M.Today’s video games can be visibly realistic. The grass swaying in the breeze, his non-player character going about his daily life, his face and gestures very close to those of a real human being.Jaw-stroking caves (reimagined in the 1999 trench coat-flapping classic The Matrix.) What if we were all trapped in a shockingly realistic illusion? Do you really know you’re in the game? Pokemon Scarlett and Violet.
For its second Pokémon outing this year, developer Game Freak abandons February’s Pokémon. Legend: Arceusintriguing feudal setting, but otherwise picks up where it left off. It aims to take the series’ sprawling yet closed environment to the next logical level. A seamless open world where you can catch and fight creatures on the move to go wherever you want. However, Scarlett and Violet give in violently under the weight of their ambitions.
At first, everything feels promising. We’re quickly thrown into the shiny character creator, and the polished presentation is a world away from old Pokémon. After that, the screen shifts to show the completed school application. This refreshingly modern prologue follows a cutscene that sweeps across the vast plains of the Pardea region and introduces you to Uva Academy, a Hogwarts-esque boarding school for budding Pokémon trainers.
But once you step outside the house, the classic first step in every Pokémon adventure comes off: the wheels. I am devastated. Scarlet/Violet is arguably one of the worst looking and acting he’s ever played. A pokeball gets stuck on a rock. The open world frame rate always swings to a crawl. City buildings shimmer like a bad Photoshop cut job, and in the middle of a fight, the ground beneath Pokémon periodically disappears.
Tragically, the Scarlet/Violet game loop is the most compelling Pokemon in decades. Free to explore a huge world map, Scarlett and Violet are one step closer to capturing the spirit of true global adventure. In keeping with Pardea’s new free-form mold, you can now follow three different quest paths: Gym Badge (Victory Road), Base Clear (Starfall Street), and Kill Giant Pokémon (Path of legend). The Victory Road Pass is a classic gym challenging runaway and the most fun. Another questline grants sentient bike Pokémon (yes, really) new acrobatic abilities. Not every mission is a winner, but the flexibility of this new approach is welcome, and the wide variety of quests and beckoning digital distractions make for a satisfying checklist for the busy work that fills the encyclopedia. This makes Scarlett and Violet the perfect handheld companions for half-watching TV shows.
Aggressive low-poly environments look good in a smartphone app, but the battle animations are lovingly expressive and always put a smile on your face. And to Game Freak’s credit, from his ankle-high Igglybuffs trotting at his feet to the grunting, trotting pig-like Lechonk, real-life to-scale creatures now roam any area. It’s hard to overstate how many there are. Free-roaming exploration makes catching Pokémon exciting.
A minor experience improvement also makes it thicker and faster. Your beloved Mon will now be able to recall old moves, the camera will conveniently pivot in the direction of the desired marker, and it can even “auto-heal” wounded warriors. He’s one of his Pokémon games. Bass and Jim take some effort and effort if you really want to beat them, marking a nice change from previous mainline his entries. sword and shield.
This is what makes Scarlet/Violet such a frustrating experience: it’s full of good ideas, but bogged down by poor execution. This is especially true for the towns you visit. While hordes of animated creatures trample and trot across the pixelated plains of Pardea, the city can barely handle the footsteps. It stalls and stutters like a marionette coated in . Most buildings cannot be entered. The shop abandons its previously fully rendered interior for a simple “buy” menu.
It all feels like a rush job – the Pokémon RPG was prematurely pulled into a brutally bright, high-def world. For decades, Game Freak has lived in something of a bubble. Nintendo DS pixel art at 256p resolution, just as the rest of the industry has mastered the high definition world. Ever since the Nintendo Switch console launched in 2017, developers have been desperate to catch up.
Here, Game Freak creates an exciting new open-world blueprint for the Pokémon franchise, but seems to lack the time and know-how to bring it to spec. Compare this to June’s Gorgeous xenoblade 3runs on the same console, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re beta testing open-world Pokémon. With more time in the oven, this could have been really exciting. Adventures full of sleight of hand will ask you to put up with far more rough than smooth.
