2/5 ★ – Fernofai's review of Pokémon Violet.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet didn't mix up the classic Pokémon experience as heavily as Arceus, but certainly tried to do some things different. 1) You go to a Pokémon school now and can take courses if you like. I personally did one course and then never came back until the end of the game, just like a good 10-year-old would do. 2) You got your legendary Pokémon right from the start and use it to travel through the world, which is cool, but not really legendary-worthy in my opinion. I'd rather liked to have an extra legendary and instead maybe even be able to use different Pokémon for the travelling as there are multiple vehicle-like Pokémon in Scarlet and Violet. 3) Your rival does not starts it journey with you, but already finished it and is a Pokémon champ. 4) There is a cool twist to the professor of this game aswell, but I won't spoil that. 5) The biggest change of all: We have an open world now. It's huge. And it's empty. Without the need of tall grass (which would be cool for sneaking up to Pokémon though) there is really just plain field, maybe with some hills and trees and some randomly placed trainers who don't mean to stop you anymore if you run past them. There were some cool vertical areas though, but it's not half as cool when you know that there is nothing to find, but some randomly spawned items. Other things to find are of course the Pokémon themselves. They roam through the world freely, have different behaviors and react to you differently which was really cool. There are many new Pokémon again and also some I really liked. To fill the world there are three main quests now and theoretically you can do them in whatever order you like, but as you arrive there you realize, that all but one are too strong for you (as in the old games - you just couldn't try there) and as leveling your Pokémon is still soft-capped and the level border is still tied to the number of arenas you completed, it makes everything just frustrating. I also couldn't really enjoy exploring the world because after some minutes of catching new Pokémon I started worrying about where the next arena would be and how I could get there before my team would exceed the level border. Speaking of the arenas I need to mention that I liked the idea of bringing the arena challenges outside and making them more fun mini-games rather than challenging puzzles. The other two main quest lines had their good moments but felt very unfinished and monotounos on the gameplay side. Battling as always hasn't changed but one special mechanic which is called Tera-crystallization and makes your Pokémon wear silly hats. All-in-all the core gameplay is still there and thus still was fun, but I feel like most of the additions in this game weren't thought through to the end making Pokémon Scarlet and Violet so much worse than they could have been.