Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Review: Gameplay Impressions, Esports and Speedrun Tips | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors

The ninth generation of Pokémon begins with Scarlet and Violet from developer Game Freak.

There’s no understatement in saying one of the biggest media franchises in the world has never seen expectations like this. Some of that is because of the usual base expectations such as expected Pokédex expansion, new starters and the hope things can be even better than the last mainline release, Pokémon Sword and Shield from 2019.

But much of the hype is also a product of some of the game’s big promises. This is the first mainline open-world, non-linear effort in the series. It boasts three branching storylines and a slew of modernizations to bring the series up to speed with the video game landscape.

A huge step forward for the series, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet can’t escape one thing—a serious give-take balance that will earn loads of praise and but understandable frustration, too.

Graphics and Gameplay

Scarlet and Violet presents a mixed bag of presentation that makes it easy to appreciate while also easy to point at the flaws.

Pokémon themselves are as expressive and colorful as ever, whether following the trainer around in the open world or within a battle. It’s the latter where some might feel some Sword and Shield-esque disappointment, though, as the ‘mons generally still do basic animations in a fight.

Exploring that world is downright intimidating due to its scale. It’s the first time Pokémon has ever felt this big. But the look of it, with muddy textures and uninteresting things going on—including Pokémon out in the wild that sort of just stand around—is another bit of that give-and-take balance. It’s easy (and jarring) to tell when inside a small area like a gym lobby or during a key battle that the resolution and looks get an upgrade because there isn’t as much for the game to juggle.

Stylistically, there’s a notable push away from traditional Pokémon and toward Pokémon Go given the appearance of Pokéstops in Paldea. There are a healthy amount of these found out in the world and they also come equipped with a market and TM machine.

Otherwise, each city and area feels as unique and colorful as fans have come to expect, with a Spain-esque feel. There’s the bright colors of a seaside city, sprawling beaches, muddy canyons, massive vertical snowy spaces and other biomes that fittingly house appropriate ‘mons to pursue, along with secrets to uncover.

Unfortunately, exploring the cities is an exercise in managing expectations. It’s sometimes difficult to tell which doors players can actually interact with, and many doors open but don’t lead to an interior, just a menu to buy sandwiches and the like. It ends up feeling like an “almost there” compromise as the series still works toward matching modern open-world contemporaries.

Battles against other trainers now start after talking with them as opposed to the old-school eye-contact initiation, which might be a bit divisive for the fanbase.

Those battles won’t shock longtime fans or be too difficult for new players to understand. Players form a team of six based around double-digit elemental types with strengths and weaknesses and have at it.

The big new buzzword and mixup to the gameplay is Terastal. Players can activate this to alter or enhance a elemental typing and to form a crystalline on a chosen ‘mon while matching an elemental “Tera Type.” This is useable once before players must recharge it at a Pokécenter.

This is actually a really, really important mixup to the tried-and-true formula. With Pokémon able to use elemental moves previously unavailable to them (while also earning the strengths and weaknesses of that typing), players can actually creatively cover gaps in their otherwise traditional party with careful implementation of Terastal usage. That’s something capable of mixing up gameplay for casual and top pros alike.

Wild ‘mons with interesting Tera typings can be found in the world via Tera Raid Battles. Like Sword and Shield’s Dynamax Raid Battles, players will team with four other players or NPCs and must defeat the Pokémon within the time limit for a chance to capture it.

Players aren’t limited to traditional battles with wild Pokémon either. Auto-battles mix up the formula in a fun way. Players can let their first Pokémon out of their ball and direct them at fights that will play out while the player explores. The usual details still decide the outcome of the auto-battle and provide experience in a fun streamlined manner.

As far as catching and expanding a team, throwing a Poke Ball at a ‘mon out in the world doesn’t actually attempt to catch it, but merely initiates a battle. Thankfully, the game doesn’t draw inspiration from others and require anything that asks the player to endlessly capture multiples of the same Pokémon.

The three branching storylines each offer distinct gameplay experiences, too, which is a nice, if not cliché cherry on top.

The typical gym path is the traditional route fans know and love. But the small challenges before earning permission to battle the gym leader is much better thought out this time as opposed to the tacked-on minigame feel of the Sword and Shield challenges.

The pursuit of the game’s five Titans is also a fun challenge that mixes up the usual gameplay flow. Players have to find, then overcome what are essentially big boss battles in pursuit of a narrative goal.

The base takeovers of Team Star fall a little flat in that they are effectively auto-battle minigames (defeat 30 Pokémon in 10 minutes with auto-battles) before another boss battle. The latter, at least, provided some of the game’s biggest challenge, though it could have been the order in which they were tackled.

Overall gameplay pacing is something that might frustrate players. Battles in Scarlet and Violet might be the slowest-feeling in the series. Animations, status card pop ups and more just take a lot of time. Early in a playthrough, for example, one Pokémon players can acquire gets certain boosts and debuffs after its health falls past a certain threshold. It requires sitting through five status cards to pop up and the accompanying power-up or power-down animations, which can happen every battle.

Unfortunately, the game has crippling performance problems.

These issues will vary in their level of annoyance based on a player’s tolerance but frustrate most in open-world exploration, especially during otherwise cool weather effects. Pop-up is a major issue, to the point of blades of grass spawning with the player as they run or items appearing out of thin air. Some simply pop in and out, constantly. Actual traversal with the legendary beasts, besides being unintuitive, frustrates because they obstruct the view of wild Pokémon that are way too small, causing the player to run into battles without wanting to do so quite often.

The game also simply suffers from framerate issues. It’s very distracting to see NPCs struggling to walk in the background of scenes. The farther away a player gets, the worse it looks. One early city has a windmill that skips through its spin unnaturally at all times.

Because of the oft-tedious nature of exploration in the world and slow manner of battles, players might find themselves avoiding wild Pokémon pretty much always, instead relying on the auto-battles to level.

On paper, these games are effectively handheld games that can be blown up on a television. But on a console as powerful as the Switch where other heavy hitters haven’t encountered these problems, they won’t escape the comparisons, and probably shouldn’t, especially not for the official games of one of the biggest brands on the planet.

Story and More

Scarlet and Violet branches into three story arcs with the Paldea region—Path of Legends, Victory Road and Starfall Street.

At the onset, players choose from starters Sprigatito, Fuecoco, and Quaxly, then quickly stumble into a rideable Pokémon with a background story, Then, those three paths, “Legends” being the pursuit of Titans, “Street” being the group of truant students in a rival faction and “Victory Road” representing the traditional pursuit of the Pokémon league.

While the story starts a little weak (chosen one receives many chosen one things), it’s not a spoiler to suggest the three paths don’t stay that basic or predictable, to the point this might stand in the minds of players as some of the best tales told yet in Pokémon games.

It is quite refreshing to have major subplots and threads to pull upon instead of just speedrunning the standard eight-gym experience. There’s a lot of heart and meaning put into those non-gym storylines, which is fun now and encouraging for future installments.

Narratively, it’s really cool that the character’s main rival again picks the starter Pokémon that the user’s is strong against—her excuse is simply that she’s already a master-level trainer and she’ll raise that one alongside yours. But that same narrative logic doesn’t apply to say, gym leaders, who are simply stuck with the same level of Pokémon at all times.

Which brings things to an important point—actual story progression is a bit of a mixed bag.

Technically, players can go challenge any gym they want. But those specifically have set levels. There isn’t level scaling and a Pokemon’s behavior toward the player still remains tied to how many badges they have won.

One nice thing worth considering? While players can tackle all three storylines at once, they could also choose to tackle one at a time. Saving the gym leaders for last, for example, with a re-tooled team so things aren’t too easy, could be fun. Players shouldn’t have to create their own workarounds like this because the game doesn’t scale, but it’s better than nothing.

When not battling or traversing the world, players can pop into the revised camping mechanic and have a little picnic with their ‘mons. This includes interacting with them as usual, plus the ability to make sandwiches from ingredients found around the world.

The TM Machine is a new system in which players can craft their own TMs. It goes the heavy RPG route, too, requiring all kinds of new materials. This can be as simple as picking them up off a defeated Pokémon from auto-battles.

Regardless, it’s actually really cool to earn the TMs. Players did in the past via exploration and gym leaders and still do, but putting effort into crafting a sought-after one feels rewarding.

Overall player customization is going to be something that causes a bit of a ruckus too. Players have more hair and face customization than any game in the series. But clothing customization has regressed to only a small number of school outfits, to presumably fit the narrative. It’s a step back that seems at best strange, and one could argue it clashes with the story. If players are on a school-sanctioned adventure, can’t they wear whatever they find along the way too?

As expected, this installment comes with the usual online suite, including Casual, Ranked, Online Competitions and Rental Teams. It’s again as robust as it needs to be, in addition to the usual trading functionalities.

One thing that will get lost in the headlines about the poor performance of this release is the streamlined approach to many things that benefit players. A simple press of a button heals Pokémon in the party with carried items. Players can make ‘mons relearn moves on the fly. Boxes to swap around Pokémon remain available from the menu. Upon exiting the map after setting a destination, the game turns the player in the direction they need to go. It’s little things that make the experience easier and shine, even more so if a post-launch update manages to speed the game up.

Speedrunning Tips and Esports

Given the flexibility the game now provides compared to the rest of the series, speedrunners should tear Scarlet and Violet to shreds.

Removing the linear structure of the game means runners can gun for the powerful holdable items and areas with certain ‘mons right away. Even the most basic of traversal will get the job done, too.

And don’t forget the creativity that will undoubtedly go into runs once ideal routing and strategies emerge.

One scenario: While this game is huge, the mismash of design ideas will leave it super exploitable to speedrunners. It won’t be long before runners figure out how to take say, a level 20 ‘mon into an area with level 55 ‘mons and status effect them into getting captured. With just one occurrence of this, they can ride that over leveled pickup through the majority of the game’s challenges.

Given these circumstances, runs will have to fall under certain restrictions, surely. But even the most basic of advice is to chart out a planned path of gyms based on the strength of the chosen starter against the first chosen gym, then picking up wild ‘mons strong against the subsequent chosen gyms.

Fast travel and in-depth options like making certain TMs on the fly makes things simple. Runners can largely ignore certain open-world diversions and focus on the traditional gym storyline while riding type advantages boosted by holdable items and a level advantage.

On the Esports front, much of the mentioned online infrastructure will mean this game has the same competitive viability as Sword and Shield. Add in a ton of new ‘mons and the way the Tera Type mixes things up and the meta should see a refreshing overhaul that feels new for much of the game’s early lifecycle.

Conclusion

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet leaves little room for debate—this is the best, most enjoyable mainline game in the series and even a major step up for those players who didn’t vibe with Sword and Shield.

There hasn’t been a Pokémon experience to this scale, nor has a story branched in so many interesting ways. The gameplay is tight, the numbers of things to do and explore is immense and it’s simply a fun experience for newcomers with resounding depth for speed runners, competitive players, Nuzlocke attempts and so much more.

But the plodding pace, droves of technical issues and stumbles in well-trodden territory by others in the industry will rightfully come under fire.

Pokémon is evolving. But whereas fans were hoping for a way to skip the evolution animation with the press of a button, they’re forced to wait it out. That wait has been excruciating, but evolution is still fun, too.

Scarlet and Violet sets a new bar for the series as a superb foundation for DLC add-ons and sequels while doling out more of what established the series as a juggernaut in the first place.