After playing Pokémon Legends: Arceus, my main conclusion was that it potentially signaled a bright future for the Pokémon series, and that I didn’t mind it if they continued to pursue that gameplay in future titles. Now that I’ve seen the credits roll on Scarlet, my feelings have been confirmed: the old Pokémon catching and battling systems just do not cut it for me anymore, even when reframed in a lovely non-linear open world.

To better understand Scarlet/Violet, it’s helpful to see them as follow-ups to Sword/Shield, rather than January’s Legends: Arceus. You travel from town to town, collecting badges and building your Pokémon team. You take on a dastardly team of villains, complete a Pokédex and discover the secrets of your region—all standard Pokémon stuff. But Scarlet/Violet do introduce a big shakeup. After seven generations of completely linear paths and one generation of being teased by the half measure that were Sword/Shield’s Wild Areas, we finally get a truly open world in a Pokémon game, and it’s glorious. Paldea has most of the things you expect from a Pokémon world, but without any of the barriers. You are free to explore as you wish and tackle objectives in any order, gated only by your capability.

Paldea is Scarlet/Violet’s strength. I loved exploring the region and discovering each of the unique towns and the characters therein. I loved getting lost in the wilderness and finding cool new Pokémon. I especially loved that I could challenge myself by taking on Gyms, Titan Pokémon and Team Star Bases that might be slightly out of my team’s reach.

Scarlet/Violet are good Pokémon games. They are certainly an improvement over Sword/Shield, which I felt played it much too safe. But while playing, my mind never stopped going back to Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and how it’s such a better take on open world Pokémon. Scarlet/Violet take the standard Pokémon gameplay and surgically transplant it into an open world while keeping a lot of the core systems intact. Legends: Arceus goes the extra mile to change the core catching mechanics into something much more modern and immersive.

The most glaring deficiency in Scarlet/Violet is the most fatal: the Pokémon themselves. Pokémon feel like dull trading cards mindlessly roaming the world, waiting to be collected. Your only option to interact with them is to battle, which is initiated by walking into them, or by using a janky Pokéball throw that just reminds me of the far superior throwing mechanics of Legends: Arceus. In that game, Pokémon are so much more dynamic. The player has complete control over when to initiate battle by throwing out their own Pokémon. Your interaction options are far greater—you can throw balls to try to catch them, or berries to try to feed them. Hostile species attack you, not only bringing those terrifying Pokédex descriptions to life, but also making the player feel like an actual part of the world. It’s truly night and day.

The actual flow of battle also feels so much better in Legends: Arceus. Battles in that game are a brisk affair, admittedly in part due to its simplified mechanics. Scarlet/Violet return to the sluggish pace that soured me on Sword/Shield. Transitions are a little better now that battles take place in the open world, but you’ll still be sitting through lots of text-based messages that could really be conveyed more succinctly by an icon on the screen somewhere (Status changes, for example). One thing I REALLY missed was the Dragon Quest XI-esque ability to walk around during battles, something that gave the player something to do during battle animations and generally made you feel much more immersed in the world.

I will give Scarlet/Violet credit where it’s due and mention a few things that I think it does better than Legends: Arceus. Paldea’s openness and non-linearity give you a sense of freedom that I really hope they stick with in the future. I liked how all of the traversal options are merged into a single rideable Pokémon now, instead of the annoying assortment of rideable beasts in Legends: Arceus. The Let’s Go mechanic is a neat idea to cut down on grinding, and it has potential if they can make it feel less janky to use. Tera Raid Battles are a really fun improvement on Max Raid Battles, and Terastallizing is probably the best of the new battle mechanics they have introduced since Generation VI. Finally, much like in Sword/Shield, I can truly feel the love and appreciation that went into Paldea. There’s tons of references to Spain, a country that I love, so it feels extra special to me.

Scarlet/Violet just make me feel a little empty. I can’t hate them, because they have good ideas that I hope can be fleshed out moving forward. I can’t love them either, because they strip away so many things that made Legends: Arceus my favorite Pokémon game since the DS era. Then there’s the visual and performance issues that everyone knows about.

I do think these are good Pokémon games, and at the end of the day, it’s easy enough to just turn my brain off and enjoy them for what they are. You may be thinking, “You’re being too harsh on these games for not being Pokémon Legends: Arceus.” Sure, but I find it impossible to review games in a vacuum. To me, new games exist in the context of games that came before. In that light, Scarlet/Violet disappointed me and make me confused as to what Game Freak’s vision for the future of the series even is.

This is a hard video game to review. Is it fun? Yes. Does it have lots of problems that affect negatively the experience and shows a lack of polish that shouldn't be there? Also yes.

I enjoyed playing it, there was obvious passion and effort in innovating the pokémon formula and doing something extremely different from the mediocre and generic experience that was Sword/Shield, and the new mechanics add lots of variety and immersion to a franchise that needed it, but while you are having a blast riding your legendary pokémon through the vast world you will see something that ruins your experience.

For example, the open world looks like a great idea at first, and I liked doing the gyms, titans, and team STAR out of order, but the levels are always the same, so if you defeat the first gym leader at last, she will still have level 14-15 pokémon. This means that there is an obvious sequence you have to follow, and while you can technically defeat the ice gym first, the leader has +40 level pokémon, so the only possible way to achieve that is grinding for hours, and after that, you destroyed the difficulty of the entire game, as the rest of the NPCs will be a lot weaker than your team. This is something that could be fixed easily with a dynamic level system, just give the bosses different levels and move sets depending on your progress and you would have the pokémon game with the best replay value of all time, but it seems Game Freak was too lazy or incompetent to program that.

Also, the open world means that routes and cities are a lot bigger than normal, which in theory sounds amazing, but in execution, it just means that you will have to "explore" lots of empty and generic green fields. Unlike previous games, most buildings are impossible to enter, so when you arrive at a new city the only interesting thing to do is talk to random NPCs, defeat the gym leader if there is one, and continue your adventure right after. While they have distinct designs, they also lack exploration and unique buildings to make them memorable, so you won't find something iconic like Lavender Town, Fortree City, Lumiose City, or Village Bridge.

This is worse when you realize the number of random trainers to battle is a lot lower than in previous entries, and an area that you need at least 15 minutes to fully explore will have at most 5 trainers. What's the point of having huge areas when most of the time the only thing to find are wild pokémon and random items in the ground that you can find everywhere else? And finding all the trainers in an area at first seems like a fun sidequest to do until you realize that the rewards aren't that good, and usually there is a trainer in an obscure zone hard to reach that leads nowhere, so finding them can feel more annoying than challenging.

And the gameplay also has some questionable choices. The Let's Go! mechanic, which allows your pokémon to get out of the pokéball to defeat wild pokémon and retrieve items, is useful for leveling up, but they can't evolve this way unless they are pawmo/bramblin/rellor, who evolve after walking 1,000 steps. This doesn't balance or add anything to the difficulty and is just an arbitrary prohibition.

Also, the Team Star route is easily the worst one, as you have to defeat 30 pokémon in a row using this mechanic to unlock the boss, but you don't get any experience during the ordeal, and walking aimlessly while spamming the shoulder buttons isn't exactly the most fun thing to do. You also don't get experience for defeating the team Star leaders, which is ridiculous. These battles are just like fighting against gym leaders and titan pokémon, so why are they the only ones that don't give even a single point of experience?

Another gameplay mechanic that is badly designed is the Tera Raid Battles, which are a worse version of the Max Raid Battles from Sword & Shield. The difference is that you have a time limit to defeat the pokémon, but at higher difficulties, it's pretty obvious they didn't even bother to beta-test them. Using moves with long animations can make a raid unwinnable, especially if they lower/raise stats, sometimes desynchronization can stop you from attacking for 30 seconds, and it's basically mandatory to terastallize your pokémon to win, but just the initial animation wastes almost a minute, and terra attacks last longer than normal ones.

This means that the best strategy is using cheap and quick tactics, like azumarill with play rough and belly drum, and most of the time you lose because the game bugged or the opponent wasted most of the time in long and useless movements, which is more common than you would expect.

So, as you can see, the game is full of flaws and weird choices, but the worst part is that it can still be pretty fun. Riding your legendary pokémon feels amazing, and the freedom of movement is appreciated in a franchise where previously running was the best option you had. The characters are charming and memorable, which makes the story more engaging despite being as simple as always, especially the Arven route, which is a lot more sentimental than you would expect from the franchise.

There are also lots of quality-of-life additions that pokémon needed a long time ago, like being able to forget and remember moves anytime you want, without needing any item, the possibility of using the Storage System from the menu and not just on specific places, breeding is no longer limited to Day Cares, and you just need to set a picnic to start getting eggs, and so on. These are things that fans had wanted for years which makes the process of raising the perfect pokémon a lot easier and more entertaining.

And you even have some optional content that gives more depth to secondary characters. Did you know that if you complete all the exams in the academy you can hang out with the teachers, learning more about them and helping them to overcome their problems, and when you complete the main story you can hang out with Arven, Penny, and Nemona? I discovered this by complete accident, but it was really fun hearing the story of the school nurse, helping Arven to find a life goal, and watching the battle studies teacher develop her cooking skills. It was like a really basic version of the social links from Persona 3-5, and I wouldn't mind watching this mechanic in the following games.

And that's my problem with Pokémon Scarlet/Violet. They are full of problems, bugs, and bad game design choices that shouldn't exist in the highest-grossing media franchise in the world, but when it works, it really works, and the number of times you get frustrated with all the wasted opportunities is similar to the number of times you are having a blast. It's a shame because, with a little more polish, it could easily be the best pokémon game of all time.

I loved the first three Pokémon generations (see me pictured above), but the series slowly lost me after that point. The 7th and 8th generation games were pretty boring for me. Even the acclaimed 4th and 5th gens, despite mechanical improvements, never really stuck with me and couldn’t hold my attention when I revisited them recently. I thought I might never love one of these games again, and that I’d just grown out of it or whatever. Luckily, this new generation brought the exact shake-up that the series needed to win me back.

What would normally be one long, relatively linear Pokémon story has been broken up here into three parallel ones that come together at the end. I loved being allowed to approach things in whatever order I wanted, whenever I wanted as part of a big open world. With free roaming unconstrained by story progress, no random encounters, and no forced trainer battles, the chill collection side of the game really opens up. I ended up with by far the most Pokémon I’ve ever caught, and collecting them was my favorite part of the game.

This isn’t Pokémon Go, though. The actual stuff you do in the three storylines is not a huge departure from the kinds of things you’d do in the classic Pokémon games. They just feel so much better pacing-wise now that you can approach them from any direction at any time. On a few occasions, I ran into something that I was wildly over-leveled for, like my final gym which probably should have been around my 3rd. In general, though, I regularly threw myself into things I was under-leveled for, which made for some fun and tense bits of strategy.

The main quests did leave room for improvement in their objective design outside the big battles. Little challenges required to unlock each gym battle or Team Star boss fight are sometimes okay, but often lackluster and awkward to execute. And the big Titan Pokémon you hunt just don’t provide much of a memorable chase or tracking challenge—a missed opportunity for something closer to Monster Hunter. Both Titans and regular Pokémon would benefit hugely from more dynamic behavior in the world, since they are the thing that can make the open world interesting.

I was surprised to enjoy the story as much as I did, mostly owing to the characters, who are some of the series’s best and have a lot of funny moments. What also surprised me was just how much I liked the Pokémon, one of my favorite sets of new ones ever with some cool and quirky designs. They brought back a good balance of old ones here, too, even changing some of them in ways that give them more style and identity.

The game’s presentation and visuals have good aspects, especially when viewed in handheld mode. Either way you view it, though, textures are often bland and poor quality, and the performance definitely gets choppy, even slideshow-esque for distant objects. The camera is often put at awkward angles, though is easily moved. Animations can be stiff and outdated. The absurd visual glitches being shared around the web were not as pervasive as I expected, with only one goofy bug like that in my playthrough. It’s not a great-looking game though, by current standards.

They did a good job mechanically, at least. The big new battle mechanic, “terastallizing”, feels pretty fun and well-balanced to me, with nice visual design and interesting implications for Pokémon’s typing. Very rarely in this game did I feel like some mechanic was a nuisance or an unwanted relic of the past. I think where they drop the ball on quality of life is just the clunky map menu, which I hope gets improved in a patch.

There’s no doubt that this game needed a lot more polish and care put into its visuals and technical side, but I found all that fades away in the moment. While I hope that soon we get a Pokémon game that can be recommended without major caveats, I personally found this to be one of the most fun entries the series has ever had. This is a divisive entry for sure, but if you can even win back a jaded fan of the first couple generations, you’re at least doing something interesting.

I used to praise Pokemon games because they were always very solid. I never found glitches, problems running the game, and the mechanics were on point. Not with this one... The game is so glitchy, it is very disappointing.

I know they went big and did the open world thing. That is great. The problem is that if having an open world will sacrifice on how solid the game is, then it is not worth it. I was comparing this game to Pokemon Sword, and the difference in how it looks, performs, and feels is very different, in a bad way. Graphics are not great, the movement of the character feels clunky. It even makes me dizzy to play it on the TV. Even Arceus looks and feels better, and I wasn't a big fan of it.

Now, even though I have a rather harsh opinion on this game, let's mention some things that were quite nice. The character development was pretty nice. There was a big roster of people to meet and they had very particular interests, especially in the Academy. I like the idea of having different quest lines to play, and how they used the map.

I didn't feel the main story was solid enough, maybe because I wasn't a fan of future Pokemon.

last game i enjoyed in the main pokemon series was X and Y

i was pleasantly surprised when I enjoyed this game.

pros despite being glitchy, i love the environments. i love when pokemon games have full and vibrant cities and this game succeeded in that. i also love the open world aspect

The new pokemon are cool and i enjoyed being able to do 3 different stories at my own pace.

one of the best in the game is the characters (which pokemon usually always succeeds at.) The gym leaders are creative and really fun.

the music!! i immediately made a note to download the soundtrack

cons glitchy - updates have made it better but still glitches and pop in. i played zelda on the switch so i know that it is possible to make things look good!

i love the amount of accessories, but it bugs me that i cant change my clothes and it has to stay my uniform. its hard to look coordinated when you will always have yellow and blue required to be part of the outfit. good luck sporting a pink hat and looking good!

it was slightly annoying that only certain hairstyles could have hats and the game didnt tell you which ones so i had to pull it up online. wish if you put a hat on your hair just got tucked in, but instead it refused to give you a hat until you get a haircut

some story stuff was predictable, but i actually didnt see the end game stuff coming so that at least succeeded

all in all, highly recommend

When this game initially came out I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I could overlook most of the bugs and have never been one to care too deeply about graphics.

Sadly, after about 10 hours of gameplay, the excitement of an open-world Pokemon dwindled. The music is okay but not something I really connected with like in previous titles. I found the world to be bland and empty, and the story really disappointed me.

Despite this, I pushed through to complete the base game's Pokedex and Teal Mask's Pokedex. I was excited to start the Indigo Disk and was happy to see that some Gen 5 music had been incorporated but sadly after about 3 hours of the DLC, I couldn't take it anymore. I was just not having fun. I can't connect with the characters and their motives. The story feels like it is going nowhere despite having an excellent foundation and the graphics make me physically dizzy and disoriented at times.

I am sure some enjoy the game but I am left incredibly saddened that a Company as well off as the Pokemon Company would put out something like this. I am sure there are those at Gamefreak who put their heart and souls into this but I feel as if I have to shovel through feet of soot to even get a glimmer of their passion. I know that they could make something so much better if given the time to breath.

I was very excited for this release especially after they hype that was Legends Arceus. And honestly I wasn't disappointed. Pokemon scarlet and violet have their issues but over all I enjoy what it has to offer.

I loved the story of the game that being said. The story of the game only really happens in the 3rd act of the game. I really wish it was a bigger one from start to finish. When the story took off I got flashback to generation 5 which in my opinion have the best story in any pokemon game.

The DLC also have good storyline though they are very very short. I also love how populated the world is in some cases I think it's better than pokemon Legends Arceus in the way that the world feels lived in.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is sadly not very well optimized is some Cases such as raids. In nearly every single raid there is always some kind of issue. For example, Gastrodon has the ability storm drain but still get hit by water type move in raids sometimes. That should not happen. Or where it just skips your turn for like 3 turns in a row. It's very buggy and gets frustrating to do them.

Game has some minor to major clipping issues as well though I don't encounter them very much myself.

I would say there is a difficulty spike in the games especially when it comes to the DLC (I didn't notice it though because I was already running with max level pokemon at that point).

I enjoy the end game but I love shiny hunting so that creates the end game on its own right there. If you live online battles the end game for you are raids to collect material to make your pokemon stronger (unless you gen your pokemon😒)

Over all I give the game a 4/5 even if I see the problems I love pokemon and I always enjoy my time with the games.