“Pokémon Scarlet and Violet” offers brand new gameplay experiences for players to explore new worlds. PHOTO CREDIT: Pokemon.com
Throughout the run of Nintendo’s “Pokémon” video game series, there had never been a completely open world game until “Generation 9”.
“Legends Arceus” came close, with five large areas highly populated with Pokémon, but it still followed a rich plot line following confrontations with “frenzied” Pokémon and, ultimately, Arceus. One could even argue that “Sword & Shield” had open world aspects, but the “Wild Area” hardly proves to be anything but a break between gyms.
The open-world aspect of a Pokémon game was something that fans had been asking for for a long, long time. However, the newest open-world installments, the highly anticipated “Pokémon Scarlet and Violet”, were immediately met with backlash from longtime players of the Pokémon series.
In “Scarlet & Violet”, the prologue and tutorials lead you through the task of catching Pokémon, choosing a starter, and even playing through a day at school. After collecting the main three storylines to complete at your own pace, you are officially sent out on your own.
The open-world aspect is done beautifully with sprawling landscapes and a variety of different geographical features to catch Pokémon in. There are towns and cities with shops to check out and gyms to complete if you want to. The “at-your-own-pace” aspect is really brought to life without level-scaling, truly allowing each player to start where they want and visit wherever they would like. That being said, there are certain unavoidable obstacles to face when playing through “Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.”
Although the landscapes are vast and fit well with each other, they hold numerous lags and glitches that are cluttered throughout the playing experience. They can be so jarring that they can take a player out of the gameplay experience completely.
For example, limbs stretching and obscuring gameplay controls while in multiplayer mode, or Pokémon spawning inside of rocks or unreachable walls (surprisingly, not a new glitch). In some cutscenes, there is a Pokeball placed in the center of the room that cannot be touched or removed, and it can be hard to look away. Pokémon can fly off-screen while despawning, and on occasion, a player’s game can completely crash and shut down.
With all of that in mind, the playing experience is not completely ruined. Shiny hunting just became a whole lot easier with the use of sandwiches and the herba mystica plant that replaces HMs or Hidden Machines. For more casual players, shiny hunting became reasonable and worthwhile instead of a 5000-encounter ordeal that took days worth of hours to complete.
Another feature that aids the gameplay is sending out Pokémon to auto-battle and gain XP quickly. However, for those who grew up with the EXP Share and manual battling, like me, it can take a little getting used to. The new style of gameplay may be a little jarring to old Pokémon lovers, but it is definitely a step in the right direction for Nintendo and Pokémon as a whole. With the expansion of an open-world game, the next generation should bring all of those aspects and clean up technicalities as well.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet offer brand new gameplay experiences and a wide world to explore on your own. Having three separate storylines and even more post-game activities still makes the game loads of fun to play. As long as players can look past the glitches, lags, and sudden crashes, playing through Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is a worthwhile experience.