Topic: Pokémon Scarlet & Pokémon Violet

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Right?! Genuinely, so many of the designs for this Gen are really cool. Like a lot of it is very weird, and a lot of it is just the Pokemon thing of just looking at household objects or real animals and just sorta sticking a goofy face on them and calling it a day, but it feels like there are more standouts here than I've remembered for a while now.

The rest of this post isn't directed to you specifically @Fizza, sorry 😅 As I wrote that paragraph, I just started to have a lot of thoughts and they all flowed out and I realised by the end I had written a big wall of text that due to the quote at the top seems like it is all directed to you lol

I also think it is interesting, because the way this gen Pokemon are animated, and especially Pokemon who get signature moves that can seemingly only be used by them, they seem to have really gone all out on these animations. It is nothing crazy by video game standards et al, but there are so many static, barely animated/barely have any special effects hold over animations from the past in here in direct contrast to those newer animations where the Pokemon actually move their body, they actually close down space, the attack actually has unique animations and effects attached to it. It is a real shame they weren't given more time to go back over every animation and give it this much care.

And of course, it is especially sad that games like Monster Hunter Stories 2 exist, because by those standards even the new animations here are just nothing, man I wish they would have been given the time to bring all animations to that level.

I will say that is one thing I am finding with this game the more I play it. Like the writing is fine, the "ohmergerd we actually have the open world Pokemon game we dreamed of as kids!" thing goes far, especially with so many interesting Pokemon to catch, but the longer I play this the more I'm just like... is this game even anything?

Even if this ran better and looked nicer, I almost feel like it would be a double-edged sword because the technical problems I think have almost created a distraction from everything else bad here. I came from GOW Ragnarok and went straight into this, and it is just jarring.

And it isn't like we are comparing a one-man couple of thou indie project to some blockbuster game release, I am pretty sure Gamefreak, Nintendo and the Pokemon brand could buy Sony and wouldn't even feel it in their pockets and this game is honestly just kind of embarrassing when you think of all the money they have, and this is the product we get in return.

You have three quest lines, but all three of them basically have you doing exactly the same things in each. Like I honestly didn't like the Arceus boss battles thing, but at least they tried something else and tried to give a sense of spectacle to those key moments. SV so far has absolutely none of that.

And I also just can't help but think like as we go through that Titan storyline and wonder just how much better that could have been, had they had even basic facial animations (not just static expressions the game cycles between) and voice acting. Like those shouldn't be crazy hopes and dreams from a 2022 game that is released by a trio who have basically unlimited money.

Even the open world design itself, like it is just nothing really. It is tiny, with a huge amount of it cut off for the entirety of the campaign, there are basically no landmarks whatsoever and you could argue that the only thing that matters in these environments are the Pokemon as it is a Pokemon game, but wouldn't it be nice to have other things to do, see and interact with in the spaces between the questlines? Again, like this shouldn't be a big ask, all the money they have.

Not to mention, navigating the map before you get your Mounts full suite of traversal abilities is honestly kind of excruciating. It uses the worst kind of open world design (to me), where you have to go what feels like an hour in the wrong direction, to then double back round on yourself and basically go back to where you started only on a slightly higher piece of elevation you could only access on that path to get to your location.

And it isn't lost on me why they do that, because they want you to see all the Pokemon and make sure you don't fall behind the level curve, because if you could just go straight to every location, they'd have to basically redesign and rebalance the whole title with that in mind, which runs the risk of people who exploring every inch becoming insanely over levelled very quickly. I get it.

However, you realise just how small this map is once you have the ability to actually go in straight lines and you no longer have mountains and stuff blocking your path. I do genuinely wonder if they made it as convoluted as they did to trick the player into thinking the map was way bigger than it really is.