I have mixed thoughts on this game. While I preferred it over Pokémon Sword, it's still not at the level I'd expect from a billion dollar franchise like Pokémon. For example: the lack of voice acting is very disappointing. It's not like they can't add voice acting, at least for the cut scenes. Even Xenoblade has voice acting and that series isn't nearly as huge as Pokémon is.

Visuals were subpar when in the open world. The environments also seemed pretty generic. It's easy to tell where corners were cut like with the eating animation or the shops that are just menus. I still don't understand why this and Pokémon Legends Arceus were released in the same year, what were they thinking?!?

The open world is very interesting compared to the half step that Pokémon Sword made. Only problem is that there's no level scaling so you'll be jumping around the map a lot if you don't want to brute force your way through a tough fight. I would usually be fine with this, but there's nothing on the map telling you which level the Pokémon are in each area. I had find that information from IGN and not from the actual game.

Exploration is pretty fun when using Miraidon, though you probably won't get all of his movement options until fairly late into the game.

Conceptually, the idea of having three paths their own main objectives to do instead of just the gyms is cool on paper. Though in practice it falls on its face. There's eight gyms, five titans, and five Team Star bases. The titans and the Team Star bases should be a nice breather between the gyms, but the titans and the Team Star bases are just too short in my opinion. I was able to get a lot of the game done faster than I anticipated simply because there's not much to some portions of the game.

I like being able to send out my Pokémon to fight on their own. It made grinding go by a lot quicker.

Some fights in this game are difficult if you're under leveled, especially in the last game.

The story is pretty good on paper, but the lack of voice acting really makes the pivotal moments fall flat. Even if you can't include voice acting for whatever reason then you could at least do what Ace Attorney does. The sound design, music, and the text sounds for the dialogue really do make for the limitations of the Ace Attorney games. Just do something like that and it would increase my enjoyment by a vary large amount.

Overall, Pokémon Violet is a fun game. If you don't mind poor performance and messy visuals then you'll probably have a good time with this game. Don't let my opinion stop you from having fun.

I have no idea how I feel about this 'game' and what it's attempting to say. I guess the visuals are improved, but it's rather bland when compared to the unique look of it's predecessor.

This barely even feels like a game. You mostly just push a single button and read text.

Also the ending made zero goddamn sense. So I guess you could say that this game is neither good nor bad.

Just to be clear, this isn't really a review. It's more like an explanation of why I can't get into the game. I wanted to enjoy it, but the gameplay is actively keeping me from getting sucked into the atmosphere and the music. I'm sorry, but I'd rather watch somebody else play it. Is it bad that this makes me even more excited for the movie?

I played Iron Lung for about thirty minutes and lost all of my progress cause the automatic save kicked in before I got any objectives. That combined with the controls and the unhelpful map discouraged me from continuing the game.

It's cool that a game so short has automatic saves and loading, but if you're gonna go that far then you might as well go all the way and give the player the option to save/load anytime they want. Maybe I've been spoiled by the Ace Attorney Trilogy, but I wouldn't feel as frustrated if I had my own safety checkpoint.

Don't know if this just cause I played the Switch port, but the controls feel slippery. I think I saw an option in the main menu that fixes that, though I left the settings as the default cause I wasn't sure if I would need the settings changed. I only realized the issue after I started the game and I couldn't change the settings without exiting to the main menu. I guess that was my fault for not changing the settings right away, but can you really blame me for not expecting the default movement/camera speed to be a little too quick in a game all about meticulously planning your route and carefully avoiding obstacles?

I'm unsure how I feel about the map. I get that it's deliberately vague, it's just that my issue with the map feels unintentional. Any objectives on the map that aren't highlighted by the cursor have this dark color to them that blends in with the map. This issue ended up in me completely missing one of the objectives and having to backtrack after getting a different objective. Kinda frustrating ngl.