Pokemon Scarlet and Violet offer ambitious ideas and fun concepts that inject life into the Pokemon formula, but don't quite capitalize on them to their full extent – not to mention that poor technical perꦚformance coꦗmpromises the experience deeply
Pros
+
Paldea's open world is conceptually interesting
+
A bouncy musical soundtra𒅌ck elevates the eℱxperience
+
Terastallizing adds an intriguing twist to combat
Cons
-
Performance and graphics are 🌠bad꧃ – often painfully so
-
The ൲actua🍷l open world mechanics don't always integrate well
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are… odd ducks, and I'm not just talking about the greaser mallard that compris🌸es one-third of the new starters. After the breath of fresh air that was Pokemon Legends Arceus, 💫Scarlet and Violet feel somewhat torn by their desire to go back to the standard mainline Pokemon formula, but also carry on elements of the Arceus experiment, and even crib off other recent gaming trends – including open-world games like Breath of the Wild.
FAST FACTS: Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
(Image credit: Nintendo)
Release date: November 18, 2022 Platform(s): Nintendo Switch Developer: Game Freak Publisher: Nintendo, The Pokemon Company
It would've been an ambitious idea at the best of times, made even tougher by the limitations of the Nintendo Switch and a clear desire on the part of developer Game Freak to not alienate anybody along the way. And though Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are trying their fair share of new ideas t🦹o ensure that this long-running franchise stays fresh, not to mention bringing a lot of old ones back… Well, the result feels somewhat off-kilter, bordering on outright messy, even if it's probably the most interesting mainline Pokemon game in a long time – for better and worse.
School's out
(Image credit: Nintendo)
ꦚPokemon Scarlet (the version I played for review) starts with our character's first day at school in Paldea, a new region to add to the ever-growing list with a clumsily Southern European feel. You play as the new kid at the over-budgeted Naranja Academy, and even on our first morning commute, the blank-faced mannequin you pilot is given a new starter Pokemon, forges several one-sided friendships, gets accosted by a costumed street gang, and even falls down a cliff to battle with a dying demigod. Seriously, all of this happens in the gap between zipping your rucksack shut and stepping through⛄ the Academy's door for the first time. Tomorrow morning, I'm taking the bloody bus.
We check over 250 million products every day for the best prices
Joel Franey is a writer, j⭕ournalist, podcaster and raconteur with a Masters from Sussex University, none of which has actually equipped him for anything in real life. As a result he chooses to spend most of his time playing video games, reading old books and ingesting chemically-risky levels of caffeine. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be 🍒improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at USgamer, Gfinity, Eurogamer and more besides.