Feature: 14 Things That Pokémon Scarlet And Violet Get Absolutely Right

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

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.

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.

@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.