Until recently, Pokemon in the open world was just a dream of every fan of the series. But suddenly, after a few months, we had a second game, which openness not afraid
The first time it was just such an attempt and a step into the unknown and it was a spin-off part called Pokémon Legends: Arceus He collected up unexpected success for all his unconventional moves that were at odds with the core of the series. So, Game Freak took everything good that was in it and included it in the new main part of the series. You are heading to a new island called Paldea that is waiting for you 103 new Pokemon, friends and evil villains, and most importantly, a big world to explore. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is the very beginning of the ninth generation of games in this long-running series.
While at first glance it may seem like Scarlet is doing the same thing over and over again for the full price, just go through the introductory lesson that will introduce you to the new area and the first huge change it’s here. You chose your starter Pokémon as usual, and… Go wherever you want. For the first time in the history of the series, you have real freedom in where you go first. First, fifth or ninth trainer in the gym, it doesn’t matter! Of course, for this you still need to properly equip yourself, but nowhere. you will not run into an invisible barrier because of the progress made so far. This goes hand in hand with the fact that until now even the path between individual trainers has been blocked by some undiscovered skill or immobile shooter. Completely open world but it can’t have those barriers, so naturally the game doesn’t even forbid you from visiting someone earlier. And travel faster now you also have the option from the very beginning of the game. Instead of a regular bike, you have a partner pokemon at your disposal, which turns into a motorcycle for you, and later in the story – into a plane, a ship, and the like.
Even the fights in the gym have become a bit more diverse in almost 30 years. In order to get to the trainer and start the battle for the badge with him, you no longer have to go through the hellish absolute labyrinth in which the enemies simply squeeze you in front of the boss itself. This time you are waiting for the so-called gym tests. These are simple but fun challenges that will at least give you a break from the constant struggle.
However, immediately after training, you are released into the world not only to defeat the trainers and catch all the Pokémon. Do you have now three storylines, which can be continuously rotated and receive new insights and fragments of history. In addition to the aforementioned climbing the stairs of the gym, there is also a villainous team a la Rockets who have settled on this island and are up to no good. This way you can visit all their bunkers in turn and defeat their commanders in each one. But this storyline is pretty dry in terms of gameplay. You keep doing the same thing over and over again, the difficulty basically doesn’t increase and you’ll be done in a few seconds. Getting to those places is already longer than conquering them.
The third sector will guide you along the tracks legendary pokemon titanthat hide all over the island of Paldea. These are powerful Pokémon for which you will need to take a group of six highly trained companions. In addition, for defeating each of the titans, your mobile Pokémon will receive upgrades, for example in the form flying, swimming or just faster jogging.
There’s a lot to be done and at any moment you can tell yourself that you really want to do something else, and switch to something else. In this regard, Scarlet feels seriously fresh, and this good step towards the open world has already been seen in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. In addition, you can play the entire game with a partner in local and online co-op. And when Scarlet and Violet players join each other, you will get all the exclusive Pokémon in the world.
If you are not prepared for the difficulty of the terrain or the enemy, this part can really mess you up. Especially when it is not clear which zone is intended for which level. That’s why Pokémon Scarlet tries to make the game as easy as possible for the player. For example, with Pokémon attacks, you just see if they are effective against the enemy. And exchanging experience points it is also taken for granted among all team members. In addition, you no longer need to constantly start fights in order to quickly upgrade Pokemon. You have the ability to order your Pocket Pokémon to attack, and it basically rolls a die to see if it wins the battle or not. No cut scenes or pauses. In short, you either get XP or you don’t. This was handy for me in the later part of the game when I needed to buff the team up a bit but didn’t want to fight endlessly “traditionally”.
Just like parts X and Y in 2012 introduced megaevolutions i.e. the ability to evolve Pokémon even further than usual, so Pokémon Scarlet introduced terrastalization. Think of it as a general ultimate that you can summon any of your Pokémon to crystallize it and give it extra power. You can only use this skill once until you jump into the Poké Center and heal your team.
Unfortunately, during my stay on the island of Paldea, I constantly stumbled over various errors, be it gameplay or visual. When the area in front of me did not disappear, I managed to get stuck in it several times. The landscape is very fond of flickering, sometimes near, sometimes from afar. In addition, the game suffers from over-optimization of animations for the umpteenth time in a row if something is far away. But the limit when the optimization starts to work is incredibly close. As a result, everything seemed to me a jerky movie. And not only because of this optimization. The overall frame rate in the game is usually between ten and twenty frames per second, even when I was looking at the ground. The previous spin-off, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, also had optimization and performance issues, but we were a bit more forgiving since it was the first open-world adaptation. This is the main part of the series and manages to be a year later even worse than Arceus.
The main content of the game, even with three storylines, took me approx. 40 hours, but unfortunately with the fact that the first half of the game I was incredibly slowly crawling through the world without improving the transport. In addition, the frames per second were not the best either. In fact, in truth, they were often really awful, and I could count them on my fingers. The overall performance of the game on the Switch leaves a lot to be desired, and despite countless fixes and bug fixes, I’ve run into a lot of bugs and slowdowns. pokemon scarlet for sure moving in the right direction with its openness, but even Pokémon Legends: Arceus was better and often managed to look more colorful. And with other gems coming to Switch with no performance issues, Game Freak is running out of excuses. In our review of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, we forgave a lot because it was a side experiment in which Game Freak finally allowed themselves to make bold changes to the core of the series. It is no longer possible to squint here, and although the studio took a lot of good things from past games, the overall presentation is weak and unforgivable. It’s a good and relatively fun game, but it could be a lot better. We can only hope that Game Freak learns and improves for the next installment. There are several steps taken in the right direction, but they are all completely unfinished. For the Indiana team, the game picks up 7 out of 10.
Verdict
Pokémon Scarlet & Violet takes the best from past games, draws inspiration from the experiments of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and combines them into the ultimate experience. But he has his shortcomings. The performance and stability of the game is in a very poor state, but the good core of the game cannot be denied. This game has a lot of potential to be a good influence for upcoming games in the series.
Source :Indian TV
