Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet - The game is out but let's be careful with them spoilers!

Muss wrote:

Wiglet is love.

Wiglet is an abomination to arceus!

Wiglett is actually a Khezu.

The bits where the humans talk - or, rather, where there is a load of unskippable text is the worst part about this game. So far I've not really been impressed by the plot. I mean there isn't really one, and that's ok! I just want to go about adventuring, but there are times where the game just has you stuck in long tedious exchanges. There are some flashbacks which I just do not care for at all. I also find it weird that the characters don't have little Zelda like grunts when they speak.

But anyway, that shit aside, I've taken out 2 gyms now, 1 Star den, and 2 titans. Really enjoyed the titans part, especially the first one I fought as that fella had me shout "KLAUF YOU COWARD!" What a legend

I haven't looked into it but I don't think the areas scale with your level. At the start you can go east or west (or back south like I did), and after I cleared the east, I went back west and found all the pokemon to be baby levels again. I feel like there probably should be some level scaling, but then again it gave me a chance to rotate my squad and use a load of different monsters so I am happy enough with it.

Although I've spent a lot of time in the game, my highest level pokemon is only level 27.

It looks like Pokemon Colosseum on the GameCube and runs like Pokemon Colosseum on an Amstrad CPC. It's crashed on me twice and I've glitched out of it's world four or five times. But: it still performs better than Sonic Frontiers.

Echoing everything said about the opening. I appreciate Pokemon isn't designed for adults who go about calling themselves The Cappuccino Kid but it's really dull. I see these notices flash up every so often saying there's a new class to take: am I buggery going back to the school.

I think it's quite good otherwise. I like the freedom of cutting about and doing your own thing, though I tried that and wandered into an area where the wild and trainer Pokemon were all ten levels higher than me. I assumed it would be a bit more adaptive to how your game is progressing, but ach well, I just went somewhere. I'm definitely finding it harder too. The Normal gym had a Lv. 36 Pokemon that wiped out my whole Lv. 32-35 team with the same move six turns in a row.

What's folks' teams looking like?

My team:

I've not played a lot so far, just got the one Gym badge for noteworthy achievements, but I'm loving what I've played. I've never really cared for a Pokemon story, so that doesn't really affect my thoughts, but I like the combination of open world and classic Pokemon gameplay, as I felt catching Pokemon in Arceus just left me feeling hollow.

I think on performance now I just expect everything on the Switch to run like shit, so sure it's disappointing, but it is what it is...

My team is all over the place as I have been using different lineups in each area. I would say i have probably used about 30 to 40 different mons in battle. It's easy to swap pokemon out in the field as you're free from having to log into computers. Its been nice because I've always had so many different teams to try out.

Team:

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I see these notices flash up every so often saying there's a new class to take: am I buggery going back to the school.

I haven't popped in and checked yet, but hopefully it works like the jobs in Sword and Shield and is something I can run in the background.

Japanese people are really into school fiction - that's why Harry Potter is so huge here, I guess - bit it bores my balls off. I hated going to school when I was a child, why would I want to relive it now? I'll be glad if Gen 10 goes for more of 8's sports vibe.

Besides the school angle, I think the story hasn't bothered me because I've been seeing it so infrequently. I've played 15 hours of Scarlet and grabbed one of each kind of badge, but I've been constantly getting distracted by "oooh, what's over there" and "I don't have one of those yet" and "look at that circle of grass types, my bug will chew those up!" so it feels like a lot of fun gameplay at my own pace between short bouts of story stuff which I find to be utterly inoffensive.

I also enjoyed coming into work today and excitedly talking with my Japanese pals who have been playing and loving it. I tried to explain that the discourse on the English internet is about the performance stuff and they seemed genuinely unable to grasp how anybody could give a shit.

I will say though, the game opens with quite small areas and then a dull-looking brown rockscape. It was after the first gym town that I found myself on rolling plains, with grass swaying in the wind, the water sparkling below the cliffs and the sun setting and rising, with wild Pokemon going to and fro, and thought the game looked actually nice.

Speaking of the first gym . . .

Spoiler:

The titan was cool, and the base assault was a fun idea if an absolute pushover - though the boss was a bit more of a challenge. I liked how she tried to walk in her boots.

The school bits are a lesson in hammering A.  They're pretty mediocre but they're not as bad as those weird 'quiet talking' bits by a long shot.

Current team:

I've been making slow progress because writey nonsense.  I've done two gyms, two titans, and one base raid (different one from Buska I think).  I'm definitely enjoying the game more now that I'm out in the wild.  However, unlike Arceus, nothing here tells me that Pokémon needs to go open world.  

The multiple routes thing isn't anywhere near as clever as the game thinks it is.  If they did level scaling it might be, but it isn't.  Buska is right about the bunch of collectables making sense for an open-world game, but that it doesn't work merely makes me think more that the open world is pointless.  The focus on the landscape has left all the towns as empty husks, where it's impossible to find the two NPCs with something worthwhile on them because of all the pointless ones.  For me, open worlds work the best when you see something on the horizon and it looks cool and fun and you want to go for it.  I don't think SV has those in the same way as, say, BotW.  The navigation options in Arceus made them better at constructing impressive vertical landscapes that were more fun.

Not too impressed by the first two gym trials, but I like the base battle and the Titans.  

Buskalilly wrote:

The lack of set is a weird choice, I'll give you that one.

You know they introduce other characters to be the mean rivals, so you're banned from getting all weird about nice rivals every time. Especially as Hop actually had a great character arc.

Nice that we agree on something for once!

I've not met my mean rival, so it's more potent here, but Pokémon always stuffs up the nice rivals anyway.  Hop is a case in point (and I swear we've done this before): yes the arc was good, but he was terribly written!  The urge for GF to make him cheery at all times completely undermined what was meant to be him getting lost and depressed.  A good arc counts for nothing if the execution is shoddy.  

That said, I like what little I've seen of Penny, even if I think I can see the plot twist there coming a mile off.  And sandwich lad is fine.  It's just battle girl I dislike.

I'm feeling very differently about most aspects of the world.

Balladeer wrote:

The multiple routes thing isn't anywhere near as clever as the game thinks it is.  If they did level scaling it might be, but it isn't.  

Yeah, it doesn't really feel like multiple routes. If anything, so far, it feels less "open world" than Red and Blue. I think the lack of gating is cool though. My friend Mizuho did all the Titans before any badges to upgrade her movement, while my pal Sawada did all the gym badges without worrying about the other two.

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Buska is right about the bunch of collectables making sense for an open-world game, but that it doesn't work merely makes me think more that the open world is pointless.

Mileage varies I guess, because it works fine for me.

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The focus on the landscape has left all the towns as empty husks, where it's impossible to find the two NPCs with something worthwhile on them because of all the pointless ones.  

I feel like towns have been too big to be as memorable as you want since Black and White. I think this might be one of those things that just won't ever be how we remember it from the ol' days because we won't ever be 10 years old again.

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For me, open worlds work the best when you see something on the horizon and it looks cool and fun and you want to go for it.  I don't think SV has those in the same way as, say, BotW.

Whereas for me I am absolutely getting that feeling and loving it. Overall, I don't think it is open world. It feels like a fairly linear route just made of more open maps, which are fun to explore.

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The navigation options in Arceus made them better at constructing impressive vertical landscapes that were more fun.

I've seen plenty of stuff stashed away atop cliffs, so wait and see on that one.

The multiple routes thing isn't anywhere near as clever as the game thinks it is.  If they did level scaling it might be, but it isn't.  

Yeah, it doesn't really feel like multiple routes. If anything, so far, it feels less "open world" than Red and Blue. I think the lack of gating is cool though. My friend Mizuho did all the Titans before any badges to upgrade her movement, while my pal Sawada did all the gym badges without worrying about the other two.

I did it all in the order it sort tells ya on the map if you zoom right out it shows ya badge 1, 2 and so on. I did it like this as I went to one gym then a place near it and because of lack of level scaling I was well under levelled. Think if it had some sort of detection oh you have 2 badges you will take on these Mon but if you have 14 then it's these Mon as it didn't I followed a linear path.

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   Buska is right about the bunch of collectables making sense for an open-world game, but that it doesn't work merely makes me think more that the open world is pointless.

Mileage varies I guess, because it works fine for me.

I just saw stuff and sent Pokémon to get it.

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   The focus on the landscape has left all the towns as empty husks, where it's impossible to find the two NPCs with something worthwhile on them because of all the pointless ones.  

I feel like towns have been too big to be as memorable as you want since Black and White. I think this might be one of those things that just won't ever be how we remember it from the ol' days because we won't ever be 10 years old again.

I agree with Balla it is here are some buildings randomly put on a map, but they do the job of battling & following a story.

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   For me, open worlds work the best when you see something on the horizon and it looks cool and fun and you want to go for it.  I don't think SV has those in the same way as, say, BotW.

Whereas for me I am absolutely getting that feeling and loving it. Overall, I don't think it is open world. It feels like a fairly linear route just made of more open maps, which are fun to explore.

I fall into a bit of both as I've never seen anything on the horizon of let's go have a look, just more of when a Pokémon has popped in, I'm like ohh not battled that yet.

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   The navigation options in Arceus made them better at constructing impressive vertical landscapes that were more fun.

I've seen plenty of stuff stashed away atop cliffs, so wait and see on that one.

Arceus does a lot of things better still and why I rate it a tad higher out of the two games.

I thought the numbering was the order you did it in rather than the order to do it in, but I didn't really pay that much attention.

I thought this is definitely the best Pokemon game since Gen 3, I though the world was fun to explore, I felt I was on a proper adventure, I loved being able to pick and choose my battles largely and I enjoyed the various story threads mostly. The only things I would mark as negatives are the Team Star bases weren't much fun and I felt there was a weird gap between level 50-60 that made my end game feel a bit harder to deal with than it should have been, but that's so minor I can live with it.

I paid no attention to the numbering. The difficulty was weird at times  there's a place where a minor bridge separates level 30 and 50 pokemon.but I rotated my team constantly, so I wasn't overpowered.


I ended up using exclusively new poks for the elite four and had a good time. The post game has also been fun so far with one crushing revelation about a certain pok being unbreedable.        

My final team was

Spoiler:

I saw a video of Sword recently and forgot how good looking the pokemon were in that game. Everything is just a lot sharper. But like Andy says, being able to choose your battles isn't something I want to ever change now. I do feel like we've taken a step back in terms of how many of the moves look, but this will no doubt be improved for the next gen which will surely be on the Switch 2.

I don't want to be too hard on gamefreak for the state of the game in terms of performance. I think they were given very limited time to fit it all in, and they always have to crunch it to hit the schedule in time for the anime, merch etc. If anything perhaps the pokemon company is to blame. Aren't they the ones bankrolling all this? I just think it's a shame that every settlement I visited I just wanted out as soon as possible. Some of the areas in the previous game were nice places that I liked a lot, but I can't say that of anywhere in this game.

As for the open world. I guess yeah, it's more like a series of linear paths than a true open world but I liked it. I think it's a good framework and a natural evolution of the wild area. I wish the trainers weren't all hidden so thoroughly in some areas, but I felt like there was plenty of good adventuring out there on the various pathways.

OH ALSO, I think the early introduction of the box legendries was very smart. First time in an age that I have given a damn about them.

Well that's where some sort of level scaling should have been in the game.

Do you think end game is a bit harder because the game's a kid's game but if you stayed to the end they want to give ya a bit of a challenge?

Personally I did not find the end game to be too hard. There were inconsistencies in the difficulty of the game overall, but I had a really solid team for the elite four and I was also only a few levels lower than most of their pokemon going in.

I nearly got rocked by the post-game area, but I was rushing through there trying to finish so I didn't battle anywhere near as much as I could have.

When I played the original games, I absolutely brute forced it. I'd never take my starter out of the party, and I would happily use pokemon I caught in the wild that were super high level if I felt it made the team better. I remember my starter becoming so strong it could pretty much take on the elite four alone. So if I was a child playing this game, I think I'd probably be similar. Just stick with my heavy hitters to the extent that I'd be overpowered by the end anyway.

Plus, I'd definitely abuse using those XP candies you get from raids.

The numbering is the order you did stuff in, yeah. I have a '12' on Cortando gym despite it being the first or second objective you're supposed to do.

I don't mind the wild pokemon not being level-scaled because I feel like it makes sense. I don't want the igglybuffs I see early on to be level 60 suddenly near the end of the game if I go back there. I mean, I guess they could replace them with Wigglytuffs or whatever but that's not the most elegant solution.

It is just kind of surprising and disappointing to me that the gyms are not scaled despite it being portrayed this way in connected media. In the Pokemon Origins anime it's shown that the gym leaders use a different team - or at least a different number of pokemon or whatever - depending on how many gym badges you have. That was a fun acknowledgement of how gyms in different cities could be reasonably approached by trainers just starting out their league journey. I've seen this play out in practice in a pokemon crystal 'open world' romhack, and was hoping to see something similar in Scarlet but alas.

I enjoyed a nicely mild level of difficulty early on by going off the beaten path. Even had to leave a Team Star base for a while because it was tough. Then it was rather easy but I don't want to labour this point too much because pokemon games have always been easy I've never minded that. Would be nice to have the option though without just having to self-impose some rules like in a nuzlocke.

Anyway, I've enjoyed Scarlet a fair bit. I did get a bit bored of it after I beat the main game - I returned to school and finally did the super boring classes - but completing the dex got me back into it. I've even had some fun doing the tera raids with some powerful pokemon builds even though the raids are terribly designed. I fancy playing through the game again at some point too.

I've not done the classes myself but seen videos on info they give and other things in the school etc adding to the lore

Pokemon have looked crisper in older games, but I really like how textured they look in this game. They have fur, or scales, or shiny metal, in a nice way.

Battle animations seem to have been scaled back to allow them to happen in the game world instead of in separate, generic zones. For me its a fair trade but I do hope to see the best of both next time.

For me, I adore the games and I'm basically unbothered by any of the issues people are bothered by, but the game does have a hint of the rushed about it and I'm sure, as Muss mentions, it relates to the Pokemon juggernaut that the main series games carry on their shoulders.
By the standards of mainstream games, I would say these aren't particularly bad. Compared to other first party Nintendo titles, though, Pokemon's technical performance seems heinous.

masofdas wrote:

I've not done the classes myself but seen videos on info they give and other things in the school etc adding to the lore

Don't tell me there's lore, I'll have to do them all for the pod!

You can skip the classes, apart from maybe the history one I guess. But each teacher does have their own quest line. Most of them are... not worth it.


I'm into the endgame now. Slow progress, but I've finally got all 18 badges. The location of the hardest gym through me because it naturally seemed to fall before gyms 6 and 7 in level order, so I trained up for that and then roflstomped the other two. I've suddenly been hit by a level jump from the last badge (the one in the lake which is entertainingly silly), but that might be because I've been training a squad of ten. I want to get lots of use from new fine folks!

The crew:

Despite the broad squad, in general I don't think the designs are as strong as generations 7 or 8, even if they're still not bad. The starters in general do make the entire thing feel worse.

My views basically haven't changed on the game overall. I still don't think the open world is necessary: Buska points out that it isn't really terribly open, so what you end up with is a bunch of slightly unfocussed sprawling routes that I just don't like so much. Some verticality has appeared, but the navigation isn't as fun as in Arceus. As for the signs of rushed design, it's absolutely because the Pokémon behemoth hasn't given Game Freak a chance, but that's all the more reason to rag on it.

Buskalilly wrote:

The lack of set is a weird choice, I'll give you that one.
Wait, scratch that, thought of a funnier answer.
You can just choose not to switch Pokémon if you want. Therefore, I will only accept this as a valid criticism if you admit Meteos is shit.

I forgot to answer, but I am actually doing this! It's just, I need to press a bunch of extra buttons each time for something that has previously been the default. Battles are slow as heck anyway, they didn't need this slowing them down as well.

You've overtaken me, but I think you're a strange deviant. Also, unrelated, this game is startlingly excellent.

I was raised Catholic, I'm bound to be a strange deviant.

Anyway, I'm done! I finished the game, got the game's legendary group, and figured that was probably enough. I actually think the game has the strongest ending in the series, for a variety of reasons. Part of it's probably just being able to have a bit more power to pump into spectacle compared to previous entries, part of it's the different threads of the game coming together, and part of it is just... good interesting writing. Surprisingly good!

I'm not done yet as I have another 30 or so pokemon to get before completing the dex. I agree about the ending, I think the conclusion of the main arc was really good. Almost annoyingly so, because it's a tease for what could have been had that level of quality run through the full game. I really enjoyed the entire end game area and would like to see more of that quality in future games.

Yes! Also it was somewhat more streamlined, so it didn't have as much of the slightly baggy, why-bother-making-it-open-world feel of the rest of the game.

I wanna fuck the school nurse.

Smurf with the content we all crave.

I have an important question for the thread: what were your favourite lil guys and girls from the generation?  And also your least favourite if you fancy being a negative Nanu?  (I do.)  Here's my list:

Good folks:

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