On Nov. 18 of this year, Gamefreak released their yearly titles of Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet to the Nintendo Switch. Considering how much controversy that new Pokemon games have had in the past few years, it only made sense to review the new title to see if it is still fun.
As of right now I have 25 hours clocked with the main story of the game complete and 150 Pokemon caught and in my Pokedex.
To start, I really like the region and all the new Pokemon that are in it. There are several new forms of old Pokemon as well as new evolutions to Pokemon that previously did not have any. The new Pokemon in the region are really cool as well.
There are 107 brand new Pokemon, but I would say for the majority of the experience it feels like there is new Pokemon or form wherever you go. It definitely feels like a new main series Pokemon game.
I really like the fact that there are three different storylines and you can pick and choose which you want to do first. You can choose to challenge gyms, the different titans or the villainous team star.
The story is not terrible for a Pokemon game but Pokemon has only really dug deeply into the story aspect in a main series game once. It, for the most part, is pretty standard until you get to the very end.
In the previous generation of Pokemon, GameFreak introduced a feature called the wild area where Pokemon were not just in bushes but fully walked around and even chased and ran from the player. It was more open and for the first time ever you could change the camera angle.
In Pokemon Legends: Arceus, GameFreak expanded on this idea by making the entire game practically a wild area. They also added a stealth mechanic as well as Action RPG elements.
Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet followed suit in making the entire game a wild area but did not have stealth or other Action RPG mechanics. It is nice to see because the world and region of Paldea feel a lot more lively and wild. However, the stealth capture and other action mechanics are sadly gone.
You can also move the camera around during battle which is a feature that should have been in pokemons games way sooner.
The main complaint that a lot of people have had with the game is the performance. On my Nintendo Switch that I purchased on day zero, the game struggled to hit 30 frames per second which was already below the standard for consoles. Whether this is because the game is poorly optimized or because I wasn’t built for Nintendo Switch very well is still up in the air.
There have also reportedly been a large amount of bugs in the game. In my playthrough, I encountered a few but nothing that really ruined the experience. I only crashed the game once while I was playing multiplayer.
Overall the game is really fun. It is just an issue with polish that keeps the experience from being fully outstanding. I would consider Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet a must buy for Nintendo Switch owners.
