Pokémon Scarlet and Violet - Not as Bad as People Say?

Source: The Pokemon Company

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I got my copy of Pokemon Violet a day after the release, so the internet had already been filled with reviews and opinions by the time I started playing. I tried to approach this game openly and without prejudices, but I confess that it was a daunting task considering the number of people saying that it is an unplayable flop. After many failed attempts to avoid videos and comments on the net, I finally sat down to play, and was quite surprised to find that I had a great time!

Visual controversies

The search term Pokemon Scarlet/Violet currently produces tons of hits with videos of absurd bugs popping up left and right. Pokemons dip below textures, the main character sometimes looks like their neck was broken, and one bug makes hem suddenly grow to the size of a building. All of this looks really bad, and I'm not saying this game is actually free of bugs, but I also haven't come across nearly as many of them as I was lead to believe. The worst things that happened to me were texture clipping or camera going awry when I was leaving stores – bugs that are really annoying, but don’t have much impact on gameplay.

Opinions are also divided about how much of a letdown the overall appearance of the latest Pokemon installment is. I can't agree that the style as such fails; what disappointed me was how uneven it turned out to be. All the heroes (even the NPCs) look nice, are distinctive and well-designed. The same goes for all the Pokemon (including the latest generation, which won a lot of my sympathy). It also seems to me that it's exactly these well-done characters and creatures that make the views, reminiscent of the PS2 era, even more eye-catching. The appearance of the world is significantly different from the standards to which modern games have accustomed us. We’re talking about one of the top, most profitable franchises, which suddenly conjures up a game that's "uglier" than its predecessors, and it's admittedly hard to understand why this has happened.

On the other hand, while I largely agree with the discontent, I personally didn't feel that the outdated looks of the world affected my experience in any significant way. I'm used to I play a lot of games done on a much smaller budget, so the deficiencies in the environment's appearance became irrelevant when I equipped the pokeballs and set off on a new journey.

The old meets the new

After Arceus, which completely forsook many iconic elements of the series, Pokemon Scarlet/Violet kind of went back to the roots. We collect badges again by fighting strong opponents in larger cities, and we can also catch Pokemon again – as long as we start a direct confrontation with them. However, what I can see in Scarlet/Violet is a bold and surprisingly successful attempt to introduce novelty to a traditional formula and meet modern standards. The new installment lets you run around the game world with your pokemon by your side, or join other players in fighting against unusual pokemons marked on the map.

Among the most significant, positive changes, I have to count the full openness of the world (Pokemons are just perfect for that) and the ability to play together with up to three other people. The series has been encouraging players to interact with each other, for example by exchanging Pokemon, so enabling it on a larger scale than before is only natural.

Despite so many novelties, Scarlet/Violet reuses many known solutions, although often improving on them. Overcoming the leaders in different cities is preceded by various, interesting challenges, and the quite unoriginal story is non-linear – in Scarlet/Violet we can, simultaneously or in turns, explore three, completely different threads.

I also see a change for the better when it comes to the key element of the series, i.e. the Pokemons themselves. The Pokedex is bigger than in the last few titles and I find it nicely varied, as new Pokemon appear side by side with a wide selection of creatures from previous generations. As a player who takes the slogan "catch them all" to heart, I had a great time playing Scarlet/Violet.

An almost open world

Ok, the world is indeed open and positively huge. Almost from the very beginning, we can go anywhere we want. Unfortunately, if we don't look up the recommended order of challenges on the Internet, the quality of our experience may suffer greatly. Sort of a gaming lone wolf, I gleefully walked where I wanted and didn't look for help online, so I often ended up in places that I was way too strong or way too weak for.

So, the game seems to suffer from lack of enemy scaling in a completely open world, which isn't unlocked in stages. The freedom to go wherever we please is great, but the developers should make sure that the challenges in each region are tailored to how we play our game. Oddly enough, it wasn't the graphics, but the lack of level scaling (and of side quests, the amount of which was one of the best things about Arceus) that annoyed me the most in this new, open-world Pokemon.

The graphics are not up to date, glitches happen more or less often (I was lucky to be spared most of them), and the difficulty level of the challenges lacks balance. It's not hard to find faults with this game, but if I had to honestly answer whether they spoiled the fun for me, I would strongly deny it. In terms of gameplay, multiple quests, or the size of the world and Pokedex, Scarlet/Violet is just what the series has seemingly needed for years, and I had a great time with it despite shortcomings.