Pokémon Scarlet and Violet - A Scathing Review
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- Опубліковано 15 чер 2024
- Welcome to my non spoiler review of Scarlet and Violet. This is the worst game in the series, and I don't say that lightly.
0:00 - Introduction
2:40 - The “Open World”
13:45 - Buggiest Game since R/B/Y
20:05 - Ghost Towns
26:45 - “Following” Pokémon - Worse than Isle of Armor!
29:57 - The Braindead “School”
37:23 - Comparing to PLA
40:10 - Bad Game Design Laundry List
45:57 - The Worst Pokémon Game - Ігри
I love that the fanboys say we can't compare it to Legends Arceus because that (Legends Arceus) is a spinoff. When yes it only had one town but that singular town was dynamic and changed with time and every quest you did.
Legend of Arceus is a prime example how lazy Pokemon are towards the main series games.
Did you even play legends arcues. That town was a complete zombie city having soulless NPC's empty design and nothing of value to do in it. I think these games are great comparisons bc it shows that they have stopped caring about making the cities rich in lore and character like they did in the 2D era
@@jessiescholten9119 Did you even play legends arceus? That town was a complete rich city having amazing NPCs that are ancestors to modern day characters, very open area to roam around and full of stuff to do. I think this game shows that they truly know how to make cities rich in lore and character like they did in the 2d era.
@@ivanzoneBR completely missed his point lol
It's amazing how gamefreak doesn't include the most basic of things in an open world game and gets a pass. Level scaling is one of, if not the first, thing you think of when planning how to balance a game like that. As a fckn 10 year old, imagining an open world pokemon game, I would think, "All the gyms would scale to your level, so you can challenge the gyms in any order and go anywhere you want!" Now we finally have one, and there's no level scaling. This is truly the dumbest timeline.
Ryan George - Fan?
Couldn’t have put it better myself
#FuckGamefreak
I'm genuinely confused as to why pokemon fans lap this up
I'll be totally honest: The only Pokémon games I've played were Omega Ruby and a small part of X _(I borrowed X from a friend, hence why I never finished it),_ and I'm so glad that I haven't played any of the games afterwards, and this is exactly why. Poorly made, unfinished products. And seeing how bad the "fans" have gotten, I don't think I want to be a Pokémon fan or play any of the newer games any time soon. How is the fanbase so welcoming towards garbage on a silver platter...? I'm genuinely frustrated trying to understand why this is acceptable to them when they can get much better games. How did it come to this...? When Sonic 06 was released, it damn-near killed Sonic, but here, Pokémon is being praised for it... Why? "Fans" slander people who bring up genuine concerns with the games and are apologetic towards GameFreak when they've had several chances to prove that they can make a good Pokémon game, and they've proven that they cannot be trusted, yet people still refuse to see that... I refuse to call these specific individuals "fans" of the franchise, so that's why I'm putting it in quotations. Real fans point out criticisms and don't just let their favorite franchise plummet. It really does feel like that Pokémon is the Sonic of Nintendo, if you catch my drift, but worse.
It's especially embarrassing to see other Switch games perform better and have much more polish than most of the Pokémon Switch games. GameFreak is the only company that's tripping over themselves while other companies and development teams are doing great. Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Splatoon, and even Xenoblade are *much* better games than the Pokémon games because they focus on the polish of the games. These games have very few bugs, yet Pokémon is still outselling all of those other franchises because Pokémon sells. *Why is this acceptable? And why are "fans" gaslighting other people with legitimate criticisms that these games are good? I don't understand...*
They say that in order to initiate a change within a game development company, people have to stop buying the games to "speak with our wallets." But considering how many people buy these disgusting products and how many people defend these games, I doubt that'll happen... It's genuinely disturbing to me how many people I've seen with one of these games or how many people have told me that they're going to get the game, or how many people have told me that their favorite game is one of these two games. It's like a hivemind to me... or, at least, that's how I see it, anyways. Why is this okay?
One thing many people miss: Way back in Gen 1, after the first couple of gyms, you could do the next few in almost any order. I think there are more than 50 different orders you can clear the gyms before you fight Giovanni and head to the Elite Four. So their vaunted new feature isn't really as new as people give them credit for.
3rd gen was the same way too
I don't remember that. What I do remember is most areas can't be accessed because of the HMs that have an order. We need "cut" to go to some towns, "surf" to go to Cinnabar and so on
I do miss it
In Johto you can also take on the Steel, Fighting and Ice gym in any order you please.
Edit: Not to mention Kanto being completely open afterwards.
I believe you can even pick surf earlier and fight Blaine before Koga and Sabrina
I hated sword and shields towns they felt bare and empty. Haven’t played scarlet and violet but from your review it sounds like it only got worse. I remember playing sword and shield and It felt like towns were an after thought the only thing there was to actually to do typically was gym battle and book it to the next gym lol
I’d say it’s better than sword and shield but not by much. It’s much more satisfying to play and traverse the world and the final hours of the game are actually really hype…problem is that it’s completely busted on a technical level and many aspects of the game are barebones, just like swsh.
I mean there are aspects that are better than sword and shield, but this game came out 3 years after SWSH so that’s not saying much. I would argue that the towns at least are deffffinitely worse than SWSH no question.
Orlando, as far as your boss rush concern I mean yeah that’s sort of this game. There’s a reason Nuzlockers are calling this a great game for Nuzlocking because it’s kind of a boss rush. In between bosses there’s a lot to explore and can be pretty fun. And whether you consider it a boss rush or not I guess depends on how long that sustains you. But after a while I realized how empty the world is without quests or interesting things to do besides just catching Pokémon.
@@leakylou2315 i would of have not minded the state of scarlet and violet if it had some daily repateble side Quests to gain some Extra Lp or abilty changing items.the strange thing about sword and shield that it had a repeatable league battles, star tournament that's repeatable, daily EV training.rematches with the DLC rivals and pokemon trianer mustard.the only thing good scarlet and violet are good for is nuzlocks.the only new pokemon that i enjoyed in the scarlet and violet is Tinkaton,Espartha,Basculibur,Meowscarda,the pawmi line and all of the past paradox pokemon designs and all of the new legedariy pokmeon thtas it.the story line of scarlet and violet is also realy good every thing else by pokemon scarlet and violet their is not so much to do even after 200 hours in game trying to max my Pokémon in scarlet.
It's insane how this is an acceptable standard for some people and that they feel compelled to attack you for pointing these issues out or say shit like "get used to it". Sorry that I'm not an apologist for mediocrity. So much wasted potential.
All of your criticisms were spot on. It's just like you said, it's just SWSH without the roadblocks, only problem is it was never designed to be played without those roadblocks.
Edit: I called it mediocrity earlier, and that would be a compliment. They literally did less than the bare minimum in almost every single department.
I I agree that the lags and frame rate issues are horrible. I am baffled how these games got the green light to be shipped
This review is just everything I had bottled up in my mind and nobody had the courage to say because everyone is coping too hard. Thank you so much, this is just so thorough and simply correct. I really appreciate it!
Aw wow thanks so much for this. Really appreciate comments like these makes my day :)
The NPCs, to me, is something that adds replayability. Going back and speaking to random NPCs you didn't bother with, finding things you overlooked, returning someone's lost Pokemon just because.. Ultra Sun and Moon got hate but I really loved it (except for the plague of Hau). I feel like there was some heart at least in Usum that they've lost since then.
They should've wait a year and then release usum as vanilla sm
I totally agree with the ghost town analysis I don't think it's a small detail at all. From the first ever NPC I engaged with in Pokemon Yellow that famously said "Science is amazing" they have been a huge part of making the world feel alive. It's easily the biggest critique of the last 2/3 Pokemon games. I can give a pass to the glitches and bugs because they actually make the game more fun and make great memes but I cannot forgive the laziness of copy pasting ghost NPC's without quests and gifts that just walk around aimlessly. Feels creepy
I think the idea was to just to do whatever you want.. and then sometimes get clobbered. And other times clobber your enemy. I think it played really well for a first playthrough. I just did whatever I want. It was a whole lot of fun.
However I would like it if the game gives me a mode where they scale enemies upwards, but don't scale them downwards.
And for kids, another mode where enemies always scale to your total badge count.
I was really hoping for them to take the best things from legends arceus. And 100% agree the gyms should scale to how many badges u have, not just gym badges all of them. The wild Pokémon not being scaled is fine tbh.
After years of being a random kid being sent out into the world on my own, I hated the idea of becoming a student. You had full character customization just a few years ago, now I have a stupid uniform. I also didn’t like how after a major event, you spawn in your dorm instead of your home bedroom like previous games. I had no attachment to the school at all.
and you can't even customize your dorm! we had secret bases/room customization all the way back in gen 3. there's absolutely no excuse for this.
Pls give me 50+ more hours of you ranting about things lol. I couldn’t agree more with your takes. I busted out laughing when you mentioned the joke about the sock store. I seriously can’t get over that they just copy and pasted 20 sea breeze cafes next to each other and called it a town.
Would definitely be interested to hear your thoughts on Isle of Armor! I’m still recovering from playing it.
Enjoyed your review. Its so sad the quality that is deemed acceptable for these games.
Thanks so much for watching and commenting! Yeah - whichever of those game developers came up with the original gameplay loop of Pokémon is the biggest genius of all time. Here, even almost 30 years later, it is truly the ultimate cash cow. Not even the MCU can put so little effort into something and still break banks. Their recent projects show that when they don’t try at all, people don’t watch. Not for Pokémon. Not even crawling along at 15 FPS is enough to break that gameplay loop.
I agree with just about every point you made. As someone who has played Pokémon since 1999 I feel saddened that Game Freak isn’t utilizing the full potential of its series. I believe I can speak for a lot of people and say that we want a game that can recapture the original spirit of the anime. These games ARE lazy and the designs for many places are superficial.
Yea, i agree, one phrase sums up the game "Half-Baked". Like the game are filled with half-baked ideas that they wanted to have in the game that have no direction and are not even polished.
I feel like I'm playing a Beta version of a game that are filled with random ideas, that didn't get polished or reviewed to see what works what not and not included in the "Finished Product" to sell to consumers.
But hey they make money and that's all they care right.
I'm thankful for my friend who bought the Doublepack, so he lend me thee other version to play with him.
I personally wouldn't have buy this version even if it's 10$. The game It's really badly optimized and made.
I really hoped for a good new pokemon games...
Playing this version makes me feel sad and thats bad, cuz I've always been happy to play a pokemon game.
You are 1000000% right about a beta build. That’s a perfect way to put it. We basically are playing a beta build under the title of a full release. That’s how I’m going to describe the game from now on.
@@leakylou2315 Accurate description
Red and Blue glitches were awesome like you could unlock a battle with Professor Oak and even get a Mew through glitches. These games glitches have like no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
11:24 100% agreed! I also went west to take on the first gym, then headed north towards the Sky Titan and the team Star base. Which was okay, level-wise. I even unlocked the surfing ability for Miraidon because of this. Then I came closer to the big lake after the desert & water Gym and most wild Pokémon were suddenly level 50, so I thought -- well, let's maybe check out the eastern area first, where I was highly overlevelled by the point of returning, so my 2nd team Star fight (the fire one) was rather uneventful. And the supposedl "first" Titan was a joke, too. But only after defeating the Klawf did I unlock the ability to have Miraidon sprint, like...?! I spent my first 4-5 in game hours hours riding my slow-ass pokemon through all kinds of terrain (luckily, the surfing ability came in handy here and there, though it was also slow as hell) 😩 After this fiasco, I looked up a guide for which gym and Titan to take on at what level. Which basically defeated the whole purpose//fun of "exploring at one's own leisure" like they teased in the game trailers. Some kind of level hints in game would have been so nice to have, especially since there's no level scaling!
These games are not for us anymore. We are the vocal minority.
Eh… we have been for quite a while now lol
Who are they for then?
@@nswmeeuwes89 kids
@@combatsuperstar Well, hear me out... Kids will also like it if they are good games.
True. I think you're becoming a minority. I've been playing the series since Pkmn Emerald. I admit the latest 3D games haven't been the best. But technical problems aside, this is the most fun I've had since XY.
Can game freak please sit down & actually take time to develope a Pokémon game; every recent Pokémon game has just been rushed & unfinished in general Game Freak needs to sit down for 2-3 years & work on a project that is finished when released; embarrassing how games released in the 1990s by the same developers is better quality than a 2022 game
I disagree that this is the second buggiest game in the franchise. Sure Red and Blue were filled with Bugs but I had to go out of my way to use Bugs in that game, most of them I had to look up many years later to make use of them. With this game you have Bugs from the get go, most of the time you just randomly walk into them while walking through the "open" -World... Plus, GF developed R/B/G for a Plattform they and nobody else ever used before and it still NEVER hard-crashed on me. This is the 4TH GEN developed on this Plattform by GF (after LGPE, Sw/Sh and PLA) and I had a hard crash while playing.
I am not bothered that you cannot enter every Single house in a city, BUT the cities are tiny (made up of 10 buildings of which 3 are the Standard "Menü-Shop"-buildings) and there is NOTHING to do. There are no NPCs with dialogue options to interact with that explain the world around, No SIDEQUESTS (the very base of every JRPG) and each city has just a distinct visual look but nothing that makes it stand out (e.g. a City overtaken by the Bad-Team, a burned tower where the legendaries have to be de-stoned, a puzzle to solve to open up more areas, hidden areas nearby which only appear when certain conditions are met).
And one of the things that bugs me the most is the fact that the game and anime and TCG each have to Release around the same time, right? So when they cast voice actors for the anime characters that equal the game characters, then WHY IS THERE STILL NO VOICE ACTING?!?!
33:14 Same! My 9 and 12 yr old nieces caught that too and said, “Wait a minute, so you get a legendary and then a whole semester goes by?!”
That’s so funny!! When I saw it I thought it was so stupid but figured casual type players wouldn’t really pick up on or care about just how stupid it is because you kind of have to be paying attention to realize how out of place it is in the narrative. The fact that even the kids noticed is honestly really great.
I explored the first area so thoroughly that I was at level 20 by the time I got through the prologue. During the prologue, I found a Ralts. I wanted a Gallade, so once I have free roam, I looked up where a Dawn Stone was and booked it over there. I ended up beating a Titan that was WAY stronger than my levels and barely won, but I got my Dawn Stone and my Gallade. I then went and fought the first Titan and Gym with level 30 Pokemon and railroaded them. It feels so pathetic. I've been playing Cyberpunk before I started playing Violet and the world is much more liberating in terms of direction and freedom.
I have a LOT of issues with Cyberpunk. The biggest disappointment for me in gaming probably even more than this game. But I definitely agree that one thing they did well was level scaling. It does feel very free in terms of exploration because of their hybrid leveled/deleveled system
Finally someone tells it like it is. Unfortunately, this wont be a wake-up call, because, as you yourself said, it will be a comercial success. GF and TPC don’t give a crap about reviews as long as it sells like pancakes
Yup! My only solace in the face of the hopeless state of Pokémon is being able to look around and see that others are equally upset about it. Unfortunately there’s not quite as many of us as I thought… but more than when SWSH dropped so I guess I take this as a win.
ThNks for this. I agree, u had alot of balls to put this out. Pokemon fanboys are the worst.. And i love Pokémon games.. But ill call a turd when i see one and not defend laziness. Imagine a pokemon game with the depth of monster hunter stories 2 and lore. And the world of xenoblade chronicles 3. The relationships u gain with the anime characters. The fact Gamefreak can't pull this off is bullshit. No excuse and the pokemon fan base is all to blame as well since they'll defend anything.... Just leaving a critique i got called every name in thd book😂😭. Arceus was basically the BETA VERSION for these 2 games.... And that game came out earlier this year...this game was rushed. No scaling is inane!
Yeah. Swsh and bdsp are the shittiest pokemon games ever. Swsh sold over 25 millions. Bdsp sold over 14 millions. This is why they get away with releasing shitty pokemon games. They will be one of the best selling games regardless.
@@combatsuperstar Foh. Sword And Shield and Brilliant diamond and Shining pearl are enjoyable games. Scarlet and Violet is worse in every way.
I have so many gripes about it. Biggest is the fact you can't fly, you glide and not even very far. The uniforms are stupid and the lack of customization is dumb. If they wanted to focus on the school to force you to wear uniforms then the least they could have done was make outfit choices unlocked by doing the classes. Finish a class or midterm and you get a new outfit, etc. Its just a waste of time to do the classes when there's other stories to follow and the dex to fill. Once again we get a rushed and insulting excuse for a Pokemon game but people still buy it because it's Pokemon.
A very simple thing they coud have done to fix the Gym issue, is make the most difficult gyms locked, and you need to have a certain Number of badges to access them.
For example:
You coud have the Bug,Grass, and Electric Gym unlockable from the start.
Then to access the Water, Normal,Ghost Gym you need 3 badges, to access the ice and psychic one, you need 4 badges.
It woud be annoying to reach a city and not be able to fight the gym.
But hey i ain't a game developer.
Nurse Joy had to hold my hand and change my diaper all day. They were like "go do everything" but everything was at set levels so there was an inherent order that was intended, I think they just didn't want to develop a story for that many objectives.
Would of been cool to have quests for gems or vitamins for towns. Npc ask for mon from close by and maybe with no restriction or some. Restrictions like nature, moves, level, or terra type. Like for a terra normal would give silk scarf or normal gem.😓
This is such an awesome idea!
There were more outfit customization options in Gen 7 than in this game. WHY?
Well said! I have never skipped a mainline Pokemon game, but this is going to be the first time I won't buy a copy. Gamefreak needs to raise the quality of their newer games, it's getting very disappointing :(
Dude this was a great description of you time with the game. Would you do a vid about what you would do to make it more enjoyable? I’d watch that
Aw wow thanks so much! Honestly I’m not sure! As you can probably tell I’m still trying to find my channel identity. Trying to figure out what to do next after this video that feels organic and also speaks to the new folks who’ve found my channel. It’s a good idea though and I’ve been talking over the possibility with a few of my friends. If you have any other suggestions feel free to share!
Thank you man. I 100% agree with you. This video needs more attention. I quit the game after just 1h playtime. I had no fun whatsoever.
I think that’s because you still haven’t gotten to the openworld yet
Thanks for watching and I’m glad you enjoyed it!
I would be willing to forgive almost everything else, if they at least gave us clothing options other than those four stupid looking uniforms.
All I want for my character is a normal looking t-shirt and a pair of normal looking pants.
If Nintendo wants to make the clothing gender-neutral, then give both male and female players the options to wear pants or skirts.
As long as I get my normal looking t-shirt and normal looking pair of pants, I would be happy. So until Nintendo adds a normal looking t-shirt + skirt/pants option, I won't buy the game.
This is such a beautifully put together and thorough review. Thank you for looking out for the consumers.
Aw what! Thank you for this comment. You are way too nice
This type of open world feels more for a player like me. I don't care about being overpowered at certain points in the game, the story, or anything like that. im just here to catch pokemon, make theme teams and battle friends *shrug* its the same way i played red and blue, yellow, ect,ect,ect. adding the ability to play with friends just makes this more then likely one of my fav pokemon games ever and i loved sword and shield more then any other not taking nostalgia into account.
This is a super valid opinion. You are the customer that Gamefreak made this game for, and as expected, turns out the vast vast majority of Pokémon’s players agree with you. Casual gamers are always going to be the majority in Pokémon. And that’s something the rest of us just have to deal with. I appreciate you commenting and sharing your opinion. And I’m happy for you that you’re enjoying the game!
You sound like you have a lot of money on your hands and have no discretion as to who you will give it to. That’s not purposeful negativity, that’s an objective and astute observation.
People in this category are single handedly crippling the potential evolution of gaming.
@@jzd272 exactly …excuseforce is in full effect on youtube I mean just look at all the reviews of people apologizing for this game … it’s redunkulous
@@kcidd12 they think they work for Nintendo or something 🤣
Idk if this speaks on gamers or society in general at this point
@@jzd272 @jzd272 They just explained why they bought the game though. Your observation makes it seem like they're just buying the game without thinking. The game looks like a complete mess to me, but at least they're enjoying what they bought. Buying something without even thinking about it is a different story. For me though, I think all my hope for Pokemon is gone.
Idk but wtf is up with gamefreak making mediocre evil teams after gen 6 like idk man all games post gen 5 are shite except oras and legends Arceus
I definitely think it was a mistake to release a Pokemon game in the same year that they released one of their biggest titles Legends Arceus. I haven't got my hands in the game I've watched a lot of people play and have fun with it I'll get it very soon.
As I said at the end, I don’t even think people shouldn’t get it if they want to. I mean it’s Pokémon you’re still probably going to have fun even if the game is completely terrible. I hope you enjoy it!
@@leakylou2315 so far I like it but there is lag there's some clipping there's a lot of graphical errors feels like I'm playing a game that doesn't have a day one patch even though it has a day one patch but it feels like the game is like almost there it just needs good optimization it's like it never got to hit the final fine-tuning stage but they have to make their quota like they have to release it at a certain time which is pretty dumb if you ask me . The new anime just came to a close they could have waited a whole year but they don't want to wait there are other games they tried to release failed like that Town Hero game they tried to release other games other than Pokémon but we didn't let them we kept buying Pokemon it's our fault🤣🤣🤣 but for real if they would have just waited and let this year be the year of Legends Arceus and go one more year for the release of scarlet and violet they would have had much more hype and a higher quality title
@@leakylou2315 as a lifelong pokéfan, despite some of the game's positive aspects this is the first game in the series that I am legit constantly putting away - the others I couldn't stop playing at release, even the mid-tier as hell Sword/Shield. it is THAT rushed and performs THAT bad. and whenever I enter a city I immediately get triggered by how ABSOLUTELY EMPTY it is.
@@charliez077 I'm a bit the opposite I'm so excited about this game even with its problems I can only blame the Pokemon company for crunching the developers at game freak. Legends Arceus could have been released in November instead of January and then we could have waited until November next year for scarlet and violet and they would have been better but with that being said I love these games and I can't put them down I'm addicted now to Scarlett I love the Auto Battle feature I'm just killing all the Pokemon everywhere
Greed. The best word to describe the pokemon company and why they do the things they do is greed.
Thank you for this honest review. I find it so weird how I see other reviewers praising this game and saying it is the best game ever and then there are others like you who feel so different about it. That said I will not be buying this game anytime soon, I am just going to stick to replaying the older gens like SoulSIlver (which is STILL the best Pokemon game imo to this day)
Soul Silver is a GOATed game. The best remakes in the series. I still regularly play through the older games as well (well, I play difficulty hacks like Storm Silver so it’s more engaging after this many years, but the game is still the same in essence).
Thanks for your comment! I appreciate you valuing my opinion.
They can't please everyone but I love the older games over the newer, but I quite like this game it's not the best and they can do better, but for me I don't care about picture quality like a lot seem to be more focused on that the gaming quality can be better I will say, I'm not going to say it's the best game in the series or anything because that's a lie, Arceus is better than these 2 games but hopefully there'll be a patch for it soon
Because those other Users/fans haven't just played 40% of the game and are not all saying the same things; looking at this and expecting Halo Infinite grade visuals and performance because ''ricHesT companY''. They're looking at it though honest Pokémon fans through honest observations having almost or actually completing the game. This guy is just in on the ''Woke critic poser'' wave; he's after clicks too. Yes, of course the game isn't Perfect; but do I care? It's smooth enough.
I haven’t seen anyone praising this game. The most positive review I’ve seen was from one of the people at NintendoLife who said they just liked it, which is average at best, but still had MANY negatives that this guy is talking about.
As someone who played HeartGold as my first ever pokemon game, heavily, heavily, heavily disagree. It's great, but your loss. Literally, Legends Arceus was worse imo and you probably bought that. I mean play what you want but it's funny people take reviewers SO seriously.
Nooo, there are others like him that don't like the game and there's reviewers praising it? Sounds like every game ever. I hear EVERYONE call Hallow Knight a "masterpiece" but guess what?? REVIEWS EXIST CALLING IT TRASH! OMG, it's almost as if no matter how good a game is, SOME people are gonna hate it!
Definitely one of my recent favorite Pokemon games design wise (I didn't have any bugs when playing so that definitely gave me a better experience then most) for the switch but you are correct. This game wasn't optimized at all I don't know who was in charge but they pretty much said "yeah this will work". GF does what they always do and takes 1 step forward but takes 2 steps back then levitates I don't know who didn't say "maybe we should give this month a delay to smooth it out"
TLDR: the suits at the top should respect their consumers and give the workers more time, a better budget, or something at least make this game better
I just really respect that you can acknowledge that you enjoy the game and that it’s unacceptable in this state. A lot of people are conflating the two and I really want people to realize that I’m not saying that this means you won’t necessarily have fun. It’s Pokémon! The only reason they’re able to get away with this is because they know it’s still fun deep down beneath all the crap.
I agree - at least I'm happy fans like you are showing this guy up with actual User experiences that extend beyond just ''patch testing'' the game. So basically; he was treating his test as a technical demo run which should never be used to overall judge a game - especially a Pokémon game. Plus, people like him all make it out to be like some Switch version of Cyberpunk 77. I didn't experience any major performance issues too. There are many good points: the music for one!
Bro pokemon coliseum is the best Pokemon game too me
The fact that they sold over 10 million proves that Pokémon is a dystopian nightmare.
Apparently it's the best selling Nintendo game of all time.
The game is fun, and I enjoy it. However there's a ton of technical issues even with the day 1 update. I haven't had major glitches like the ones on youtube, but the frame rate drops often, the climbing controls are janky, the draw distance is atrocious with MAJOR pop-in, some pokemon/characters stutter in the background, and some pokemon/characters get trapped in the environment.
The graphics also leave a lot to be desired considering this is the same console that gave us Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and Breath of the Wild which look great. It's disappointing and I hope they learn from this mistake and up their game for the next pokemon iteration.
Edit: I do disagree with you on one thing though. In some games like the Witcher 3 I don't want the lower level enemies to level up with me. I like games where you start out weak, barely being able to scrape by, and then 50 hours in you've become a God that can 1 shot previously troublesome foes. It's gives a sense of progression and accomplishment that's lost if everything gets just as strong as you are. Then what's the point of leveling up? This game should have auto leveled though for sure though. Just my 2 cents.
I agree with you about deleveled vs leveled worlds in SOME games. In the Witcher 3 I mentioned that was an option. I didn’t use that option because in a game like that I agree that I want to feel like I’m getting stronger. In Pokémon though, disagree.
Thanks for the comment! And yeah those technical issues most people are experiencing are even so much worse than they were for me when I made this video lol.
Yah honestly the major battles (gym leaders, team star leaders, elite 4 and champions, and post game rematches and Ace Tournament) needed level scaling at the very least. I ended up doing Katy as my fourth badge and she was a joke since I was around lvl 35. And it doesn't help that no one uses held items or potions.
And with the school aspect, it's weird that you just do Homeroom and then it's independent study treasure hunt. And if you go back to do the classes the majority of the classes are so boring. Needing to go to class would be a double edge sword, as this aspect needs to be done well for players to not despise it, but you would think an academy centered around Pokemon and becoming a good trainer would be more hands on (the closest is the Language class where the teacher brings in a Pikachu and you have to determine what emotion the cry is). Like why aren't we making sandwiches in Home Ec and getting tips so it won't topple over the exact moment you drop the top bun? Ngl it would also be funny if midterm was making a sandwich with specific meal powers.
It also doesn't make sense to be forced into wearing the school uniform other than Gamefreak either didn't want to put in more clothing or didn't have time. You think these students would keep wearing their uniform off campus? I know I wouldn't. And people can't seriously think students keep their uniform on all day when they get home, cause people don't.
(also lol off topic but I could have sworn I saw an old guy as a student early on in my playthrough and you confirmed it)
Use lower level mons try some others out?
Fair arguments on your end.
Everyone who critiques the games I've seen brings up the crystal clear ROM hack that does level scaling better and still can bring a challenge so you are not steamrollering everyone.
The strongest gym leader Pokemon is level 48. That is unacceptable.
Should have been at least low to mid 50's.
And scale the E4 to be high 50's-mid 60's, and the Champion to be high 60's.
This game was not designed to scale with the open world they tried to bring about.
Still on my 1st playthrough: I have 4 badges, 4 titans, 1 Team Star base and my starter is already 43.
Forced EXP share once again is just irritating. They removed the option to toggle on or off stating everyone uses it so they made it permanent.
From what source? Majority is not everyone and unless there is real valid reason for removing player options to customize their experience don't remove them.
Elite 4 is not rematchable unless you start a whole new game and you can only rebattle gym leaders once in post game. Why? The only high level battling is some replayable tournament.
At some point in time level 60's no longer are offering any challenge.
In my opinion how they did it BDSP was fine. Higher level, (with each rematch up to 2 times) more competitive rematch teams with IV/EV training and holding competitive items to justify grinding and EV training post game.
Legends Arceus so far has felt the closet immersion to a Pokemon game I've played for since I began in Gen 2.
And why they omitted certain mechanics from this game which could have helped the game.
Performance is the worst I've played so far of any Switch game I played thus far. My game crashed twice randomly and yesterday the game freezes while throwing a Pokeball and will eventually unfreeze.
While enjoyable this is 2 steps forward and 5 steps back.
Truuuuu. Crystal Clear is the blueprint for this. That’s a really great game.
I’ve never understood how Gamefreak consistently puts the highest levels in the game to be like mid 60s in so many titles. It’s like they are actively punching the people who play their games the MOST in the face lol. The worst offender is Isle of Armor, DLC that came out well after the main game released where the highest levels were still in their 60s. Meaning the only people who could possibly enjoy it were the people who played their games the LEAST (aka the ones who quit after beating the main game) while the dedicated ones who played every day paid $15 to vastly over level the entire experience.Once they did that I knew there was no hope lol
These are the first Pokemon games games I've sworn off of ever touching outside of BDSP. I'm not even someone of a "pokemon has sucked since generation whatever and this is the last straw" mindset, but I just cannot with these entries. There are no more excuses here, this is their FOURTH home grown switch title yet arguably the WORST objectively. And I understand the biggest enemy here is the generation development cycle and whoever the fuck in charge thinks that mandating new main titles every couple years at this point in the franchise life is a sustainable, sensible practice. But those are causes at the end of the day, and the effect is an open world trend chasing disaster. I'm sure there's fun. A lot of the new pokemon and other characters are cool. I hear catching is more addictive than ever. And that's nice and all. But what the fuck happened to everything else? Pretty but lifeless as shit region and cities, a lot of little pokemon world charm factors lost, environments are basic bitch, game balance is whacked, execution of new gameplay ideas just seem kinda boring, and of course the games themselves are built like a 5 year old's first attempt at making a sandwich on their own. Like sure, the characters are nice, not at all best in the series imo like I've seen ppl say, but they and the stories are definitely highlights. But eveything else, I just can't.
It may just be the recency bias but I'm seeing the general consensus is that without the glitches and better performance these would be the best pokemon games, but I can't even give it those kinds of props from what I've been seeing. And I'm also someone that doesn't let jank bother him too much in games, but there are limits and this is definitely one of those cases. Not to mention the technical issues are far from the only things holding these games back. There's just a lot in terms of design that kills it for me.
I can only hope that despite the initial fast selling, the refund fiasco as well Nintendo themselves apparently having to acknowledge the tech issues and assure folks of a patch (that by the time i saw thus video already came and went and didn't do too much), will show to the higher ups at pokemon company or Gamefreak or wherever how much of an embarrassment these titles are and they gotta change something up about their production. I'm sure the devs themselves have been embarassed the moment copies were sent out. This current schedule cannot fucking be a thing anymore, they are not in need of new merch THAT frequently. It's fucking Pokemon, most the general casual audience will buy any plushy or hoodie with Pikachu alone on it, focus on keeping the damn source material up to snuff.
Agreed, Gamefreak did a terrible job converting Pokemon to an open world.
i am probably one of the few that was disappointed when i played legends arceus i would have been less disappointed if it had pvp, more colorful textures or at least a difficulty option like that in black and white but immediately available
The idea of difficulty correction or whatever you want to call it not being in this game actually sounds insane. Yeah what’s the point of being able to go anywhere if you’ll be too weak to take on the challenges anyway? It’s kind of like an illusion of freedom. Yeah elden ring is like that but you EXPECT difficulty from a souls game, not something like Pokémon where it should be more fun and casual.
I bought isle of armor because I wanted to complete the Pokédex. Completing the Pokédex is all I want to do in these games, and I can’t even do that anymore. On top of all this other stuff, I’m getting this 2nd hand down the road
Would these games count as the Enter the Dragonfly of the series?
Let's be honest. The fans are already in the hole. They aren't going to stop giving their money so this is just the first iteration of what happens when you become a fan. Fan is short for fanatic by the way.
i like it, its a very good review. hope it goes viral and you get some exposure
Thanks for the feedback and the kind words! It really makes a difference to read comments like this
We are in an era of such beautiful HD 2-D pixel art games like Live a Live and I really think Game Freak needs to step back from 3-D and do what they do well - 2-D pixel art games where development is much simpler for them and they can actually finish their games with polish.
This is one of the most informative reviews on Scarlet/Violet. I love how you explain various aspects of the game with great detail and further back them up with your personal experience with it. I lost interest in Pokémon games a long time ago and seeing Game Freak mess up this badly with Scarlet/Violet doesn't help my already negative view towards the state of Pokémon games.
Thanks so much for the feedback! I’m glad you enjoyed ot
Have you at least played legend arceus? Legend arceus is amazing
I've been observing Pokémon-related drama since SwSh and I believe that what modern Pokémon games really need is simply more time to bake in the oven. More time for optimization, for squashing bugs, for balancing the difficulty, etc. We don't really need a new Pokémon game every single year, do we? I'd rather have one high quality Pokémon game every 3 or so years rather than 1 broken mess per year.
But I know that nothing major will change since regardless of the lack of quality and a ton of complaints, a newly released Pokémon game will still sell incredibly well so there's hardly any incentive to do better.
It's literally all this game needed. I wish people wouldn't get so mad at Gamefreak. It's the Pokemon Company pressuring them to release the game in time for Christmas, like so many other companies do.
I am also in a abusive relationship with GameFreak... Not proud of it.
Lmaooooo “My name is Leaky and I’m in an abusive relationship with Gamefreak.”
In unison: “Hi Leaky.”
Absolutely loved this review. It’s like you put everything I was thinking into words. Subbed
Aw wow thank you so much!
Thank you for a detailed analysis. I like that you do not harp on the technical issues, lag, and bugs like so many others do and instead explain the problems with the game at its core.
edit: After reading some of the comments below, I wanted to add that I love HG/SS as well (Sacred Gold ftw)
Elden Ring may not have scaling, but with enough skill and patience you can still take down high level opponents if you want to.
There are only very specific strats to take down Pokémon which are at a much higher level than yours and none require skill.
I took one of the art class in the school, and the philosophie from the dialogues kind of shocked me. I'm not expecting something like this from a pokemon game, although im a grown up, but still, this game teaches kids to think in deep.
The reality is, this game has become so enormous. It attracted way too many audiences and different group is asking for different things. That's why whenever a sequal comes in there will always be negativities.
I have enjoyed the game so far after the first two hours of the academic life. The wildness exploration is fun and the freedom it grants exceeded my expectation.
I somewhat agree - you at least for one have leveled sensible observations on here.
The thing is We all know the game would never be technically Perfect; but this guy clearly hasn't played through the game to discover what it really is. He's just dropped in and in his mind, thinking this should look & run like Eldin Ring basically. It's ridiculous on all levels, lol.
That’s really interesting! I’ll have to keep playing through the art classes because what I’ve seen was only of passing interest.
I’m glad you’re enjoying the game! But I have to say I don’t think attributing the problem to the game being too “big” is fair. There are a lot of games that have disappointed me because of that reason - too many people want too many different things. I don’t think this is one of them. I mean soooo many of the things the game sets out to do just blatantly don’t work. This is a game that had an extremely rushed development, and it’s okay to admit that and admit the game can still be fun
@@netweed09 Cmon man. You clearly didn’t watch the video. I never said anything like and and I don’t even like Elden Ring. I’ve been a Pokémon fan since I got my very first video game at 5 years old. It’s my favorite franchise of all time and Ive played every game. Don’t be unfair. I know what to expect from Gamefreak.
@@leakylou2315 I second this. Pokemon is literally the top grossing franchise on the planet. Expectations regarding how polished a game is understandably go up in cases like Pokemon. Fans can be patient and wait an extra year if need be in order to get a better experience, and it's not as though the Pokemon company can't get the raw talent and man power to meet people's expectations regarding polish.
@netweed09 Wow. So now it's wrong for someone to have standards for the highest grossing multimedia franchise in the world? Please. You can't tell me we shouldn't expect more from pokemon at this point. If you've played anything other than pokemon in the last 10 years, you'd realize that gamefreak is leagues behind the competition when it comes to game development. I mean, there are pokemon fan games that completely blow some of the mainline games out of the water. That's just sad.
I’m not much of a Pokémon fan I legit haven’t played any since like soul silver, but I watched this whole video and wow the game sounds ridiculous. A lot of the flaws sounds like they just rushed the game, like it’s unfinished. I do have Pokémon arceus which I haven’t played yet but now I’m definitely gonna give it a chance.
Thanks for watching and commenting even though you’re not a big Pokemon fan! Really appreciate that
Good stuff bro. I don't agree 100% with everything, but a lot of it I do. Nicely done, you have some good points for sure. Keep it up! Subbed for other videos like this
I'm also playing on Ryujinx and yeah, the performance is alot better than on Switch, but i still feel some lags now and then which shouldnt be a thing because the game isnt that graphically demanding to begin with.
Playing on Ryujinx with the 1.5 speed code has been heaven. It runs great, it’s upscale, and the game is faster than normal even (that’s not a bug that’s a feature Pokémon is slow as shit!) But that only works if you have good hardware. Crazy how much this game needs to run like that lol
Regarding the ice cream stands, I'm reminded of Lewis Black's bit about finding two Starbucks located across the street from one another IRL. In that case, or was probably that there were enough people coming to them for coffee -flavored milkshakes- that it was more convenient to split the customers between two full locations.
I thought that SMT V had some issues with lag, choppy animations for characters far away in the distance, textures loading in late, etc. but its issues pale in comparison to Scarlet/Violet. Same with botw, people made fun of it for having trees in the distance popping in and out of existence but you really had to look hard to see it. Scarlet/Violet looks like a PROTOTYPE for each of these games, it even looks like a worse version of PLA too (I have not played PLA so take my opinion with a grain of salt). This gen makes SwSh look polished.
I've tried hard not to be loud about my opinions on Pokemon/GameFreak, but this is a new low and I'm tired of holding my opinion back so I don't hurt someone else's feelings. This is not acceptable, and I think Pokemon fans deserve far better
When it comes to getting stuck a similar thing happened to me. I ventured off and got stuck because I didn’t yet have the swimming feature. Had to fly way back to my house which was very disappointing.
Lol wow the fact that there are multiple places where this happened…
Remember in Gen 4 when you had to go to a specific spot in post-game with exactly one mon knowing one exact move and trade with an NPC and then save your game to get stuck? Aka you had to actively try to do it. Good times
(I mean not that that was acceptable but I mean it’s an honest mistake and they clearly put a ton of effort into making sure it didn’t happen and slipped up in one obscure spot)
IDK anymore… I want to play a new Pokémon game though I don’t know if I should get arceus or violet (I have only played Sun and ultra moon). Leaning more towards arceus…
This game felt like a shell. It was definitely unfinished
On the comment about level scaling, personally I think it should only scale upwards. The best fights are the ones where you're at a small disadvantage and have to use strats to overcome them. Eri was my hardest fight by far (i had 2 fairies and a psychic type too for reference), but was the most rewarding to beat on my 3rd try with annihilape rage fist + stalling sucker punch with rabsca's calm mind . Being underleveled I never found to be an issue since I could easily get stronger, and continue on.
The issue that breaks immersion is that when you're overlevelled, the game is a button clicking simulator. Yes i could replace my members with weak ones at the gyms levels, but I'm attached to THOSE mons, and would only ditch them after that gym. Legends gave me a reason to cycle mons out for research, this game provides no such incentive.
Though I suppose a system that scales to your level while putting the enemies a couple levels ahead at all times (for bosses at least) would be good. Or he'll do what I want and make them actually hard/intelligent like BDSP did (but with an actual difficulty curve instead of just a fucking spike). I saw Cynthia use rock tomb on luxray all caus she read that the trainer was gonna swap to a flying type to avoid EQ... That's bonkers😂. You could even do the obvious thing we've been begging for for years and add difficulty options. Harder means enemies have scaled level advantages and better ai, easier means you can button mash for younger kids and anyone who just wants to breeze through. But hey, I'm expecting too much from a multi billion dollar company
The difficulty of the Gyms, Team Star, and Titans can be assumed based on the level of the Wild Pokemon in a given area.
If most of the wild Pokemon in an area are around level 20, then the nearby Gym/Team/Titan will also be around level 20. That’s how you deduce where to go.
That said, it would have made way more sense to either (A) scale up the difficulty to the players level, or (B) leave the franchise linear until a better system could be implemented.
The one thing that Arceus did better was that you have to be the one to engage a Pokémon to trigger battle or you could just throw a ball. Arceus was still very fun despite being much more buggy than the violet I am now playing but if you could ride your motorcycle Pokémon without worry of encountering anything that you don’t throw a Pokémon at, you wouldn’t have nearly as big an argument about bugs in SV.
PLA was NOT more buggy than Violet...idk what swtich you were playing it on but i had a consistent smooth framerate throughout my entire playthrough with no bugs
Day one switch and I haven’t had any frame rate issues or hair pulling bugs, in either.
There are still skiddish Pokémon that will back away from you without wanting battle so my head cannon is that baby pokemon fear nothing and don’t care that you nearly ran them over with your super bike.
I've noticed that some Pokémon will run away from you and other types come looking for a fight.
Nagol I’m going to take your claim at face value (I’m trusting that you’re not lying) and say that maybe your game isn’t lagging that much. But you are in the tiny, tiny minority here my dude. Go look at any UA-camr, reviewer, anything. They might not be as salty as me but they allllll are talking about how bad the game lags and how buggy it is. It’s much much worse than PLA for almost everyone You have no leg to stand on on this one bud.
Glad we could agree on the Poke ball mechanics from PLA though.
the game was definitely half ass made. it’s crazy that legend of Zelda botw came out like 4 years before this and is still one of the best open world Nintendo titles.
truuuu. and the main reason why I don’t wanna hear anyone talking about switch hardware lol
Dope review. Would you consider doing a tier list of every mainline pokemon game?
Definitely something I’ve been wanting to do! I have a new upload coming soon and after that that might be next.
I personally really enjoyed the story and ending of the game and like a few aspects of it for sure but I definitely see where you are coming from on Alot of it and the performance issues and bugs and the sorta misdirected way they did some things was definitely something game freak should have cleaned up on and probably released the game after some more time to finalize everything
a lot of the glitches vanish when you overclock the switch to the same cpu clock as the dev mode units have. which might explain why they didn't catch them. they basically designed the game to run at a higher clock speed than consumers have. which is incredibly dumb.
Lol this is really interesting I had no idea! I’m gonna look into this
I think the one frame per second background animations are intended. While definitely ugly to the eye, I’m pretty sure it’s to try to have the game same as much frames as possible. I mean it already has problems with frame rate here and there, if animations were allowed to to go full on my switch would literally explode
I mean yeah the fact that it’s been two games in a row now I’d have to agree with you. However two caveats
1.) I don’t think it’s fair to call them “background” animations. I mean they literally look like that until you get right up close. It’s TECHNICALLY background maaaaybe but that’s being very generous. I would call the ones in PLA background because they only happened far in the distance
2.) other switch games don’t have that issue so while i agree it’s intentional i don’t think it’s an excuse
@@leakylou2315 I didn’t what else to call it besides background animation but true. I play XB3 and it looks and feels great
I also agree it isn’t an excuse
I think the towns and cities don’t help the frames either. I mean when you’re close the game it loading the city and all it’s models and things while also loading all the Pokémon around you. No loading screens is cool and all but maybe in this case towns and cities should all do what the school does. Block stuff off by a loading screen so the game can focus on one thing at a time
Sorry for any grammar problems and such
What a great review, well done. To me the technical problem are just the cherry on top of the pile of bad decisions made. Keep it up, shout out from France !
I for the life of me cannot understand or wrap my head around how people can support this game.
Sonic 06 ruined his name and got the meta Era. We get this and people still praise it.
The hell happened?
Very frustrating lol
All opinions and arguments aside though can we all just agree that Nintendo and Pokémon company need to chill and let gamefreak breathe we the fans will live for a few years without a new main game. Gamefreak needs a break and time to make the games as clean as they can cause while yes I’m having fun and I argued most of your points I will also admit it can always be better but trust me this could’ve been so much worse, and if they put post launch care in like they did with PLA most of the game breaking stuff will be patched long before the Pokémon home update
Glad we can come to an agreement on this! Thanks for watching and commenting. Never gonna have an issue with people disagreeing with me (although I might have to pull out a fact checker on you lol)
@@leakylou2315 definitely gonna check out more of your videos I love when people are willing to debate and not just yell and I feel I got more heated than I’d like to admit and I’m sorry for that but I appreciate your responses
This review helped me not giving into my Pokemon crave just yet. I'll pickup a second hand copy if they ever bother to patch this game up to standards performance wise.
Pokemon stopped being good with 3D and open world.
Ordinarily, I would say that someone who calls this the worst Pokemon game is just trolling for attention, but this is clearly not the case with you. You clearly feel this very passionately and genuinely, and all of your points, including those I disagree with, have clearly been made in good faith. Therefore, as someone who has been playing Pokemon my whole life and would easily call Violet one of my absolute favorite games in the series, I am going to engage with your points in good faith and explain why I agree or disagree.
First thing's first: I'm not going to defend any of the bugs or lack of polish, nor the issues with presentation/aesthetics. As much as I adore this game and I personally find a certain amount of jank to be charming, to have a game from a franchise THIS lucrative release in this state is unacceptable. I genuinely believe this game was a work of love and passion from the designers and programmers, but the higher-ups who allocated so little time and resources that the game came out in this unpolished state should be ashamed.
When I first heard this game had no level scaling, I thought it was a terrible choice that was going to kill the game. However, over time, I found that the lack of level scaling actually made the game MORE enjoyable for me, and there's one key reason for that: it encouraged me to keep switching up my team. Every other Pokemon game I've played, I've had one main team of 6 I plow through the game with, occasionally swapping in new guys but mostly sticking to the one team. In Violet, the overworld encounters encourage me to catch every new mon I see (I feel compelled to actually complete the dex, which is something I've only ever done in Arceus). Access to the boxes at any time means that instead of one team of six, I have several boxes of Pokemon, all at different levels and all of which I want to train. When I have a level 30 team and waltz into an area with a bunch of level 15s, I just swap out my team to mons with matching levels. Sure, I could bulldoze through everything with over-levelled mons if I wanted to, but this game makes it so easy to customize your team on the fly with candies, craftable TMs and mobile box access that it's always fast and easy to set myself up to engage with the game in a fun way no matter where I am. This is the first time I've ever played a Pokemon game in this way, and frankly, I find it SO much more fun than the old way ever was.
Basically, I agree that if you're playing this game with the traditional Pokemon mindset of leveling being a strictly linear progression where each challenge you face is a new and more difficult challenge for the one six-member party of teammates you have, then yes, this game isn't well-designed for that at all. I also think that this game was specifically designed to allow players to break from that tradition if they want to, and while the text of the game certainly could have made that change in design philosophy more clear, playing it this way results in a far more interesting and engaging experience than the old way ever was.
The Lets Go feature also makes dealing with weaker Pokemon in the overworld actually fun for me. Between experience, EVs, shinies and materials, you always have incentive to do it, and picking a team member with a good type matchup and seeing it plow through a hoard by itself without taking damage is intensely satisfying for me to watch.
In terms of the open world being terrible, I simply don't agree. Between outbreaks, items, raids, trainers, Pokemon spawns and landmarks, I often find myself getting sidetracked on huge tangents between main objectives with all the stuff around me I want to interact with.
I agree that the strength of the main objective challenges not being clearly dictated is a flaw. I typically was able to intuit their stength from the relative strength of the trainers and wild Pokemon around them, but this was certainly one aspect that was handled sloppily. I'm not saying it should be listed on the map screen or something, I like the surprise of stumbling on something new and seeing what level its at, but the context clues could certainly be stronger.
I agree, running into small Pokemon can be annoying, though I personally didn't find it that big of a problem. That definely seems like the kind of thing that would have been designed around if they had more time, although like I mentioned, the Lets Go feature helped a lot.
In terms of the school setting, my honest thought is that they did a pretty decent job balancing out game feel with the mechanics of it. Frankly, I don't think there's any way they could have made you feel like a student through the mechanics without turning the whole thing into a slog of unskippable tutorials. At least this time the tutorials are optional, and you have the ability to interact with and get to know your teachers. Don't get me wrong, they DEFINITELY could have done a lot more with it... maybe have some student battle tournaments or sandwich contests you could enter or something like that... but I honestly felt that while being a student didn't add a lot to the game mechanically, it was a cool dash of flavor to the experience as it was (though not being able to change your outfit is total bullshit).
It's known at this point that Scarlet/Violet and Legends Arceus were developed simultaneously, and while I'm sure the teams talked, its not really surprising to me that a lot of things Arceus did right didn't make it into the new game; I don't think it was pale imitation, I think they simply didn't have a chsnce to imitate. I'm hoping that Gen 10 will incorporate more aspects from Arceus, for sure.
That's pretty much everything I have to say. I hope I've convinced you that I'm not a mindless fanboy who will consume anything the Pokemon company gives me. I really disliked Sword and Shield, I honestly found them to be extremely basic, tedious and boring, but Arceus and Violet have given me a lot of faith in the direction the series is going, at least from a design standpoint. I'm very sorry the games didn't click for you, but they did click extremely hard for me.
If I could offer you a piece of advice from one content creator to another (I've been on UA-cam for half a decade and running my channel is my full-time job), it would be to be very careful when throwing around accusations about the designers, doing things like calling them cowardly, saying they hsd no vision for this game and that they were just copying and pasting a forumla with no thought or passion behind it. I've been making video essays discussing music for several years now, and one thing I've found is that making accusations about the intentions of artists is a very, VERY tricky thing to do, and that it can easily make you come across as presumptuous and narrow-minded when it goes wrong.
It's one thing to say that the game tried a new design philosophy that didn't work or that an idea wasn't given the time to be fully realized, but it's another thing entirely to say that the game designers didnt even try to put effort into making something new work because they just wanted a new gimmick to put on the box, and that the whole product is a lazy cash grab with no care or love put into it. That's the kind of accusation that will cause a new viewer to click away and never engage with you again if they disagree with you, so you need to be EXTREMELY sure before you commit to saying something that damning.
I think you have a lot of potential as a UA-camr. You have very good camera presence, and you're very confident and well-spoken, especially for a channel of your size; I wouldn't have written this fucking essay of a comment to you if I didn't think you were a person worth taking the time to engage with. Even though I disagreed with the majority of the opinions you expressed in this video, I am interested to hear more from you... you've earned a new subscriber.
Hey! Thanks so much for this thoughtful feedback. Glad you enjoyed the video and that we are able to find common ground and also disagree amicably.
As far as your point on having teams above 6, this is actually the same realization I had back when Gen 6 introduced the EXP Share. Been doing it in every generation since. My current save file is only slightly farther than it was when I made this video, and I have 12 full team members that are all overleveled compared to the stage of the game I’m in (now that I’m just using a guide to zigzag to the different locations in level order). For a while, when my Pokémon were first caught, I was able to have a team that was below level to send out in underleveled areas. But at this point, they’ve all caught up. And I acknowledge this is mostly due to my compulsion to interact fully with any Pokémon. game and explore, catch, and do everything when I’m in an area, which is a problem I’m inviting on myself because I know how the game works at this point. And I’ve been overleveled in Pokémon before. But it does suck that the entire time I’m exploring the world I have this sense of dread in the back of my head. I’m always thinking “I can’t go here. I shouldn’t be doing this” because I know that continuing to explore will only further make me overleveled (and I’m not even going into high level areas I’m talking about in the normal areas). I hadn’t quite solidified exactly this issue until writing this comment, but I’ve realized that’s what has me continuing to put this game down. The lack of level scaling with the bosses means that the entire time I’m exploring I’m doing nothing but having anxiety over the fact that I need to stop exploring 😂.
I’ve also grown to like the Let’s Go System. I would much prefer PLA catching as a way to quickly gain experience, but I don’t mind it. What I do mind is how god awful the AIM is for Let’s Go. It is another one of those extremely infuriating things. I don’t even need to explain I’m sure that anyone who’s used this system knows what I mean. Sorry to be a downer lol the system is good! I guess I am very glass half empty with this game. I completely agree that when grinding for anything this system is great.
As far as your piece of advice, that is greatly appreciated! I wonder where it comes from:
A) Are you saying that opinion writing in general should be way less comfortable making broad, sweeping generalizations that aren’t 100% backed up? If so yeah I agree. I really saw this as more of an informal rant when conceptualizing it, and framed it as such. Definitely didn’t hold it up to the standards that I would if I were trying to publish something anywhere serious and not just dicking around on my UA-cam channel. But I do want to do this professional. I suppose I should take this just as seriously. Or maybe not? That in itself can be a UA-cam identity? Informal, less “journalistic,” with an understanding that my videos are supposed to be digested as if you’re just talking with a friend, not as a formal review? Something I’ll have to think about.
2.) Are you saying that I’m disrespecting the people who put their love into making this game? If so, I once again agree that I was careless with my words. All accusations of the game having no love and being a quick cash grab were meant to be aimed at the investors and corporate board of SV. Not the developers themselves. The true claim here is that the director didn’t have TIME to make a strong vision that I’m sure they had. But I was careless with my words and didn’t make that distinction clear. if you feel that way about me criticizing the owners of GF and the Pokémon Company as well, well I guess we just disagree. I am happy saying loudly and proudly that they are crushing the artistic value of their developers.
3) Are you saying none of the above and more just that this kind of language can be off putting to watch. In which case I’ll have to think about that. I’ve typed out a few things but deleted them because they’re half-baked. Will have to marinate on that thought for a while.
Hey thanks again for the sub and the feedback!
@@leakylou2315 No problem man, always happy to give feedback.
In terms of the level scaling, yeah, I guess that's the kind of thing that just affects different people differently. To me, the ability to walk into a high-level area and plow through it earlier than I was expected to is worth the tradeoff of having some areas be underleveled, and frankly, the fact that I'm constantly compelled to swap in lower-level team members has lead me to raising new Pokemon that I never would have considered using before.
I agree with the Let's Go Function: great concept, pretty good implimentation as a mechanic, but really awkward to use in a tactile sense. I've gotten used to it now to the point where I can use it pretty reliably, but I agree that it feels very stiff and video-gamey in a bad way.
In terms of your presentation, I didn't mean that you should temper back your harshness... if that's the way you genuinely feel, then it's your job as a creator to express those views truthfully in an engaging and entertaining way, and you should almost never water down your honest opinions for the sake of not pissing off those who disagree with you. The primary point I was trying to make is to make sure that you're attacking the actual product itself, and to not attack the motives or intentions of those working on or enjoying the game if you don't have actual tangible proof to back up your claims (and even then you've got to be careful). I talk about music on my channel, and nearly every time I've regretted saying something about a song, it's been making assumptions or claims about motivations and intentions, i.e. "if you like this song, you clearly don't know what good art is" or "this artist didn't even try, this was a cheap lowest-common-denominator sellout for the radio market with no artistic merit at all." That second one is particularly potent; if you ask me, calling an artist lazy or a sellout are among the single harshest criticisms that you can possibly dish out, and a lot of people tend to throw them out so flippantly or thoughtlessly and I think that sucks. I'm not saying you were flippant or thoughtless, I think you presented well for the most parts, but there were a few times throughout the video where it felt like you kinda dipped into that type of rhetoric. Don't sweat it at all, it's a common mistake to make (I still make it myself sometimes, especially when I'm extremely passionate about something) but I just wanted to call it out and make sure it was something you were aware of.
You mentioned that this was supposed to be a less formal, off-the-cuff rant, and that's completely fine, nothing wrong with that at all. However, it is worth keeping in mind that when you're trying to build a career on UA-cam, literally everything you do and say online is factored into the brand you're building for yourself, which can be exhausting and limiting at times (trust me, I know), but it's the truth. Learning how to be true to yourself and speak your mind openly and freely while also instinctively keeping that awareness of public perception on in the back of your head at all times is an extremely important skill that can really only be mastered through practice... I've definitely had a lot of trial and error to get the point where I am today, and like I've mentioned, I'm still nowhere near perfect lol.
I've been doing UA-cam for five and a half years, and professionally for three of those years, and I'm always happy to share some of the stuff I've learned along the way, especially to people who are just starting to find their audience. I hope that what I said was helpful for you, and I wish you the best of luck.
I was trying to figure out why I disagree with you so much and then you said it. it’s because I enjoy steamrolling enemies that are smaller than me which is what I always do before I start any Pokémon game, which is level up my Pokémon to the highest that I can without wasting 30 minutes just to get one level, then pushing the entire region as a steamroller!
You basically hit every nail square on the head. I keep hearing detractors from this game focus almost exclusively on the bugs and performance issues, but that's just one piece of the pie. Heck, it's not even the biggest piece in my mind. Those praising this game seem to be granting it far too much leeway because it made a bare-minimum attempt at something "new," without considering the actual quality.
There are so many things wrong with these games, but honestly? The final nail in the coffin is that there is nothing to do. In Breath of the Wild, I got pleasantly distracted by so many things because there was just so much to do in the open world - Koroks to find, Shrines to complete, sidequests to take on, beautiful views to witness, armor to unlock. Here? You run around and occasionally catch Pokemon and that's basically it. No collectibles, no sidequests, no hidden dungeons or caves, no interesting NPCs. It is a giant, open, bland, hollow, lifeless world that doesn't even LOOK good, let alone play well. I have battled SO few Trainers because I don't have to. Just catch Pokemon and feed them an endless supply of candy, and you can basically skip the whole game...except it still takes you hours to reach the final objective due to the confusing and bland map design. There is, quite simply, no reason to play this game. It does nothing well. It slaps the classic Pokemon formula into Baby's First Unity Map, shrugs, and calls it a day.
And these are the best-selling games in the entire franchise. This is depressing. Pokemon effectively has no reason to even try. God of War: Ragnarok came out around the same time, and it costs the same amount as these games. Except there's only one version, because the developers aren't low enough to try and sell you the same package two to four times. Guess what I'm going to be spending my time playing?
Are all relatively known UA-camrs held at gunpoint or something? I know they want to be in good relations with game developers, but no one out there is telling how trash this game is. You're the first one I've found being plainly honest and the rest of the reviews I've seen are or feel like people with thousands of dollars spent on Pokemon products trying their hardest not to describe the game as it is: a disgrace to gaming. Thanks for your honesty and taking the time to make this essay of yours
Thanks so much for the kind words! Really appreciate that.
Lmaoooo I really don’t know why people on UA-cam aren’t more upset about this. I don’t think they’re all just shilling. I mean there are financial incentives at play but I don’t think most people are straight up lying. Although I can imagine with some of these big gaming outlets there might be something deeper at play.
My best bet is that people conflate “having fun” with “being a good game.” Anyone who enjoys Pokémon can likely have fun on SOME level in a modern Pokémon game because the formula at its core is still fun after 25 years. For a lot of us, the fact that GF actively exploits this by making shit games is something we pay a lot of attention to. But for some fans, all they know is that they’re having fun and that’s okay.
Still it is a surprise more UA-cam reviewers aren’t mad about this. Hopefully once some of the more respected Pokémon UA-camrs finish the game and make reviews they will be tell it like it is. But I don’t know that’s just my guess.
@@leakylou2315 Smh the pokemon formula is fun but they're managing to make it way less appealing. It's as you said. They didn't adapt the formula to a new game genre, open world. If to that you add all the flaws this has, not as a pokemon game, but just as a game backed by a giant corporation... It's just unacceptable. I had my hopes a little raised after PLA tried new things and had actual move animations, but it seems TPC is just trying to get out as many unfinished, low-quality mainline games.
At this rate the Pokemon formula is going to begin being known as making these kind of games... At least spinoffs seem good and hacks are actually better than the "real thing".
If you have grown to enjoy a From Software game, you will have no problem getting over the fact that some titles you used to love as a kid are no longer as good as you want them to be. Because of this weakness people still buy low quality products. I bought NieR Automata instead.
Not a huge fan personally! I only played Elden Ring and it wasn’t for me. I want games to be difficult - but not THAT difficult lol. I suspect I’ll feel the same about other From Software titles. But interesting perspective nonetheless
@@leakylou2315 It's a matter of perspective. All I expect from a game is that it respects the time I'm willing to spend on its content. That being said, the content should be relatively valuable. We are adults now.
So far it's Bloodborne taking lead in this criterion for me. I recommend you give it a try.
Nurse Joy sent me to a titan over 20 levels over me while I had like 3 gyms or more haven't leveled up that far yet on the opposite side of the map. Going left, right, left, right, middle, top, right, top.... why can't you follow a straight line if they don't want to level scale. Also minor issue compared to having to over level on one boss just to one shot 8 bosses on the other side, but really Joy knowing what you should do next breaks canon. If it was so simple to complete every objective from legendaries, beat school bullies, defeat giant monsters destroying towns that even a nurse knows about it, then why aren't every one taking care of business.
my comment is basically the same as estefanias. its crazy how common this is
It’s totally unacceptable
The more u play it the worse it feels & it'll get to u at some point. Listen, I dont like being this negative nor do I wanna treat 3D Pkmn games like they're some kind of irredeemable pieces of trash (there're very few games u can even call that). They're ok videogames definitely benefiting from being just part of Pkmn franchise thus their Insane popularity, but after advancing so much til Gen5 it's horrible regressing like this when the complete inverse should be happening & done to impress the fans & make them loyal, connected & proud of what the devs can achieve for the never endlessly flopping franchise that's named Pkmn.
Brilliant review bro,suprised this channel isn't bigger as this is very high quality.
Earned a sub
Omg yes. I spent 2 days trying to go from the first gym and second gym. Within that time I ended up battling a trainer that had his pokemon at level 50 where my pokemon were only 19.
I played and completed the game without knowing public reaction. I was quite surprised at how many people disliked it but having it explained here I totally get it.
I think the main reason I enjoyed this game despite disliking the last several entries is my expectations. The main Pokemon entries haven't been really good for me for awhile. I expected a game that was basically the same as the past several entries. But I was pleasantly surprised by the open world, the travel system, the let's go mechanic and I enjoyed the lack of a scaling system because it allowed me to train my Pokemon faster.
So, I guess the reason I liked it is because the bar has been lowered and lowered with each new entry unfortunately. Someday I hope to enjoy a mainline game because of its merits and not just because it sucked less than previous entry for me.
This, and is why you don’t pre order especially from gamefreak and yeah legend Arceus and I can’t believe LET us think the open world would be better. So happy I didn’t buy this rushed does not deserve the 10m copy’s but make more legends games I love em 👌 Well IMO but from all the AND I mean all 😞 reviews have been bad obviously not all like some of the Pokémon designs are cute and cool and the plot I haven’t seen yet because I wanted to play it but yeah enjoyed the thorough review 🤙
I’m sorry I’m commenting so much but I can’t resist, when I get to another noteworthy part of the video. The map literally does have an arrow in front of the circle showing where you are moving and a cone for vision showing where you are looking.
That’s only the minimap. Not the actual map itself. And orienting yourself on your minimap in the context of the larger world is a constant pain. And I’ve seen other streamers have trouble with this too.
Thank god for Austin John turns out you can press a button to fix the map so your facing north and it’s a lot easier to navigate
You could just do what I did. Do the first recommend gym first and then get lost and catch a Houndoom that's so over leveled it only listens to you 10% of the time and fight what is considered the 7th gym. .-.
the only purpose of the relationship system with the teachers is SOLELY just to give each teacher some background info nothing more. it's not worth sitting through it. there is only the history teacher that helps you mark the shines for the legendaries on the map. and as you get closer to pokedex completion. it would give you small rewards for every bookmark. catch 30-50-100 ect. but there are so insignificant because you can just farm them in the teraraids.
What they should have done, instead of the badge level system, they should have made it so you are able to tackle a gym based solely on the type and have the gyms level up with you. More Pokémon, more complex strategies, etc.
Finally. Someone who speaks truth. I'm sick and tired of people defending Gamefreak. Until we hold Gamefreak/Nintendo accountable the same crap will be release. No more excuses people. The game is a mere 6/10. I truly believe that 3D is not Gamefreaks strong suit. The golden era was when they made games using sprites.
BW and BW2 art style and sprites were absolutely goated. I could gush for hours about it.
While I agree that there were numerous ways for them to include level scaling in the game, I understand why they didn't. In a game where you can have hundreds of different "team members" (pokemon), having everything scale to your highest level makes it so that your weaker members are useless while you grind them using shared exp. They'd have to have a continuous level check based on your current team in order to have proper scaling but that's something that would probably be very straining for the system, and would only work for the overworld.
Meanwhile, for Gyms/Titans/Team Star, they'd need a 2 level check to figure out scaling to begin with. One check would be based on the other similar content completed (gym badges for gyms, etc) and then a check based on your level. This would mean that pre-made gym team would take on a lot more data because they'd need a ridiculous amount of variation per gym to fit your current progress and level, which in turn would also mean that grinding (or lack thereof) would be completely pointless. It would encourage people to speed run the game, using lower levels, TMs and strong hold items in order to plow through the story.
Of course it could be circumvented by implementing a forced scaling based on the content completed along with set rules (so for example, after 2 gyms you're meant to be level 20+, so the 3rd gym would scale between level 20 and 30, but you'd be unable to bring a pokemon that is higher than level 30), but starting to implement these kinds of system would be counter intuitive to the level scaling and liberty of the open world, bringing us back to where we started off by being gated by the game, again.
There's probably ways to do everything perfectly, but the company is at least trying new things.
Thanks for the thoughtful response! This is why I talked about how multiple games (in fact, the vast majority of open world rpgs) have hybrid systems. I think level ceilings and floors would have been a perfect way to do something like this. As you sort of said, they could have made whichever gym you fight third have a minimum level that the Pokémon would never scale below and a maximum level that the Pokémon would never scale above. The important factor here that I think your comment overlooks slightly is that this would apply to whichever gym you fought third, not the gym they deemed to be the third gym, which allows freedom. Also I think making you unable to bring Pokémon above a certain level would be overkill. You CAN in any open world game just grind in the overworld forever if you really want to, but that means you are making an active choice to be overleveled. Whereas anyone progressing relatively normally throughout the game would find a very balanced gameplay loop.
Also to be clear: I definitely don’t think Wild Pokémon should scale to level, and with catchig giving exp and so many wild Pokémon + just general forward thinking game design (like handling trainers in a unique way) I don’t think being consistently under leveled would be a big problem.
I’m sure the system I’ve laid out might need a few kinks ironed out here and there. But I just made it up on this spot. Overall I think the main point here, which we agree on, is that there is definitely a way to do this right. The point where we disagree though is where you commend them for trying something new. If they were an indie dev doing their best I would agree. But I think given the overall state of this game and the fact that they are the biggest media company in the world shows that this is not a problem of “doing our best and not fully succeeding.” This is a problem of “doing our best with the extremely short time window we have” which is unacceptable from the suits at Gamefreak. We deserve better than this! I’m not unreasonable. I game them sooo much credit for trying new things in PLA and am willing to overlook basically any negatives about that game. I can’t give them credit for doing their best when the central system of the game and the main selling point( the open world) fundamentally just doesn’t work.
@@leakylou2315 It would appear that there is some confusion though in your idea of the actual company. We all know that Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were ported/developed by a 3rd party, ILCA, but for Sword&Shield, Legends Arceus and Scarlet&Violet, they're all marked as being developed by Game Freaks. While I have no doubt about this, I'm really not sure that it's the same team within Game Freaks that developed all 3 games, let alone had proper and complete communication between the projects. SwSh was released in 2019, with its DLC in 2020. Then PLA and SV in 2022. That doesn't leave much time for development, when you consider that (usually) there's around a 2-3 year gap between mainline games. I'd argue that maybe even the revision games, like USUM, may not be developed by the same team, or perhaps the full team.
So in my opinion, what could've happened is SwSh has finished development, a (small) portion of the team stayed to work on the DLC while the rest started working on SV. Another team might've come around to help development of the DLC from SwSh, then move on to work on PLA.
Clearly there's a big disparity in looks between PLA and SV, and they wouldn't have had the time to work on 2 different engines within those 2 years. As far as communication between both projects, the most we really know at the moment is that there were communication as to which new variants were appearing in PLA, and make sure that their regular form would be available in SV. Higher ups may have pitched some ideas about how some systems would work regarding the overworld, but there's still multiple differences between both games, like how PLA has a sound prompt to indicate that a shiny appeared nearby, but SV doesn't.
And that is why I say that I'm glad that they are trying new things. They could've opted to stay in the classic style before they made Sun & Moon, and there was a lot of people who didn't like the direction those game took because of it, but right now people want better looking games, even though that was never really the point of Pokemon games.
It seems that whenever a company decides to make a change, it's celebrated if it works well and ridiculed if there's issues with it, but at least Game Freak is trying to give us what we ask for, unlike some other companies that dish out the exact same game every year and expect players to buy them over and over again.
Did they succeed completely? No. Should they stop trying? Hell no. They why are people giving them shit because the system wasn't perfect on the first try? Pokemon is in a period of change, they're listening to what was asked and they went out of their comfort zone to try and develop an open world experience while trying to remain true to the Pokemon experience.
@@Kyduk Alright this might sound harsh but I don’t mean it that way. I appreciate this discussion!
I mean we could go back and forth about the stuff regarding the different teams all day but IMO it’s largely irrelevant. I know that games have different teams, but to that I say: get bigger teams, make less games at once, or give the teams more time. Nowhere in your analysis do you account for, or even acknowledge the existence of, one of the biggest corporate machines in the world that demands strict deadlines in accordance with a tv show, toys, cards, etc etc etc. This is the machine that runs GF and makes decisions on Pokémon games and everyone knows it. As I said in the video, I’m not shitting on the game devs here. I’m shitting on the people who sit behind them and run the company like a soulless machine. Why should I give them credit for releasing a broken game with broken mechanics? Because their lust for profit is understandable? I’m sorry I don’t really get your point.
@@leakylou2315 I didn't see your comment as being harsh in any way, and likewise, I do not mean any disrespect with my answers.
But let's look at things this way. I personally work in the video game industry, as a 3rd party support (the company I work for is basically hired to assist in any way shape or form a game company would need assistance, from testers to player support and even going to translation and various other tasks). I'm not at all related to Game Freaks or The Pokemon Company, so I can't say exactly how it works inside their company, but I've seen other companies that are widely known in the industry and release AAA games.
I've seen communication problems between departments. I've seen developers who work as a group to program various things in a game, but refuse to go in detail and explain to other department what is the point of what they're doing, or how it works. I've seen video game reps (who are supposed to know all the details of their game in order to discuss it with various teams and explain details) get information wrong because they themselves were told wrong information.
If you want an example of what I mean, you can look back to Goldeneye 64, whose Multiplayer mode wasn't even supposed to be a thing. It was added by the developers at the last minute, while the game was already late for release... and unbeknownst to management.
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So I don't see how blaming the executives of the companies would solve anything in that regard. They have board meetings early on in development to figure out the general route the game will take, and how long they expect the game to be in production and whatnot, but then it falls on the developers to make everything a possibility. And if something doesn't work right, there might be delays. But something we do know, is that a non-linear open world is not something that the developers team is used to make, even the 3D modeling and asset management for the loading calibration is relatively new to them, so they have to do what they can.
The team is trying what they can, and it's not just a matter of hiring externally if they don't have the expertise for 3D modeling and asset management, because that is a skillset that the team has to develop, not something that you can fit in a new employee or 2 to fiddle with, because you need consistency in the team.