I often tell people that I am not a Pokémon fan. I say this while sitting in a Pikachu-branded chair, with my handmade Snom figurine hanging out on my desk next to my my off-brand plastic Swinub figurine, having played 90% of the available Pokémon games out there (I didn't bother with Black and White 2 and I didn't like Sun and Moon enough to get the Ultra version). But it's true. In a lot of ways, I am the Pokémon player that everyone complains about — the one who buys the games, has an okay time, wishes they were different, and then buys the next one anyway.
The thing is, it's more complicated than that. I love a lot of things about Pokémon, or I wouldn't keep shelling out for the games and the merch, would I? I love a lot of the designs from each generation, I love the increasing character customisation, and I love playing with friends and having an incredibly fun time messing around in Raid Battles. I love the innovation that each game brings, I love sharing discoveries online with the whole community, and I love choosing a starter all over again. See? I love a lot of things. At least six things.
What I don't like about Pokémon is that it often feels like a parent forcing you to play with educational toys instead of what you're currently doing, which is having fun pretending that a cardboard box is a spaceship. "Come over here, you're not playing it right," Game Freak says. "Look at this! It's Pokémon battles! Don't you want to do Pokémon battles?" Actually, no, I don't. Not really. The battles are the least interesting thing about Pokémon for me — and for once, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet actually seem to agree with me.
Sure, it still has wild Pokémon, gyms, and the Pokémon League, and sure, everything is still focused on making your pets fight, but a lot of the friction that puts me off Pokémon games is miraculously gone.
No longer am I forced to walk down straight paths full of people that literally want to fight me on sight. If I don't want trainer battles, I just don't talk to them! Wild Pokémon are hardly a threat, since I can just throw out my powerful team leader and have them auto-battle. I don't need to even watch! Likewise, the shop and Pokémon Center interfaces don't take up all my time with loading screens and menus — they know exactly what I want, which is to buy things and heal things as fast as possible, and they get it done immediately. Or, well, they would, if the shops loaded their inventory a bit faster.
And the open world, non-linear gameplay is, of course, the best part. I don't even need to look at gyms for ages if I don't want to, and then I can smash through them with a level 70 Fuecoco just to get them off my list. I can spend 100 hours just exploring the world and not talking to anyone except the Pokémon Center lady every now and again. In fact, I don't even need to do that, because I can heal my team during a picnic with sandwiches and showers!
This is truly the most friction-free Pokémon game we've had yet, where the world is open to you and you can play how you want with minimal interference from the game itself. You can even turn cutscenes off! Eventually, you might have to engage with the game's storyline and mechanics if you want to actually progress, but that's not even necessary, technically — you can explore the entire map without even going to school, if you want.
The main problem with the Pokémon series is that it's been stuck in its ways for so long, and it's not hard to see why. What they do — games about fighting creatures — is popular. How they do it is popular, too. They just sold 10 million copies of arguably the most broken Pokémon game yet. Why would they change?
But I think things are generally looking up, at least in terms of how Pokémon games are designed. I'm not excusing the utter mess of bugs, glitches, and straight-up missing content from Scarlet and Violet, but I think that since Shigeru Ohmori took over from Junichi Masuda as Director of the games (starting with Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire in 2014), the series has been getting more interesting and unusual, and I hope it continues in that vein.
For once, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet actually lets me play more or less how I want to play a Pokémon game — as an exploration game with optional-ish story stuff. Titans, gyms, and the Starfall storyline feel more like Assassin's Creed-like icons on my map, which I will tackle if I'm in the area because it's satisfying, not because it's What I Have To Do.
Honestly, I hope all Pokémon games are like this in future. Way less janky, of course... but free.
Comments 38
With every article I read, every snapshot I see, the temptation to get Pokemon Scarlet/Violet grows... but not yet! First, I must persevere through Pokemon X! ...and see if the games get less buggy. then I might actually consider.
This is genuinely my favorite Pokemon game ever. The technical issues have in now way hampered my enjoyment when it gets so much right. My only complaint is: no Trubbish.
Seeing you people rave endlessly over an unfinished messy bomb of a game while being insanely harsh to like everything else is hilariously sad. Then again you guys prefer Balan Wonderworld to bowsers fury so I can’t say I’m surprised..
It's actually kinda ironic that this is the follow up to SwSh (in regard to new generations), the most linear Pokemon game out there
@Funneefox You seem really angry everytime someone dares to say something good about SV instead of just pointing out it's flaws (despite there being plenty articles about that on this site already)
This article might be a way to put some polish and sparkle on the game after an endless wave of game bashing articles before. I’m just so confused. NintendoLife seems divided. I was originally very excited to get this game from Nintendo’s own videos but then everything I’ve seen on NintendoLife scared me away and I didn’t buy it. While this article highlights aspects of the game I was previously unaware of, it also pulls me down a bit more on my interest in the game. I’m not am exploring gamer, I’m a warrior. I love Pokémon for the battles, not the aimless wandering. In past games, I have enjoyed the linear method and catching certain Pokémon, leveling them up, building strong teams, and then the sweet victory at the end. This game sounds like a train wreck in every way possible based on what I’ve read on this site. Is it really this bad? I’ve still been considering getting it, at times, but that is fading fast. Is there anyone here who loves Pokémon for the battles primarily, and the straightforward “go here, then go there” type gameplay? If so, have you played this game? What are your thoughts?
It is really good but game freak still made some of its usual missteps. It's insanely easy and now they even took the ability to play the game in set mode, which was the only option in the game to make it harder. It really feels like they despise the core fans and want to cater mostly to new fans and children.
@Funneefox They gave Balan Wonderworld a three and Bowser's Fury a ten. Unless I'm missing something, that point doesn't really hold any weight... tell me if I'm wrong, though!
@Kirbyo I think he's referring to the last sentence of this article: https://www.nintendolife.com/features/soapbox-in-defence-of-balan-wonderworld-the-worst-game-of-2021
@Funneefox
I'm kind of the opposite.
Much like Skyrim, the glitches on first release are numerous, but none of them have negatively impacted the gameplay for me.
The journey isn't interrupted, the exploration is interesting to me, terrastalizing is so much more interesting than "watch as i make my pokemon larger for what feels like the umpteenth game," and I can breed pokemon more easily than ever.
I'm not saying you're wrong. The problems bother a lot of people, but if there are other people like myself and my friends who are playing this out there, then it makes perfect sense to me.
The only pokemon game I've felt is better than this one is Arceus.
So for some of us, this truly is a revelation when it comes to pokemon games.
Oh I think there's been PLENTY of friction online if you know what I mean.
SV's freedom is absolutely fantastic and it makes going through the region an absolute blast....but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think the way Legends handled open areas in a Pokemon game was much better. To me, Legends is smaller yet more densely packed in terms of it's exploration while SV, like a lot of it's open world contemporaries, is more freeing and less hand-holdy....at the cost of sparsity in cities and occasionally the world itself.
I think both are great at what they set out to do, I just think PLA does it's goals a bit better (though that could just be my biases speaking, PLA is my joint GOTY after all). Definitely intrigued as to where they take the series next though, I'm personally hoping for the main series and Legends to be split into two different, ongoing series similar to SMT and Persona, that'd make so damn happy.
@Vortexeo Ok, so I was missing something. My bad! of course, that article is not from the same person who made this article, so they might have completely separate opinions, and that article was by one person, so it doesn't reflect the opinions of the whole group.
@Kirbyo It's no problem and yeah I agree! I was just letting you know why they might've thought that 😅
@Kiyata we've written pretty extensively on our thoughts, and we're all different people, so we have different takes. Some of us aren't impressed at all, some of us are having fun despite the issues, and some of us just wish that Game Freak had released something less slapdash. Our opinion isn't a unanimous, solid thing — it changes over time, and it is made of many parts. It's not an all-or-nothing thing, and we're not trying to convince you to buy it or play it, just to let you know our thoughts so you can make an informed decision.
Personally, I think the game is unforgivably janky, but I see ideas within it that I love. I've written positive and negative pieces to show that balance!
@Funneefox I didn't review Bowser's Fury or Balan Wonderworld. NL is not a monolith; we are a team of many diverse viewpoints!
@KateGray How do we know you're not just part of a larger mycellium HMMMMM????
(please don't take this seriously btw)
@Kiyata You may love the Let's Go Mechanic, where you press R and can send Pokemon out straight into simple overworld battles where they mow down the other Pokemon in the field. If you see one you want to catch or actually do battle with, you can call the Pokemon back and press ZR to throw your Pokemon out from it's Pokeball at the Pokemon to engage in a traditional Pokemon Battle.
What they have done in the game is given you the freedom to choose to play how you want. If you want to fight, all 8 Gym Battles, plenty of overworld trainers, and multiple "evil" Team battles are available. It is just your choice in how you get to them, meaning you might find the Lv. 50 gym before the Lv. 10 Gym, but considering the stronger Pokemon in the overworld sort of gatekeeping you, you'd likely know to turn back until later in the game when you can actually fight them.
The game is a technical mess, but honestly, I've been having a lot of fun in Local or Online Multiplayer with friends, exploring the world together instead of alone. There is still plenty of battling to be done. If you can look beyond the technical issues, and laugh at them along the way, and see what Game Freak was going for (it becomes apparent in the first few hours of gameplay) there is fun to be had, but the game does not live up to the technical standards that it should.
@Kiyata
So, this is a game with some good bits which are good (sometimes very good) and some bad bits which are bad (sometimes very bad).
Nintendo Life seems divided because Nintendo Life is not a person with a single opinion but an organisation formed of many people with different opinions and different responses to the various good and bad bits that make up the game.
The onus is not in Nintendo Life to force its contributors to a single homogenous opinion, but to act as a platform to showcase as much of the game (good and bad) as possible so that the readership may make an informed purchasing decision (if they haven’t bought it) — or contribute to the discussion (if they have).
If this seems confusing, then perhaps that’s because GameFreak have released a confusing game: one that marks a bold and liberating new direction for the series — successfully incorporating many fresh ideas… while failing spectacularly on a technical performance level.
It’s confusing. There’s no getting around that. But the onus is on the consumer to do their research and work out whether they’ll actually enjoy it.
@Pokemaniacal Would have just assumed you're a Pokemaniac from your username, and hopefully someone with Poke in your username on a Nintendo site would be a Pokefan. However, your username also describes your maniacal idea too. Probably should throw in permadeath rules as well, since your dragons would likely die of bloodloss.
@KateGray @EaglyTheKawaiiShika @Nua @Maxz thank you so much for your thoughtful responses. I appreciate your input, opinions, and explanations. This gives me a lot to think about, still, on whether I’d enjoy this game. I never got Arceus, either, so this new open world style is very new to me in a Pokémon game! I will continue to read about this game until I buy it or lose my interest in it, whichever comes first. 😊 I guess at this moment I’m at 50/50.
The technical bugs and glitches are inexcusable but from a design standpoint, this is potentially my favorite Pokémon game to date. The exploration, amount of objectives, and freedom to do anything in any order has been incredible. Plus I really like mosr of the new designs.
That said, GameFreak best put out an update to address the issues. It hasn’t ruined the experience for me but it has made it a bit less enjoyable.
@Kiyata You're welcome, it is a change in the formula, but that's not a bad thing. When I was younger, I cared more about battling Pokemon than I do now, the battles are fun for me, but my focus is more on catching Pokemon and completing the regional PokeDex now and having a fun experience while I do so. The game still manages to scratch my battling itch. You'd probably enjoy Arceus' change to the battle mechanics too, having the ability to make moves do more damage in exchange for being slower, or the opposite, a faster move that is weaker. These battle styles can be changed on the fly and applied to your moves in battle. This did not make it's way over to Gen 9 though.
I just got it 6 days go, played it for around 50 hours. Just finished the last gym leader. And I loved the gym leaders, the gym jobs, the new Pokémon, all the a lot new overworld animations for old mons.
Battling (and discovering new Pokémon and forms) is my fav thing about Pokémon, so I'm basically the opposite of you.
I even grinded 3 teams at the same time so I'm always underleveled at battles and gyms. Sneaky hard mode for myself.
Haven't had any glitches and the game looks good enough for me (in handheld at least).
Probably in my top 3 gens already.
Sorry, the correct take is to throw this in the bin if you're within 30 feet of it. Or to break it into 1,000,000,000 pieces with a blunt tool (preferably a hammer). Nobody is allowed to like a single thing about this generation and if they do, they're objectively wrong.
Friction-free is the problem. I get an automatically leveled up team just from basic exploration and all my Pokemon are the same lvl as the gym leader's ace. On top of it they removed Set battle style for some reason. The game's battles could be played by a drinking bird toy tapping the A button.
Old school Pokemon made you actually gasp send your Pokemon into battle to train them. All that friction, I wonder how it became a successful series among kids.
Not quite sure about the sentiment of this article, but that Men Without Hats reference did not go missed.
I still can’t believe these games received a 7/10 review score. They’re easily two of the best in the series, minus the graphical/performance issues (which I’ve experienced rarely from the beginning all the way to postgame). All of the things listed in this article reinforce that point, but of course there are still aspects about the series that can continue to evolve.
@Flint I forgot I had made that reference and had to check what you mean!! If I can't think of a good tagline I just default to lyrics
@kategray 😆 Love it
@Kiyata I am someone who is not a fan of recent Pokémon games, but has still played them all. I also enjoy Pokémon Emerald Rogue, which is a great hack for the sake of team building and difficulty. I can say, this game is very broken. I witnessed people melting into each other, and a Golduck falling through the world. It was hilarious frankly. The battles are also insanely slow. Some of the slowest I have ever seen, with not so great effects either.
On the other hand. This game has objective markers everywhere, you can just place down a flag and ram yourself over to the next objective. There are three tasks you must do in the game. If you want linearity, you should either set down flags to the three objectives closest to you at all times, to ensure levels scale naturally. Or you could just do the entirety of one task first, like the gyms, simply by setting the marker on each gym until they're all gone. (But it's better to do the ingredient line first.)
However, if you run through the game in the wrong order on purpose, like I did, then it's actually one of the more difficult Pokémon games. I was often fighting trainers that were ten levels above me. It was rather fun.
The game isn't worth the money, especially compared to some of the amazing rom hacks out there, but it's still not so bad for people who don't do well with open worlds. (Like me.) It helps that the open world is very small compared to others.
Since I'm not an avid Pokemon player, I didn't bother to read the review and generally don't follow the news. But hearing @KateGray perspective on this tells me that this may just be the Pokemon I have always been waiting for. I may go ahead and consider leaping in on this iteration.
@MeloMan without a doubt. The glitches and janky problems are not a deal breaker, I’ve had minimal issues and put in 75 hours so far. Overall it’s a great new direction for the series and by far one of the most addictive games yet. Very difficult to put down.
Too bad they re-added friction that had already been removed in Legends: Arceus. In that game, you can easily catch Pokemon outside of battle, and battles themselves are exceptionally snappy. Whereas everytime I want a new pokemon in Scarlet/Violet, I have to run into it, then initiate the same old-fashioned, slow-paced battle gameplay as in previous gens.
Ditto with evolutions. Having control over when a pokemon evolves put into my hands was amazing. It's annoying spamming the B button whenever a pokemon I don't want to let evolve gains a level.
And while it's dramatically improved over something like SuMo where you're interrupted by a cutscene every ten minutes or so, there's still too many pointless unskippable dialogues in this game.
The open world approach IS the way to go for Pokemon, though, even if GameFreak needs more time to make their open-world RPGs. It feels like much more of an adventure when you're not just railroaded down one path.
@Funneefox
Feels like they got a memo last week telling them to 100% bank on Pokémon fans who absolutely don’t want to be told anything negative about this game
Even though I normally prefer somewhat linear games, I absolutely love playing this game in a nonsensical and accidental order. I love it too much in fact. It's not quite a 'this game is so good I want to keep playing', but more of a 'this is so addictive I can't stop playing'. I think Arceus was an overall better game, but I didn't desperately crave playing more and more like I have for Violet...which is both a good feeling and a bad one (definitely bad on my sleep schedule).
@SalvorHardin That's not how journalism works, don't worry. I've just been having fun with Pokémon Scarlet and wanted to offer my thoughts that weren't entirely negative (although I've experienced plenty of bugs myself, and I'm really sad about the game's towns being so boring!)
The world would be quite dull if we were only allowed to feel one way about a game. We contain multitudes
@FishyS Yeah! That's it, really - I just want to keep going back. Even though it's buggy and I've had three hard crashes and two total freezes. Something can be crappy and good at the same time!
I don’t know why, but this one hasn’t stuck with me as much.😭 Yet I say this as I’m playing and loving the game. I’m really excited to start Xenoblade 2, so I think I’ve been subconsciously rushing myself through Pokémon, but it has been a fun 60-hour break.😅 I’ll probably like it more as I play.
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