It’s safe to say that Pokemon as a franchise has entered a whole new era with the release of the Nintendo Switch titles. Pokemon used to be a game that you would play on your tiny handheld, hidden under the covers at night hoping your mom didn’t walk in and catch you. Definitely not a true story. But it’s true to say that it was a mindblowing experience finally being able to play on the big screen in my bedroom. I thought that would have always been reserved for spin-off games like Pokepark or the Stadium games, etc.

Pokemon Sword and Shield truly were the turning points in this aspect. Despite my numerous issues with those titles, which I’ve gone more in depth on in a different review, I can’t deny that they are some of the most important games in the series. A console is generally much more powerful than a tiny handheld system, and it should mark the start of even better Pokemon games. Well in theory anyway. You see, the Nintendo Switch was certainly a beast compared to the crappy 3DS, but it is not without its struggles. When you compare its power to other systems of the recent console generations, it’s clear the Switch is lagging behind. It hasn’t stopped the Switch as a whole, it’s on its way to become the number 1 sold console of all time, after all. But it does hinder the capabilities of some of its titles, and that sadly includes Pokemon.

Famous examples of this are the now infamous “Dexit”, a term coined by the broader Pokemon community after the developers made the decision to remove a bunch of Pokemon from the game data. In their words, this was due to a lack of space/power and so they could prioritize other aspects of the game. Long story short, fans were outraged and Pokemon Sword and Shield still had terrible graphics and processing in important places like the advertised Wild Zone. But okay, everyone can miss every now and then. Maybe Sword and Shield weren’t what I, and many others, would have wanted them to be. I’m sure they’ll take the critics and the feedback from the playerbase and adapt in the next titles! By then they’ll be familiar with the Switch and its limitations as well.

Enter Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. The names instantly brought me joy. Gone are the days of random objects or concepts being the titles of a new Generation. I still cringe every time I say Pokemon Sun or Pokemon Shield. I understand that they have to go a little more in depth than the traditional ‘Yellow’, and that they are running low on gemstones, but I’m sure they can figure something out.

The initial hype was strong. I was admittedly a bit weary of how, or if, they were going to improve upon Sword and Shield. A new Pokemon game quickly takes over the worries in my mind though, so soon after I was on calls with friends discussing the potentials and predictions until deep in the night. For me at least, time zone difference. Were they going to finally make a real open world Pokemon game? Everyone had Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey on their minds. Just imagine a game like that with Pokemon! Potential was there for one of the best games of all time, at least for my own personal experience. I’m not sure if what we got fit that dream image I had. Actually, I know for a fact it didn’t. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet tried but failed at a lot of things that it needed to nail in order to be a legendary game.

Gameplay

Let’s start with this unofficial category, because there is a lot to talk about that didn’t quite fit into one of the other categories for reviews. As I mentioned, many speculated that this would be the first time a Pokemon game would truly be open world. I’m not counting the stupid Wild Area from Generation 8. This ended up being correct, as we were swiftly shown some trailers for the game over the next months showing off some of the region, cities, and characters.

Why do I not sound very excited despite this being an open world Pokemon game? Well, that’s the issue really. There’s very little to be excited about. It might be ‘open’, sure, but there’s barely a ‘world’ there. Paldea is the name of the region, and it’s based on the Iberian Peninsula (think Spain + Portugal). You’d expect a very diverse and beautiful region from those countries. I’ve been to Spain myself and it has such a great mix of greenery, sun, even a desert. Not to mention the beaches! On top of that, there is so much rich architecture that dates back a long time ago, and so much cultural history as well. When you look at how they simulated that Iberian magic in the Paldea region, it falls flat on its face. The cities are huge, and from afar look visually pleasing, but they are practically ghost towns. There’s barely any NPCs, much less so ones that actually talk to you. Hardly any side quests to do, just a bunch of empty space and houses you can’t enter. It’s not like this disappointment is contained to just the cities either. So much of the region is just an endless stretch of grass fields with some trees and hills on them. You can count yourself lucky if you even find some random NPC miles out from the city, and even if you do, they are hardly fun or interesting. Areas that are deemed ‘different’ by the game look completely the same, and honestly in this entire region there are maybe two areas I thought looked cool. There’s a giant lake with a bunch of Pokemon in it, and there is a really nice Jungle looking area that I loved exploring. The rest? I would have preferred it if the region was half the size it is.

Now how are you supposed to traverse this empty landscape that is Paldea? Luckily you don’t need to walk across the entire thing. I’d probably unplug my Switch if they told me to do that for story progression. This game is unique in that you actually get to use proper mounts from nearly the start of your adventure. We’ve had mounts before, specifically in the Alola region and in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, but none of them were as cool as the ones in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. You see, the mount Pokemon in these games is the featured Legendary Pokemon on the cover box! After a short introduction quest, you basically get given this thing to do with what you want. They did make sure it was a mount only though, no using it in battle. Koraidon and Miraidon, the legendary pokemon of Scarlet and Violet respectively, will act as your mounts throughout the entire game. Wait, but I thought we usually get different mounts for acts like climbing, surfing, flying, etc.! You’d be correct, and believe it or not, these legendary bicycles can do exactly that. They start out as the bicycles they are initially. Mounting them will allow you to run at a faster speed than you would with your puny human legs. It’s only after you progress through this game’s story(ies) that they will unlock more features such as surfing or ‘flying’ (more like gliding). It makes sense for Miraidon: that thing is literally a robot. But how can you make a creature of flesh and blood such as Koraidon magically learn to fly and swim? Was he able to do this the entire time and he just decided not to? I’ll be real, the best part about the entire Paldea region and traversing it is seeing how you can break the game, or skillfully glitch/manipulate your way to areas you shouldn’t be able to reach. This has been a thing since the first 3D games hit the market in the Gamecube days and even older. Wherever there is a map with borders and inaccessible areas, there are gamers with nothing better to do than to ignore these rules and get to wherever they want to be. I had the best experience with this myself by climbing the gigantic mountain smack in the center of the Paldea region. You’re not supposed to access this place until the very end of the game, but I was able to climb my way to the top by carefully positioning my Koraidon and jumping at the right frames whenever I would clip into a rock. That’s all I had by the way, just the running and jumping feature. There’s a Koraidon mode specifically for scaling rock walls, you don’t need that for the big mountain. I was quite proud of it, until I jumped in the crater that I saw in the middle of the mountain (is it a volcano?) and got teleported back to the edge, only to keep on sliding back in. I seriously thought I had just soft locked myself. Thankfully after a few repeats of this the game put me at the Pokemon Center lol. The swimming was honestly fine, as was the rock climbing. I’m personally unsure of how I feel about the gliding mechanic. It was weird in Pokemon Legends: Arceus too, as you literally used a Braviary in that game for it (you know, a big bird that can actually fly???). In this game it makes slightly more sense. Koraidon and Miraidon aren’t exactly airplanes, so I can maybe get behind them gliding instead of flying. What I can’t get behind, however, is that they ACTUALLY CAN FLY, but of course this feature is locked behind a paid DLC. More on that later. Ridiculous that paying 60 dollars for a game only gets me this weird gliding. What’s also weird is that the gliding isn’t even linear. At some point Koraidon just gives up and drops down like a sack of bricks, dragging my stupid self down with it. I’d get it the first time, but I can give bro vitamins and get him to level 100, and he’ll still run out of stamina before I can reach the platform with the item. Is Koraidon calling me fat? Anyway, that’s the gist of the exploration aspect in this game. I think the empty region has kind of soured me on it, as I think with a slightly more compact, and especially more alive region I think I would have loved it. Koraidon and Miraidon themselves are honestly pretty good mounts, and the controls are smooth. It just feels like a drag going from field 1 to field 3 that is 5 minutes of running away. At least they were kind enough to include a bunch of teleport spots once you unlock a remote Pokemon Center or something.

With a big open (empty) world like Paldea, how does battling work exactly? Well, there’s honestly not that much of it. I’d say that’s another gripe I have with the game. I was halfway hoping a battle system similar to that found in Pokemon Legends: Arceus would be used, but it’s back to the same old, same old system we’ve had for 8 generations already. Inherently I don’t have an issue with this, but it doesn’t feel very interesting to finally find a trainer in the wild and then just click flamethrower with my Skeledirge 4 times like I would in any other game. There weren’t many battles in Pokemon Legends: Arceus either, but the swift/strong modes made those that were in the game interesting at least. In this game, there are maybe a handful of trainers sprinkled into each ‘zone’. The neat thing is that running into a trainer can be risky, as you might be underleveled for that ‘zone’, but it’s not like they are particularly hard to avoid. I’m pretty sure you need to actually talk with most of them.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, like most games since X and Y, introduce a new ‘Gameplay mechanic’ to the battles. First it was Mega Evolutions, then Z-Moves, followed by Dynamax, and generation 9 introduced Terastilasation. I’m sure I butchered that, so I’ll refer to it as ‘Tera’ from now on. Tera is a bit unique, as it completely overrides a Pokemon’s type with a new one. Each Pokemon you obtain has a certain ‘Tera type’, and you can check this in the Pokemon’s main menu. Normally the Tera type of a Pokemon is automatically one of the types it already has. A pure Electric type like Bellibolt will always have an Electric Tera type, while a Bug/Dark type like Lokix will randomly have either Bug or Dark as its Tera type. On its own that doesn’t do much for these Pokemon, but activating a Tera type makes all your moves of that type deal 50% more damage. Now we are talking! It’s not surprising to hear that this absolutely trivializes the game. Once you get one good move of your Tera type, you’re practically golden to blast through just about anything that doesn’t resist it. Even if you can’t find a move for some reason, the game has you covered! Tera Blast is a Normal type attack similar to moves like Weather Ball: it will change its damage type to match your Tera type! On top of that, it will be either physical or special, depending on which stat is higher of the Pokemon using it. This would normally be somewhat balanced by just becoming a weaker Thunderbolt for Electric types, for example, but the game actually lets you change the Tera type of a Pokemon. You can collect Tera Shards as you progress through the game. Obtain 50 of one type, and you can use them to change a Pokemon’s Tera type to that type. This way, Tera Blast becomes a coverage move of whatever type you want. Previous Pokemon that were balanced by their lack of coverage now become hilariously broken as they can hit a bunch of Pokemon that countered them for Super Effective damage. Like most battle gimmicks, important trainers will utilize the Tera mechanic to beef up their strongest Pokemon. I’m personally not the biggest fan of Tera, as it makes the game way too easy. I preferred playing without. I do think in the official competitive tournaments, which are double battles, Tera can be fun when you gain access to your opponent’s Tera types. It becomes more of a mindgame that way. That’s the only context I can enjoy it in, however.

Finally, I want to touch on the core concept of the Paldea region: Paradox Pokemon. These are essentially the Past (Scarlet) or Future (Violet) versions of some Pokemon we know today. They will have visual similarities, but with different types and stats. The Scarlet Paradox Pokemon are all ‘extinct’ and primal looking versions of the Pokemon that eventually evolved to look like the ones we know. The Violet Paradox Pokemon, on the other hand, are futuristic takes on those existing Pokemon, often having robotic or synthetic looking body parts. I personally really enjoy Paradox forms, they look great and have really good stats as well. It’s another way Pokemon can give love to some underappreciated or underpowered existing Pokemon. There’s a futuristic Delibird, for example, that’s an actual demon and super strong in battle. I also like that it’s not limited to fully evolved forms! There’s a historic/primal version of Misdreavus and Jigglypuff, for example, instead of their evolutions. It gives the little guys a chance to shine as well, and I’m all here for that. I did find it a bit sad that these were only obtainable at the very end of the game (with one exception that I promptly used on my team lol).

Those were the most important mechanics of these games! Moving on to our traditional categories now.

Graphics

Oh boy, this is a controversial one. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is just simply too intensive of a game for the original Nintendo Switch. It’s incredibly noticeable when you play through the game. In closed locations like buildings the graphics look great! Even within the cities I’d say I enjoy the majority of the graphical aspects in this game. Vibrant colors, some neat building designs (talking about the exterior here). It’s when you venture further away from the city that the game really starts to struggle. The graphics in the fields and other zones are improved from Sword and Shield’s Wild Area, but only by so much. The trees and rocks still look unpolished. I experienced frame drops at several points in the game because it couldn’t render everything in the area due to the limitations of the console. I’ll admit that the water looks quite good though.

To the game’s credit, there is one area in which it really shines graphically: the Pokemon. I’m not just talking about the new ones, by the way, but I suppose I can go over those first. I loved not knowing anything about like 90% of the Paldea Pokedex. I remember vividly running around with friends and seeing all the new Pokemon, having the time of my life. At some point one of us would yell ‘What is that???’ and we’d run over and discover some weird looking Flamigo or something. Wonder trading was also fun, as I truly didn’t know some of the Pokemon I got from it, falling in love with them by adding them to my team. That’s how Toesies, my Espathra, came to be. I was initially very high on the Paldea dex. Not only is it the largest new Pokedex since Generation 5 (and the first since then to hit over 100 Pokemon), but I think a lot of the evolution lines are quite solid. I’ve moved the Gen 9 dex down a ranking since then in my hypothetical tier list, but I’ll remain a Paldea dex fan. Great designs, often coated in Hispanic folklore in some way.

What I meant to go over earlier, though, were the Pokemon themselves. For years Pokemon was played on tiny handheld systems, and those would always use sprites for the Pokemon in menus and in battles. One of my favorite parts of a new generation was seeing all the new sprite work for older and new Pokemon, it could really bring out their personality in battle. Generation 5 with Black and White improved on this, as we now had small animated sprites of each Pokemon, showing off even more personality. And then the 3DS nation attacked. Pokemon X and Y tried to make use of the 3DS’s specs to make the transition from Pokemon sprites to full on Models. Unfortunately, these were incredibly pixilated and compressed due to the limitations of the 3DS, so they looked quite bad, to be frank. Generation 7 didn’t really improve on this front either. I had high hopes for Pokemon Sword and Shield, now being on the Nintendo Switch and all, but honestly I couldn’t really see a big increase in quality. So color me surprised when I loaded up this game and saw just how… detailed and smooth the Pokemon models looked! Pokemon that are hairy genuinely look like they have fur on them, and all the metallic looking Pokemon shine and reflect light like they realistically would! I had a lot of fun getting closer looks at all sorts of Pokemon, and I must say I appreciate that they took the time to improve on this front.

The characters in the region looked fine. I don’t think this cast and their designs particularly stand out too much, but we’ve definitely had worse designed characters in the past.

Sound

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet had a rather forgettable soundtrack in my opinion. Honestly the best pieces were the ambient piano background tracks for certain zones in the Paldea region. They made me enjoy walking around an empty field a bit more, and were quite pleasant and fit the environment. The final boss fight of the main storyline was also a great track that really amped up that battle and made it feel as epic as it was.

Shoutout to Scarlet and Violet though for having possibly the single worst Gym Leader theme in the whole franchise. This is supposed to be a theme that pumps you up and makes you go for glory against the toughest trainers in the region, but in Paldea it’s this jazzy arrangement that honestly doesn’t really fit the stakes at all. It’s disappointing, because if there is one thing Sword and Shield nailed, it was the epic metal Gym Leader track, further amplified by battling in a sold out stadium! Speaking of the Sword and Shield Gym Leader track, Scarlet and Violet blatantly ripped a part of it and added it to theirs. At a certain point in the Sword and Shield track, the audience starts chanting and you can hear the crowd singing along as you’re battling. I personally found this mildly annoying, but at least it felt kind of neat given the fact that you’re in a sold out stadium. In Scarlet and Violet, gym fights often take place on an empty battle field somewhere in the city, with maybe a handful to a dozen people spectating the battle. Whenever the Gym Leader Terastilizes one of their Pokemon, they decide to play that crowd chanting part of the Sword and Shield song. Except this time it looks absolutely stupid, as there is no stadium, about a dozen old folks standing around, and instead of turning gigantic their Pokemon just becomes sparkly with some crown on its head. So epic! Not.

Addictiveness

This is one area where I think it helps being a functioning human in society. I personally actually had an absolute blast playing through Scarlet, despite my many issues with the game. This is in almost no part due to the game itself, but more attributed to the fact that you can actually play with your friends! They tried this in the Wild Area in Sword and Shield, but the online system was garbage and I swear it never worked anyway. At most you’d get a little message pop up that your friend caught X or Y Pokemon. In Scarlet and Violet, you can host a lobby once you gain access to a Pokemon Center and the online feature. Your friends can use your code to join your lobby, and then they get magically teleported outside the Pokemon Center! It was so fun to see my friends running around the map, it really felt like we were playing and exploring together. Out of all the things I hoped this game would be, this is the main front it delivered on tenfold. Since I was a kid, I would always play Pokemon with my friends, but we would obviously be playing in our own single player worlds, just sitting next to each other on the couch. Actually getting to chase my friends, find new Pokemon together, watch them fail a parkour jump, etc. brought me a ton of joy. I will always have fond memories of playing with them.

This would be a different story if you have no friends (that play Pokemon). With as empty of a region as Paldea is, I can’t imagine wanting to marathon through it all. And honestly that’s my issue right now as well. I’ve replayed so many of the old games, especially generations 3 through 5. I’ve even replayed Generation 6 and 7 once or twice each. But with the Switch titles, I just can’t get myself excited or motivated to. It’s weird, because you can actually have multiple saves now with the Nintendo Switch profile feature. I can’t imagine dragging myself through the empty Paldea region again though. What would I even be doing? I’d rather not spoil my memories of the game playing with friends the first time.

Depth

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are severely lacking in Depth. Yes, there is an open world. Yes, there are multiple main stories. But it all feels so empty. I’m not going to beat a dead horse, I’ve already gone over my issues with the region before. There’s just flat out nothing to do outside of the main stories. Hardly any side quests, much less interesting side quests. You can camp with your Pokemon, I suppose, and make sandwiches. It’s fun for about 10 minutes maybe. There’s also no real exciting Post game like some titles have had. No Battle Frontier, no mini games.

I suppose you can run around the empty region looking for stakes in the ground. There’s about 20 of them in each major chunk of the region I believe, and you need to find all of the same color to unlock the caves that some new legendary Pokemon are in. Some of them were tricky to find, but it’s not like collecting X amount of things is particularly interesting. I didn’t like it with the Unown cells in Alola, and I didn’t like it with the Whisps in Legends: Arceus, so I don’t really like it here either.

Of course there is a magic fix to a lack of Depth that Nintendo seems to have discovered recently: DLC content! Yes, after paying a small loan of 60 dollars for the initial game, you now have to cough up about half of that for an expansion to the region and some post-game things to do. The DLCs do have some story to them, but honestly outside of the new area and some new legendaries, there’s not much to them. I sure as hell am not paying for them, even if you do unlock the actual flying mechanic through them. Fail!

Story

Here’s where I probably disagree with the majority of the playerbase who praise this game’s story up to the moon. What this game does really well: it has multiple storylines. There are three in total, one focusing on your gym challenge, one focusing on the evil team, and one focusing on big boss/titan Pokemon found throughout the region. Each one also has an important character/friend of yours at the forefront of them. I like that all these characters get time to shine, and I like how they slowly start converging until they all come together fully at the end.

My problems with these are simple: they are scattered throughout the region, and you kind of just have to figure out which one to do next. To me this game does the one crime an open world game should never have: they have no enemy scaling at all. I was really hoping I could choose the Fire starter and walk up to, say, the Ice gym, and take it on as my first gym leader. Isn’t that the whole point of an open world game? However when you get there, the gym leader uses like level 40 or 50 Pokemon. Okay great, I got my ass kicked, but now what? Yes there is skill involved in trying to beat a gym leader while my party is underleveled, but now I will be way too strong for any of the other gyms that might be weaker in level. There’s no balance here. Either I take them on in increasing order, kind of removing the point of the game not being linear, or I go out of order and some of them become boring and easy as a result. Would it really have been so hard to code in 8 different teams for each gym leader, and have a flag check how many badges you already own so it gives you the appropriate levels as their team? I would have loved that, and it’s not a very hard feature to implement at all. It’s not just the gyms though. All the boss battles in the other two story modes also don’t scale. I kind of neglected the evil team story for a little while, and now all those boss battles became laughably easy as a result! The ‘optimal’ path in terms of level scaling has you jumping all over the different stories and the map, with no indication!

It’s certainly a step in the right direction, but for me it’s a missed opportunity, and one I hope they learn from in future installments (though I’m doubtful). At least once you finally completed all 3, I found the ending to be very compelling and moving as well. I just think people hype it up too much, maybe because Sword and Shield’s story was so bad.

Difficulty

This is a hard one to rate. Like I mentioned before, this varies wildly on what boss battles you take on in what order. I personally didn’t really struggle in many parts, but others might have a completely different experience with the game. The fact that there’s a forced exp share for all your Pokemon, though, makes the game even easier. Honestly the hardest part was finding some of those stakes. I also like playing challenge runs of Pokemon games when I replay them, like nuzlockes, but I don’t think an open world game like this is well suited for those either.

Overall

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet were games that had many of us hopeful for a true and wonderful open world experience in the Pokemon universe. It ultimately did some things really well, while it fell absolutely flat in other aspects. I think the games were severely hindered by being made for the Nintendo Switch. When they announced a patch for the Nintendo Switch 2, it became laughably noticeable in certain areas like the big lake how superior that system is in comparison. I hope that Generation 10 is able to use Scarlet and Violet as a solid foundation and build upon these games to produce an absolute masterclass of a game. There’s a lot of things that can become great with just a few minor adjustments, so I hope that someone on their team is randomly reading this review all these years later on Vizzed.

I personally will never be replaying these games, and I think that’s okay. Not every game needs to be played and beaten seven different times. I had an absolute blast playing with my friends, so I’d rather maintain that as my final memories of these games. Objectively they are subpar entries in the franchise, just like their predecessors Sword and Shield, but I often found those games actively irritating while this one was more of a letdown in certain areas.

Great review! I will say I disagree on one point and that's the game being held back by the Switch I think Game freak is terrible at optimization because yes it's this big map and a new graphical style but you have games like Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, and the Xenoblade games and speaking of the Xenoblade games Xenoblade X definitive edition has a much bigger map that you don't have loading screens separating you can just go from one point of the giant map to another no problem and while I know it's a Wii U game I think that's even worse because it looks better than the Pokemon games in most areas and never stutters the way Scarlet and Violet did on Switch. I've heard people say the Switch held them back a lot of times ever since Sword and Shield came out but I just think game freak sucks when I've played so many better looking and running games on the Switch.

That's a valid point.

Aren't there other games not by Gamefreak that struggle on the Switch as well though? I feel like it's either not as powerful as the other consoles of its generation or it's a little poorly designed in some ways, making it harder to code games for than other systems or making it more incompatible with certain coding languages/styles. That's just my guess anyway. I'd personally lean towards it being a bit of both I guess if I had to compare both arguments.

SonicOlmstead :