Topic: Pokémon Scarlet & Pokémon Violet

I agree with the DLC. I just think if Squirrel is asking about the main game, I dunno why they've waited a year, its still gonna be the same price as it was on launch lol

@Pizzamorg Ahh, then yeah. If the main game hasn't stuck out to them, then I wouldn't bother. I enjoyed my time with it in some aspects, but performance-wise it's hard to exactly recommend the game at all. Unless they can find some sort of deal pre-owned, I'd just wait for the 2024 games (and hope those end up being at least better performance-wise).

Usually you can get first party games on a pretty good sale if you get them on Black Friday. Just have to go physical instead of digital.

(Not sure if this is the right place to ask so sorry if it's not allowed here :3)

So first off, I LOVED Scarlet, it's now my second fave mainline pokemon game. (I could go into details but that would probably derail this post.) I liked it enough to actually try to complete the pokedex for once. Unfortunately the majority of missing pokemon I need to complete my pokedex are Violet exclusive.
So would anyone be willing to trade me a (non-hacked, genned or cloned) Ceruledge, Miraidon, and all the Iron- paradox mons?
I'd be willing to trade the equicalent Scarlet exclusives for them. (Armarouge, Koraidon, all the Scarlet paradox mons

@Moonwatcher
If you don't mind, what do you like about the game? I'm interested on picking up Scarlet on black friday but only really know about the negatives. It would be nice to hear about the good things in the game.

@blindsquirrel For positives of Violet I would put 3 main things:

• Great main plot. One of the sub-plots is decent also.
• Just doing things in literally any order you want is fun.
• riding around on your poke-mount

Not a perfect game, but quite fun.

@blindsquirrel I know that you didn't ask me, but personally I think that it's one of the best Pokemon entries for several reasons:

1.Actually likeable characters.

2. Better plot than most Pokemon games.

3. The best use of the main Legendaries in the whole franchise.

4. Actual open world, and at least a bit of challenge. It's the most fun main entry in a good while.

5. Not everything is plain or ugly looking. Many more Pokemon animations than in past Pokemon games. Compare it with Sword/Shield and Pokemon at least look natural roaming around. Trainer animations are good and the interior of the buildings look nice.

6. Music is good as always.

7. Pokemon formula, whether people like it or not, is great and popular for a reason. Testaralizing isn't as great as Mega Evolution, but it's also a great idea and added more to the competitive scene. It's just that the formula isn't at it's best in the story mode.

Of course not everything is great. As people have mentioned there's no reason for performance to be bad on a Nintendo first party title. However, I think that they are taking it to an extreme and lashing on these entries because of the accumulated frustration as well as others just parroting whatever the mob says because ironically, "they aren't sheep". Are those bugs game breaking? no, not really. There aren't any serious ones that I encountered. Not much on the level of stuff like Skyrim or Fallout when they came out.

Another problem is that while explorarion is fun, it lacks more interesting places to explore. People are asking for stuff like being able to enter houses again. Personally, I don't miss anything of that at all and I don't think that it really added to the exploration since most houses were too similar and one simply entered to search for items in their trash or talk to the NPCs to receive something. What the game needs in general is more places like the Power Plant, the iconic caves, the towers... those places that were actually interesting and unique. They could even make the map half the size with more of those and I think that exploration would be even more enjoyable, specially if there are optional ones that is what makes an open world game great for me.

Personally, I think that this one is an actual step forward despite of it's flaws, which by the way, were way worse in Sword and Shield. That game had bad performance, not an actual open world, the most annoying rivals in the franchise, a bland story that literally excluded you of moments that are just described through dialogue and not enough places to explore which by the way, were too small to enjoy. That entry was the one that deserved the backlash that this one is receiving.

Anyway, sorry for the long reply and me ranting a bit haha. You may feel different about them if you play them so sorry in advance if that's the case. But hopefully you'll enjoy them as much as I did despite of being pretty critical of the franchise in the past (fan since Red/Blue).

@FishyS @roy130390
Hey, thanks for the responses! It sounds fun aside from the possible glitches, which isn't a huge deal for me. I'm trying to decide between Scarlet or Y right now. Probably will just pull the trigger on both though.

@blindsquirrel While the game has its issues, I think that the story and gameplay made up for the tech issues. Not to excuse how poorly the game runs of course, but I enjoyed it more than I have enjoyed Pokemon since gen 6. The characters and story are actually pretty good, being on par or maybe a bit better than Gen 5's narrative. The Legendary pokemon are handled well, and the lore of Paldea is pretty rich. The gameplay is the same pokemon formula but more polished with an open world. While things don't level scale within the world itself, it still felt refreshing to no longer be confined to corridors that took you in a straight line through the region itself.

I believe that it being Open World is sort of the biggest detriment to the game though. Outside of the starting area and the final area, most of the game's world is just empty fields with cities littered about. The cities would be a bit more interesting if they didn't utilize the same copied and pasted buildings, and if the cities actually had interiors to the buildings that were unique. Some of the cities actually make the frame rate worse from what it felt like.

The wild might not be the most interesting in terms of a pokemon region, but I felt like the traversal was the best in the series, along with getting that feeling back of wanting to return to previous areas and explore again. A feeling which was lost with Generation 7. They brought back HMS, but in a way that isn't actually intrusive to the pokemon on your team. It helps open up the region when you get more and more abilities for your Legendary, and makes it to where older areas you couldn't get to are now fully open to explore and visit on your own.

The game is a mixed bag, but there's some good things about it. I wouldn't really recommend it because of how hard it is to even really play the game due to the technical issues; however, I still feel like if tech issues don't bother you, its probably worth giving it a chance.

@blindsquirrel XY honestly don't have much going for them other than being the first 3D games, not really worth it IMO. The game is a giant hallway simulator with how linear everything is (it's practically FFXIII levels of linearity), the story is terrible and practically nonexistent until the 11th hour, and there's not much in the way of optional content. SV is horribly unpolished but fun, especially if you love open world games. And the storyline is much better, although again, it's mainly the game's climax that's really great. Unless you really hate open world and like linear, simplistic games, you'll probably end up liking SV more than XY.

@Bolt_Strike X and Y are weird for me, since while they're hyper linear, they're not bad gameplay-wise. It doesn't feel like Gen 7 where you just keep going down linear halls with the game pausing you every five seconds to state the obvious or force an encounter. X and Y has a good amount of the game where you can just exist within the region, even if it is a linear path through. There's also that huge branch of the game between the first and second gym that holds that feeling of wonder a pokemon journey generally has.

Gen 7 is.. well.. it certainly is a game. One that I've played twice and just can't bring myself to play more than that. I'm trying to give gen 7 another chance, but I stopped around the Grass trial because of Hau forcing me into a 10-20 minute tutorial.

@Bolt_Strike
X & Y is weird for me. I didn’t even play a Pokémon game until about a year and a half ago, but as a kid I loved the cards and Anime. With that being the main gen at the time, I have a lot of nostalgia for the era.

Plus the only games I don’t have access to are Scarlet & Violet and X & Y. I guess i technically don’t have Sun & Moon, but I have Ultra Sun.

Yeah there has been a bit of high-horsing. There's definitely issues all around. The proximity activated wind turbines are a particularly fun example of the lack of polish. Probably the worst is my character disappearing during the Pokemon evolution cinematic. Also, some UI sound effects are weird, like the audio samples were clipped.

There are some nice visuals to be had all around too. The look of the game was always going to be a bit simplistic by intention and that's not a bad thing. I like the looks of the towns in particular.

And yes, the music is great.

I've not seen any actual game breaking bugs though or even game impairing bugs (and even the best games have those). It functions fine, just looks like a serviceable beta. Unpolished, but not broken as some want to push. I don't know if Cyberpunk 2077 comparisons are fair only because I don't know how "broken" that game was.

Sorry for the late reply but I'd be happy to help you out! I don't have Miraidon unfortunately as I'm also a Scarlet player but I have every other mon that you need sitting in my PC as I made a mad dash for the Shiny Charm around about SV's release myself XD

If you wouldn't mind me asking for a favour in return, could you help me with filling out the dex for the Teal Mask? Been wanting to get it finished since it came out but I could never find someone to trade with for some of the trade evos (Conkeldurr, Golem, etc.) so I'd greatly appreciate if you could do that with me once I send over the Violet exclusives! I'm currently in school so I won't be able to do it until a few hours later but I'll let you know when I'm available here (or through Twitter DM's if you have an account on there).

Oh and don't worry if you don't have the DLC yet; you can trade mons with those who do have it without any hassle

@Glom Yeah, I definitely think that the criticism for the game's looks were pretty much overblown. A lot of people kept making fun of glitches like character models stretching out, but I never once had anything happen whilst playing.. and I have about 100 hours in the game at the current. There are a ton of issues visually and technically like the frame rates or the world popping out of existence only to reappear later. There are muddy textures that look incredibly rough as well. However, despite that lack of polish I feel like this game does a lot of good things visually as well. Things like the Pokemon and character textures being super high detailed and realistic looking. Things like the Pokemon actually feeling like they're existing in the world instead of just sort of standing around and wandering aimlessly until you capture them.

It just all feels like the game has a strong visual presentation that would be even better if the devs were given more time with the game. Much like the rest of the game, SV was basically handicapped due to the issues that the dev team had with working under a strict time-frame. It sucks as well, given that I would really like to recommend this title to friends due to how much fun it is in comparison to the other games in recent years. How much care went into the story and characters, along with the designs for the Pokemon and the towns. Tons of potential that showed that the devs actually cared about the product they were developing, yet never had the time to see it fully realized.

If anything, this game is a showcase as to why I hope the next big generation of pokemon is able to be delayed if need be. The team needs more time and can't keep working under these conditions.

Oh that would be awesome, thank you! And yeah I'm willing to help with any trade evos you want.
Though since you have Scarlet, is there anything else you'd like in return instead of the Scarlet exclusives? I have HA Eevee and Alolan Vulpix if you'd like either? :3
(Don't have twitter though, so it'll have to be through here)

Oh and @blindsquirrel I don't have much time to write right now, but I'll get around to a proper answer as soon as I can

@Moonwatcher Oh I'll gladly take some Eevee and Alolan Vulpix, thank you!

Just spent the last hour gathering all the resources I'd need for trading so I'm ready to go whenever you are! Just let me know if you're good to go and I'll send on a trade code

Honestly I'm not a big fan of open worlds, but I loved the open World in Pokemon Violet. It is somewhat big but also very easy to get around, especially later on when you can basically just climb over everything. And between all the goals on the map and fast travel you can explore all you want and literally never get lost or get away from the main plot more than you want to. In my opinion, the game dodged almost all the negatives of open world games, except for the graphical/lots of emptiness aspects.

I will say, in contrast to what a few people have said, there actually are a lot of fun secrets scattered around the world which really make you want to explore. Sure, the density of them is less than in an ultra polished Mario or Zelda game, but there are still a lot.

The only non-graphical aspect of the open world I thought was weird was the lack of level scaling. On the one hand that made the first part of the game fairly difficult and fun, but then it made the later game trivial difficulty-wise. Unless you purposely use your non-main Pokemon. Honestly that was a bigger issue with the gyms than it was on the world map. It's something which could be improved but wasn't the end of the world.

Also, the towns were pretty dull. My wishlist for a new open-world pokemon game besides improved graphical performance would be better towns, better clothing options, and some type of level scaling. Besides that, honestly a great game.

I can trade now if you're still available. Otherwise I'll be free from 8pm gmt onwards tonight. (so 3 hours after this post was made) Hope that's ok, if not I can try and rescedule things.

Yeah, the lack of level scaling is a pretty major oversight. What I did was travel up the western side of the region with one team and then catch new, lower levelled Pokemon to use on the eastern side (then mixed and matched once the new ones caught up in level). I remember beating one gym in the second half of the game with my lower levelled Pokemon, and then Nemona appeared and fought me immediately afterwards, but her team was much higher level than the gym leader. IIRC I actually got close to winning with my massively underlevelled team but didn't manage it.

Maybe I missed something but I honestly don't know what you're supposed to do, because if you don't swap to a new team halfway through the game you're going to be ridiculously overlevelled for some areas, no matter which order you do things in as far as I can tell. I don't know exactly how level scaling should work in an open world Pokemon game but it's definitely something they should think about for the next one. Anyway, this was my biggest issue with the game but I really liked it for the most part.