Pokémon Scarlet and Violet

There is absolutely nothing to defend in this game, everything is terrible, the only part that saves himself is the basic pokemon core gameplay with the teracrystal (and they are lazy as fuck with the design) , everything else plays and looks terrible.
The world and level design is just awful, the writing is even worse, the characters makes you wish you could kill them with your bare hands.
I don't get how everybody is defending the story so far, it starts with nothing at all and ends with something that tries to be interesting but fails due to a lack luster story telling progression.
The bugs are not the major problem the game itself is the main issue, don't buy this game and stop supporting game freak lazy game dev please they don't deserve your money.

A tricky game to discuss, for a variety of reasons. The first and foremost is the fact that it's a Pokemon game, which in and of itself has such an enormous amount of baggage that it's difficult to really have an objective opinion on; Pokemon is such an overwhelming force in both popular culture and my own life that it's difficult to pin down in any meaningful way. It's tough to have any true respect for Game Freak and the Pokemon Company, who are able to print money no matter what they put the Pokemon logo on, be it a great game or a truly terrible one. Considering how wealthy the companies are that own Pokemon, these games should be polished masterpieces and often are not. BUT, these games were instrumental to my childhood and remain incredibly important to me in adulthood, so I have to have some degree of admiration for them. This game, which is emblematic of this strained relationship I have with its creators, is both a triumph and a frustration for all these contradictions. It's a topic that I have difficulty articulating when I decide to be too heady about it.

The other thing that makes this game tricky to discuss is the glaring problems with glitches, performance, and graphics. The complaints about this side of the game are still posted ad-nauseum, but since this review is largely for my own records, I'll add my own complaints. The glitches were annoying, but almost never game-breaking (except for one time the game crashed before I had saved). The performance is the most egregious problem, with stuttering animations and a remarkably low framerate for a game released in 2022. It's fairly astounding how bad it is, and I don't consider myself someone who usually cares about this sort of thing. The graphics are an improvement over Legends Arceus and Sword/Shield, but not by much; I have to wonder what a Pokemon game could look like if the graphics had any sort of stylization rather than attempting realistic environments.

Aside from these glaring problems, the game is very fun! I think the game is worth playing despite the issues, because the gameplay is really great. The exploration is very nearly what I imagined when I was a kid thinking about Pokemon games in the future, with countless areas to explore and all sorts of Pokemon to find. The new Pokemon designs are, as always, a delight. The story was a surprising high point for the series, with some actual maturity and depth, especially in Arven's tale. The difficulty was mostly just right, meaning that I didn't have to grind, but I did have to use my brain a bit. Terastalization, this game's battle gimmick, is a fun twist that lets the player act defensively or offensively and change the course of a battle. It's a fun game! There are problems with the gameplay, like the very glitchy Tera Raids. There are also excruciatingly slow-paced battles and a lack of depth in the overworld (towns and cities especially, but there was a dearth of reasons to explore), but even in some of these issues there are hidden joys to find, like the tiles shaped like sprites from Red/Blue in Alfornada. Overall, it was a really fun game, despite the drawbacks. I hope (against hope) that the DLCs and next games can increase the amount of polish.

One more aspect that I hope they continue to improve upon is the accessibility of competitive Pokemon. The fact that you can mostly make a Pokemon competitive with mostly just in-game money is a huge advantage. Of course, it wouldn't be a Pokemon game if there wasn't a half-measure in this regard, and in this case it's the mind-numbing grind to get more Tera Shards to change your Pokemon's Tera Type. Why they made everything so accessible except this one aspect is a mystery, but alas. I will continue to cross my fingers hoping for an official version of Pokemon Showdown.

Good ass storyline, interesting gameplay, doesn't bore me and doesn't feel like a chore to play through? CHECK. Best Pokemon games in a long time. I can't compliment this enough, sad to see people are criticizing it so much

i dunno if i would bet on these games becoming classics (i anticipate the dlc will hurt the replayability of the games) but these are definitely leaps and bounds ahead of sword and shield. nobody is wrong when they say scarlet and violet are ugly as sin and grossly buggy. maybe it IS wack to support game freak for putting out games of this graphical fidelity when they clearly have the capability to put out much more advanced, interesting work and take pokemon in a bolder artistic direction (arceus stays winning). in spite of all that, there's a lot to love here. when the switch eventually sells its last copy, scarlet and violet will probably have been the quintessential (non arceus) pokemon experience for the switch and one of the most memorable, strongest pokemon games in recent memory – since generation six, in my opinion.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are the fourth mainline Pokémon games developed by Game Freak to be released on the Switch, and yet they are as unpolished as ever, if not more so than their predecessors. Scarlet and Violet do take a step forward by adopting the open world take on Pokémon that Legends Arceus introduced, though it still shoehorns in the same tired Pokémon League formula in the worst way possible. Despite the player having full agency over where they can go in the world, it is completely undermined by the fact that the gyms don't use level scaling, instead having a set order that they are intended to be beaten in, completely defeating the point of an open world adventure. The gyms themselves have been gutted too, as the traditional "gym puzzle + trainers" model is replaced by boring mini-games that do nothing to break up the monotony of the gameplay loop. The open world itself isn't very interesting to explore, most of the routes look almost exactly the same and the few biome changes that there are get hampered by performance issues, most notably the desert area completely tanking the FPS with its sandstorm weather. There are some item pickups here and there, but really the only worthwhile objective the open world gives you is catching Pokémon, and this alone is not enough to make exploring the world feel satisfying. There was not a single moment during my playthrough where I felt compelled to go out of my way to catch Pokémon, I simply wanted to get the game over with as quickly as possible. What little story there is from the titan badges and star badges are not interesting or compelling, and the actual Pokémon League itself has almost no story to speak of whatsoever, so there was really nothing to keep me going. I didn't care about any of the characters or what was happening to them, and while mainline Pokémon has never had good stories, the older games at the very least have something driving the game forward instead of just letting the player aimlessly wander around. Aside from gameplay, the games also completely fall flat visually, using the same old low effort battle animations that every game since X and Y have stuck with, while also having some of the worst texture quality I have ever seen from a major Switch release. There are textures in certain areas that are literally on par with the N64 in resolution, and while I understand that graphical fidelity is not imperative to enjoying a game, seeing parts of the world that look this inexcusably ugly completely shatters what little immersion these games have and does an excellent job at highlighting just how far behind Game Freak is from meeting any industry standards, something that is only further evidenced by the various technical problems with the game such as how laughably low the FPS is for certain object or character animations as well as the myriad of amusing bugs that show just how rushed and unpolished these games are. The only part of the game I had any enjoyment playing was online battling since I quite like competitive Pokémon, though Scarlet and Violet continue the trend of running an incredibly restrictive 20 minute battle timer that completely shafts 6v6 singles in favor of discouraging stalling in 4v4 doubles, and while I understand that the latter format is the one used for official tournament play, I don't see any good reason why they can't implement different timers for different battle formats. One positive I'd like to end on is that unlike in the previous generation, the main battle gimmick of Scarlet and Violet, Terastallization, is actually a pretty interesting addition that shakes up the flow of battle by allowing Pokémon to change type on the fly. It provides a unique layer of strategy for both offensive and defensive play and is one of the few things this game does that I can truly appreciate. Most fans saw Scarlet and Violet as a step in the right direction for Pokémon, and while I'm glad that there are people who can enjoy these games, to me they are the product of Game Freak's continued complacency with mediocrity.

Im not even kidding, this is simultaneously the most boring and frustrating game Ive ever played. even when its awful performance isn't dragging it down, the gameplay is BORING. its some of the most repetitive copy-paste bullshit Ive ever experienced in a game. every single enemy might as well be the same, and it LOOKS atrocious too. who looked at this game and thought it was suitable for release? this game is proof that people will play literally anything from this franchise off brand recognition alone. play the south park RPGs instead