Pokémon Scarlet & Violet

MissingnoMaster

Far as I'm concerned, my only real gripes back when the games came out was the performance issues. That said, over time, I came to realize I'm not overly enamored with the open world aspect. It's not bad, by far, but like... I think there's a balance to be struck in terms of linearity. Not too little, not too much, y'know? That being said, the story is phenomenal, the characters are fantastic, and the twist we get told in the Zero Lab had me absolutely floored. And then the Switch 2 came along, and hoo, boy, I think the improvements that brings to the table warrants Scarlet and Violet being among the best Pokémon games of all time. Like, these are fantastic, and the performance issues were really the biggest gripe I had. No more Lagtree Thicket or Cassannoya Lake.

And I didn't even mention the DLC! Darren you'll definitely enjoy it, I think. I won't spoil how things go, but the characters will definitely leave an impression on you. I know I enjoyed it.

KomodoZero

Regarding the open world, there are other games I think a new open world Pokemon game could learn a few things from.
One of them Shin Megami Tensei V, largely in its world design, being a series of large areas that are like an open world, but aren't. They have the advantages of many pre-designed "routes" did in older Pokemon games, but also the scope to feel grander than what we'd seen before. Once you've cleared through the story objectives, you get access to new regions of Tokyo. Of course, along the way there are various item spots, sidequests and other areas of interest filled with optional content that actually give you something to do when you're not chasing the main objective, even side stories too.
Actually doing something with the world is something Pokemon should really do the next time they take on such a large game.

colours

like many others, i've had many issues with SV's performance. i don't think any of it outright ruined the game for me or anything, or significantly downgraded the experience, but until the switch 2 edition released, i basically refused to buy the DLC because i didn't want to experience the myriad amount of framerate drops that others had reported on social media.

once i got the switch 2 patch/upgrade though... playing through SV felt like the game that it should've been in the first place. there's little to complain about in terms of plot, story, and characters, but the performance and consistent framerate drops were the one achilles' heel for this game. it really is a shame that in order to experience this game at its best, one would require a switch 2 for it but... i suppose it's worth it for the best experience possible.

tkarispe

Dragonfree Oof, yes, I hated that the Gyms were the only buildings in cities that you could actually enter, and all the shops were just soulless menus. One of my favorite things about previous core series games was the ability to just wander around towns and cities, entering people's houses and businesses and having conversations with them that usually didn't contribute directly to making progress in the game, but really fleshed out the world. I feel like SV had some really nice environmental design ideas when it came to the settlements of Paldea, but without that depth to back them up, they felt like just more of the landscape.

And I like your idea of scaling the Gym Leaders! The descriptions of the Gyms on the map were pretty vague, and I wish I'd known beforehand that they scale in difficulty as you go north. It would have helped me plan out my journey better. But that whole issue could have been circumvented by just scaling the Gym battles.

Wiseape

There was a moment as I first played Violet when the camera clipped through the floor and I could see an endless chasm down to the ocean through the dirt track floor as a hapless Lechonk watched my trainer. I was so shocked by the poor quality of the game that I immediately dived into the game’s Reddit to see what people thought of it. The game had been out a while but suffice to say the reception online had already bombed. As a Brit I was absolutely willing to call Violet a disaster and bask in the smug satisfaction of Britain-inspired Sword and Shield being my favourite Switch Pokémon games.

I pressed on and ended up pouring 240 hours into Violet, buying the DLC and finishing that as well. By the time I finished I had completed the dex for the main game and two DLC areas. I have never come close to completing the dex before. Maybe it had been patched by then but after an initial shock at its rickety foundations I was able to play it just fine. I thought the core game design was absolutely fantastic but level scaling is badly needed. The story was vague, a victim of the critic’s holy grail of open world game design, until it reached a great ending which was probably a product of its newfound linearity.

Would a more linear experience be better moving forward? Arceus suggests maybe. ZA might shed more light.

Did the overworld need some events, like a red Gyarados Lake of Rage etc.? Possibly, but I think that was what the two non-Victory Road storylines were really meant to be. Even so, the direction they have moved away from HMs is simply amazing, even if the bikes are a bit goofy.

I thought the game was actively trying to communicate a lack of development time and resources, maybe as a clandestine channel of communication from the devs to the financial eggheads. That’s how pervasive some its performance/presentation issues were. But there is a great game in there, somewhat uncovered by the Switch 2 update. I just hope they can iterate on it rather than be swept away by the commercial currents that the poor reception the game had will have produced.

I liked a lot of the new Pokémon. I thought the battling was great. I could go on… But here’s hoping the Pokemon Company throw some more money at development in the future. Profit margins are nice, but I’d love to encourage them to think even longer term by creating a happy fan base.

KomodoZero

I suppose it's worth bringing up the Pokemon this game introduced, which new Gen IX Pokemon do you guys like the most?
I love Meowscarada and Tinkaton a lot in the base game, Meowscarada encapsulates everything I love about cats, and Tinkaton is just pure chaotic gremlin and hard not to love.
In the DLC, Ogerpon is just undefeated. Easily one of my favourite legendaries to ever be introduced, another little scrimblo goblin who is just utterly adorable.

Darren

KomodoZero Clodsire, absolutely Clodsire!

I also like Roaring Moon

BlueMoonFalls

KomodoZero
I'm the Johto girl so of course my heart is pulled towards Clodsire and Farigiraf (not as much Dudunsparce but I still love it). That being said, I adore the Quaxly line and especially Quaxly itself. I love that little duck. I've joked around with my friends that I want Pokemon Crystal where everything is the same but the Quaxly line and Farigiraf/Clodsire are in it. Maybe one day I'll make that a reality for myself... And it's a crime that I don't currently own a Quaxly plushie.

tkarispe

KomodoZero I love Meoscarada and Tinkaton too! For basically about the same reasons as you do, haha. When the Paldea first partners were revealed, I was like "ABSOLUTELY GOING WITH SPRIGATITO". It reminds me of my cat when he was young, and I guess as a cat mom I'm contractually obligated to like cat Pokémon. My niece is also a huge Sprigatito fan and I enjoy obsessing over it with her. I was not at all disappointed when mine evolved into Meowscarada. And Tinkaton's whole design concept is just great.

Darren Clodsire is so fantastically derpy. I have one on my Paldea team. I love that Gen II Pokémon got some love in Gen IX!

I really love Ceruledge; even though it's supposed to be the more "sinister" of its evolutionary family, it's got such a marvelously sleek design. Like, I want a pair of phantasmal arm-swords. I also think the Treasures of Ruin are really cool because I love Asian history and I got so excited when I saw Ting-Lu and was like "I know what this is referencing!!!!!"

swiftyshq

a lot has been said here that i really agree with! as an environment artist, i am obsessed with background detail - it's one factor in why i love PLA - and although there's something cooking there, i agree that it feels really empty.

actually, maybe my issue is more about how the game looks from afar. in addition to having a tacky visible tiled texture on distant terrain (looks better up close, but bad when it's just a stretch of land with nothing on it), i'm not a huge fan of... i don't know. the color grading? the shading? it's so hard to figure out the exact point of contention. the colors are washed-out and feel dull in some places, like the southwestern fields.

THAT SAID. aside from glitches and the above things... i do enjoy wandering around, and i love the city designs. you can tell they were kind of stretched thin and couldn't make interiors for npc houses with whatever deadline they had, which does hurt it some, but i really adore the general layouts of most of the towns. they're all so distinct and i really enjoy how varied they are.

i think it really does suffer from the pitfall of open world design, though. if they had more large obstacles to block view, they could have managed performance better, i think. and also, it was kind of annoying to keep running into a super tiny flabebe when i'm trying to go somewhere specific. maybe i'm just a hater? but i really wished more of the towns had more "cover". i would often appear at a town and go, wow, it's kind of just smack dab in the middle of the field, huh? and you can see for miles... it just felt... i don't know. undercooked, underbaked...

that said, i haven't tried or purchased the DLC. i really dislike the trend that gaming has formed where the REAL MEAT OF A GAME is locked behind a second paywall. especially when that DLC is around the same price as when i went to buy pokemon pearl NEW, over a decade ago.

the pokemon designs are fun though. i love clodsire and appletun so so so so so so much. dudunsparce was, in my opinion, the best design concept for such a pokemon. dunsparce, but more. i don't find it lazy - i find it incredibly fitting and cute that it isn't overdesigned and doesn't stray too hard from the first stage. it's great.

BlackjackGabbiani

I do agree that Nemona doesn't really change over the course of the game (she does change a little, since she's finally able to raise a successful rival) but I found her far from a flat character. She's always struggling to prove herself despite being so strong, but she can't mentally connect this with how her family treats her. She thinks it's normal to be ignored in favor of her sister, something Arven and Penny find shocking.

Everyone praises the DLC story but I found it a massive step down, with one major trait even going directly against some of the lessons we learned in the base game! The game forcing us to be friends with Carmine, a massive bully, which made me feel like I was betraying Penny. And one of the big traits of the base game is that love on its own isn't enough if you never demonstrate it, and yet we're supposed to just take it at face value that Carmine loves her brother despite continuing to undercut and belittle him even in the epilogue.

(also I didn't want to tell Kieran the truth. He had a dangerous parasocial relationship with Ogerpon to the point of tracking down where she lived, and I didn't want to encourage that)

That said, the characters and the genuine emotions that came with them were the highlight of this game. I felt so attached to, of all characters, the AI after spending just a few minutes with him that I was genuinely nervous in the leadup to the DLC that it may say something horrible happened to him. I also super adored Clavell and wish I could have had a principal like him when I was in school.

As for the glitches and bugs, it's interesting to see how reception changes over time. Sure there have been games that are so buggy as to be unplayable over the years, but SV isn't one of them. The way I think of it is that my favorite game ever is incredibly buggy--you can glitch it to the point of skipping over a major character, and there's one that's so utterly insidious that it not only deletes your save, it corrupts the entire cartridge to where you can no longer play it. If it released today, identical to the original release, it would be dismissed as slop and people would be whining about how Square released a soulless game they didn't care about, entirely because of the bugs. And yet that game, Final Fantasy 6, is considered one of the greatest games of all time.

tkarispe

BlackjackGabbiani I'm positive we're in the minority here, but I actually didn't have an issue with SV's performance problems either. I probably cut programmers a large amount of slack because I've done some work on video game development, and I've watched games' programming get exponentially more complex over the years. Also, I grew up in an era where video games were riddled with glitches and encountering them was just part of the normal gameplay experience, so I'm pretty patient with them. (Although, I think a lot of people on this forum are around my age, so I'm not sure how convincing of an excuse that is.) I guess my bigger beef was the monotonous overworld experience, and I was so frustrated with that, that things like memory leaks paled in comparison.

Also, it's really fun how characters can leave different impressions on every player. Clavell was awesome. I thought the other faculty members were great too--I just wish they'd gotten more of a role in the game besides going through their bond stories and academy classes. I feel like they would have been prime candidates for giving out side quests.

As far as Carmine and Kieran,

I thought it was some really clever storytelling to have their respective attitudes toward the player character reverse by the end of Teal Mask. I felt like they had compellingly complex personalities and I enjoyed watching different sides of them come out as the plot progressed. Both siblings have their fair share of character strengths and flaws, and I found their relationship with each other pretty realistic for teenage siblings. Although, near the end of Teal Mask, I really hated how the game just forced you to catch Ogerpon and then watch Kieran fall apart about it. Owning a Legendary Pokémon is not worth the cost of someone else's mental well-being. I get that it's a crucial plot point that sets up all of Kieran's character development in Indigo Disk, but still. I dislike when a game forces the player character to do something the player doesn't actually want to do.

KomodoZero

As far as the performance goes, it is dreadful and probably should never have shipped in the state it was in. But because TPC has merchandise schedules that must be adhered to, the game suffered as a result. From its performance to world design, it was nowhere near close to being "finished".
Switch 2 alleviates the performance a lot, it's wild going to areas like Tagtree Thicket or Casseroya Lake and seeing it not break a sweat. I am sensitive to input latency, personally, and when it gets hammered in those areas I can feel it dipping a little, but nowhere near as bad as before. We're talking milliseconds of additional lag, most people would never notice.

swiftyshq

KomodoZero imagining a scarvio without lag at the lake or thicket is crazyyyy. if i had a switch 2, i'd love to try it, but it's prohibitively expensive for me ATM. you have me really interested in looking at gameplay comparisons on youtube now!

KomodoZero

swiftyshq Oh trust me, it's wild. Frame rate at locked 60fps, resolution is 1440p (upscaled to 4K), render distance is massively improved, there are now up to 30+ Pokemon on screen at once, the list goes on. What's actually funny is that I played online with a friend still on Switch 1 and their character was refreshing at 30fps still. In fact, they were also lagging pretty much all the time, to the point where I could chase them down and overtake them effortlessly. Really highlighted just how bad the performance really is on an original Switch...

BlackjackGabbiani

it's weird to me because I don't remember ever having that much of an issue in Tagtree Thicket. The water in Blueberry though, now that's a laggy place! Especially in the polar biome for some reason. Honestly I'd believe that they programmed water poorly or something except it doesn't happen on the ocean.