Pokémon Scarlet/Violet is a Game

Backup Links: DeviantArt   • Google Drive   • MEGA  

After being disappointed with Pokémon Shield, you’d think I’d have learnt my lesson and not bought the sequel. However, I bought it while in the middle of beating Shield, as I was determined to try every main game of this series.

This was painful. With that statement, it’s a foregone conclusion that I don’t like the game. But is it worse than the 2019 one? Let’s see.

I am playing Scarlet, for reference. So if I ever mention specific things like Koraidon or Professor Sada, just replace them with the Violet equivalents if that’s your preferred version.

And if you’d like to see my first impressions of this game, you can easily watch it on Google Drive   or MEGA  .

Recap
It’s always gotta happen when I’m reestablishing myself. These are my thoughts on all the Pokémon games I’ve played. I’m gonna assume you know all the acronyms.

RGBY is not a good game, but I can appreciate it for what it was in ’96.

I like GSC, but I do think it has a lot of problems.

I had a bad first run of RSE, but it’s really not that bad.

I really enjoy DPPt. The music, the region, it mostly sat well with me. Worst usage of HMs in the series, though.

I love BW. I acknowledge BW2 is a good game, but I like it less than the first one.

I don’t like USUM. It felt way too linear and boring, and I didn’t care for the characters.

SwSh basically carried over most of USUM’s flaws, only far worse. Don’t like this one.

In short, BW is the best of them, with BW2 and DPPt being close behind. The only ones I think negatively on are SM/USUM and SwSh. And I have yet to play XY.

Brief Lead-Up
While I’ve been loosely familiar with Pokémon since I was a little kid, I paid more attention to elements of the show than the games. As in, if I was tugging it to a character, it was because of their counterpart in the show. I tried the games as a kid, but I didn’t get into them.

SV is the first time I’ve been paying attention to the Pokémon scene while a new generation is releasing. This does change things a little, as now I have proper expectations from things Nintendo released. And the fans of mine, of course.

You fans made it sound like this was gonna be a fully open game, where you have three stories and aren’t forced to become the champion of Paldea. We’ll get to your lies later, but initially, that sounded pretty impressive.

Additionally, nothing about the lead-up to SV made me think it would be remotely janky. Pokémon never had the best presentation under Game Freak, but the company had to have learnt something from making Legends: Arceus, right?

Boy, I was a dumbass. Now I get what it’s like to be a modern Pokémon fan, where disappointment platters get served regularly.

Graphics and Performance
This marks the fifth HD Game Freak game, including Little Town Hero. Even though the Switch’s hardware was old for 2017 standards, it’s clear that this game would’ve been ugly, even if it were a PlayStation 5 title.

I mention this to counter some opinions. Some Pokémon fans always defend Game Freak, claiming that the team needs time to learn how development works. I firmly disagree with this. If this was its second HD game, that’d be more understandable. However, it had five years before this game came out to learn how to create modern experiences, and even longer to understand 3D design. This isn’t a small indie company with limited resources. If the developers continue to struggle with HD games, it’s on them or Nintendo to provide better training or hire more staff. While adding people doesn’t guarantee a better game, Game Freak’s strict schedule means it needs all the help it can get.

Scarlet/Violet looks terrible.

To be positive, I don’t mind the less vibrant colours. Sometimes, the previous games could look oversaturated. Plus, I appreciate that all the Pokémon have fully rendered facial features. Unfortunately, both changes came in Legends: Arceus earlier in that year, so I can’t give SV credit for that.

The Pokédex looks really cool this time around. I love the library formatting so much. And while I think SwSh overall had a better menu system, I appreciate that the main menu has returned to the style of the first four generations, being tucked in the corner.

Okay, positives over.

I normally like to keep performance and graphics separate when judging a game, but they both tear each other down here.

Characters often move at less than 30 frames per second. That would be acceptable if they were in the far distance, but it happens to characters who are close to the camera. The background itself is subject to visual bugs, like flickering that belongs on a PlayStation game, dithering that would fit perfectly on the Nintendo 64 and lighting so half-assed that it would pass for a Sega Saturn title. This is a modern-day fifth-generation video game, down to the choppy 3D performance.

This game is allergic to optimisation. Boxes take forever to load, the gameplay regularly dips below 30 FPS, the resolution is low, and this is the first time a Switch game has crashed on me. All because I wanted to look at the adorable pink sheep…

And the glitches… Fuck me, the glitches… Whether it be Bounsweet walking through the floor, Spoink bouncing on air, characters entering T-poses, this is unquestionably an unpolished game. And by the way, while I played most of it without a Day 1 patch, I did eventually update it.

Nothing changed! The performance is still godawful. The mistakes weren’t fixed.

The cinematic cutscenes are nice, although they beg to be voice-acted. This complaint mirrors the one in SwSh, so I won’t dwell on it.

What I will dwell on is the laziness of the normal cutscenes. These animators must have been on constant vacation. Any time a different action is needed, they fade. Any time a new shot must be loaded, they fade. There are more fades happening in this game than in a Black-owned barbershop. While not every scene needs Disney animation quality, they use this one transition as a crutch far too frequently. It happens a lot during conversations with the professor.

Lastly, the shift in art style isn’t my favourite. The game is trying to look more realistic than earlier ones. This choice isn’t inherently bad; it matches the developers’ want for Pokémon to be relatable and immersive to players. However, the execution is terrible, with so many environments looking unfinished compared to past games. It also reflects badly on the characters, as whenever they try to have one stand out, it looks off. In SwSh, at least the mediocre visuals were covered up by the cartoonish art style. A cartoonish look can work well with simplicity, but you can’t be cheap if you’re going for high-definition realism.

This is one of the ugliest modern games I have seen. I am normally a proponent of having simpler visuals with a solid framerate. I don’t care if your game looks like an upscaled PS2 title if the textures are sharp, the art and animation are excellent, and the gameplay is satisfying. But I can name several PS2 games that look nicer than this.

The game is pure rubbish on the visual side.

Character Designs
I just mentioned how I’m not a fan of the art style. Sadly, this doesn’t just apply to the 3D visuals, but also the 2D art.

Firstly, I hate the school uniforms so much. The orange used is garish. And it’s not scarlet! I know scarlet has a little hint of orange, but it’s predominantly red. Who the hell wants to walk around wearing orange all the time?

The protagonists are lame, especially Florian. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s hard to think of any beautiful male players who aren’t named Brendan or Elio. But man, Florian is painfully boring. And his official art makes me want to sock him square in his face. He looks like a bitch.

Juliana is slightly better, but she feels like nothing more than Florian with a sex change. This might apply to other protagonist pairings, but these two are way too similar, and it doesn’t help that they’re forced to wear the same outfit. Juliana doesn’t even get a skirt option.

Nemona… Eh… I don’t find her ugly, but I also don’t find her amazing. About the only interesting thing is that she needs a shooting sleeve to throw Poké Balls.

Iono looks very annoying, a reflection of her in-game personality. Not crazy about her shark teeth, but I’m sure the Japanese love that. Not ugly, just not a favourite either. I gotta say, it does bother me whenever people refer to her as a V-tuber. It’s like… No, that’s just incorrect. She’s a streamer. Just because she’s a fictional streamer doesn’t mean she’s a V-tuber. I’m anal about this stuff, okay?

Katy is fine. Didn’t stand out to me originally, but looking at her again in the post-game, I like her reserved baker aesthetic.

Larry is just human Squidward, and I’m cool with that. Everyone seems cool with it.

Poppy pisses me off. I love this girl’s design. It almost gives me “classic anime” vibes for whatever reason, like she’d be in some older animation. I like her colour scheme. I don’t like that she’s nine years old. For one, aren’t you supposed to be ten to be a trainer? How the fuck did she get into the Elite Four? It’s meant to be a joke, but come on. I know the series has never been consistent about it, as early as Generation III with all the young trainers. But at least they were never important figures.

Secondly, she doesn’t even look nine. Not by this series’ standards. Bonnie is ten, and she looks older. Max, May’s brother from the cartoon, is seven, and he looks like he should be taking care of Poppy. Poppy looks like she’s in kindergarten. If I ever draw this girl, I feel it’s almost mandatory I have to age her up, for my own comfort.

Rika… Don’t like her. She’s too lanky for my tastes. She has one of the more androgynous designs of the series, which I’m fine with.

Meanwhile, Geeta’s out here looking like a jackass in a dominatrix suit.

Of Team Star, the only one I like is Ortega. I think he’s cute, evidenced by the fact I drew him. Another very androgynous design, I’ll add. Considering he’s also so similar to Bede in personality and his Pokémon typing, here it feels like laziness.

Mela looks like shit. Those fucking boots. SpongeBob looked more respectable in his squeaky boots than this girl looks. They’re so impractical that I can’t help but laugh (and I don’t think that was intentional on the designers’ part). Whenever she walks, she struts like a toy soldier with a stick up its ass. She was one of the first characters revealed in the game, and I didn’t think much of her then either.

Penny looks like she constantly listens to school shooter music. And like her breath stinks. And like she doesn’t bathe often. And like she’s sleep-deprived. Also, she wears an Eevee backpack, and I’m immediately suspect of anybody who sports Eevee merch or has an Eevee profile picture. They tend to come off a little predatory, and we’ll leave it at that. Maybe I’d bang her in the rear, where I don’t have to look at her.

And the grunts don’t stand out since they have no unique costume. They’re just wearing the same student clothing, despite the fact that they should be rebels who don’t want to go to school (?).

Of note, it seems most of the NPCs have designs based on some template. Not a bad way to make the world more immersive, as one of my complaints with SwSh was how uncanny it was for Team Yell to have the same two members.

Overall, nothing impressive. Pretty disappointing compared to the last game.

Player Customisation
This section will be brief. While I appreciate that you have more options to customise the player’s face, I’m not a fan of only having school uniforms to wear. I just don’t see the point when we’re not even in school most of the time.

It’s for that sole reason that I can’t say that SV has better customisation than SwSh. The outfit plays a major part in one’s appearance.

And why can’t I just buy regular flip-flops for my character!?

I hear XY has the best customisation, and it has consistently gone downhill from there. If true, then that is impressively depressing.

Sound
I don’t really care for this game’s music. It’s not all bad, and I wouldn’t call the soundtrack horrible. It’s just that I don’t deem much of it memorable, which is a common flaw I’ve discovered with open-world games. I get that they don’t want melodies that will get annoying after a while, but it just leaves me bored.

Credit where it’s due, the game finally gives different battle themes depending on the area. Of the songs, I really like Nemona’s final battle music in particular.

Although, the lack of voice acting is a bad move. I’ve explained the cutscene issue, but it makes many other moments less impactful to have complete silence. I’m not of the mindset that every single line of dialogue needs a voice in all nine languages like Metal Gear Solid or Kingdom Hearts III, but at the bare minimum, a few grunts and having the important scenes voiced would be nice, similar to what the Persona games do.

Also, this game has some nerve having no voice acting, yet having a vocal song in the credits. A shitty vocal song, I may add.

Actually, I have another complaint, and it’s related to the game design. Because Pokémon will not disappear during battles, it can result in you hearing the same cry over and over again. I’ve gotten very irritated from both Igglybuff and Litleo for this.

Field Gameplay
I’m skipping discussion about the Pokémon designs because most of them fail to impress. It’s what happens when you have over 1,000 creatures across a span of 20+ years. Pawmot is probably my favourite new addition, this fat fuck. It’s cute. I also like the absurdity of Tandemaus and Maushold. Tinkaton is cool, and Cetoddle is a nice thing.

Now, onto the actual gameplay. This game is open-world, unlike all the other Pokémon games. Well, Legends: Arceus is technically open world as well, but this leans more in that direction. Paldea is a bigger world than Hisui, so you can say this is Pokémon’s first full commitment to the open-world formula.

My opinion is simple: this game has no reason to be open.

I am not a fan of this open-world game trend because it tends to be style over substance. So often will these worlds feel like ways for developers to do less work, as they’re utterly lifeless. The Zelda titles look pretty empty, and I know Sonic Frontiers is a ghost town. Also, so many of these open worlds refuse to take place in modern city environments. They always have to contain endless fields or deserts to fill the empty space. It’s as if Rockstar is the only company with the balls or budget to create a proper city, as shown in Grand Theft Auto.

People have this thing where they don’t care whether open design even benefits a video game. They just love the idea of something being open world. Just the simple thought of having a completely free game is appealing to them, hence why you get so many people asking for a franchise’s new entry to be, “the Breath of the Wild of X series”.

If you’re one of those people, to each their own. I am not.

I’m honestly sick of how anything slightly linear is deemed outdated or poorly designed. It’s like the 2D scare from the late 1990s, where suddenly everything 2D was considered worthless because 3D was the new hotness. It didn’t matter that most of these fifth-generation 3D games played like shit. It was the future, so fuck 2D.

I just don’t like games shifting to an open format for the sake of it.

While I am not against all open-world games, it’s frustrating when said world is so pointless. You can slice off one half of Paldea, and you would lose nothing of value. Empty space is necessary in an open game, but this game goes above and beyond with just how much nothing there is. There is nothing to do outside of fighting Pokémon. Where are all the real minigames or side activities? I guess you have sandwich-making, but that’s unimpressive, especially when the success animation looks like your character is blowing themselves.

Every Pokémon game has this problem to an extent. Being such a unique RPG makes it harder to have typical RPG gameplay, akin to how Sonic can’t be designed like normal platformers. It’s hard to have elaborate dungeons or boss battles when every enemy needs to be collectable; the enemies are the real treasure, not the items.

However, I feel if they were going to expand the map, then they should’ve found ways with which to adjust the traditional Pokémon gameplay. Give the human player some more fun movement rather than always tying them to the Pokémon. And if the legendary was a decision that couldn’t be removed, then have puzzles related to its movement. The game could retain its turn-based battle system, but these little action bits in the field would spice things up.

The game could’ve kept a sense of openness by having multiple routes merging. For instance, having a high road and a low road to travel between cities would give players choices that encourage experimentation and exploration. It also would remove the need for developers to make such a large world that the Switch hardware is clearly struggling with.

Hell, that’s what the previous Pokémon games already did. They beat SV at its own game.

The game advertised itself as being completely free. This is true. But while you can do anything in your own order, the game has a specific order it wants you to tackle these things, purely based on character levels. You don’t know how disorientating it was to go from facing the Bug leader early on, only to be confronted with Level 40 Pokémon just a short distance away. The game seems to want the player to zip all over the map between each event, and it’s not convenient in the slightest.

But it’s possible that the developers intended for you to go to school more often. Mesagoza is smack in the middle of the map, so it’s quicker than, say, going from the northwest to the southeast. Unfortunately, the game fails to make it clear what the benefits are of attending school, so I never attended lectures. I tried, and nothing significant happened other than seeing Nurse Miriam’s ugly yellow nail polish.

And the greater issue with having an intended order is that you can be overlevelled by pure accident. This happened to me when I found myself defeating so many gym leaders and Titan Pokémon easily on the east side of the map. How was I meant to know I wasn’t supposed to battle all the West leaders first?

Some people online argue that the game provides hints through the map, but many of these hints are super ambiguous.

In theory, the absence of level scaling shouldn’t be a big deal. After all, being unable to access parts of the map in the beginning can make the world feel bigger. One of my favourite examples is comparing GTA: San Andreas to GTA V. GTA V is unquestionably the larger game, but since you can access the entire map from the start, San Andreas’ slowly unlocking world feels larger.

But if Game Freak wasn’t going to scale the levels, then it should’ve had a very clear recommended order for tackling events. This way, players could still choose to stray off the path as they pleased (speedrunners would love this), but at least players could know they wouldn’t be overlevelled for half the game.

Adding fuel to the fire, the towns in this game aren’t interesting.

Pokémon has always had this problem, in fairness. Compared to other RPGs like Paper Mario or Ni no Kuni, the series tends to lack interesting set pieces. Or rather, the environments are just backdrops for the story to unfold, rather than being involved themselves. Think about it. I bet you’ll remember several specific scenes in the Paper Mario games that are memorable partly from their location, be it the train mystery in TTYD or the mansion with creepy spider wife in Super. In Pokémon, at least for me, the environments are almost never given importance.

Moreover, Pokémon has historically struggled with uninteresting NPC dialogue. SV does nothing to improve that.

Players can’t enter buildings anymore, limiting exploration and kind of removing a sense of cosiness, to be honest. Most restaurants are just menus, so the interior designer must’ve been smoking crack the whole time. Seriously, having menus for your interiors is something I’d expect of a budget PlayStation 2 game rather than a major 2022 Switch release. Compounded with the horrible framerate and ugly visuals, the simple act of exploring isn’t fun here.

On that note, I don’t like how many items are randomly scattered. While it’s meant to populate the world, it ultimately diminishes the significance of item pickups. In an RPG, grabbing an item should feel rewarding, with a small celebration. Whether it be how Sora swings his Keyblade or how chests aren’t very common in the Persona series. In this game, there are so many items that I’m mindlessly tapping the A Button for hours.

The field is arguably more important here than in past games due to the open-world nature, and yet it’s so much less engaging to roam around in.

Battle Gameplay
And speaking of being turn-based, holy fuck, this game is slow. When playing this game, I was bouncing between Black 2, Crystal and Emerald. All of them are unbelievably faster than this newest title.

Why are battles so fucking slow!? Why do they still display stat messages every single turn!? Just make it a visual; RPGs have done that since the ‘90s, it’s not rocket science. Not only that, but the rival Pokémon is now forced to make its sound before you switch creatures, and it takes about two seconds to load every time. That might sound short, but it adds up in a game as sluggish as this.

The slow battles really hurt this title. RPGs are naturally slow unless it merges action like Kingdom Hearts or Mario & Luigi. You have to accept that before diving into the genre, which is not a problem. But the best RPGs are the ones that let you speed the tedium up, which this game will not allow.

Why? They removed battle animations. While I don’t disagree with this choice, since it’s not normal for a game to even have the option to disable animations, the animations are so boring and slow this time around that you want to skip them. They should’ve either had snappier animations, a faster battle speed… Fuck, they should’ve had both!

Don’t even get me started on how slow healing is. Or, God forbid, multi-hit attacks.

I guess I should talk about the new gimmick: Terrestalisation. It’s not a bad gimmick, but it's used horribly in the single-player mode. Every gym leader who uses it will use it to transform some random creature into their iconic type. It’s dumb, and it makes these battles easy. What is the point of Iono having a Mismagius (a unique type) if it’s just gonna turn into another Electric type?

I can see how it’s useful in the competitive space, at least. I only tried one of these raids, by the way. Meh. It’s extra content that’s harmless. I imagine it’d be fun with more people, but I’m not yet willing to pay for a Switch online subscription. Isn’t that new console on the horizon anyway?

Concluding battle stuff, let’s talk about the stupid Let’s Go mechanic. First of all, the joy of having your Pokémon run by your side isn’t there at all. You can’t run for more than ten seconds without your creature warping back into their ball. Could they seriously not program all the creatures to keep up with you? It can’t be that they’re tied to their in-universe speeds, either. There is no reason that a Glaceon—a goddamned fox/dog/cat—can’t keep up with a human.

And the battles that begin the Team Star encounters are laughably pathetic. Has anybody lost them? Maybe they’re harder if you have to redo them, I don’t know (haven’t gotten far in the post-game). But during the main story, there is no real threat. I did have a situation where my creatures were getting knocked out because I went into the battle with the incorrect typings. But they have healing stations in the battles, so that negates all challenge.

Yeah, the battle system here blows. It’s slow, it’s boring, Terrestalisation is badly used during the actual story, and I don’t think much of the Let’s Go battles.

Gym Challenges
They’re shit. End of discussion.

I mean, what else can I say about the gym challenges in this game? The reason they all take place outside is because they have no interiors, again. And they’re all so easy. It’s that FNAF: Sister Location problem where they try to have some unique gameplay, but they can’t have it too hard since it could cause a roadblock.

Even then, there are some that use the regular gameplay and are still too easy, such as the Sunflora hunt. The only ones I liked are the ones that involved battling, namely Iono’s. And even that challenge was hurt by the character being so damn annoying.

TM Synthesis
I almost forgot to mention this. This game added crafting to Pokémon. I hear it was in SwSh in some form, but this game makes it a lot more obvious with the TMs.

Why are so many games obsessed with crafting materials? Just late last year I was complaining about Tears of the Kingdom and its shitty breakable weapons, and now I’ve got another Switch title with crafting.

On one positive note, I’m glad HMs are still not here. Fuck HMs, always wasting a slot for a weak move.

On the flip side, I hate that they reverted TMs to the old one-use system. It had to have been done to encourage you to synthesise more of them, but it feels like regression. Especially when the synthesis system isn’t exactly fun.

Again, I’m used to RPGs. I’m used to grinding. Kingdom Hearts has synthesis in its numbered entries, and I don’t mind it there. Even in the very first game, which oddly has you mixing old enemy materials with late-game enemy materials, it doesn’t bother me. Firstly, that game’s battle system is just faster, so I’m not bored like I am in this game. Secondly, I’m able to actually make stuff in that game.

Why is it that when I finally beat this game, I had almost nothing to synthesise in the shop. I killed so many enemies; I spent so many hours grinding. And yet I’m somehow lacking enough materials to craft TMs? How!? You are pretty much guaranteed an item whenever you beat a battle; the Let’s Go mode makes this very clear.

I get the idea is to encourage the player to battle more and explore the world more. In theory, if you just had all TMs able to be picked up all over the place, the game would lose difficulty. Well, remember what I said about how there should be more puzzles in the map? Yeah, combine that with the legendary’s movement (or give the human more control), and that could be alleviated. It’s not like other RPGs magically don’t let you get special moves because of a bigger scale.

This just feels like filler in a game already brimming with it. If they’re gonna stick with this ass of a system for the future, for the love of God, please make it less tedious than this.

Story and Characters
Per usual, story is not one of Pokémon’s strong points. It’s bad in most of these games.

Right off the bat, this game has a similar problem to SwSh. Most of the adventure is barely spent on a narrative, and they relegate all the interesting content to the last two hours. If the developers can’t tell a story with a silent protagonist for most of the adventure, either they should scrap a narrative or finally let the protagonist be a person.

Part of the problem is that the game is so open. The only times it would be able to tell a narrative would be in between the main events, which isn’t optimal. And since you can do the tasks in any order, the characters whom you interact with can’t really grow or interact with others down the line. You see this with the Team Star content, as they’re all self-contained.

I hope you understand by now why I don’t think that open worlds are conducive to an RPG.

I’ll tackle each section at a time.

The Victory Road plot is simple: defeat the eight gym leaders, beat the Elite Four and become the champion. There is a small extension concerning a final fight with the rival, but that’s the only shakeup for this formula.

Nemona is one of the most overrated Pokémon characters, which is quite a statement considering how the fanbase goes crazy over characters like Cynthia. Throughout this entire adventure, Nemona is painfully one-note. She lacks any character development. This wouldn’t be so bad if she had something cool going on, but she doesn’t. Okay, she’s a champion. But what does that matter? In the very last game, we had a champion who was friendly towards us and appeared more frequently than her.

When the game began, I thought Nemona would’ve been interesting. I found her obsession with Pokémon battling to be neat. But it was around the third or fourth battle that I realised that this was all she had.

If Nemona were male, I believe she’d be treated just like Hau and Hop; she’d have fans, but not many. Think about it. Is she really that different from either of them? They’re all hyperactive, they’re all one-dimensional, and they’re all even dark. She’s barely separate from Hop, just with different genitalia. Although, in the Pokémon fanbase, being a female character immediately means you get a pass to be basic.

Moreover, I don’t feel personally motivated to become a champion in this game. It feels like it’s Nemona’s selfish priority to make me champion so that she can have someone to battle against (which could’ve been interesting, but they do nothing with it). I don’t feel like I’m her real friend by the time this game ends. I honestly feel like she’s an acquaintance taking advantage of me.

Compare this to Blue in the Kanto games. In those, I wanted to show him who was boss. Even if he had quit his desire to be champion, he pissed me off so much at the beginning that I would still want to continue for my own sake. Hell, I’d feel stronger for continuing while he gave up.

Nemona is too nice; she’s all fluff and no actual edge. It’s really like Bianca or Hau placed a curse on this franchise regarding the main rival, as the writers keep going back to this super-friendly archetype every time.

Ironically, the only exception is one I hate, Hugh. He might’ve been annoying in BW2 with his Purrloin obsession, but at least he wasn’t always this sweet dude.

I think the obsession with having friendly rivals comes from the Japanese crowd, where any sort of edge or aggression can make them uncomfortable. But it’s obvious that non-nice people or even antiheroes continue to gain popularity in that country, so that’s not a good excuse either. It’s not as if Nemona needed to be evil or even hateable. She could’ve been just as nice as she is in the final product, but with a lot more intrigue to her character. Explore the fact that she’s fucking weird. Show her being vulnerable for once rather than taking the worst parts of Son Goku and moulding them into a Pokémon trainer. Anything other than simply being the dumbass who only knows about battling.

I really don’t like Nemona in this game. Admittedly, she’s cute; her design has slowly grown on me. But as an actual character worth something, she didn’t better my experience. A real disappointment, especially given how much fans hyped her up.

Likewise, the gym leaders don’t have much going on either. They’re one-off characters who don’t get anything to do once you’re done with them. I can see they tried a little harder to give them aspects outside of just gym leaders; in the past games, this was notably rarer, with only characters like Skyla or Roxie not deathly obsessed with Pokémon. I appreciate the effort, but the execution could’ve been better for some. In this regard, BW is still the best, having the gym leaders notably more involved in the plot.

My feelings extend to the Elite Four and their boss.

Now, Starfall Street is complete shit. I loathe everything about Team Star in this game.

I care for not one of these characters because the game failed to show them getting bullied. This whole plot is about bullying, and yet never do we actually see these people bullied. The closest you get is seeing Penny getting approached by Team Star at the beginning of the game, but that’s meaningless since we learn she’s the secret boss of Team Star.

Since the game didn’t care to portray their situations, I don’t care to imagine them.

Plus, the plot is dumb. I found Director Clavell trying to blend in humorous enough, but the story makes no sense. Why can’t Penny just disband this team if she’s the boss? Now, they give an explanation in the game that everyone has to be defeated before they can be disbanded. But why even make that a rule? And if she’s the boss, clearly she can override it and explain why. It’s a very forced plot.

I could go on about how Team Star is the third team in a row with this punk gimmick going on, but that’s not even entirely accurate. It’s another pathetic team, that’s carried over from SM (why is SM influencing so much of modern Pokémon?), but the aesthetic doesn’t even make sense. The leaders all look diverse, and I could excuse that. But as I mentioned in the character designs section, the grunts don’t have any real style that makes them a team. I guess it’s a strategic advantage to blend into the public, but you know the developers didn’t think of that, as it’s not like you see Team Star outside of those bases.

Overall, Penny is stupid, Starfall Street is worthless, and those Let’s Go battles are laughably easy.

I forget the name of Arven’s subplot, I guess it’s related to the Titans. Initially, I did not like Arven. He came off as a real prick. But that slowly went away as the story progressed with him.

I still don’t think it’s a great story, mind you. Just like with Team Star, a lot of it is exposition. They couldn’t animate some flashbacks, so we’re just hearing Arven describe his past rather than seeing it play out. I think he has one of the best character stories in Pokémon; it would be mildly average for other RPGs, but by Pokémon’s low standards, I want to stand up and give a round of applause.

Area Zero
That leads into Area Zero. I actually like the narrative here, although I’ll address the negatives first.

As I said in the beginning, it’s pretty shitty to have most of the story only delivered in the last two hours of the game. I’m surprised… No, I’m not surprised they didn’t learn their lesson from SwSh. Game Freak doesn’t like to learn.

Area Zero itself is also not that interesting. I’m not sure if it changes its appearance or just the creatures depending on the version, but in Scarlet, it looks no different than the rest of Paldea. A bunch of rocks and grass. Newsflash: I’ve been looking at rocks and grass for most of this game. The structural design is neat, with the middle being this cool cavern area, but the outer area is so much less impressive than it should be.

Furthermore, there are gameplay problems here. You can’t control your Pokémon in Let’s Go mode whenever the other three trainers are talking, which is very confusing. And at least three times, my ass got warped away because “I got too separated from the team and needed to regroup”. Except, how was that the case when they were right next to me? The problem was strong because I was trying to collect an item in clear view, with nothing blocking it. But every time, the game would punish me by warping me away. I think the developers didn’t intend for the player to go there, but then why fucking let me explore!? Either let me explore or put me on a clear fucking path!

Getting past that headache, underground is where things get better. The gameplay doesn’t change much, but the story finally got a little interesting.

Despite being in a Discord server loaded with Pokémon fans, I was not spoiled about this ending like I was the Rose situation. So to find out that Professor Sada was a robot genuinely shocked me. Especially since the game suddenly got very dark, explaining how the real woman was killed in an incident.

I don’t think this twist came completely out of nowhere, either. It is implied throughout Arven’s story that his mother is neglectful of him, and we’re given a good reason as to why. Finally, some meat to sink my teeth into. It’s a small thing, especially for this late in the game, but I liked this part a lot. I was actually angry because I wanted more of it.

It also made me gain a bit more appreciation for Koraidon, who I was constantly roasting before this point. Now knowing it essentially feels survivor’s guilt, I feel bad. Yes! It sounds weird to be happy at that, but they’re finally making me feel emotions that aren’t anger at lazy writing.

Area Zero might be poor on the gameplay and aesthetic side, but it’s by far the only area of interest when it comes to SV’s plot. And on that note, I must say, the dialogue this time around does feel more naturally written. It’s still shallow in many regards, such is the curse of a Pokémon game (I really want to read the comics). But there are less moments where I felt embarrassed to read this dialogue compared to when playing BW or SM.

We don’t have Arven out here saying, “That is terrible, Mother! You are terrible!” And I’m glad for it.

Which Game is Worse?
Both Switch titles are terrible representations of Pokémon. They’re just bad in different ways. SwSh is basically SM 2.0, but much worse. SV is its own thing entirely, mostly feeding off the influence of Legends: Arceus.

I’ve taken a lot of time to think about which game is worse. This was challenging.

SV, for as clearly unfinished as it is, rarely railroaded me. Yes, the game has an intended order for all story paths, and that is a problem. But just because the game is poorly designed around this doesn’t mean you can’t do things out of order. I was able to beat the game in whatever order I wanted, and that level of freedom was appreciated. Even if I was overlevelled for multiple fights, it made conquering those harder fights more satisfying. I felt like an absolute boss destroying Great Tusk before any other Titan Pokémon

SwSh is a straight line from start to finish, with little deviation. It copies that flaw from SM, with no improvement other than the empty Wild Area.

SV might’ve removed the bike, thereby removing proper player control, but the legendary does get better as you progress. I only wish there was more level design taking advantage of its abilities, like mini platforming challenges. What I mean to say with all of this is that moving across the map is satisfying in a way that it’s not in SwSh.

Additionally, SV has the superior story. While I wish far more was done with it and the characters, SwSh was offensively stupid with its energy narrative. Hop, Marnie and Bede are all way worse than Nemona, Penny and Arven. The SV characters might mostly be shallow, and both the main girls are dumb, but they are consistently written. I can’t say the same for any character in SwSh.

Crafting TMs is a major issue, one that only serves to handicap the player. SwSh has the advantage there, keeping the tried-and-true system from BW. I’d also argue that SwSh has much better customisation; you might not be able to change the player’s face heavily, but at least you’re not stuck to four mediocre outfits. The NPCs might copy models, but they do have more varied clothing styles than the SV crew. Gosh, that dancer type just makes me wanna kiss her ass…

At the same time, though, SV better encourages you to use TMs with how difficult some battles can be. SwSh is so easy that you could probably beat it without using a single TM.

With all these factors considered, I think SV is the better experience.

However, if you disagree with me, I completely understand. SwSh looks better, it runs better, it leaves less room for confusion, and I’d argue the newer Pokémon are superior in that generation. This is like comparing an F with a D-. They’re both poor experiences that should have been crafted way better, but I’ll give the D- credit for trying a little harder. SV tried to change things and failed. SwSh largely leeched off SM, and it still fucked up.

If there’s anything else I can give to SwSh, I’ve heard many good things about at least its second expansion pack. I’ve heard nothing good about the SV expansions, only that they make the game run worse.

Though Nintendo can sincerely fuck itself selling $30+ for an expansion, and this applies to both games. Especially since it’s the only way fans will be able to use their favourite Pokémon. And even then, not all of them. Spinda…

$90 for a shitty game, what a bargain.

Conclusion
I can’t believe just how poorly structured this game is, from the battle levels to the lacklustre open world to the fractured storytelling.

I don’t see where all the praise was coming from when it launched. I know people mocked the performance, but the game was still getting so much praise. Maybe it’s back to that thing I said in the gameplay section, where just the idea of something being open turns off people’s judgment. They get so caught up in the simple idea that they don’t care about the execution.

This game had no reason to be open, other than to chase the trend of franchises suddenly deciding linearity is disgusting.

Well, I only have one more Pokémon game to try (since I’m not counting Legends: Arceus). XY. I have my New 3DS, so I might as well mod it since Nintendo killed the ship. I hear so many mixed things about XY that I can’t guess what to expect. Could be the best Pokémon game, could be the absolute worst. I’ll make the effort to try it by the year’s end.

You like this one? Disagree with me? I’d like to know.