Pokemon Scarlet & Violet

HELLO CHAT!

Is anyone here getting the new games? If so, which? Feel free to discuss anything (no story spoilers!) here both before and after release!



I'm getting scarlet and picking sprigatito!

 

violet because chad professor (and ceruledge and cuz a better color than scarlet but eh)

I'll get the game for christmas. (nvm got it early)

 

I’m getting violet for my birthday (you knew that). I’m still not sure which starter but I always go with water so I might stick with that.

 

Sprigatito ftw cuz this exists hehe :))

 

My initial thoughts from playing it for about an hour: the core gameplay aspects are really neat and fleshed out, but the main gripe i have is with camera issues and lower-quality graphics compared to stuff on other consoles. Usually after completing a battle with a wild pokemon my camera is placed in an awkward position between the ground. Of course, definitely not on the more major end of bugs (i've seen some wacky stuff from other vids), but still a minor complaint. Again, however, the core gameplay is really fun, and I hope more open-world pokemon games are soon to come (maybe with a bit more time too to fix some bugs).

Mid-way through feedback:
I'll be more critical here, so while I feel the open-world is a cool mechanic, it is kinda confusing trying to find where to go next, as some areas will be too overleveled, which makes it weird trying to find your way through. And I got some funny bug experiences. First one was kinda funny which made Miraidon looked like it was falling even though it was on land (which got corrected a few seconds later), but the second one is pretty concerning to me, directly after I defeated the water-type gym leader, my game crashed. The best explanation I can think of for this is I decided to try and fight one of the Titan pokemon I was underleveled for (it was lv 45, my pokemon were around lv 25. it was in a lv 25 area too, won't name names cuz I don't wanna spoil anything) and actually defeated it, but didn't fight its second phase. Still though, I lost some progress (thankfully not too much). It's also a pretty good thing I didn't have autosave on, cuz then I would have been softlocked there until it got patched out.

 

finished the game a few days ago

the performance of the game was unfortunately really bad, i had hoped they would improve on the performance seen in the early trailers like what happened with arceus but sadly there were a lot of npcs that moved at like 10 fps and there was 1 time where the game crashed upon beating a boss. it wasn't as bad as what i've seen other people get, though

the gameplay, is, well, pokemon. it isn't better or worse than older games, though some of the battles here definitely challenged me a lot harder than sword and shield ever did. terrastalising is a cool mechanic too

the story was honestly pretty good. i was expecting another mediocre pokemon story but it was awesome

the OST was fantastic but that's to be expected since toby fox made a lot of the tracks

toedscool being included makes the game an instant 10/10 from me

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the game seems to crash randomly after battles, i don't think your fight against the titan effected anything

 

Completed game a while ago and am 250/400 Pokémon to completing the Dex.
Overall I think it’s one of, if not the best Pokémon game to date. For whatever reason on my switch, even on the tv, had no performance issues or crashes. The OST was fantastic and (I got Violet) the paradox Pokémon were better than I expected and the final boss was a great sequence and I loved it greatly.

One of my main dislikes however is the new Pokémon are VERY hit or miss. New bird is cool, tinkaton is awesome, but stuff like wiglet and quaxly line just not it imo.
The world seemed pretty full of life and the characters are incredibly designed and feel like actual human beings who have lives- especially the gym leaders.
Tera raids, despite being flawed in many ways, are a good way to get annoying pokemon and xp items so those 2 points balance them out to be a decent feature, and on that topic terestillizing is the best gimmick they’ve had in a while, not required to beat the game but helpful, and well balanced for strategic reasons (losing good typings for damage, once per poke stop visit, etc.)


Overall, 9/10 game, very high rating for a Pokémon game and beats the 8/10 I would have given PLA. I recommend everyone play it if on the fence about it, with even if you unfortunately have to deal with performance issues.

Oh yeah edit note I didn’t add in: I picked sprigatito and even though I was disappointed at what the chose for the third evo Meowscarada is very cool and it’s signature move is the best of the trio in my opinion, right above Skeledirge’s.

 

My review after completing the main storyline (this does contain spoilers btw, which I'll put into a spoiler):

Putting bugs and glitches aside, this game is an easy 8.6/10 (Scarlet gets a -999999/10 because its scarlet, violet's infinitely better). All of the stories are great, and some of the Pokemon are very cool. I wasn't really too focused on Pokedex completion so I didn't really catch too many (I got a shiny Foongus tho so thats cool). The open world is a very good direction to take the franchise in, and I take back my claim on it not working great (I really should have realized that on my way to Alfornada (Lv 40) which isn't at-level with a lv 25 team on a path with lv 35-40 pokemon, I was an idiot).

Graphically, it is a switch game. Some areas are kinda jagged and very pixely, but I'll excuse given the switch's weaker hardware compared to the ps5 and xbox series x.

A lot of the great mechanics from legends arceus transfers over (that is still the best pokemon game in my opinion and I will die on that hill), with all the pokemon being in the overworld removing random encounters, which is pretty great (they did this since lets go pikachu/eevee, then to a bit of a lesser extent in sword and shield, before going completely back to it in legends arceus). However, the main reason why I am not giving it a 9/10 or above is because they removed one great feature from pla: you don't have to a start a battle to catch a pokemon. That made pokemon catching in legends arceus so much more convenient for me, and now it feels a bit awkward in scarlet and violet, though you can surprise a pokemon if you hit it from behind. I can excuse the mobility from legends arceus not being in scarlet and violet because the latter's much more technologically (in-game) developed than hisui.

Most of the locations are pretty cool, my favorite has to probably be Mesagoza (though that's kinda a given), and my second favorite's Artazon. The OST is absolutely amazing and some of the themes are an absolute bop (I am vibing to the final boss theme as I'm listening to this). I support adding Toby Fox to compose a whole bunch of music for Pokemon games at this point, I don't really think anyone's gonna be against it. Some of the new Pokemon designs are also kinda amazing (I actually spoiled all the Pokemon for myself before playing it). The character development is absolutely nailed here too, while some characters might look a bit one-dimensional at first (such as Nemona, who I originally interpreted as another Hau clone at the start of the game, boy was I wrong), they end up showing how complex they can be throughout the story.

Tera Raid battles are also a much better way to do raids than what was in Sword/Shield, because everything is now so much faster, which is great, and was also a max raid battle's biggest downside. I didn't do too many but they were at the very least pretty decent. Speaking of tera stuff... Terastallization (i'll call it teraing). It's a pretty good mechanic. Mega Evolution worked pretty well, Z-Moves were awesome cutscenes but my god they slowed down turns a lot (i forgor if i checked in ultra sun/moon w/o move animations) and were pretty limited. Dynamaxing was too powerful and even more limited than z-moves, as you can only do them in certain areas for only 3 turns. Teraing feels like a weaker Mega Evolution... because that's kinda what it is, and I honestly don't hate it. You can switch a teraed pokemon back out and it'll still be teraed, it can only be done once per battle before you have to charge your tera orb again (would you look at that you also need an item for it), but where it heavily stands out from Mega Evolution is in the typing aspect, and you can completely turn the tables in a battle with it (was gonna put a meme I saw of a dragonite up against a fairy/rock type and then dragonite teraed into a steel type and followed the call an ambulance but not for me, i messed it up when I find it i'll put it here).

Spoiler: my thoughts on the stories (this covers every story and goes over how they end)

So time to talk about the characters and stories. I really love the plot(s) of scarlet and violet, each of which having great and raw characters.

Victory Road:
This is the basic plot in pretty much every Pokemon game. You're trying to become the champion of the region. Here, it doesn't necessarily work like that. You still become a champion but no dethroning is involved. This is a fairly basic storyline so I won't talk about the progression of it, everyone knows how that ends, so I'll talk about the characters instead.

Katy is pretty neat, being a pastry chef affiliated with bugs, which actually works pretty well in my opinion. Not much to say here though.
Brassius is very cool, with him being a manic artist. I absolutely love his attitude and his appearance in the art class is very welcomed.
Iono is a parody on e-girls and I feel like they nailed the slander here without making that the defining trait of Iono. Her putting up the act of "i need views so go do random stuff" throughout the gym challenge is kinda funny, and the gym trainers literally look like how I imagine her simps would look like, and user "Electro King" donating 5k is something that is absolutely hilarious. Out of all the games to poke fun at e-girls, I did not think Pokemon would ever be that.
Kofu is the Seaskipper Captain but is not the Seaskipper Captain, so he's not as cool.
Larry. ... Larry.
Ryme is also pretty neat, with her being a rapper. The one I wish would happen in her gym challenge is actually challenging her to a rap battle before the actual battle would happen (or maybe have a rap battle during the battle either one would work).
Tulip, unlike pretty every psychic gym leader, isn't a psychic, and rather a beauty queen, and that fits pretty well with the psychic type in my opinion. Fairy could work better, but I'd say psychic works well too here.
Grusha is a snowboarder. Enough said.

Rika is a pretty neat character to be an introduction to the elite four. Ground is one of the stronger types, and has historically been associated with more of a late-end game challenge in Pokemon games, and she is more of that infrequent visitor big sister type character.
Poppy, being a literal child (prodigy), is something I was not expecting to see on the elite 4. However, her character does kinda feel like she wields her pokemon with power, so I can't really judge there.

Spoiler: Larry. ... Larry? ... Larry.

I absolutely fucking love this guy. A normal office worker being a gym leader is a great thing I didn't know I wanted, but I got it. The guy is an easygoing worker who also works part time as a gym leader and elite four member. He is overworked, and him being a normal type gym leader perfectly fits his office worker archetype. What makes Larry the best character out of all the victory road characters though is the fact that he stands out the most by being normal, which in turn makes him the most unnormal character in the Pokemon series. Him also being the flying elite 4 member also works pretty well too, as flying is a very common type to pair with normal, his ace, staraptor, is normal/flying, and he actually has other characteristics that also kinda hint towards him being a flying-type guy, like the sprigs of hair sticking on his head, and unlike how he normally 'watches' the battle, standing still, he has an aggressive throw, and I will copy this quote from the youtube comment that pointed it out to me (sry i forgor who it is, but you know who you are) "he is a rambunctious flying-type soul in an easygoing normal-type body".

Hassel bawling his eyes out when you beat him is funny and wholesome at the same time as one of his students got this far.

Geeta is a pretty decent character, and truly does feel like a chairwoman taking her job seriously while also having fun with it at the same time.

Nemona is arguably the most complex character out of all the major victory road characters. I initially interpreted her as a regular battle-obsessed rival like Hop (the latter was to an extent), but after defeating Geeta, she became obsessed with you being her best rival for life, and when you defeat her in the final battle in the victory road storyline, she isn't upset that she lost, she is ecstatic you won, and if you do all of her cutscenes at school in the post-game, you learn that the reason why she is obsessed with battling you is because nobody else at the school can give her a good battle, as pretty much every other student is terrified of her pokemon's power. After learning that, I now feel like it's actually the duty to battle her from time to time so she won't get bored often when in the story or academy ace tournament.

Path of Legends:
This story is more basic than I expected it to be, though its sequel, the way home, is the more lore-filled story. In this story, you and Arven are beating up big pokemon that ate some funny plants. There's pretty much only 1 character to go over here, and I'll save the other major one for later (if you've beaten the game, you probably already know which one it is I'm putting off):

Arven:
My guy Arven truly does seem to be enthralled with his cooking, and that just seems to be his character initially, a guy who likes to cook. However, at the end of getting the first Herba Mystica, Arven also gives his sandwich to somebody who isn't revealed to you yet until you get the second Herba Mystica, and this character is his Mabosstiff. His doggo was almost mortally wounded from a pokemon in Area 0, and the Herba Mystica are said to replenish any pokemon's health of all of them are obtained. This is actually the closest any video game has gotten me shed a tear from my eye yet. I was honestly pretty happy to see it come all the way back to full health at the end of the storyline.

Starfall Street:
This story involves the antagonistic team trope that's a staple in the Pokemon franchise. It went from an organization that just wanted to commit terrorism across a region to literally seeking to rewrite the universe to now just being rabid thugs. Team Star is also joining the new 'thug team' category (like team skull and team yell, teams that don't really have an ulterior motive other than to just be hooligans), and you initially think that team star is basically a team for bullies, but that's actually not the case. Team Star are the bullIED, and it just got out of hand very quickly. The two main allies along your journey are Penny Cassiopeia and Director Clavell Clive.

I'll breeze over the big bosses as the main stuff I'll talk about is at the end.
Giacomo is the musician of the team, and he is canonically the one responsible for all the banging team star themes.
Mela is a bit of a hothead who is focused on getting Pokemon for Team Star.
Atticus is obsessed with shakespeare and ninjas and made all the costumes.
Ortega is the one responsible for the starmobiles and is way more of a hothead than mela.
Eri is the girl who trains the pokemon in Team Star.

After you've cleared all of the bases, you then get the big reveal who the big boss of team star is, which is Director Clavell Penny Cassiopeia. I actually expected that coming as they seem to have sentimental nostalgia for the boss you just defeated. And you also get the biggest shocker yet, which is a far greater twist than any other twist in ANY form of media yet: Clive is DIRECTOR CLAVELL! Him actually saying he is Cassiopeia is kinda unexpected, and it is kinda relieving to know that this guy actually doesn't have any sinister motive, he's just a guy who wants the best for his students, and he gets my respect forever for that. The true identity of Cassiopeia is her supply department rep, Penny. She probably took the advice "EVs are important" in another way (i stole this from another youtube comment). Her battle theme perfectly fits the stereotype of the quiet kid, barely anything going on the outside, bunch of wacky, random, hardcore stuff on the inside. Seeing all the team star bosses welcome Penny and support her after defeating her is pretty heartwarming, and it's also kinda nice how the team star bases get repurposed into training centers for academy students. The postgame cutscenes with penny seeing the team star bosses reincorporate themselves into the academy are also really funny and are a treat to watch.

The Way Home:
Now this is essentially the sequel to the Path of Legends. This involves you going into Area Zero after you and Arven get a request from the professor to do so. You slowly descend into Area Zero and shit gets wackier and creepier as you descend. Eventually, you end up encountering paradoxmons, before eventually reaching the Zero Lab, and here, you get the biggest twist in any Pokemon game yet: the original professors are dead, and the one you have been speaking to for the entire game was an ai. However, what I really like about this twist is that this is not the average ai role in a story. The main archetype of this is 'human inventor creates ai, and ai is evil', in this game, the roles are kinda reversed. The professors were actually the main antagonists, who sought to build a time machine (and were successful in that regard) to bring pokemon of the past/future to the present. However, the ai doesn't like this as it could ruin the current ecosystem of paldea, and the original professor would later end up being killed by the second koraidon/miraidon (forgot to mention that there was a second of the box legendary but eh). And the professor valued the time machine more than his own son Arven. Back to the now, the ai tries to shut down the time machine, and tells you that it will probably battle you in an attempt to protect the time machine, which it later does. Fun fact, during the battle with the ai, the name of npc speaking during the fight is Professor Sada/Turo, which likely means that is exactly what the original professors would have said if they were still alive today. The battle theme is also an absolute bop and is my favorite theme I've ever listened to.

After you defeat the ai, Nemona, Arven, and Cassiopeia Penny show up, before the Paradise Protection Protocol is booted up, which locks all of your Pokemon EXCEPT Koraidon/Miraidon. A very nice detail also added when you battle the Paradise Protection Protocol is the line glitches through this cycle:
"You are challenged by AI Sada/Turo!"
"Paradise Protection Protocol initialized"
"AI Sada/Turo has no intention of fighting anymore!"
"You are challenged by the Paradise Protection Protocol!"
The final theme of the Guardian of Paradise fight is very cool and while it does feel a bit tacky with the "friendship and love can solve anything!" theme, it does feel worthy to end it this way. The way the ai reacts to you stopping the protocol is inspiring, and they later decide to leave this world by going to the ancient past/distant future to prevent the time machine from currently working. The person I feel the most bad for here though is Arven, as he never got to see his mother/father as they were killed, and now the replica of his parent will never get to see him again. Give that boy a hug.

Post-Game:
The post-game is basically victory road all over again, except unlike ending with the elite 4, it ends with you beating up other people in the academy, and does still end in a fight with geeta. That's it.

The Other Stuff:
Seeing all the school interactions honestly help builds up a lot of authenticity and realness to characters, especially with some of their storylines. My favorites probably have to be Penny's, Dendra's, and Salvatore's. The classes, while initially being a grim reminder of some classes some of us are in, are also kinda funny at sometimes. For one instance, the way Salvatore opened a class made think of him like Gus Fring from this point onward.

However, with all the stories, there is one big complaint I have with one element: the treasures of ruin. These things are talked about ONLY in history class and brought about the end of the Paldean Empire. These things being related to the downfall of Paldea would have been an EXCELLENT thing to toss in to the path of legends storyline, and after defeating the ai professor, ancient (i think the current ones would be these ig)/future versions of them appear through the time machine and begin armageddon through Paldea, very similar to how Ultra Beasts terrorized Alola in Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon, although this could just be me thinking a climax should be VERY climactic. Still though, I definitely think the treasures of ruin should have had a much bigger role in the story instead of them just being raifort going "hey can you show me some funny creatures".

Overall though, I'd say all the stories in Scarlet and Violet are absolutely amazing, and Game Freak knocked that out of the park unlike Sword and Shield striking out in the most embarrassing way possible. The characters are great, and the plots of each follow suit.

Violet was a blast, Scarlet bad. Thank you for coming to my Turo Talk.

 

L take, koraidon supremacy srry

 

I loved the game. Paldea was a blast to explore, the story had me on the edge of my seat, and the new Pokemon have really grown on me despite some misses

I don’t understand why people are making a big stink about the bugs and glitches. Other than some goofy ones to giggle over, I never encountered anything gamebreaking. Games like Skyrim have tons of bugs and yet they’re beloved because they’re fun. Sure, a Triple A game in 2022 probably shouldn’t have been released in this state, but oh well. At some point, you just have to look past the flaws and have fun.

My only real issue with it is the framerate drops. It’s fine in most areas, but in cities and denser parts of Paldea, the slowdown is very noticeable. Even then, this isn’t an action game, so it wasn’t abhorrent enough to take away my enjoyment. Compared to my issues with previous games in the series, that’s nothing.

8.9/10 game, would’ve been a 9/10 if it had Minior in it (get back to me when the inevitable DLC comes out) and would’ve been a 10/10 if it weren’t for the performance issues

 

I like toedscool