Impressions: Pokémon Scarlet & Violet

Fun and engaging but janky as the distortion world.

One of the downsides to liking RPG´s so much that I´m very well aware of is that they take a long time to finish. You can be playing them for months. I don't mind this, I love it when I find an RPG that enthrals me and get to spend considerable time in, but as someone who can´t help himself but commit to a game, when something new comes along I often don´t have the time for it. Sometimes that´s fine and other times you get the current situation. I still haven't finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and both God of War Ragnarök and Pokémon Scarlet & Violet are also vying for my attention. Now, I feel partly guilty for not finishing XC3 and having to dodge God of War Ragnarök while playing Pokémon Violet, the game I feel like playing the most right now.

It also means that none of these games is getting a review even remotely soon to their release which is why we're here. While those full-fledged reviews are coming, in the meantime, I want to share my first impressions of the recent release of the aforementioned games: Pokémon Scarlet & Violet. Also gives me a chance to follow up on a post I wrote earlier in the year, '7 Things I want to see in Pokémon Scarlet & Violet'.

So without further ado, let's dive into my thoughts and feelings, so far, on Pokémon Scarlet & Violet.

My current progress

Let’s start with how far I am so you get a good sense of what I’ve experienced so far. I’ve put in over 20 hours of gameplay, my team is around lv. 20-25, I’ve gone both East and West of Mesagoza and got 4 of the 18 badges. That’s pretty early on in the journey especially if you consider that the game pushes you to get at least 3 badges as part of the extended tutorial.

After the introduction that was a bit on the long side, I checked out the West side of the region a bit following Nemona’s advice to challenge the Gym there and not wanting to go the East where all the trailer material was before going to the West so I could get a taste of what the Titan Pokémon and Team Star bases were all about. Now, I’m travelling the West side of Paldea looking for a Girafarig and a Ditto for breeding (though the latter isn’t necessary anymore). Oh, and just so everyone knows: you get a Badge for beating Gyms, Titan Pokémon and Team Star captains. This game does not have 18 Gyms. 

The open-world appeal

If you think to yourself "it doesn’t sound like you’ve gotten very far into the story after 20 hours" then you’re correct! That’s what you get with an open-world game like this. A bit part of the appeal of this genre is just walking around and going where your whims take you. To set yourself a goal and you can just do it.

In older games when I wanted a certain Pokémon on the team you had to wait until you got to the part of the game in which it was available to you. Here, you just have to look up where it can be found and you’re off. I didn’t have to wait until, like, badge 6 to get that Ditto. I only had to plan out a route and go there so that’s what I did. That I haven’t reached that goal yet has everything to do with how distracted I got along the way.

By what did I get distracted? Pokémon, mostly. Seeing new Pokémon I’ve never seen before and want to catch it. Seeing Pokémon I did know about but still catching it for Pokédex completion. Seeing items in the far distance and looking for ways to get there, wanting to know what I’ll get. Checking out Terra raids, seeing stuff like a somewhat hidden cave and wanting to know what’s inside it. Seeing some sort of weird pins stuck in the ground and checking them out so I can learn more about them.

That is what has inflated my game time so much and I’m having a lot of fun playing Pokémon this way. Legends Arceus already gave you a lot of this but as it went for the Monster Hunters Rise approach in that it divided the world up into different sections only accessible through a hub it was a lot more limited. Here, you truly can go anywhere you want after you’ve gotten through the tutorial. You can find overpowered Pokémon that’ll kick your teeth in if you attempt to battle them but that has its own fun to it.

The open-world appeal is strong with this game.

What Legends Arceus did better though is something that brings us to the '7 Things I want to see in Pokémon Scarlet & Violet’ are the side-quest. Or should I say, the lack of any side-quests here is disappointing to me. As I said, side-quests give players a (light) narrative-driven activities to tackle. They give the game some more meat on its bones and give players more choices in how to approach their adventure. There is a lot to do in Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, I haven’t mentioned everything, but aside from the 3 story paths you already know about through the marketing none of the things you can have any sort of narrative to them. None of it has you interact with any characters or the region in any meaningful way and that I miss.

Speaking of that list: let’s tackle the terra raid battles real quick. The Dynamax raid battle was a lot of fun; they added a community element to the games that the series hadn’t had yet. Every month the Pokémon you could find in Raids were different and often you could find a Shiny in them. It brought people back to the game every month. It was a good, if flawed, addition that Game Freak thankfully brought back with improvements. The slow pace of the raids has improved, and the turn system has been replaced by a cooldown system and a timer. I have yet to really dig into them and the Terastal gimmick, I’m not strong enough yet, but from what I’ve been through I like it better than Dynamax raid because of its quick pace and lack of those annoying shields.

The Pokémon, World and Characters

I also briefly want to touch on the Pokémon themselves, the Paldea region and the characters. I don’t have encountered every new Pokémon yet but I like what I’ve seen so far. There are some missers like Fuecoco’s evolution but there are also some hitters Toedscool and the Tinkatink line. There are new regional forms and even if they are only 3 of them I appreciate they are here so that´s another ´hope´ that came true. I don’t want to see this concept go so the fact that there are regional forms here gives the sense that while it might not be a priority for Game Freak, they still think it’s worth keeping around.

Paldea isn’t bad, I just haven’t seen enough of it yet to really judge it. I do know I’m not a fan of its towns and cities. You can no longer enter houses, making them feel superficial. Lots of the towns are also nothing more than a few buildings set in a square with perhaps one major attraction; usually related to whatever the Gym Leaders regular job is.

The characters are a lot more interesting than the world itself; haven’t met one I didn’t like yet. Nemona is a good rival from what I’ve seen of her. She’s both your main rival as well as your mentor of sorts, a combination we haven’t seen before and alongside her enthusiasm and mannerisms works well. Principal Clive has taken a direction I didn’t expect. Penny remains mysterious but I can already see where her story is going and it looks to be a fun one. And Arven has a lot more going on under the surface and I’m pretty sure we’re up for a parent-child story with him not that we know he’s the son of Professor Sada/Turo. Looking forward to seeing where these stories will lead.

Technical stuff and other annoyances

The visuals aren’t the greatest either; I don’t find the ugly but I said during the reveal trailer that I preferred the Sword/Shield and Legends: Arceus style visuals and I have not changed my mind on this.

I´m also annoyed that, once again, this game feels like two steps forward, and one step back. Game Freak reversed or flat-out removed features. There´s no longer an option for set battles, the one ‘difficulty option’ the series had so there´s that for that hope. You can just press ´B´ every time the prompt comes up but having to do that every single time, which I do, is very tedious. The Rare Candy (as far as we know) can no longer be used to force a level-up evolution on an Lv. 100 Pokémon. These are just two things, small things, but there are many things like this and it just adds up. These were appreciated features so their removal for seemingly no reason is just weird and annoying.

The technical problems that plague these games are impossible to ignore. I’m not a person that cares a lot about a game’s performance. I can appreciate some excellent-looking games such as God of War and Horizon Forbidden West but such visuals aren’t a must for me. I can enjoy something like Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc for the PS2 just as much. I can’t distinguish between 30fps and 60fps and my TV is so old I don’t even know if it is 1080p or not. But even I, even I!, notice and am hindered by how poorly this game runs.

From the numerous bugs and glitches to the ugly pop-in, stuttering framerate, and low polygon models to the floor just disappearing on me. I’ve yet to encounter anything as drastic as, say, eyes popping out of your character’s head but I have encountered some technical mishaps every play session. Nothing has been game-breaking, but all these small(er) problems do stack up, you know? Really hope they patch things soon. I’m not expecting a one-and-done ‘it fixes everything’ patch but at least gets it up to Legends Arceus standards before any (potential) DLC announcement and or Pokémon Home integration at least.