I’m a 28 year old Pokemon fan, been involved with the franchise since I was little.I’ll start my review off by saying Pokemon fans really do deserve so much better but I enjoyed the game nonetheless.The game is unfortunately marred by poor technical performance and art/environments.Some of the main issues were: pop ins, low animation frame rates, texture clipping, FPS dips and glitched cameras.The large lake to the North-West is an absolute slog to play, the game ran so poorly there everything was in slow motion which leads me to believe the game speed is tied to the frame rate. Animations were slow motion and the sound was 1-2 seconds behind the animations which was another second behind the text. A really jarring experience.As for the game itself.First ... MoreI’m a 28 year old Pokemon fan, been involved with the franchise since I was little.I’ll start my review off by saying Pokemon fans really do deserve so much better but I enjoyed the game nonetheless.The game is unfortunately marred by poor technical performance and art/environments.Some of the main issues were: pop ins, low animation frame rates, texture clipping, FPS dips and glitched cameras.The large lake to the North-West is an absolute slog to play, the game ran so poorly there everything was in slow motion which leads me to believe the game speed is tied to the frame rate. Animations were slow motion and the sound was 1-2 seconds behind the animations which was another second behind the text. A really jarring experience.As for the game itself.First impressions were positive, whilst I didn’t like any of the starter evolutions I certainly enjoyed their base forms and think they’re great. The animations for them at the beginning are really nice and it was a tough pick but I ended up going Fuecoco who was boxed shortly after.The early game has a really good variety of Pokemon and it’s really easy to get a varied team going.The game has you enrol at Uva academy where you go on a field trip of sorts to ‘findyour treasure’ and you get 3 story lines to complete. I actually really liked these story lines as far as Pokemon goes and thought the characters that intertwine with these plot points to be some of the best we’ve seen in some time.I did find the early game to be the weakest part however.As we are now playing in an open worldWhere you can tackle the gyms in any order you like you do need to be wary of over levelling as the gyms don’t scale so it’s incredibly easy to ruin to early/mid game by exploring too much which I did.Thankfully in the late game I found I was in the sweet spot and had to reset of the Elite 4/ Champion Fight and end boss multiple times so there was a bit of challenge there.The end game was actually really good and by far my favourite part as the multiple story lines paid off and I enjoyed where they took the narrative.Pros:- Characters- Story- Pokemon VarietyCons:- Performance- Art direction- Lack of scaling/ difficulty option

A Treasure With Bugs Between The Glimmer

As a Pokémon game, it’s a huge step forward for the franchise and really shows the potential for the brand going forward; Pokemon has been stuck in the same formula for over 2 DECADES and began to break it with a previously released title, POKÉMON LEGENDS: ARCEUS, which was a semi-open world approach. This entry develops a bit more into that approach well but is littered with frame stutters and drops that aren’t necessarily game breaking but have a huge impact on the experience of the game (varies by user), but the core itself is super fun and exciting. As a long-time fan of the franchise, it’s a no-brainer buy that holds three great storylines that start separate of each other and intersect into an impactful end.The monster designs for this 9th generation give a ... MoreAs a Pokémon game, it’s a huge step forward for the franchise and really shows the potential for the brand going forward; Pokemon has been stuck in the same formula for over 2 DECADES and began to break it with a previously released title, POKÉMON LEGENDS: ARCEUS, which was a semi-open world approach. This entry develops a bit more into that approach well but is littered with frame stutters and drops that aren’t necessarily game breaking but have a huge impact on the experience of the game (varies by user), but the core itself is super fun and exciting. As a long-time fan of the franchise, it’s a no-brainer buy that holds three great storylines that start separate of each other and intersect into an impactful end.The monster designs for this 9th generation give a familiar feel while staying new and interesting; I personally really like the majority of their designs and mechanical approaches to the games competitive scene. A ton of ease of use and quality of life features have been added to the title for those who want to get into the competitive scene as well, such as quicker and more streamlined breeding and shiny hunting (rare Pokémon colored variants).As a summary, it’s an amazing Pokémon game at its core that’s unfortunately littered with performance issues. There’s no promising better performance through updates as the developers have not showed a consistent history with such practices but it’s still very enjoyable. I would recommend this game to any pokéfan and if you don’t care for framerate hiccups, then it’s already a must-buy!! Gotta catch them all!!

Fantastic Story, with Technical Difficulties

Anyone with a computer or social media account or knows someone with either of those things has probably heard about the bugs/glitches in these games. My experience has been relatively bug/glitch free so far (though I’ve heard it correlates to playtime and because of my busy schedule i can’t play for anymore than an hour or two at a time, so that combined with I haven’t tried co-op might be factors as to why). I won’t discount others experiences with those things, but this review is about my experience. While I am disappointed to see them, especially after how nice Legends ran (to my memory, I didn’t experience a single bug or graphical glitch when playing that one), I felt most were benign or didn’t even know it was a bug until someone told me. Now, onto the real ... MoreAnyone with a computer or social media account or knows someone with either of those things has probably heard about the bugs/glitches in these games. My experience has been relatively bug/glitch free so far (though I’ve heard it correlates to playtime and because of my busy schedule i can’t play for anymore than an hour or two at a time, so that combined with I haven’t tried co-op might be factors as to why). I won’t discount others experiences with those things, but this review is about my experience. While I am disappointed to see them, especially after how nice Legends ran (to my memory, I didn’t experience a single bug or graphical glitch when playing that one), I felt most were benign or didn’t even know it was a bug until someone told me. Now, onto the real place where the game shines: the story. This game has one of my favorite storylines. I won’t spoil anything in this reviw, but the three storylines given for the player to pursue are heartfelt and filled with a delightful cast of characters for you to meet, leading up to a climactic ending and fun postgame. I’m glad GameFreak really capitalized on how much people liked getting to know the Gym Leaders and other NPCs from Sw/Sh and fleshed them out more in Scarlet/Violet. Other things I enjoyed were the return of the Let’s Go mechanic, even if it could be tweaked a little to prevent your pokemon from return so easily when you get out of range; the open world that allowed for exploring, and if you knew where to look, made you able to get your dream team set, but level scaling would have been appreciated especially for story bits; and the return of raids, a mechanic which makes getting pokemon that would be otherwise hard to obtain slightly easier if you know where to look.

Great Game - Post Patch review

Since the games patch performance has been far more stable, so lets start with the engine. the game uses a few rendering tricks to maintain draw distance some may mistake as bugs or performance issues1. distance between player, npc and moving objects - the further they get away from the player character the frame rate of said objects and npc drops to half frames then to quarter frames, this purely an easy way for the tegra gpu to free up resources2. since the patch the game has been far more stable, frame rates are much higher with some select areas still causing a frame rate drop but for any thats grown up on retro consoles youll get over it3. the game does still crash but far less4. ive tested violet on physical cartridge via a switch lite and original ... MoreSince the games patch performance has been far more stable, so lets start with the engine. the game uses a few rendering tricks to maintain draw distance some may mistake as bugs or performance issues1. distance between player, npc and moving objects - the further they get away from the player character the frame rate of said objects and npc drops to half frames then to quarter frames, this purely an easy way for the tegra gpu to free up resources2. since the patch the game has been far more stable, frame rates are much higher with some select areas still causing a frame rate drop but for any thats grown up on retro consoles youll get over it3. the game does still crash but far less4. ive tested violet on physical cartridge via a switch lite and original patched switch, I do find the switch lite handles it better perhaps due to the smaller screen but the render is the same so i dunno, I have also tested scarlet on both consoles digitally with the digital version of the game running far more consistently better on both consoles perhaps due to a faster memory buffer between the ingame storage vs the game cart--------------------------------------------------ok now game play, lets start with the region, by sheer scale this is the biggest pokemon game world so far, excluding silver and golds dual regions, the game world is diverse with beaches, caves and even center area which feels like a direct inspiration from Made in Abyss.----------------------------------------------------------The pokemonas and og pokemon fan I find it a mixed bunch, I dont hate them but at the same time I felt like their was missed potential in alot of them, almost none of the shiny versions are that cool either, with that said they are good additions to a list Ive now lost count of------------------------------------------gameplay - ok so this is a pokemon game lets be clear you do pokemon things, but id also say this felt like the most RPG pokemon game ive played.---------------------------------------music - it felt similar to sword and shields but with some really amazing set pieces and the credit music felt perfect--------------------------------------conclusionits definitely a pokemon game while it might be lacking something to truly make it stand out it definitely felt great and the 3 stories actually culminated perfectly at the end, youll easily get 100 hours out of this if your a pokemon fan

Not just the best pokemon game yet.

Pokemon games are weird to judge, as they have completely conquered the niche of monster raising games.For that reason even a bad pokemon game will sell a lot.These games, however, are not just the best pokemon games to date, they are amazing games period.The world is full of details that make it alive, example: you can use the slide in the playground of the school. WHEN HAS A POKEMON GAME EVER DONE THAT BEFORE??All quality of life changes from the past remain and more are added, battles feel much faster (albeit some stuff like leftover should have animation and text merged into one to save time).Music is great, as always, but in these ones it's super dynamic: you will be near a pokemon and a theme plays only for new instruments to kick in once the battle ... MorePokemon games are weird to judge, as they have completely conquered the niche of monster raising games.For that reason even a bad pokemon game will sell a lot.These games, however, are not just the best pokemon games to date, they are amazing games period.The world is full of details that make it alive, example: you can use the slide in the playground of the school. WHEN HAS A POKEMON GAME EVER DONE THAT BEFORE??All quality of life changes from the past remain and more are added, battles feel much faster (albeit some stuff like leftover should have animation and text merged into one to save time).Music is great, as always, but in these ones it's super dynamic: you will be near a pokemon and a theme plays only for new instruments to kick in once the battle goes in full gear.By the way, congratulations to the advertisement team at Game Freak, as they have kept a lot of mystery alive and havent given in to the temptation of spoiling everything. It's been such a blast getting to see all the new pokemon and mechanics with my own two eyes.Although I still have to finish it (I will savor the experience as long as possible), the story is looking to be the most intriguing of any pokemon games, with plenty of references to past games including Galar and Hisui from Legends. Very cool.TLDR: I have been loathing the pokemon company since the Sword and Shield fiasco, so believe my unbiased words when I say this game is amazing. 9/10, with the possibility of reaching that perfect score if the story pulls me in as much as it has done so far.Game Freak deverses the credit for listening to criticism and actually improving.Pokemon has entered a new era of greatness

Not worth the money.

While it saddens me to say this I kind of regret buying Pokémon Scarlet. With all the bugs and glitches it has this game shouldn’t have been release to the public yet.Even if this was a non-issue the gameplay feels like a huge downgrade from Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. Everything from the subpar plot to the massive nerf in difficulty, having what I can confidently say is the worst Elite 4 and Champion ever created in the franchise’s historyShiny hunting is a huge nightmare to do as there is no indicator to show if a Pokémon is shiny or not besides their outward appearance…. And seeing as how most of the new Pokémon’s shiny forms are barely any different from the original color palette it is quite easy to walk past a shiny Pokémon without even knowing ... MoreWhile it saddens me to say this I kind of regret buying Pokémon Scarlet. With all the bugs and glitches it has this game shouldn’t have been release to the public yet.Even if this was a non-issue the gameplay feels like a huge downgrade from Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. Everything from the subpar plot to the massive nerf in difficulty, having what I can confidently say is the worst Elite 4 and Champion ever created in the franchise’s historyShiny hunting is a huge nightmare to do as there is no indicator to show if a Pokémon is shiny or not besides their outward appearance…. And seeing as how most of the new Pokémon’s shiny forms are barely any different from the original color palette it is quite easy to walk past a shiny Pokémon without even knowing it.I am also disappointed with the massive downgrade in character customization options. The players will be stuck with only 4 different school uniforms to choose from which are all visually unappealing to me, with the only changeable items being the bag, socks, shoes, gloves, hats and glasses.Unless there are free massive updates to improve the game I highly recommend spending your money on a different game.

Pokemon's Newest Hot Mess

As someone who's been a Pokemon fan since the original games and who hasn't missed a generation, reviewing the Switch mainline Pokemon games is...odd, for different reasons. For Sword and Shield, the biggest problem in my opinion was that as the first $60 Pokemon games they felt insubstantial and not worth the price point, until the DLC came out...at an extra charge. Scarlet/Violet doesn't have that issue, as from launch there's plenty of content to sink your teeth into. As the first open world mainline Pokemon game, you have plenty of interesting locations to explore, challenges to face, and critters to catch. The locations actually even look pretty nice on an aesthetic level...when you aren't dealing with framerate drops or performance issues.The glitches and ... MoreAs someone who's been a Pokemon fan since the original games and who hasn't missed a generation, reviewing the Switch mainline Pokemon games is...odd, for different reasons. For Sword and Shield, the biggest problem in my opinion was that as the first $60 Pokemon games they felt insubstantial and not worth the price point, until the DLC came out...at an extra charge. Scarlet/Violet doesn't have that issue, as from launch there's plenty of content to sink your teeth into. As the first open world mainline Pokemon game, you have plenty of interesting locations to explore, challenges to face, and critters to catch. The locations actually even look pretty nice on an aesthetic level...when you aren't dealing with framerate drops or performance issues.The glitches and performance issues are the most obvious drawback of these games, and as of mid December 2022 many are still unpatched. My understanding is that the worst of the glitches occur in multiplayer mode, so as someone who tends to stick to singleplayer anyway my gameplay wasn't too impacted, though I've still had my fair share of issues. Not bad enough to be a dealbreaker for me, but enough to be a huge caveat while recommending the game to others.My other biggest gripe with the game is that in the shift to an open world setting it feels like the game offers too little guidance to players. The map is hard to interpret on a first playthrough and does a poor job of distinguishing between which areas are accessible to players at this point of the game and where the cliffs are too high to be navigable. Areas that are the appropriate level are scattered throughout the map instead of being adjacent to each other, and the lack of level scaling means you can easily end up accidentally skipping over low level gyms/titans/bases and have to come back at a point where you're overleveled to a point where there's no challenge. It feels as though Game Freak still needs to find a median point between railroading linearity and dropping you blind into an unintuitive layout with little direction or guidance.The most frustrating thing about these games is that if you're able to look past these problems there's genuine potential for them to be among the best in the series. There's a sense of adventure to them that has always been implicit to the franchise but has never really felt so vivid. The characters are great, and the story is surprisingly good for a Pokemon game, as little as that means coming from a franchise that isn't exactly known for its storytelling prowess.After over 20 years of Pokemon games, I tend to appreciate when the games try to experiment with new things and step out of the comfort zone of its tried and true but perhaps a bit overdone formula. And this game is no exception, but I wish it had been given maybe another year of development first.

Pokémon Scarlet - a blast despite technical issues

I purchased Scarlet on release and have played through the entire story and postgame content. I won’t spoil anything in this review, though. I’ll just say the story pleasantly surprised me compared to Gen 8.My first impression was that the character models look great this time around - a marked improvement from Sword and Shield. The player character and individual Pokémon look fantastic.There are also major improvements to competitive play, making battles and raiding much more accessible. You can purchase all the required bottle caps and mints for in-game currency, and you can hyper train your Pokémon starting at level 50 instead of having to wait for 100.However, as many have mentioned, the animations often lag in this game. In my several weeks of playing, ... MoreI purchased Scarlet on release and have played through the entire story and postgame content. I won’t spoil anything in this review, though. I’ll just say the story pleasantly surprised me compared to Gen 8.My first impression was that the character models look great this time around - a marked improvement from Sword and Shield. The player character and individual Pokémon look fantastic.There are also major improvements to competitive play, making battles and raiding much more accessible. You can purchase all the required bottle caps and mints for in-game currency, and you can hyper train your Pokémon starting at level 50 instead of having to wait for 100.However, as many have mentioned, the animations often lag in this game. In my several weeks of playing, I’ve only had minor visual glitches, but they are frustrating nonetheless. The worst lag is in the “Tera Raid” battles, where online play slows down considerably more than I recall last Gen.Overall, I’m giving Scarlet 4 stars because the story is a huge improvement from the typical Pokémon plot line, and, despite minor performance issues, I’ve had a blast playing through the story and doing some postgame raids with my friends.

Robert's review of NINTENDO SWITCH Pokémon Violet

Pros: Experimental open world with a variety of pokémon to catch. The coffee cup that came with this order is decently made for what it is. All of the base-line, older mechanics of the pokémons series work well enough and the introduction of some new mechanics are fairly interesting too. There's a lot of good ideas in this title.Cons: The game should not have been released in this state. GameFreak are a multi-billion dollar developer and this is their flagship series. The PSP graphics are horrendous, but negligible next to the sheer amount of performance issues and technical glitches. This is not the fault of the Switch. People know that a Switch is not a gaming PC, but people also know that there are many beautiful games on the Switch that make good use of the ... MorePros: Experimental open world with a variety of pokémon to catch. The coffee cup that came with this order is decently made for what it is. All of the base-line, older mechanics of the pokémons series work well enough and the introduction of some new mechanics are fairly interesting too. There's a lot of good ideas in this title.Cons: The game should not have been released in this state. GameFreak are a multi-billion dollar developer and this is their flagship series. The PSP graphics are horrendous, but negligible next to the sheer amount of performance issues and technical glitches. This is not the fault of the Switch. People know that a Switch is not a gaming PC, but people also know that there are many beautiful games on the Switch that make good use of the console's hardware. At this point, releasing on a home console, what they are doing is backwards and they need to put more time and care into their projects if they expect long time loyal fans to buy into their next projects. This will be my last GameFreak purchase for a very long time. You're not developing for handhelds anymore, GF.

The Fallout76 of Pokemon games

In traditional Game Freak fashion another madden level cash gra-errr game where you can expect a reskin of Pokémon past, only this time expect a myriad of bugs, glitches, and uninspired half baked inclusions giving the overall feel of a third party game that’s still in beta despite having that AAA price tag. This game is so horrendously optimized that it can’t even handle graphics that would have looked dated back in 2014 while using tactics from gaming history like the comical amount of pop in, dropping frame rate to 0 for anything more than 30 ft from the players character.. Pokémon get more than 15ft from your character POOF they vanish (there are points where while in a confined classroom poorly rendered “classmates” will be in lazily animated loops but will ... MoreIn traditional Game Freak fashion another madden level cash gra-errr game where you can expect a reskin of Pokémon past, only this time expect a myriad of bugs, glitches, and uninspired half baked inclusions giving the overall feel of a third party game that’s still in beta despite having that AAA price tag. This game is so horrendously optimized that it can’t even handle graphics that would have looked dated back in 2014 while using tactics from gaming history like the comical amount of pop in, dropping frame rate to 0 for anything more than 30 ft from the players character.. Pokémon get more than 15ft from your character POOF they vanish (there are points where while in a confined classroom poorly rendered “classmates” will be in lazily animated loops but will still be moving at a frame rate you can count on one hand despite nothing remotely “graphically taxing” even going on)…But don’t worry if you love text walls in place of voice actors because there’s no shortage of text in this game, expect multiple hours of mashing A through text walls that could easily be condensed into a few lines on a single page… Hell this is the only game I’ve seen in 2022 that expects you to A spam through 3hours of text dialogue because I guess no one ever explained to the GF team school is a terrible experience irl and trying to take that experience and condense it down to 3 hours of mashing the A button doesn’t make “gameplay” even if you throw in multiple choice “quizzes” every 15-20 minutes. (Yes I did complete all the classes and quizzes as it’s required to reach end game content, no this description doesn’t do justice to exactly how terrible that experience was, be prepared to have a guide open for the answers and something actually entertaining playing on another screen) Finally the best way to sum up “new content” is the inclusion of a new evolution metric: steps walked with a Pokémon. There are 3 new Pokémon who only evolve after walking with the player 1000 steps. How did they implement this? Well there is a step counter that is not visible to the player… Also if you’re moving at any speed faster than a crawl you will outspeed these Pokémon and they will be automatically returned to their pokeballs so get ready for the wonderful experience of moving at a crawl across paladea! (Again make sure you have another screen with something entertaining to watch) Honorable mentions: -An “auction house” where you can pay multiple times more for items than what they regularly sell for at shops! (But not till you’ve gone through your obligatory A spamming and selecting choices that ultimately don’t matter!) Clothes -hey did you enjoy getting to pick your outfit in previous game shopping for tops bottoms accessories? Good because those are gone, you can pick from 1 of 3 school uniforms that you’re stuck wearing at all times on or off school grounds, then you can choose from a lackluster selection of hats glasses gloves shoes socks and backpacks… yup Tera Raids! -every second ticks the timer down (yes even while your spamming a through 4 boxes explaining a status condition that could easily have been explained in 3 words) -expect the raid Pokémon to randomly take like 4 turns back to back while you sit frozen on a random textbox unable to do anything! -Don’t use any moves with recoil during raids because they can and will do massive damage up to and often including randomly OHKOing your Pokémon! (Yes that means from full health you faint from recoil damage!) -Expect not very effective moves to randomly 1hit your Pokémon during terra raids! -expect your 90% accuracy moves to randomly miss without reason back to back! -be prepared for a matchmaking experience where neither the host or players in a raid can boot individuals, in spite of the pushed difficulty of higher level raids! Expect trolls and throws! Honestly I could go on and many other reviewers do, but I’ll stop here and offer these pro tips if you plan to buy this mess: 1. Text speed to fastest from start! 2. Resist the urge to turn off auto saves till you are done with the story (trust me, this game can and will crash and when it does losing a few seconds-minutes versus losing multiple hours is a dealbreaker.) 3. I was not kidding about the “lessons” and “exams” if you plan to reach end game content have another screen or a podcast and a guide for answers, and be ready to put multiple hours into mashing A “coming back” only to answer multiple choice questions….