Pokémon Scarlet & Violet

Really the whole world should have scaled based on your own level. I have not been grinding ridiculously but my starter is at least five levels ahead of the wild Pokémon that I’m facing, and that’s without doing things in the order that you are ‘meant’ to.
 
dmlaw said:
Really the whole world should have scaled based on your own level. I have not been grinding ridiculously but my starter is at least five levels ahead of the wild Pokémon that I’m facing, and that’s without doing things in the order that you are ‘meant’ to.
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I mean I did get a little distracted with trying to catch ‘em all (although I’m confident they fucked me over by not allowing a full national dex in-game so I’m not going to even ask for the sake of my sanity)

But my starter evolved before I even got to the first gym
 
Diddy said:
With a little fix they could’ve had it so whichever gym you attempt first will have a certain level, and the second gym would be a bit harder.
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ZenGiraffe said:
That is literally how I thought it would work so I was annoyed when it didn't. What's the point of being open world otherwise
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dmlaw said:
Really the whole world should have scaled based on your own level. I have not been grinding ridiculously but my starter is at least five levels ahead of the wild Pokémon that I’m facing, and that’s without doing things in the order that you are ‘meant’ to.
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All of this.

I think this is probably in the running to be the worst mainline Pokémon game of the whole lot. For a plethora of reasons, I found it an utterly frustrating experience.
  • The graphical/performance issues are well-documented. I started playing just before the first patch, so in fairness I do think it's improved slightly. Or maybe I just got used to it. But the first few hours, I felt like everything was incredibly laggy.
  • Leaving that aside, the whole game feels laboriously slow to play. There are so many overdue quality of life things needed, like skippable cut-scenes. You can turn them off via the menu, but why not just have a "Hold X to skip" like pretty much every other game in existence? Or the insistence on repeating an animation when multiple status changes are inflicted and stating them one by one: *pow* [Pokémon]'s attack fell *pow* [Pokémon]'s special attack fell *pow* [Pokémon]'s defence fell *pow* - one animation and a list of stat changes would suffice.
  • The open world is so dull. There's a snowy area, a desert area, a water area, then lots and lots and lots of grass. Obviously, rendering a Switch game is very different compared to a Game Boy game in almost every respect. However, in previous Pokémon titles, I nearly always felt a sense of ostensibly moving through a world, even back as far as Red/Blue. It just feels like about a third of the map was designed and then stretched to cover the entire island.
  • On that note, all the towns look the same, and all function (or don't, as the case may be) the same. They're almost empty of people - which is where the low framerate really becomes apparent - and most of the doors/shops are non-interactive. There's one point where you see a town and it has lights beaming into the sky. It looks like a hub of activity...then you get there to find one or two people milling about. Any sense of scale is lost as soon as you step into the towns. And because there is very little to interact with, they leave little impression whatsoever. You run through them to the gym, complete a menial task, battle and leave. Where are the towns that have been occupied by an enemy force? Or towns that have ferries sailing out of them? Or casinos? Or haunted towers? Where are the STORIES?
  • As above, the lack of level scaling shows Game Freak either don't understand open world or don't know how to do it. Pokémon isn't Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Elden Ring, etc. so letting you go "anywhere" only really works if the game is willing to let you die. Often. The stakes are rarely - if ever - that high, so at most, you might get a few battles that go down to the wire (which just about pass for "normal" difficulty by most other RPG standards). The flipside of that is the rest of the game becomes stupidly easy; even more so than the low benchmark of difficulty the series has already adopted.
There is some stuff I liked:
  • The end-game story (which I won't spoil) was a successful tonal shift compared to everything else. I felt it was wonderfully atmospheric and would really like to have seen that in more of the game.
  • I quite enjoyed the school setting. In principle, at least. It was a very (very!) basic take on Persona, but I found the characters quite charming. It's just a shame the lessons were all text-based questions, as opposed to being more interactive and using the Switch controls creatively in the art class, for example. Again, it felt like a half-baked concept with promise that ended up being stretched too thin.
  • The core concept, as ever, remains addictive.
  • Some aspects of the menu - like using a single button to move a Pokémon to the top of your team - feel long overdue. With less faffing, I felt like my overall team was more well-rounded because I was more inclined to rotate the leader to match the environment.
However, I have to say that in essence, it's almost as if in trying harder, Game Freak have shown how hopelessly inept and uninspired they are. It's not all their own fault; I think they - more than any other Nintendo developer - probably felt the struggle of having to move from handheld to home console overnight. Therefore, its not helpful that they're having to churn out at least one new game a year.

That said, I think my main bugbear with the whole experience is that the bar was set relatively low for them to fail so hard. Okay, it's open-world. But it's an open-world that's 75% grass and rocks, so it's not like they've tried to create eight functioning cities with distinctive environments and come up short. Equally, a lot of the cumbersome gameplay elements feel like they occur simply because either the code is being re-used from previous titles, or no-one from Game Freak actually playtests them as a gamer. I can only hope the resounding - and entirely justified - criticisms over technical performance make Nintendo sit up and take notice because the series deserves to be so much better than this.

p.s. sorry for the rant, but I've been saving it up for weeks.
 
Maybe this should be Random things you HATE/LOVE about Pokemon Scarlet/Violet

HATE: The Pokemon are microscopic and have a death wish so you have to try really hard not to instigate battles
LOVE: The ghost treasure chest is cute
HATE: How the fuck do you climb down ladders? The only way I seem to be able is by PLUMMETING
LOVE: The Pokedex bookshelf
 
HATE: Nemona Nemona Nemona
"It's so wild that we ended up randomly visiting the same gym at the same time - again!"

IS IT THOUGH, or just annoying and unsurprising? Especially as she seems to have superhuman running speed
 
LOVE: The battle music gets all choral and exciting when you're on the last bit of a gym battle
LOVE: Terrastallizing fucks up the mechanics of a gym battle a lot less than the gigantism one from S&S
HATE: The word Terrastallizing (sp?)
 
This is quite addictive and while I see Slave’s criticism about the bland nowhere cities, the major cities can be quite lovely, just finished the snowy one with the Ghost gym :disco:

Speaking of which, that was quite fun, the doubles battle, even if it did suffer from the stats change onslaught. The audience cheered, your two Pokémon each get 4 stat boosts *dies of old age*

The gyms have generally been more challenging than I expected, the Normal guy almost got me with that fucking Facade move :o

Grinding/catching was fun at the start but now I’m not bothering as much, I just want to get to the next place quick. I guess that might bite me in the arse
 
Well that didn’t go well, Psychic gym lady just one-shotted basically everyone with that cunt Gardevoir. How can it be super effective against so many types?!

Oh and first look at that Fagariffic or whatever the Girafarig evo is. And they used Zen Headbutt on me :o @ZenGiraffe to comment
 
Diddy said:
Well that didn’t go well, Psychic gym lady just one-shotted basically everyone with that cunt Gardevoir. How can it be super effective against so many types?!

Oh and first look at that Fagariffic or whatever the Girafarig evo is. And they used Zen Headbutt on me :o @ZenGiraffe to comment
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It's what you deserved
 
I had a similar experience when I turned up at what was meant to be the first gym with a level appropriate team, having benched my regulars because they were way too powerful for that entire area. Turns out that Nemona's level is based on the number of badges that you have and so she was about 15 levels higher than everything I had brought. :bruised:
 
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Seriously is she supposed to be a main character in my story? She’s only talking about battling and being fruitful, am I being stalked? Groomed?
 
Has anyone played the DLC? I’m considering making a purchase.
 
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