Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Review
I’ve seen a lot of reviews and comments on this game that I think are really interesting, because they seem to have looked at the game and I just can’t tell if they actually just tried playing it. So here’s my review as somebody who plays games without just trying to find what’s wrong with them. For context, I have not completed the pokedex but I have fully completed Violet and am starting on Scarlet today. I have caught all Legendaries as well, so all major side quests are complete too. I’ll start by touching on some aspects of the game before launching into my big story reviews. Oh, and this will have spoilers big time, so turn away now if you are still trying to avoid them.
Graphics
So, this is where the overwhelming majority of the discourse about this game has been on the internet for some reason, and thus I think it has to be addressed first. I honestly don’t know what people are expecting, Pokemon hasn’t looked good for 9 years since the transition to 3D in X and Y, that’s where your expectation should be, Pokemon isn’t pretty, it’s fun. That said, I think some of the discussion even here is kinda crazy? The environment is a bunch of low res flat textures, but hold up at a distance when you’re looking for your next destination. Models far away look bad, but I usually am not looking that far out, it’s peripheral and your brain should mostly ignore it unless you’re really focused wherever the action on your screen is not happening, also, the stutter walking is kinda funny to me, it never made me upset, but it did make me laugh, and it certainly never changed how much fun the game is for me.
The actual pokemon models are the best they’ve looked in 3D though in my opinion, the texturing on them makes them feel a little furry and alive compared to past outings. I even think they made Litleo and Pyroar look alright, both of which I thought would always suffer from the low poly count models of X and Y, so I’m actually fairly impressed. A lot of the newer Pokemon look interesting too, with the weird exception of Sprigatito’s evolutions which look oddly bad compared to basically every other Pokemon in the game.
Character Design
The character design is mixed for me, I think they really tried some new design space in this game, and a lot of it didn’t work for me personally, although my wife thinks there’s a lot of good designs, so clearly that’s subjective. The standout designs are Nemona in her simplicity, a number of the Team Star leaders, and for gym leaders Iono, Larry, the ice leader, and the ghost leader are fun, as well as the first Elite 4 member and the Chairwoman. I’m still learning the names of all the new characters, it’s only my first playthrough that I’ve finished. I think that the ability to customize our own character has hit impressive levels compared to past games, and I have seen some fantastic designs that really show a great level of self expression already despite the simple Pokemon look. The biggest critique of our own character is the limited outfit choice, we went from fun t-shirts, cool pants, sweet jackets, cute skirts and beautiful dresses to four school uniforms that are all mediocre and hurt that self expression a lot.
Battling
The thing that I think is weirdly overlooked considering it is the core mechanic of the game, battling is a lot of fun in this game. I like the 400 Pokemon they selected for the game, it’s a pretty fresh cast and the new pokemon fill in some cool niches to round out teams in fun and interesting ways. I think a lot of the new held items especially add to the fun experience of battling, and my favorite among them is the item that boosts punching moves and makes it so the puncher doesn’t make contact with the opponent, so that they don’t get the negative effects of abilities like static, which is really interesting. Balance wise, I’m not sure how the item that stops stats being changed by moves or abilities is going to work out, but for story gameplay it was fun to use with my Tinkaton, whose ability stopped her from getting any status affects too, so she could just fire off high damage abilities without fear. My biggest critique here would probably be that the boss fights could use more held items, move sets were actually good, but we know from challenge hacks and BDSP that some held items can add a little boost of difficulty that makes the game more fun, although if you are on par level wise for the fights, they still feel satisfying. Also, gym leaders using off-type pokemon and making them Tera into on-type pokemon is so much worse than doing the opposite, imagine Iono finishes with a Raichu that she turns into Tera-ice and it knows icicle crash or something like that to counter the ground types that people are using against her, that would be way more fun to face (I know Raichu doesn’t learn icicle crash, just giving an example).
The Stories- Starfall Street
I’m starting with this story because I think it’s probably the weakest of the three, although the leaders and flashbacks are interesting, they feel the most disjointed from each other of all the stories, even by the time it wraps up. I think this is a product of the pokemon company struggling a lot with how to handle the “evil” teams in the last few generations, but this modern format will hopefully let them improve the formula with time. I think the bases are also really easy, although the leader fights are fun and a decent challenge, and the giant Revavroom’s are a lot of fun to battle from a visual perspective. The “twists” at the end of this story were also very expected even for somebody like me who doesn’t really look out for twists or reads into the clear signals about them. Sorry Penny, you were obviously Cassiopeia, and no Clavell, your fake claim of mafia didn’t work out, try again next time. I do like that it wrapped up with Penny being recruited to help cyber security, that’s really realistic as oftentimes highly skilled hackers that get caught are given a deal to get lesser punishment if they join cyber security teams instead.
The Stories- Victory Road
Nemona is the best rival that we’ve had in Pokemon in a very long time. She's an over possessive stalker, but I get her motivation too. Nemona is the best trainer in the region, the further along you get the more clear that becomes, Geeta even mentions she thinks Nemona was likely holding back on her path to being champion. Suddenly the player character comes in and Nemona senses something, that we have the power to really challenge her, so she is pushing us because she wants a reason to actually try the hardest she can. To that end she picks the disadvantaged starter because she wants the challenge, that decision makes genuine story sense instead of just having the rival opt into the worst matchup for no perceivable reason. I also think this story benefits from being the classic pokemon story as well as having the most stops and best encouragement to actually progress in it, since the badges keep your Pokemon obedient. You’re likely to pace this story better than the other two more or less.
The Stories- Path of Legends
This story is by far the best one emotionally and from a raw story perspective, as this is the real story one, whereas Starfall Street is a side story and Victory Road is a gameplay tool. Arven’s quest to heal his doggo is actually really sad and heavy, and you want to get through it to see that poor pup feel better. Arven also heals emotionally along the way, opening up and becoming more humanized. Every main character in each path feels like they progress a little honestly, but Arven is the standout. The final battle here and the launch into building a team for the final story is also a strong motivator to keep going, it feels like something epic is coming and it’s fantastic. Titan battles are fine, five is probably the correct amount, more would feel tedious and because it’s just two battles per titan with time to heal between there just isn’t enough challenge to justify more than that. I would say this is paced correctly for the content and the story. Also, it unlocks movement abilities that open up the world, so even if you’re a monster who feels no attachment to curing a doggy, it still is a great motivation to fight more titans.
The Stories- Area Zero
The final story is awesome, there’s a lot it does fantastically in my opinion, but the chief among them is the mood. Area Zero has this “Journey to the Center of the Earth” vibe, or even “Made In Abyss” energy where you’re descending this deep crater and finding crazier things the deeper you go. I also love the fact that you have to walk this journey instead of just flying down on your version legendary. It forces you to appreciate the mood they’ve established, and the other characters in the team walking with you and talking as you are still exploring does a great job of keeping the mood up. I love how much growth the team gets as a group in the short period of time thanks to all this too, you feel like a real squad despite the section only being a few hours long at most. I think the only thing that is clearly missing is voice acting, especially here, since it’s hard to navigate around and dodge pokemon while reading the dialogue. I don’t know how different it is in Scarlet, but I honestly didn’t expect the twist that the professor died a while ago and the person we had been interfacing with had been an AI attached to his memories. Also the final battles here were awesome, I faced a boss where I didn’t know the typing of half his pokemon, and in fact hadn’t even seen a few of them, and the legendary mirror match was really well scripted to feel dramatic, I love how they handled it. I also love that the ending is strongly bittersweet despite having a hopeful drive to keep moving forward, it’s honestly some of the best story work in a Pokemon game, my initial impression has it top two with Black & White.
Side Story- The Legendary Gifts/The Ruinous Legendaries
The last thing to touch on is the side legendaries that you learn about in history class. First of all, as a person with a degree in history, I love how the presentation of these pokemon was handled, I think it’s cool. But bias aside, I think the story we get for these pokemon is interesting, and the concept behind unlocking them is interesting too, finding 8 stakes to unlock each one’s resting place. That said, I really wish there was some way to get the game to mark the stakes on your map at some point, because the world is pretty big, they can be fairly tucked away, and there is literally no sense of direction in where you should look for them. I used a guide for this section because I wasn’t going to roam aimlessly. The actual designs of these legends are mixed to me except for one massive standout, the Grass one looks absolutely incredible and is one of my favorite designed legendaries ever.
Overall Opinion
Playing through this game was an absolute blast, I loved that they lengthened the game out so much. To complete all major stories and catch all the legendaries took nearly 40 hours for me to do, which is 15 or more hours than the next longest base pokemon game. I love the make-up of this pokedex and there are some great new designs and graphical decisions in regards to the Pokemon, and the old pokemon that got new evolutions got some great designs. I think that anybody who looks at the story and gameplay we received and thinks this isn’t a top half pokemon game of all time is just wrong, I really think it’s one of the best ever. Non-pokemon graphics being mediocre doesn’t change how fantastic this game is either, it’s raw fun and some stuttering characters 5 feet behind the battle doesn’t make that any less true to me.
Rating: 9.5/10
This is my base rating, it could go up, and if they keep getting better at DLC like they did during Sword and Shield, I have a feeling that the final experience for this game will be at a whole new level.
