Let's get this out of the way: The technical state of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is pretty shocking. It's buggy, it's broken, and sure, it makes for very funny glitch videos, but for what a full-price Nintendo Switch game costs these days, it should have launched in a much better state.
But we've already written extensively about the problems with Pokémon ScarVi. Alex has given us his thoughts on how to improve the open world, and we've got a massive list of 30 things we'd like to see in the next update, too.
This article is not intended to excuse all of that, but to celebrate the designers, artists, and developers on the Game Freak team that did great work — work that is getting overshadowed by the problems with the game.
Because, honestly, there's a lot to love about Scarlet and Violet's redesigning of the Pokéworld and its inhabitants — and we did. Pokémon games have made very slow progress over the years, almost as if Game Freak is reluctant to change too much lest it all come crashing down, but there are the seeds of great new ideas hidden under all the jank, and we just want to make sure they don't go unacknowledged... or else we'll end up with something safe and boring for the next Pokémon release.
So, here are 14 things that we love in Pokémon ScarVi — despite, you know, the other attention-grabbing stuff.
The Things That Pokémon Scarlet And Violet Get Right
Open world
This goes without saying, doesn't it? The open world in ScarVi may not look particularly pretty, especially when held up against Breath of the Wild and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but it has beautiful bones. The verticality of some areas offers promise of adventure; the huge map with its different biomes inspires us in a Zelda-like way to imagine what each one has in store; and being able to see something exciting above or below you, and knowing that you can travel there — well, that was the whole thing with Skyrim, wasn't it?
The Pokémon series maps so well onto an open world that we're surprised this is the first time we've seen it properly implemented in a Pokémon game. And yes, it's not perfect. But we don't want to go back to the linear world ever again.
Non-linear gameplay
Speaking of linearity, we love the ability to do things in whatever order we like. The argument against this, of course, is that the Pokémon and gym encounters don't scale, but honestly, that's part of the fun. The challenge of being able to get to a gym but pushing your luck in terms of your team's strength makes it feel like you're being daring — kind of like running straight to Hyrule Castle in BOTW and giving it a go with nothing but three hearts to your name.
If we had to suggest a change for this to make it a bit better, it wouldn't necessarily be level scaling... it would be letting us cheese our way through a high-level battle, like taking on a Lynel in the early days of BOTW.
Outdoor Pokémon Centers
It's unbelievably freeing to be able to rock up to a Pokémon Center without having to head to a town... or even head inside. Listen, all we want is to heal up our Pokémon and go, and having Poké Centers be as friction-free as possible makes this a much more pleasant experience. The fact that they're combined with Poké Marts and the TM Machine is just the cherry on top.
Let's Go
YES. NEVER GET RID OF THIS FEATURE. Let's Go is maybe the best new thing about these games, because it once again gets rid of some of the biggest sources of friction in the Pokémon games — the slowness of battles. Now that we can see Pokémon out in the wild (thanks, Sword & Shield), we can avoid them, unlike the old days with that pesky long grass, but if we still want XP, we can throw out our Pokémon and let them figure it out themselves. It's worth the reduction in XP for the sheer amount of time and effort it saves. Brilliant stuff.
Separate sellables
Is this new, or have we just forgotten? Either way, we love having our sellable stuff — Nuggets, Stardust, and all that — separated into its own pocket. This means that we can always be 100% certain that an item like Rare Bone is made for selling, and not some obscure evolution ritual. GG, Game Freak.
The clothing (except for the uniform)
When we're not yelling about being forced to wear those HORRIBLE shorts, we're actually quite impressed with the selection and colours of the clothes in Paldea. We can be goth, pastel, biker chic, designer... as long as we're a school-themed version of all of those things. Sigh.
Trainers being more chill
Some of us have anxiety and really hate eye contact. It's a genuine surprise to see that trainers no longer run up to you as soon as they see you, because Pokémon should not feel like a stealth game!
Skip nicknames
Some of us don't want to give Pokémon a nickname, like, ever. Being able to save a couple of seconds of our time by not having to say "no" every time we catch a new Pokémon may not sound like much, but it's fantastic to have our preferences reflected in the settings.
The music
Not really much to say about this one, but the soundtrack is perfect. We're really glad that Pokémon Sword & Shield's football-style chants for the gym battles made a triumphant return, even if it does make less sense with only a handful of people watching as opposed to a whole stadium.
And yes, we're glad to hear some Toby Fox-ass music in the soundtrack too.
Keep going to page 2 for even more things we love about Pokémon Scarlet and Violet...
Comments 50
Some will probably be happy with easier shinies too, while others will be upset that their favourite way of wasting time is more casual-friendly.
Some of these things are definitely stretching, maybe the list is a bit big.
Anyway, I enjoyed that all the ride features were confined to one Pokémon, as it was really tedious switching between them in Arceus.
Doing some standard open world things right and taking some good stuff from Arceus across doesn’t feel super amazing and all that worth celebrating. It’s still a largely unfinished game on the framework of something that given a couple of years longer could have been absolutely amazing.
I appreciate the want to be positive and not hate on it all the time (and I am enjoying it despite itself). But this is Pokémon and it’s sold record breaking amounts. It doesn’t really need an article defending it for the handful of things it does well.
@Preposterous the rates are about the same as SWSH, it’s just that they’re MUCH more noticeable.
…I already have 6 lol
The mechanic where the ball shakes only once before catching has been a thing since Gen 5, it's called a Critical Capture. That's not something LA gave us.
Also can I give mention to the final arc as well? Without spoiling, man I never expected a Pokemon plot to go in that direction, especially with the truth behind what Prof. Sada/Turo was doing.
I'm having a much better time in Scarlet than I did in Pokemon shield. What a FUN game! It's not the best technically or graphically but it's a joy!
Fly has been a thing since sun/moon, skip nicknames too AFAIK but that might’ve been SWSH.
In some ways, Scarlet and Violet are the truest realisation of Satoshi Tajiri’s original vision.
The idea for Pokémon was formed in the young Tajiri’s mind while running around the Japanese countryside catching and collecting various insects.
The latest games capture the same wide-eyed spirit of adventure by providing the player with an immersive open world to explore however they see fit, and quite fittingly… it’s full of bugs!
Also yeah what @Bolt_Strike said, the balls shakes have been a thing for ages. Also titan pokemon originated for ultra sun and ultra moon.
Those shorts are not horrible. They're comfy and easy to wear!
The character designs are on point at least.
As flawed as the execution is, this is the first attempt at a mainline (Legends Arceus is a spin-off) game with a fully co-op open world. That's a big, big deal!
Sword/Shield's wild area was arguably the best part of that game, and this feels like a whole game based around the concept. The execution is very flawed, sure. But between this and Legends Arceus, the Switch era of Pokémon feels like a soft reboot of the series, and it's absolutely for the better.
come on, the soundtrack is awful, super tedious. It's fine if people do love the composer, but this OST is not automatically good just because some famous guy was involved.
@abdias I don't even know who the guy is, but the soundtrack is actually fire. What are you on about? Especially everything in the endgame. That is a banger soundtrack.
What about the story/writing? It's was actually really good in this game, perhaps even the best in the entire series
How hard are you guys trying to cope over this game being unfinished
@Funneefox is it a cope or is it writing an article that presents something to contrast with the ubiquitous articles about the jank?
one of the biggest news stories in gaming right now is the jank of s/v, but at this point there's not anything substantially new to report or even comment on that front. why not write something different about the game?
I'm not picking it up anytime soon unless the bugs at least begin to be worked out. but i have to say it's been increasingly difficult to avoid just spoiling all the new pokemon species for myself because all of the ones i keep happening on are so fun.
Of course it's not all jank and bugs.
I could ONLY name two of my pokemon that. Otherwise the lineup would start to get confusing.
Edit:
Also, you're spot on with the trainers being more chillaxed. I spent probably the first 20 hours positioning myself behind/above/out of view of trainers -INSTINCTIVELY- because of the older games pounding that into me.
It took forever to get comfortable with just walking right past trainers!
Can we also agree that bulk buying/selling is also really convenient as well?
@mariomaster96 don't get me started on the arven and mabosstiff story
In addition to the excellent new roster of mons and immensely fascinating new abilites/battle gimmicks given to said mons, I'm quite shocked the stories didn't get a mention here. All of them have been very fun to go through but as a dog person myself? I was absolutely bawling by the end of Arven's. Turned a character I thought was going to be the villain into potentially my new favourite Pokemon rival.
What the f***
There are a lot of positives. I agree about the stories. I felt the elite four was super dull, but the rest was really good.
Just a shame they didn't sort out the performance issues before release.
I've had this Game since launch and completed🏅 all the paths yesterday (Mon 28th Nov) and am doing the post-story stuff now.
I've personally enjoyed this game but I won't be completing the PokeDex (I never do) and neither will I be re-levelling up any Pokemon I've already caught in 🗡🛡
I will get my Starter, Miraidon, the four Shrine Pokemon, Seviper and Hariyama to level 100 and use the money to buy all the clothing accessories.
Then I'll either wait for DLC or return to the United Kingdom of Galar🇬🇧
"Well, Team Star, but we all know they're just Team Rocket with a new name."
What??? Well this sentence right here makes no sense. These two teams are not comparable.
I am 99% sure the sellable items category was in Sword and Shield too but I agree wholeheartedly.
One that didn't get mentioned was the fact that rather than being completely deleted from existence entirely, single-use hold items are now just single-use per battle, meaning you can keep experimenting without needing to shell out more money to replace that throat spray or air balloon.
Some personal thoughts
1: Music seems weak this gen tbh. I don't know for sure which tracks toby did, but they're certainly not megalovania, battle tower, or undertale tier, it feels like they took an instrument and just went wild without a sheet to go off of and kept bass boosting parts of it. Its talented still but doesn't really fit pokemon, team star is the only track I can say sounds pretty fitting, and maybe the team star boss theme too because its over the top like the car which is fitting. I do like the overworld music and how it remixes for battles based on what area you're in.
Final battle is significantly better music wise than SWSH's but i can't help but feel the game forgets its a matter of life or death and remixes a hype and cinematically well done end game into a trap remix.
2: Open world is... TBH I kinda prefer how legends handled it? I was open minded and liked the idea but I don't think open world really added much. There's a lot to explore at your own pace sure... but you can't catch anything overleveled, the gyms/bosses are too hard when you do them out of order, and I found myself very unleveled following the 'path' some came up with because i didn't stop to battle trainers or anything, it felt like i had to gain 10 levels from the last fight or the next objective i run straight to just outscales me, or i take on something low level and it felt too easy. I do think restricted to big areas to explore like arceus worked better than 1 big area thats hard to render and scales levels as you completed objectives. Hopefully they look at what went wrong with open world and do the open world even better next gen.
3: story is, well to avoid spoilers I'll simply say the ending is chefs kiss, the rest of it feels waaay too cluttered and rather pointless. They certainly tried to flesh out the characters more and again, i liked them end game, but during the main game i found them really annoying because all they were was forced battles at terrible times (once after i just completed a gym... literally a back to back battle AFTER the gym i couldn't even breathe) and dialogue that repeats the same thing over and over.. the titan path's dialogue was fine, the other two i just wanted to skip everything because nothing changed about them really. I liked the team star bosses, they didn't overstay their welcome, meeting them was cool despite how similar every fight with them felt, and their stories and interactions with other character felt real not to mention their designs stood out.
4: Performance and glitches?
Yeah ngl the framerate made my first playthrough borderline unplayable.. it was so bad at first. I maybe had solid frames 5 whole minutes of my playthrough, now? It for some reason post game as i completed more stuff, finished my dex, got the stakes off the map, surprisingly stabilized to the point of being really consistent now, i wonder if its caused by literally one script or event in the whole game that GF just couldn't find and disable.. and once i disabled it by completely whatever it was the game started to work.
I like the addition of the last two paragraphs, @kategray, and I wholeheartedly agree.
This game really felt like a lot of steps forward, and a lot of steps backward.
It's unfortunate that the technical issues are so bad - I haven't personally experienced any major glitches in many hours of gameplay, but the FPS is pretty weak and there are lots of odd pop-ins, disappearing terrain, and lighting jank. I honestly think that if this game was more technically polished, it'd be one of best Pokemon games to date.
Removed - harassment; user is banned
Disagree with most of the list.
Feels like a stretch to say the open world is good if you ignore how bad it looks, ignore the lack of scaling, and ignore the lack of content aside from playing the game in its intended way...
Strongly disagree that the Pokemon models look good.
Many of them use washed out colors and awful, fake looking textures. Lots of them look like they are made out of paper mache or clay.
I am often not a fan of big open world games, even some of the more famous ones, but the Pokemon Violet open world just works really well for me. Rather than feeling constantly lost, no matter where I go I find something interesting. Even if I accidentally fall off a mountain I'll somehow find myself right next to a new team star compound or some other important or interesting place. The fact that there is a map with goals is a nice fall back, but I rarely use it because everything somehow just magically works.
I also agree with most of the rest of this list. Except clothing - I'm very happy there were a few non-hideous options and the color choices were great to have, but the fact that the npcs get really interesting outfits just made me want much more customization for myself. They made one step when they should have made 10.
One thing not on the list — picnics. Your pokemon should be solid during picnics and let you pet them or at least not be able to walk through them, but the concept is still wonderful to see them all sleeping or throwing a ball for them. Another great (modified) holdover from Arceus.
@MechanicElephant I'll forward your concerns to my manager
#1: Meowscarada
...What?
Skip nicknames is flippin ingenious!? They should be given a cookie stat for maximum effort!!!
*edit for being stoned out my minds and not being able to type properly. All apologies 👍
Real question though for those in the know. Do shiny Pokémon not alert you in the over world no mo??? That’s gonna suck for sure 🤷♂️
@Draxa No, they don't and that's something I was disappointed in. You can see the shinies, but the jingle only plays in battle, not in the overworld. So you can very easily fly right by a shiny and not even know it. Definitely need to bring this back from LA next game.
@Bolt_Strike : 1000%. I'm sure I've skipped by at least a shiny or two during my 20+ hour playthrough so far.
The only shiny I've found so far is a Magikarp (ugh) that happened to be in a river and it could have easily been missed. Considering that Psyduck routinely swim in rivers, I could have easily mistaken it for one of them as well. And some Pokémon are so insanely small (Flabébé, Smoliv etc.) that they too would be very easy to miss.
While I've recently gained the ability to swim, I'd have been absolutely spewing if I was, say, at the beach, and there was an out-of-reach shiny.
And I know for a fact that I easily would have missed most of the shinies that I ended up catching in Legends Arceus had it not been for those audio cues (I video-captured all of my encounters), and I shudder to think of some of those tantalising shinies that I may have already missed in Violet so far.
And to say nothing of all of the shinies that look virtually indistinguishable to their normal forms, not helped by the muddy dynamic resolution. I would rather a shiny audio cue patch take priority over anything performance related, to be quite frank. The performance doesn't bother me nearly as much as this QoL regression does. Even the Let's Go games gave us a visual clue by depicting sparkles in addition to the alternate colouration.
Nice to see some appreciation for Pokémon IX. Yes, there's stuff that could use fixing or improving, but there's also some good quality of life improvements.
Not a fan of the soundtrack so far. Sword and Shield gym leader battle theme is so much better than any battle theme I've heard so far in the game.
I agree with most of these. Another small one is that the characters are more expressive. We've come a long way from the static-faced, always smiling, never showing any expression protagonist from Generation VII. lol
@KateGray Thanks
@KateGray Yeah you have forgotten about separate sellables lol as they had that in Sword and Shield under a separate tab called Treasures
Pretty sure the treasure pocket has been there since SwSh. Either way, fast traveling was for sure in SwSh, Titan Pokémons are basically the Totem 'mons from Sun/Moon and the critical capture has been in every game since Black/White.
You could've just done a top 10, y'know.
Critical capture (when the pokéball only shakes once) has been in the series since gen V
Also some of the pokemon designs are super cute
@Ogbert
In your opinion, an yes, at the time an probably now it did need defending, people were only hearing or seeing the negatives rather than the phenomenal game underneath, this is the kind of Pokemon game we often dreamed about.
@Rosona it's the largest franchise in the world. It doesn't need defending when they clearly push and entry out before it's finished.
The game is unfinished. It's not phenomenal it's basely together and average at best. I'm not ever judging by the bugs, the core game is not finished and it's clear at every step.
@Ogbert
Except it does, you and the many people who bash it are exactly why it does, hate spreads faster then love, always has.
Saying it is unfinished is a stretch, it needing more time to run better is fair.
Basely together, I can only assume you mean barely, which just isn't true, it isn't and doesn't break every minute or anything even close.
An If S&V are what an average game is, then all I want are average games, I would then consistently have my mind blown.
You say you are not judging on bugs, but you clearly must be as the core game is very much finished which is clear every step.
What is it you are expecting from it? Perhaps you had too high expectations?
While its a shame you are not getting from it what I have and many, many others, it doesn't mean it is therefore average, perhaps it just isn't for you anymore?
@Rosona honestly I'm glad you've had your mind blown by this game. That's great for you! But I have been massively underwhelmed because I have played many other games on Switch and elsewhere far more polished and finished than this. So what do I expect? We'll from the largest franchise in the world's latest entry in their main series... something more akin to those games honestly. And there are glimpses throughout of where, given time, they could have achieved that.
It's not finished.
Half the shops don't let you preview items.
You can't change your characters clothes.
Basic features like searching the Pokedex are missing.
Things like the Pokecenter lady is animated to type on a keyboard but there is no keyboard. This is basic stuff that previous entries have.
The cutscenes and gym experiences are hugely paired down from the last entry.
Honestly you think it's finished? Look at the beautiful cutscenes you get in the Tera Raids. Look how polished and well done they are. Then look at the cutscenes when you encounter and battle the Titans. They are so basic and clearly unfinished.
Every corner feels like this. Everything very clearly had plans to be bigger and better and feels cut short to meet a deadline. What they've managed to do is bare bones for an open world like this. Yes it's a big step for Pokemon to be open world but it's not a finished one.
I'm glad you enjoyed it but that doesn't mean it's not unfinish or that it could be better. Despite itself I have enjoyed and completed it and my Dex, not as much as previous entries but enough, but it's not what it could and should have been. Not a game of this high a profile.
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