectively, had unique areas that stuck out in the mind (Ballonlea, as an example). Scarlet and Violet had maybe two or three places that stuck out in my mind and for a game with many places you can go to, that isn't great. The game feels less "free" and more "unrestricted" at times, if that makes sense. You're able to go wherever you want, but you can only do the things you want if you do them correctly.

The other big hook is Terastalization, the Mega Evolution/Z-Moves/Dynamax of this generation. This is where things get a bit spicier (even though I hardly used Terastalization during my playthrough). This mechanic essentially allows you to change a Pokémon's type during battle. This has a LOT of potential both casually and competitively (I hear, because I'm not in the competitive scene that much, admittedly).

However, the gameplay is where my bigger complaints come in. The Pokédex grind still sucks and in order to have a seamless 100% experience, you need one of three things to be true. You have to have both versions, you have to know someone who has your opposite version, or you have to get extremely lucky with raids (which is really difficult when the raids don't have Pokémon you need). This also becomes a problem when the online functionality for raids requires payment for an online service. The game is also fairly easy, with battles not really scaling to your level if you're going in order (and if you're not, there's a good chance you'll die your first time around). Despite that, I really think that some of the battles in this game are amazing. When you get to the late-game, the battles may not be hard, but they go hard.

You know what else goes hard? The music. This is in no small part thanks to Toby Fox coming on to compose the best tunes in this game. There's a certain theme in the postgame that rocks so hard that he composed and I'm listening to it as I write this. Despite the bangers on this OST, there is one weird song choice that was by someone you probably wouldn't associate with Pokémon normally. You'll know it when you hear it, but it's in the main story.

Speaking of the main story, let's talk about that for a second. It was the one thing that caught my attention. I know not a lot of people come to Pokémon for the story (and I also don't to an extent), but ever since I played Mystery Dungeon, I wanted to see the main series hit that stride. I'm happy to say that while Scarlet and Violet still have the usual Pokémon story, they manage to pace it a lot better than in most of the 3D era (Generation 6 onward).

One more small complaint. I really don’t like how the shiny sound and sparkle from Legends: Arceus is gone. It’s such a small change, but it’s the feature I miss the most. They’d better bring that back in a patch or in the next generation because it’s so easy to unfairly miss a shiny Pokémon now.

Missing those shinies is even more of a shame since I really liked a lot of the Pokémon this generation. Koraidon, the mascot of Scarlet, is a doofy lizard that I adore. Quaxly, one of the starters, is in the running for my top 10 favorite base form starters. Oh, and who could forget Clodsire? My bumbling muddy boy makes me smile every time I see him. There weren't as many misses this time in comparison to things like Dhelmise or Bruxish from Alola for example.

On the whole, I liked it a lot, but it is 100% not without its shortcomings. The bugs can be annoying, the Pokédex grinding was pretty annoying, and some of the online components were less than ideal. None of that bothered me enough to hate it.

Also, yes. I 100% completed the Paldea Pokédex. I'll take my trophy now.

The worst sequel I have ever played.
The whole gameplay is diffrente than in the first game.
The first game was all about shades and stealth.
The second game tries to be a lot of things at the same time.
When the stealth doesn't work you can (have) to go into close combet wich is just broken.
It is designed for 1 vs 1 but this is never the case since you are always surronded by 3-4 enemies and new enemies arrive the whole time.
Also the game is so ugly. The first game had a specific designe and art style which made it kinde of uniqe.
The second looks like some cheap assets from Unreal Engine.
I fell like they tried to do something like sekiro but it didn't work.