Name: Pokemon Violet
Item: Pokemon Violet
Rating: 8
Author: robiu013

Let me be controversial once by writing a positive review on this mess here. I guess the idea of not having a controversial Pokemon release these days is just too much to ask for (well, there was **New Pokemon Snap** to be fair, but that's a spin-off). **Let's Go** only had slightly more than the original 150 Pokemon, **Sword & Shield** doubled down on the dexit and had poorly modeled trees, **BDSP** was just a new coat of paint faithful remake that carried over all the original's bugs and **Legend Arceus** had the audacity of being super fun and a step in the right direction all while having bad graphics.

What did **Scarlet and Violet** do to deserve scrutiny? Well, they doubled down on what Arceus did before it. I guess it was too good to be true to just drop a new release only 9 months after the last one and not expect it to be bugged out or rough around the edges. The outrage over the final product has perhaps been bigger with **S&V** than any previous releases. I guess for good reason, if you are having major issues with the game yourself. I'm not quite in that boat, as the performance issues were not game-breaking for me. Even pre-release people were bringing up the frame drops, but to me those weren't nearly all that frequent and the game ran at it's intended speed for most of my run. I did encounter the visual bug of seeing what's beneath the floor when in a fight on a slope and once I fell through the floor of a cave, which was saved as soon as I opened up the menu and flew to the nearest flying station. To be honest, the most frustrating part about the performance issues to me was that they were there in the first place and filthied what is easily the second best Pokemon release on the Switch otherwise. But I can't quite just sing praise of it, when even the 3DS games felt aesthetically more pleasing and polished to my eye, can I?

Anyway, **graphics are not great**. I still feel they are quite acceptable when played in handheld mode, but they turn out blocky and unpolished if you dock the Switch to a bigger screen. Animations are both kinda more ambitious than on the previous releases with quite a ton of additional movements to the tiny and big creatures, but then you also get stiff scenes in the story that hold too firmly to the limited presentation traditions of the JRPGs of the olden times. Much like in Arceus the battle animations are also lacking some form of impact or grandeure to a point where even the stronger moves don't quite feel like the earth-shattering surges of energy you'd expect them to be.

While the graphics leave quite a bit to be desired, **the soundtrack is brilliant at times**. I love the song that plays whenever a gym leader terrastalizes his ace Pokemon, the fusion of upbeat J-Pop with metallic shredding in the raid battles and even when the soundtrack decides to go all Nier Automata when entering the final area. Unfortunately (despite some trailers lifting our hopes up) Pokemon still seems uninterested to invest into any form of voice acting for their mainline games. There's partial voice acting for the cinematics and not even partial sentences or grunts to fill in the void like in the mobile Pokemon Masters.

Gameplay comes with a plus, but also some negatives. First of all **the open world is great**. There's no linear routes in this game and you can move forward just about as freely as you'd like.

Now, to be fair the game still doesn't quite commit to a "choose your own adventure" setting and **the gym challenge still firmly stands at the game's core**, even with two additional stories being promoted next to it. While you can take things on in whichever order you'd like with a decent degree of freedom, there is still an implied optimal order you might want to figure out. Gyms are not level scaled. Some gym leaders are simply better than others and you might want to take them on in their strenghts' order to gradually amp up the levels at which your Pokemon will still listen to you. Overall I was relatively pleased with the new batch of Gym Leaders. They were a colourful bunch and them utilizing the terrastalizing mechanic (which turns Pokemon into their hidden type and boosts those type's attack power) to add Pokemon from other types to make sense within their theme was quite nice. Even if it backfires at them for not having type diversity. The pre-gym challenge to qualify you for the Gym Leader battle were ok to provide some shift to the gameplay, but nothing that great or clever. The Elite Four challenge I didn't exactly like too much. It presentation-wise just didn't feel big enough. Their Pokemon teams were odd to say the least. There's a toddler in the elite four for some reason (sorry, if this is a spoiler, but it's gotta be some hormonal dysfunction right?) and the big final battle was underwhelming with the champion-equivalent utilizing too many "good, but not great" Pokemon, that facing equally leveled Pokemon just don't have a roadblock or destructive quality to make the fight feel epic or satisfying when beat. Level pacing is good by the way. You don't just overlevel. It's good to see Pokemon got the hang out of it after Gens 6, 7 & 8 were dulled down by an overactive experience share.

I'm not sure if some areas are in fact locked by your **Pokemon ride's movement abilities** obtained by completing the Titan challenges. Simply put the second story line is between you and a character called Arven, who seeks out your help to take on Titan Pokemon in order to retrieve herba mystica (HM, wink wink) - herbs with a healing power, which gradually restore your ride Pokemon's (either of the two dragons on the box art) movement capabilities which help you speed up exploration and potentially reach previously locked areas. Miraidon (or Koraidon, if you're playing Scarlet) is kind of derivative of Arceus' noble ride Pokemon, but is the whole package in one: running, swimming, gliding, climbing... he has it all, except for Ursaluna's sharp tracking nose.

The final story besides the gym challenge and the Titan Pokemon is taking down Team Star. Team Star are a far cry from the pokemon trafficking gangsters we grew up with. It's just a bunch of bullied kids who hit back. But hear me out: ...it actually works. The school setting, the theme being explored, the characterization. Team Star as a story element jives more with the "for all ages"-game than a generic story of having to take down some big bad, some sloppy social commentary that doesn't commit to handling the themes in a properly mature manner or just another hamfisted "friendship is magic" story. I liked it. Rather than crossing your way randomly, Team Star actually have 5 areas of their own, which play out somewhat akin to gyms. Each of the 5 Team Star Leaders is a type specialist. In order to be able to challenge them, you need to massacre through a mini game of the **Let's Go feature**, (a open world auto battle feature, you just throw out your Pokemon and they do all the work, but bad type match ups could make success unattainable) taking down 30 of their allies' Pokemon. Only once you've gained their attention they will challenge you to a one on one battle.

Ok, now to the unfortunate things regarding the gameplay: **Some of the improvements Arceus provided were cut**. It's back to the traditional battle system of Sword and Shield. The battles are slower paced and sometimes the animations drag a bit. There's no action mechanics. You can't "die" by falling of high places. There's also no Breath of the Wild style boss battles. Instead they bring back somewhat improved raid battles from Sword & Shield. Much like SWSH they also again only provide a fraction of the official national dex with only 400 entries + some additional hidden options that are not yet available until the next Pokemon Home update drops, where the Pokemon will become transferrable from older games. On the bright side taking the games back to Gen 8 in this regards also means the game will almost certainly (it's already kinda confirmed) get DLCs with more areas, more new Pokemon and even more returning Pokemon + unlike Arceus this will have support for competitive battling and will take over real world tournaments from SWSH.

Now here's my deal with these games: The games deserve criticism and I'm sure glad my Switch performs them competently, but based on the sheer ambitions they tried to cram in into the game and my enjoyment of it, I still view this as the second best Switch release for Pokemon. The still more positively reviewed BDSP and Let's Go games have very little on the fun I got out of these games. Sword and Shield is an in hindsight more competent looking game, but the open world, better pacing and even stronger story elements make this a vastly more enjoyable release. Personally, I still feel Pokemon has revitalized itself in 2022. All it needs is more time to get these games more polished and I sure hope the higher-ups' drive for success and big numbers stops messing with the games' quality control for future releases.

Let me be controversial once by writing a positive review on this mess here. I guess the idea of not having a controversial Pokemon release these days is just too much to ask for (well, there was New Pokemon Snap to be fair, but that's a spin-off). Let's Go only had slightly more than the original 150 Pokemon, Sword &amp; Shield doubled down on the dexit and had poorly modeled trees, BDSP was just a new coat of paint faithful remake that carried over all the original's bugs and Legend Arceus had the audacity of being super fun and a step in the right direction all while having bad graphics.What did Scarlet and Violet do to deserve scrutiny? Well, they doubled down on what Arceus did before it. I guess it was too good to be true to just drop a new release only 9 months after the last one and not expect it to be bugged out or rough around the edges. The outrage over the final product has perhaps been bigger with S&amp;V than any previous releases. I guess for good reason, if you are having major issues with the game yourself. I'm not quite in that boat, as the performance issues were not game-breaking for me. Even pre-release people were bringing up the frame drops, but to me those weren't nearly all that frequent and the game ran at it's intended speed for most of my run. I did encounter the visual bug of seeing what's beneath the floor when in a fight on a slope and once I fell through the floor of a cave, which was saved as soon as I opened up the menu and flew to the nearest flying station. To be honest, the most frustrating part about the performance issues to me was that they were there in the first place and filthied what is easily the second best Pokemon release on the Switch otherwise. But I can't quite just sing praise of it, when even the 3DS games felt aesthetically more pleasing and polished to my eye, can I?Anyway, graphics are not great. I still feel they are quite acceptable when played in handheld mode, but they turn out blocky and unpolished if you dock the Switch to a bigger screen. Animations are both kinda more ambitious than on the previous releases with quite a ton of additional movements to the tiny and big creatures, but then you also get stiff scenes in the story that hold too firmly to the limited presentation traditions of the JRPGs of the olden times. Much like in Arceus the battle animations are also lacking some form of impact or grandeure to a point where even the stronger moves don't quite feel like the earth-shattering surges of energy you'd expect them to be.While the graphics leave quite a bit to be desired, the soundtrack is brilliant at times. I love the song that plays whenever a gym leader terrastalizes his ace Pokemon, the fusion of upbeat J-Pop with metallic shredding in the raid battles and even when the soundtrack decides to go all Nier Automata when entering the final area. Unfortunately (despite some trailers lifting our hopes up) Pokemon still seems uninterested to invest into any form of voice acting for their mainline games. There's partial voice acting for the cinematics and not even partial sentences or grunts to fill in the void like in the mobile Pokemon Masters.Gameplay comes with a plus, but also some negatives. First of all the open world is great. There's no linear routes in this game and you can move forward just about as freely as you'd like. Now, to be fair the game still doesn't quite commit to a "choose your own adventure" setting and the gym challenge still firmly stands at the game's core, even with two additional stories being promoted next to it. While you can take things on in whichever order you'd like with a decent degree of freedom, there is still an implied optimal order you might want to figure out. Gyms are not level scaled. Some gym leaders are simply better than others and you might want to take them on in their strenghts' order to gradually amp up the levels at which your Pokemon will still listen to you. Overall I was relatively pleased with the new batch of Gym Leaders. They were a colourful bunch and them utilizing the terrastalizing mechanic (which turns Pokemon into their hidden type and boosts those type's attack power) to add Pokemon from other types to make sense within their theme was quite nice. Even if it backfires at them for not having type diversity. The pre-gym challenge to qualify you for the Gym Leader battle were ok to provide some shift to the gameplay, but nothing that great or clever. The Elite Four challenge I didn't exactly like too much. It presentation-wise just didn't feel big enough. Their Pokemon teams were odd to say the least. There's a toddler in the elite four for some reason (sorry, if this is a spoiler, but it's gotta be some hormonal dysfunction right?) and the big final battle was underwhelming with the champion-equivalent utilizing too many "good, but not great" Pokemon, that facing equally leveled Pokemon just don't have a roadblock or destructive quality to make the fight feel epic or satisfying when beat. Level pacing is good by the way. You don't just overlevel. It's good to see Pokemon got the hang out of it after Gens 6, 7 &amp; 8 were dulled down by an overactive experience share.I'm not sure if some areas are in fact locked by your Pokemon ride's movement abilities obtained by completing the Titan challenges. Simply put the second story line is between you and a character called Arven, who seeks out your help to take on Titan Pokemon in order to retrieve herba mystica (HM, wink wink) - herbs with a healing power, which gradually restore your ride Pokemon's (either of the two dragons on the box art) movement capabilities which help you speed up exploration and potentially reach previously locked areas. Miraidon (or Koraidon, if you're playing Scarlet) is kind of derivative of Arceus' noble ride Pokemon, but is the whole package in one: running, swimming, gliding, climbing... he has it all, except for Ursaluna's sharp tracking nose.The final story besides the gym challenge and the Titan Pokemon is taking down Team Star. Team Star are a far cry from the pokemon trafficking gangsters we grew up with. It's just a bunch of bullied kids who hit back. But hear me out: ...it actually works. The school setting, the theme being explored, the characterization. Team Star as a story element jives more with the "for all ages"-game than a generic story of having to take down some big bad, some sloppy social commentary that doesn't commit to handling the themes in a properly mature manner or just another hamfisted "friendship is magic" story. I liked it. Rather than crossing your way randomly, Team Star actually have 5 areas of their own, which play out somewhat akin to gyms. Each of the 5 Team Star Leaders is a type specialist. In order to be able to challenge them, you need to massacre through a mini game of the Let's Go feature, (a open world auto battle feature, you just throw out your Pokemon and they do all the work, but bad type match ups could make success unattainable) taking down 30 of their allies' Pokemon. Only once you've gained their attention they will challenge you to a one on one battle.Ok, now to the unfortunate things regarding the gameplay: Some of the improvements Arceus provided were cut. It's back to the traditional battle system of Sword and Shield. The battles are slower paced and sometimes the animations drag a bit. There's no action mechanics. You can't "die" by falling of high places. There's also no Breath of the Wild style boss battles. Instead they bring back somewhat improved raid battles from Sword &amp; Shield. Much like SWSH they also again only provide a fraction of the official national dex with only 400 entries + some additional hidden options that are not yet available until the next Pokemon Home update drops, where the Pokemon will become transferrable from older games. On the bright side taking the games back to Gen 8 in this regards also means the game will almost certainly (it's already kinda confirmed) get DLCs with more areas, more new Pokemon and even more returning Pokemon + unlike Arceus this will have support for competitive battling and will take over real world tournaments from SWSH.Now here's my deal with these games: The games deserve criticism and I'm sure glad my Switch performs them competently, but based on the sheer ambitions they tried to cram in into the game and my enjoyment of it, I still view this as the second best Switch release for Pokemon. The still more positively reviewed BDSP and Let's Go games have very little on the fun I got out of these games. Sword and Shield is an in hindsight more competent looking game, but the open world, better pacing and even stronger story elements make this a vastly more enjoyable release. Personally, I still feel Pokemon has revitalized itself in 2022. All it needs is more time to get these games more polished and I sure hope the higher-ups' drive for success and big numbers stops messing with the games' quality control for future releases.

Pokemon Violet

Pokemon Violet

Player Score

robiu013