I think by this point, we all know how a Pokémon game usually plays out. Since 1996 the formula hasn’t changed too much; defeat the gym leaders, fight the elite four, and if you want, complete the Pokedex. Sure, it’s had a few change-ups over the dozens of games released, Sun and Moon had island challenges instead of gyms and the switch from 2D to 3D was significant enough to feel like a brand new era, but for a while now, It’s felt like the Pokémon company could just release the same old experience with a different name on the front and it’d sell like crazy. While this is still true, there are elements to Scarlet and Violet which do make it feel like a new direction for the long-running franchise, but these elements are only one part of this mixed bag of a game.

To be honest, I wasn’t originally going to review this game, as I believe a lot of the open-world gameplay was taken from the recent spinoff, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which I’m led to assume brought forth a less linear progression system and had this new “Breath Of The Wild” inspired layout and accompanying sense of freedom with its exploration. I can’t comment too much on the actual impact that game had as I haven’t played it, but it seemed like it answered fans’ disappointment towards Sword and Shield’s ‘Open-Zones’, which were free-roam-ish sections in the 2019 entries. It seems like we’ve been slowly inching towards a fully open-world game with each entry and spinoff, and now that we have a mainline Pokémon duo of games set within one, we can see just how much the game benefits from having that new range of freedom.

The game’s premise is heavily reliant on its large sprawling map; Paldea, and incorporates each corner of its Iberian-based world via multiple questlines. You’ll start pretty similarly to every preceding game: choose a starter from one of the new Water, Fire or Grass types, meet the game’s ever-persistent rival character, and wave your mother goodbye as you set off on your adventure. Where this game decides to rock the boat is by having your character enlist in a Pokémon based school, that being Naranja or Uva Academy (Each being exclusive to Scarlet and Violet respectively). At this school, you’re rather swiftly sent on a Treasure hunt, which is essentially the school sending you off into the world to fend for yourself and find your own personal “treasure”, which is not only the broadest statement ever conceived but is also not something any school that has kids attending should ever do. Blatant safeguarding issues aside, the game is then split into three questlines spread across the world and is deceptively presented as a choose-your-own-path type of deal. Which is only half true.

Along your questionably aimed treasure hunt, you’ll encounter that unnatural and robotic modern Pokémon dialogue we’ve all come to know and put up with, from characters which are either incredibly two-dimensional or tone-deaf, which makes the one surprisingly well-written character feel very out of place. The new Pokémon this time around are pretty great, excluding the starters, which just didn’t do it for me this generation. A couple of standout favourites of mine include Tinkatuff, a hammer-wielding pink child, Scovillian, a double-headed Chilli Monster, and Annihalape, a new third evolution to one of my childhood favourites Primeape, which looks fucking badass.

The star of the show this time is the box-art-featured legendary Pokémon, who, in the past, you’d meet and utilise at the end of the game, but this time, becomes your main form of transport from the beginning of your adventure. I love this aspect of the game, as not only does it serve to utilise the star Pokémon in a more prominent narrative role, but also perfectly complements the open-world design, and makes traversing it a breeze. Zooming, gliding or climbing with Koraidon in Pokémon Scarlet ( or Miraidon for Violet) Is arguably the most memorable and unique feature of these games, and discovering the region atop their backs is an exciting new way to explore the Pokémon world.

The two legends, Koraidon and Miraidon are exclusive to each game, and of course, this isn’t anything new for Pokémon games, you’ll have Ho-Oh in Gold and Lugia in Silver for example, along with a handful of version exclusive Pokémon, that’s how it’s been since the old days. This game however does do a bit more in the narrative department when it comes to distinguishing between games. Other than the academy each having a unique name, version exclusive NPC’s and gym leaders, the main feature is more prominent towards the end of the game, specifically in the final act. Without spoiling too much, the two differ by focusing on elements of the past in Scarlet and the future in Violet. It’s hard to explain without giving too much away but the version-exclusive Pokémon become quite a bit cooler with this aspect in mind. An early indication of this is in the design of the two legendaries with one looking more robotic, and the other looking “dinosaur-esque”, with their names, also originating from the Japanese “korai” and “mirai” meaning “ancient” and “future”. The point I’m trying to make here is that the two versions have cool, yet understated duelling contrasts, which some people might not realise playing through their version of the game.

One of the three questlines you’ll embark upon is defeating the new enemy team, Team Star, whose awful catchphrases and bland uniforms mark only the beginning of a confusing yet possibly clever twist on the long-running enemy team formula. See, this time, the evil team is actually formed by a group of bullied school students, who wanted to group up and get back at their tormentors. Cool concept yeah, but this somehow became a territorial endeavour where each founding member runs an open plan headquarters around the region, enlisting what seems like 100s of other students, for a reason which is beyond my understanding. Not only is the plot in this storyline very disjointed, but the gameplay is also beyond bland. You send out three members of your party to defeat thirty Pokémon in ten minutes. This actually takes about two minutes to complete, and on the off-chance that your Pokémon doesn’t one-shot the opposition and is hurt, there are healing stations scattered around the base, which means it would be physically challenging to lose. Another element of this game which is almost impossible to fail is the Gym “challenges”

The gyms in this game are possibly the worst in a Pokémon game period. They tried to push the boat out in this one and instead of having the interior of the gym be the typical maze of trainers to battle and navigate through, this time you’ll have to complete a random task before facing the top dog. I get why they did this, Pokémon gyms are all very similar and I’m glad they tried something new but my god, these things suck. There is maybe one decently interesting challenge at the Normal-type gym but every other one is a pointlessly mundane snooze fest. From slowly sliding down a small mountain slope to pushing a big olive for 30 seconds, and whatever the actual hell the dance thing was, these tasks are oftentimes concepts which might have worked well if they were executed properly. But they weren’t, and wouldn’t even be fun if I was 6 years old.

Those last two questlines aren’t anything to write home about but the third is by far the strongest. Tasked by a fellow named Arven, you’ll hunt down colossal-sized versions of new Pokémon and in doing so, unravel the mystery of why exactly this dude wants the herbs that each goliath is guarding. That surprisingly well-written character I mentioned earlier, IS Arven, as you’ll come to realise through some pretty emotional scenes that this guy has honourable and understandable motives, deep-routed childhood issues, and becomes maybe the most human character in a game where otherwise half of the characters feel like generic anime archetypes. Other than being also the most important narrative section to the game’s final act, this questline is also how you’ll upgrade the legendary Pokémon’s traversal abilities, as you’ll gain upgrades to glide, swim and climb across all terrains.

The final act, which begins once the other three quests have concluded, takes a character from each storyline and sets its sights upon Area Zero, a massive crater in the centre of Paldea that is hyped up throughout the game. Gotta say though, as with other aspects of this game, It’s underwhelming. There are maybe five new Pokémon in this area, which are all pretty cool, design-wise but, the way you’re introduced to them is by slowly walking downhill for maybe half an hour. Storywise there are some pretty cool sci-fi elements that I won’t spoil here, and the final fight has moments within it that do hit the nail on the head, but to reach them is definitely a slog. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say, any positive aspect of the game’s finale was instantly erased as soon as Ed Sheeran started singing in the unskippable credits.

Before I talk about the largest glaring issues of the game, I do want to point out the biggest highlight of my entire experience playing. It’s not uncommon for these games to have incredible soundtracks but oh boy, the tracks in here can be absolute bangers. Ignoring the gym leader battles and giga-raids which aren’t anything special, the variation of songs in each climate-based location and the intensity of the later game final fights are incredible. The first time I heard slap bass in the early game I became a bit giddy, and the final fight in the Team Star quest had me hyped beyond belief, regardless of how uninvested in the story I was. I’ve seen someone online talking about that fight, saying how the story writers should be given raises, and I’m fairly sure that’s just them being tricked into thinking the story is as good as the music from that fight, because the fight itself isn’t even very good, let alone the plot that’s driving it. 

Alright, the largest (gameplay-based) problem is the progression and levelling. I had a problem with this in Elden Ring of all games, but when you’ve got an open world that boasts freedom of exploration, this is an issue that often occurs. It’s difficult to know when to tackle certain gyms, Pokémon encounters and trainer battles as each zone has its own set difficulty that you won’t know until you’re actually in a given fight. Having the disappointment of an under-levelled team is bad enough, but when you go into a fight over-levelled, it makes the game feel incredibly easy. I resorted to choosing lower-level Pokémon as opposed to the ones I wanted to use, just to have a fair and challenging fight. Having something as simple as a recommended level next to each icon on the map would easily fix this, and is something I feel was severely overlooked

Technical issues were prevalent at launch and unfortunately still plague the game months later. The most obvious of these problems is the frame rate, which at times is disgustingly low, worsening the more time spent in a single session. This is bad enough but on multiple occasions the game buckles under the technical load and straight-up crashes. How the hell are they allowing this to happen in 2022, in a mainline AAA series like Pokémon, It’s not a port like Witcher 3, it was built specifically for this system. It doesn’t have ground-breaking visuals, it’s not trying anything too technically advanced, and is overall, a huge embarrassment.

I’ve gotta mention this game’s “battle-gimmick”, which each of the modern Pokémon titles has. It’s no surprise that this time round, ‘Terastallization’ is just as much of a pointless addition as Z-Moves, Gigantomaxing, and to a lesser extent, Mega-Evolution. To give a Pokémon a Tera-Form is to change its base type, which honestly, isn’t a bad idea, however, most of the Pokémon you’ll ever have don’t swap to a different type when it’s activated so, it’s just a small powerup. The 10-second animation required to activate it doesn’t feel worth it, and when the levelling is as janky as it is, a powerup is the last thing I need, and like Sword and Sheild’s Gigantomaxing, I avoided it whenever I had the option.

With the game being (loosely) based around an academy, you can interact with the facilities available by taking lessons and interacting with the staff around the building. The first of these is neat to have, but also not something I ever felt like doing, and when I did, it wasn’t a satisfying use of time like Persona 5’s lessons are. You can build a relationship with the teachers, in a weird levelling-up way, which can eventually lead to useful rewards like a bunch of Max Revives, or pointless trinkets like a single Gold Nugget. Speaking of, money is incredibly easy to obtain as you can sell literally anything you find around the world, and the lands are littered with random items every 10 steps. The only things I ever bought were quick-balls once they were available, as everything else you can just find laying about on your travels.

The post-game content is a bit lacking in comparison to other Pokémon titles, where this time you’re asked to just fight every gym leader again. That’s nice. Not only am I not gonna do that, but it feels like a crap way to say the game has more playtime than it does. My favourite feature of most of these games is hunting for legendary Pokémon that are hidden after the credits roll, and with a world this big I was expecting to find maybe some old favourites or, something fulfilling at least. The game in reality has four extra legendaries who are all locked behind gates, and to get in you’ll need to find 32 stakes hidden anywhere around the huge open world. I’ve found around twenty and no gates have opened and after playing for 50 hours I don’t want to have to google to find the rest. Some kind of help might have been nice, or at least a way to track where and how many you have. My girlfriend Amy found absolutely none up until the credits rolled, and I’d like to say it’s a testament to her being oblivious but it’s most likely the game’s fault for not even hinting at their existence. Stake-talk aside, some older games would have entire additional storylines to uncover, a new area or even region to return to or explore, but this game’s lack of interesting additional content is a damn shame. realisticall they’re probably just withholding anything cool for a DLC, because more money is always nice to have.

Look, at the end of the day, the things that make Pokémon fun are still here, just like they have been for over 20 years. The worst games in the series are usually still decent, I’d consider these to be Sun and Moon, and Sword and Shield, both of which I still sunk a hefty amount of time into. I think the main complaint fans have is when it doesn’t feel like the series is evolving in any way, but obviously, with this game, you can’t say that. So while I’m happy they’re trying to create a new experience, there is still some ironing out to do when it comes to refining a true open-world experience. Technical clusterfucks aside, this is still an engaging game, and although there are a lot of weak elements, exploring the region atop Koraidon, and encountering new and old Pokémon alongside a great soundtrack, is a good time, but If I had to recommend a Pokémon game to anyone, this definitely wouldn’t be my first choice.