There’s only one way to describe this game: wildly inconsistent. Pokémon Scarlet/Violet very much embodies the “three steps forward, three steps back” phenomenon. For a game that’s supposed to offer more freedom than ever in a sizable open world, I’m shocked at the amount of restriction within.

My opinion of this game changed many times as I was playing through it. Thus I wanted to wait until I was way post-game before reviewing. Initially, I thought it was 3/5, to 3.5, to 2, again back to 3.5, and finally after being in the post-game, I now believe this is a 4/5 star game. In the first week following its release, I put 115+ hours into the game, beat the elite four twice, and also finished the pokedex for the first time ever - something I could never be bothered to do in any other Pokemon game. Clearly the game is doing something right, but I'm still torn nevertheless.

Every positive quality can be matched with one negative at a 1:1 ratio. On one hand, performance issues are extremely distracting as everyone has already mentioned. But the game itself is lovely. The music is phenomenal, character, and Pokémon modeling look great. For example, steel type pokemon like forretress, bisharp, and magnemite look absolutely fantastic in this game. What a glow up! They look genuinely metallic and shine like steel. This is a huge visual improvement. Only it's so wildly inconsistent when compared with overworld surroundings.

The majority of the overworld frankly feels desolate and empty. The only exception could be the ruins you encounter every so often, the vast amounts of sparkly items on the ground, and the rare stakes scattered around the map. Even so, none of this makes up for how boring the overworld is. In fact, very few towns are memorable. One town that particularly stood out to me the most was Montenevera. Absolutely gorgeous, cozy, and lively little snow town brimming with warmth and soul. The detail on the ground is realistic, and it's just chefs kiss. Another town I loved was Porto Marinada. It truly encapsulates the ideal fantasy beach town, it has a homey feel to it. Levincia gives off a trendy, touristy beach city vibe that's meant for shopping and spending $$$. If only every town or part of the map was made with as much love and detail as these cities.

Then there's the other side of the coin. The player cannot walk into about 99% of buildings which is bizarre. Previous titles open up virtually every facility to the player and allow for additional npc interactions, items, and other stuff to discover. Not this game. Well, at least when you CAN actually enter a building (eg. the Academy) it’s done exceptionally well. Highly detailed, encapsulates a large school environment perfectly, and is visually pleasing. It's obvious that the inside of this building (notice i say building, not buildings) was designed with love. Still weird how most of the overworld is glitchy rubbish, yet you'll find the finest details on npc clothing.

In addition, there are “quality of life” updates that are actually regressive. For example, the devs included 26 hairstyle options, 31 colored contacts, 24 eyelash shapes, 9 eye shape. That's pretty cool, but the player is restrained from changing out of the god awful school uniform the entire game???? Make it make sense. Even if actual clothing options aside from accessories were added in the dlc, that's still not cool at all. It should've been implemented when the game was released. Look at Pokemon X/Y - the vast amounts of clothing and other customization are definitely possible. It's either sheer laziness or the fact that Game Freak was pressured to pump something out in a year's time.

One cool thing is that you can do hyper training at level 50. Bottle caps and nature changing mints can be purchased for only $20k each. This is a massive improvement compared to previous titles, where one would have to grind for hours for enough battle points to purchase a single item. The bad news is that there's no battle frontier or battle tower. Why is this? So easily this could've been included, yet they chose not to. Why even lower the hyper training to level 50 then?

The 360 view of battles is nice, it really feels like you're in a battle while still remaining in the overworld. The flip side of this is that the camera angle view is horrendous. Not only does the camera look through the ground most of the time, everything just looks blurry, pixelated, and like absolute garbage. This needs to be fixed, but of course it won't be. Instead, GF is focusing their efforts on patching the fun glitches like item duping and other money hacks.

I do love how you can see shiny pokemon walking around in the overworld, just like in Arceus. Through my regular playthough with no shiny charm, I got blessed with four shinies. FOUR! Through the course of a regular playthrough. This has never happened to me...even in bdsp, i got my second shiny after 200 hours of playtime. Speaking of Arceus, they really should've kept that engine for this game. But I digress.

There's really so much to say about this game. I could go on forever, so I'll add additional information if I think of anything. Overall this is a fantastic game - the gameplay is addictive and undeniably fun despite how majorly flawed it is in a technical sense.

edit: 120 hours of playtime and counting, and I am still discovering new locations I've never been to, trainers I never beat, and objects I never picked up. The open world is MASSIVE! If you think you've been everywhere, think again. You haven't. What a shame the open world is so desolate. While the devs did an amazing job at distinguishing each individual region from one another, it's still so empty...