I do too, mostly for Nuzlocke purposes. It sort of ruins the whole thing when you can see your encounters in advance.

 

Nemona looks like a nice change of pace from all the other female rivals, hopefully Nintendo lets us change the name of our rivals again. It’s one of my favorite functions from the classics.

 

I'm 4 hours in, and am predictably having a great time.

All in all. Pokemon had incredible ideas here. I love almost every new mon introduced - it's my favorite gen for new Pokemon since Gen 5.

But. The visuals are just bad right now. It seems like a quote unquote sacrifice for the entire game world being open. The frame rate is set at 30, and you can very much notice the lags. The shadow graphics very much look 144p, and I'm not exaggerating.

I was hoping for Legends Arceus geplay, and KINDA got it. You can't brain wild Pokemon with items or pokeballs. You still can catch the unawares when you send one out. You still sneak a long in tall grass

All in all, it's worth it to me, but if you're not a huge pokemon fan, wait to see what the first patch does. The lag is bad. The hitches are bad. Seriously, not sure what they can do to fix the hiccups, but lettem try before you buy unless you're like me or if you're a Showdown fan, and the new Mons are just more ammo.

I acknowledge that I'm apparently quote unquote part of the problem, since I'll get each new PKMN game, but I enjoy the fuck out of this one and will likely enjoy the fuck out of the next. The chances I don't get to my hour of fun to $$ spent are remote. Really though. I'm surprised that this is what we got graphics wise. Unreal engine can't come fast enough

**Roaring Moon (ancient Salamence) is the best Pokemon introduced, aesthetically, in two decades**

 

So I beat Violet last night (all three paths and area zero) and my overall opinion is that this game is disappointing. The game environment is pretty bland and full of bugs. It’s not as bad as cyberpunk at release, but my game crashed about 5 times my whole playthru.

Sorry for the disorganization, but I want to share my thoughts.

I was under the impression that you could play the game however you wanted and do gyms and events in any order. The reality is all activities have a fixed level, but it’s difficult to gauge what event is next. For example, I tried each of the different events (gym, Titan Pokémon, and the villain lairs) before just doing the gyms and Titans. Afterwards I came back to do the lairs, and I was extremely overleveled. The Titans give you the “hm” abilities, so it’s kinda unavoidable, if you don’t want an easier way of transversal and it’s a why I didn’t skip them.

I also didn’t care for the 2 hour tutorial nor any of the classes. At some point Pokémon needs to cater to the vets and beginners separately.

But let me tell you, the gyms and the Elite four are the worse I’ve ever seen. It’s a minigame before each gym and then you fight each gym leader outside- which is fine, but defeats the purpose of having a “gym building”. Couple of the mini games are terrible, for example, where you run around town to gather clues for a menu order. The clues are obscure and actually supposed to identify something else you do to get the actual menu order. For example “pick the odd one out” doesn’t mean look at the menu and pick the weird dish, but go to a ice cream shop and figure out what the different thing is and pick that in the menu. Do that 4x. And the gym leader was about the most bland guy ever. Add on the fact that all gyms are the same tall white building and it’s just lame.

Comparatively speaking, Sword and Shield gyms took place in huge arenas with the crowds going wild. Here you have 10 or so people around a basketball court either glitching in and out or frozen mid animation.

Oh the elite four? It’s another bland building where you run threw them all in the same white room. You fight the champ outside on the patio. Just woefully underwhelming, and that goes for the champion as well. No victory road either, as you can just go to the league from a short walkway by the school city. No crowds for either. Also you have to do the stupidest quiz in existence before you fight. “Do you like Pokémon?” “What gym was hard for you” “what was the name of that gym leader” “what type of Pokémon did they use” “what city were they in”. If you fail that fucking quiz, you have to do it all over again.

The battles are fine, but I’d have battles where random passerby would walk in the middle of the battle and block the camera. Or have the auto camera put me behind a wall.

Now for the Pokémon. The new Pokémon are pretty cool, with my favorite being the ghost type mankey evolution. It’s one of those generations where you are going to phase out your starter- mostly because the final evolution isn’t very good or because it looks really bad. The cat I was tempted to go looks silly in it’s final phase, with grass dark being useless late game, the final duck form is very polarizing looking but decent, and the croc is fine, but you’d better feed it speed steroids because it’s obscenely slow and not super tanky- also it’s very weak to a lot of shit as a ghost-fire type.

My problem here, is that previous favorites like garchomp dragonite Salamance Goodra feel nerfed, whether by moveset or stats, but they don’t feel strong. That normally would be fine, but they take way longer to level and only feel usable at 50+, and at that point they still feel more niche than all around good. In contrast, I’d say fighting and psychics feel too strong with lightning/fire types always felt like a necessary spot on your team. Ground types do well and everything else feels average or below average.

The story is fine, the characters ok, the Pokémon are good- most of the super cool ones you don’t even get to try till postgame, and terra forming is more balanced than other gimmicks, even if the animations take forever.

Personally speaking, this might be is my most disliked Pokémon game. It’s ugly, and buggy. There’s less customization options for your character than Sword and Shield. I still have no idea how to make sandwiches. The post game tells me to beat all the gym battles again when I didn’t enjoy them the first time around. I hate the way the characters use lingo, like flex or vibe. Nothing I do in the game feels impactful. Raid battles are even worst because the Pokémon get a bigger health shield. Worst gym leaders and elite four ever. Entering most of the buildings and shops just takes you to a menu.

On the other hand, they gave us the ability to relearn any moves in three buttons presses at any point in the game, free of charge. The quality of life systems are great. Passive farming exp is great. The Pokémon are fun to play and experiment with. Area zero seems cool to explore. So to me, I’d grade it as an average Pokémon game. With a lot more polish, this could have been an amazing Pokémon game.

 

Fun fact: Nintendo is giving away refunds if you talk to customer support.

Normally Nintendo never does refunds so it is maybe indicative of the guilt they feel for rushing out this gen. I got a confirmation email after 10 hours, but i still see the digital download saved on my switch. No clue if I get to keep the save data, but I’m not too attached.

I’m a huge Pokémon fan and I do think that Scarlet and Violet are fun. However, I don’t want to support and incentivize what I feel to be an unfinished product compared to Sword and Shield.

I’m sure people will enjoy the game- it is a great cast of creatures to pick from. I just don’t think everything else in the game got the same attention and effort.

 

The school uniform nonsense is so goddamn stupid. The past four games have had great clothing options. And we take it away for the dumb school motif. (And I like the school)

Especially since I'm 99% sure the DLC will have new tops and bottoms.

And double especially since I chose Scarlet and the orange is just. It's just awful. Violet at least has the nice purples.

Joining one of the Star teams just for the drip is the clear choice.

 

So many old people cosplaying students in those tight short pants D':

 

Am I a dipshit motherfucker, or is 3 stars the only sandwich rating no matter what you do, what ingredients you use, how much you fail when placing them somewhere on the bread, etc, etc, when you make a solo sandwich?

i still love this game lmfao, fuck me. It's superb even with the obvious shittery

 

Yup, your "originals" are always 3*. Are you making many of the shiny sandwiches? I've assembled a full shiny paradox team in Scarlet. Roaring Moon took so much longer than every other one.

On topic of the thread, I love Scarlet and Violet. The game has massive perfomance issues, but the actual gameplay is just so much fun for me. I like all the new characters, the majority of the gym leaders are memorable, the Titan storyline is the only time I can remember crying at a video game. I think Scarlet and Violet are my favourite of the Pokemon games, and I think I will enjoy replaying them significantly more than any other game in the series.

Thats not to say issues dont exist. There's two or three locations that I avoid because of the lag issues that happen there (Tagtree Thicket, the Bamboo Forest when its raining, and the surface water of the lake). The graphics are pretty poor, especially in comparison to things like Zelda, but these graphics have never been why I play Pokemon games and the new designs almost all slap. Roaring Moon, Dondozo, Kilowattrel, Great Tusk, Iron Valliant, Chien-Pao, Chi-Yu, Ceruledge and Armarogue are all fantastic designs.

For people who arent pokemon fans, I'd give it a skip. For anyone who likes Pokemon, I'd thoroughly recommend buying it.

 

RIP OU Tyranitar

 

I will say, one of my favorite things about this game is that wild pokemon will get up close and personal when you're battling their brethren or some other pokemon. They even occasionally emote, or get timid and run.

I like to imagine that it's all fun and games to them, placing berry bets on whether the silly human and the tamed pokemon will prevail over their opponent. And a lot of pokemon bolt after a battle ends, so you can imagine that they're saying fuck that and fuck him and fuck his too-strong monster. And others will come up and square up (I'm looking at you, all of you, Tauros)

 

So the official Pokémon channel uploaded a video to celebrate that they're over 1000 'mon now.
The remixed music is fantastic but I'm feeling my age right now.