Topic: Pokémon Scarlet & Pokémon Violet

@Moffo Oh yeah, I also got a shiny Milcery on the last day of the event! (plus a random shiny Duskull about 15 minutes later in Kitakami XD)

My shiny luck during Indigo Disk has been kind of wild honestly; I got about 6 shinies total between Teal Mask's release and Indigo Disk coming out and yet I've already managed to grab 9 total shinies: Litleo (evolved up into Pyroar), Alolan Exeggutor, Slakoth (my 6th one funnily enough XD), the event Lucario and the aforementioned Milcery, Duskull and 2 Delibirds. I'm kind of reinvigorated to try and get as many different shinies as possible now if I'm honest (hell; I might even go back to SwSh and finally attempt a Galarian Ponyta hunt I've had on the backburner for the past 3 years!).

also really looking forward to that Dragon-centric Outbreak event too (SHINY DURALUDON/ARCHALUDON WILL BE MINE)

Meanwhile I only need every form of Alcremie and every form of Minior, along with a few starters and the Violet exclusive (new) Paradox mon. The only one that'll be genuinely hard to get is the Violet exclusive paradox mon, since I can't trade people my scarlet ones... given you only get one of each.

I'm surprised by how cool Paradox Entei is as I didn't care for Paradox Suicune, and the less said about the hideous abomination that is Paradox Raikou, the better.

Would any Violet players here be able to help me finish off the Indigo Disk Pokedex? I've got almost all mons necessary for it and am just missing a couple of trade evos/version exclusives.

These include:

• Shieldon/Bastiodon
• Rhyperior
• Magmortar
• Kingdra
• Alolan Sandshrew/Sandslash
• Iron Crown
• Iron Boulder

I have every opposite mon from Scarlet in my boxes so I'd be more than glad to supply the necessary counterparts for anyone's own dex if need be. Thanks in advance and please let me know if you'd be interested in helping me out!

@Slugg You unlock the ability to fly permanently after catching Terapagos, not by completing the Super-Hard Course; Amarys will be chilling in one of the classrooms and when you talk to her, she'll give you the food necessary for Ko/Miraidon to fly. Did you talk to her yet?

I beat the DLC recently, and wow. This was honestly the most fun i've had in a pokemon game ever. The characters are so well written (I love Kieran and Penny sm) and i honestly didn't experience that many performance issues.
The open world was genuienly so insanely fun, and it carried a sense of adventure that i hadn't really felt before in a pokemon game.
I honestly don't care about performance issues if the next games have this much heart put into them.

I’m gonna start over on Violet next week.

I just started Violet. This is absolutely my first Pokemon game of any kind. I think one of the challenges of picking up a game series with numerous versions is that any one game would have accumulated a fair amount of assumed mechanics or mythology that veterans take for granted. It's hard for a newbie like myself to appreciate the core of the game. For example, I see 2 kinds of currencies, sandwiches, way too many shops selling similar food or ingredients, TMs, berries, and of course Pokemon in all their varieties, types, strengths and weaknesses.

What is the basic gameplay loop that you enjoy? Is it catching or finding all possible Pokemon? Leveling up one Pokemon or your entire party? Finding the optimal makeup of your party? Picnics? Beating up everyone you meet? Finding obscure materials?

For what it's worth, sandwiches are not a normal part of the series. Personally I almost completely ignored them while playing Violet. Pretty much every other item besides clothing are centered around improving your Pokemon, healing your Pokemon, capturing new Pokemon. Pokeballs and healing items are probably where most of my game money goes personally.

As for the game loops? Violet has more of an exploration aspect than most Pokemon games, but every mainline Pokemon game has 1 or more plot thread to follow (one of which is always 'beat all regional gyms') and the additional goal to fill your Pokedex. In Violet I would consider the 3 core storylines the main game and finishing filling your Pokedex the main post-game.

Leveling up Pokemon, catching every type of Pokemon you find and beating up every NPC is sort of the core game loop for all the games.

It should be noted that in Violet if you unbalance your main party too much level-wise you may have problems because overly high leveled Pokemon won't consistently follow your orders until later on.

Personally I have some favorite types of Pokemon I usually start with and then I experiment with the new Pokemon in the game so I tend to have 1 main party with a diverse set of strengths at any given time plus maybe a backup set of different leveled up Pokemon plus some rejects which used to be in my main party but that I replaced partway through the game. And then hundreds of other Pokemon I captured but didn't really use in battle.

The one other mainstay of the series is multiplayer battles but I've never been into them much personally; it requires much more optimizing of your party if you want to be good at them though so if you're really into the strategy aspect, multiplayer might be interesting.

@cwong15 The two currencies aren't really all that important. One is for TM crafting (which is basically buying items that allow you to effectively craft moves for Pokemon).

Sandwiches are only in SV, but they offer a few good things. Breeding is only really possible with making the right sandwich, and same with shiny hunting (rare colored pokemon).

For me, I tend to focus on dex completion, but you don't have to do it. I'd suggest just following the main story and catching the pokemon that you want to catch. Normally Pokemon titles tend to have one story path that's super linear, but this one has three different ones that connect back together- all of which can be done in theory within any order (of course, there is a set order, but it's so overly complicated that I don't suggest you follow it).

Edit: Also, if you have the DLC I suggest not touching it until post-game. Mainly because you can do one part during the main story, but the second part will stop you halfway through until you beat the main story of the OG game. That, and the battles in the second part are harder due to the teams being structured with a slightly more competitive focus.

Can you even access the dlc before you beat the game…?

@Eel You can technically access both, with the Kitakami one being as soon as you get done with early game I believe, while the other being able to be started after you finish Kitakami- but pushing you away if you haven't beaten the actual game itself (I believe you can get up to getting into the Terarium before the game pushes you out by not letting you continue with the story).

How well does Violet run on Switch 1, i have a Switch Lite and remember people saying to get it on Switch 2. I mean, is it really that bad on Switch 1?

@Solarstriker I played it for ~150+ hours on Switch 1, and it was perfectly fine. But make sure to install it on the internal memory, not on an SD card; that helps with a lot of the asset streaming issues the game has.

And if you eventually get a Switch 2, the update is free for Violet, so you'll only ever need to buy a Switch 1 version of the game anyway

@Solarstriker Depends how much graphical jank bothers you.

Some of the cut scenes are so hilariously low frame rate that they feel like a slide show, the game doesn't load a lot of things until you are quite close to them, and you get some weird things like Pokemon half embedded in walls occasionally. Other than stuff like that, the actual pokemon are well done and exploring and the combat is fine. I enjoyed my time with the game but it definitely wasn't super polished.

play the main game first then jump int the DLC since that would make more sense to do. same goes for any of the DLC for those Xenoblade games even though the Xenoblade DLC stuff one of them takes place before or after Xenoblade 3 while the other DLC stuff take place before Xenoblade 2.

i still need to buy and install the DLC story expansion for my Pokemon Violet game to catch more pokemon

Today is the third anniversary of the release of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet on November 18th, 2022! What are y'alls thoughts about this game three years later?

My thought is that as of right now, it's still my favorite video game of all time. But that may change in the future now that I am branching out more in terms of gaming.

@Nep-Nep-Freak I really enjoyed my original playthrough on Switch 1, I had very few issues, and it was so much fun. On Switch 2 it really shines and it's one of my favourite Pokémon games besides Arceus and the original Gold on GameBoy.

@Nep-Nep-Freak In my opinion, Pokemon Scarlet is quite fun but also quite flawed. A large part of what I liked was the open world and the novelty of it. I think Pokemon works just so well with open-world design that it became easy to dismiss many of its flaws. Also, the story, especially the DLC storyline, is one of the best in the series. Functionally, I enjoy terastallization as a gimmick. Finally, I deeply enjoyed the double-battle focus and difficulty of the Indigo Disk.

As for what I didn't like, I'll have to do a full-on list:
-Abysmal graphics
-Lack of level scaling
-Lackluster postgame
-One of the worst assortments of new Pokemon for any new Pokemon generation
-DLC was too expensive
-Main game story was way too easy (especially Geeta)
-Unnatural Pokemon spawn patterns (how most Pokemon just spawn in a donut around their evolution)
-Terrible character customization
-Forgettable region design
-Terastallization was poorly implemented
-Raid battles were broken
-Switch 1 performance
-Bugs

I would've rated the game higher at launch, but I give the game 6/10 without the DLC and 7/10 with the DLC. All in all, it's a fun game unfortunately riddled with problems.

@Nep-Nep-Freak
I didn't touch my Pokemon Violet since after I finished the game.
I don't like that much the character design, the terrible performance, the bugs, etc.
I still thought Pokemon Sword / Shield looked more appealing for me.