3/5 ★ – merklepox's review of Pokémon Scarlet.

When I first started this game, I wanted to review it extremely low, and the more I played the more I wished I could rate it higher. What ends up being the best mainline pokemon game in years (in my opinion since at the very least sun and moon and more likely since gen 5) is severely held back by poor visuals and performance, as well as abysmal online functionality. To get these poor points out of the way, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet look godawful, full stop. Textures are straight out of the GameCube era, and environment pieces like cliffs, trees, houses, etc. are so low poly that they legitimately clash with the models of the people and Pokemon, which actually finally look quite decent after some reworking coming off previous games. This is not helped by performance issues like frame rate drops and horrible pop-in problems, along with the interesting (lol) design choice to have background characters move at two frames per second. These pieces come together to make a game that doesn't just look bad in a vacuum, but one that is straight up embarrassing when compared to other switch RPGs like Xenoblade 3 and Pokemon's main analog, SMT V. The performance issues do not end there, however. Memory issues cause frame rate to steadily chug more and more, forcing resets every so often. The game might even force you to - I've experienced about five crashes so far in my ~100 hours (I have a problem), which is one of the few performance issues I find the switch is usually averse to. Poor performance extends to online play as well. To begin, Game Freak has made the baffling decision to reinforce the 20 minute timer, forcing online matches to be no more than 20 minutes long. When playing a 6vs6 singles Pokemon match in game (my preferred metagame, being the main format the single player game itself is played in), 20 minutes is simply not enough time for a match, especially considering move animations and status messages, which are still much too drawn out and time consuming. Tera Raids (this games revisit to Sword and Shield's Max Raids) are the other main online mode, and while they are greatly improved from the previous game there are issues here as well. Joining a raid takes too long, and often even fails after attempting to join for a minute or more. once you are finally in a raid, the battle proceeds mechanically unbothered, but random delays and visual errors (health bar appearing to go down more than it actually should) are a frequent annoyance. I mentioned that I was initially resigned to a poor experience with Scarlet, but I actually came away with more good to say than bad. For the first(ish) open world Pokemon bout, Game Freak gets most things right. Wild Pokemon feel at home and alive in their environments, and finally being free from random encounters feels wonderful. Also well done are the locations you go to - each zone has a good amount of secrets in the nooks and crannies, and there's a good amount of verticality to flesh areas out. The towns, however, are a little more of a mixed bag. On their own, each of the towns is honestly nice, each having a solid identity and purpose. While making a city feel like a real city can be difficult in an RPG, Pokemon does a decent enough job here. Particular praise is deserved by Levincia, which nails the urban metropolis vibe. I am, however, a bit torn on mostly removing building interiors. Similarly to Persona, most shops are now menus, and going into some random jackass's house is a no-no. Less loading screens are nice, and fair enough it's a bit weird just walking into people's houses, but it feels like a mainstay of the series that was always welcome is missing nonetheless. All in all, however, Scarlet delivers a decently compelling open world. Exploring is quite fun, too. Scarlet and Violet expand off of the ride Pokemon idea from Sun and Moon and then Legends: Arceus. This time, the game's boxart legendary Pokemon (Koraidon in Scarlet and Miraidon in Violet, or as I like to call them, "the dog") serves as your mount, and progression will gradually unlock the ability to jump higher, sprint, swim, fly, even climb vertical surfaces. Being able to seamlessly switch between different modes of traversal is nice, and mechanically the dog performs well, letting you eventually be a master of bounding about Scarlet and Violet's world. I wasn't initially sold on being given the dog immediately, even if it's not capable of fighting. Traditionally you associate finding and catching the legendary of a Pokemon game as being the end of a journey, a reward for becoming the best. However, running around on the dog and seeing it grow close to you and slowly get more powerful finally solves my issue with Pokemon where the legendaries are just as I described: a trophy that you finally get and then shove in the box. Scarlet and Violet actually make quite a few good moves in helping you make attachments with your mons. The Let's Go feature, which I initially wrote off as another of Game Freak's useless gimmicks, is actually quite fun and useful, and gives a fun twist to running around with your pokemon. The picnic feature, too, is a vastly improved experience compared to camping in Sword and Shield (and a design feature that never felt quite right in its implementation all the way back to Pokemon Amie in X and Y). Watching your party members play around with you and each other is fun, and making Sandwiches is a meaningful version of the mostly useless curry feature from the previous generation. Making sandwiches can bequeath a wide variety of bonuses such as encountering a certain type of Pokemon and making shiny Pokemon more likely to appear, making hunting for a particular pokemon vastly less obnoxious. Finally, I feel actual incentive to watch that lazy-ass 'cutscene' of my squad eating a sandwich comprised of five hamburger patties between two slices of bread. By the end of the game, I felt quite an attachment with my party, even the dog. Koraidon, in particular, was a surprise, part of the most shocking improvement of these games over past Pokemon titles: the story. Scarlet and Violet's story is composed of three branches - the gyms + elite four, the requisite 'evil' team, and the mysterious herbal mystica which are guarded by boss Pokemon (my, and likely others', personal favorite story). These can be completed in any order you like (ish. Going to beat the level 60 gym first, like I tried to, is not advised). Accompanying each branch is a rival character - Nemona for the gyms, Penny for team Star, and Arven (best boy) for the poke weed bosses. Pokemon tends to fumble its non-gym leader characters, but each of these kids works. Nemona leans heavily into the battle obsessed rival trope in a way that's ultimately really fun, Arven is a fun weirdo on a sympathetic quest to heal his (actual) dog, and Penny is more reserved and reacts realistically to the other characters, commenting on their eccentricities and ridiculousness similar to how I was in front of the screen. The stories are each given enough emotional weight and proper execution to make me increasingly eager to see what happens next, and each has a satisfying conclusion. They aren't perfect - team Star ultimately is the least satisfying, and the champion of the league, Geeta, is a bit of a pushover difficulty-wise and feels too much like a vehicle to prove how good at battling Nemona is. However, I found myself caught off guard by how much I enjoyed them. Best, however, is the secret fourth story. After beating each of the other storylines, the three rivals and you are given a mission by the Professor (who is also Arven's no-good parent who has been missing for a while now) to investigate the mysterious crater at the center of the region. Without spoiling much, this is by far the most emotionally packed and well executed storyline, and gives Arven in particular a very satisfying conclusion to his arc. Even more so, it makes me take back my hesitations to being given the dog right at the start of the story - it's treated like just as much a character as the others, and the game ends with a lot of reasons to have become emotionally attached to it, while also building up its legendary-worthy power. All in all, I like Pokemon Scarlet. I played with my boyfriend, who had never played a Pokemon game before, and even he found himself invested in the world and story, and he found quite a few new pokemon that he liked (a topic I didn't really touch on since it's so subjective, but I quite liked the new roster of mons). The game, however, is also ultimately held back enormously by poor performance and lazy visual design. More than ever before I find myself disappointed that this series is the effortless cash cow it is - another studio like Monolith Soft helping out to make these games with a longer time budget boggles my mind with how much potential it could have. As it stands, though, it's the most fun I've had with a Pokemon game in years, and hopefully it only gets better with DLC, similar to Sword and Shield before it.