Playing this game, like, two months after release seems to have resulted in me playing a completely different game to what we all saw upon release. It's not perfect, there's still framerate issues and texture quality and pop-in in still a huge mess. However, now that most of the major bugs have been patched out, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is one of the best mainline Pokémon games I've ever played, the world is well laid out, it provides the kind of structured freedom many games struggle to capture, the world is varied and interesting and the story is easily one of the best in the series, as medium-height a bar as that is.

Most importantly though is that, for the first time since the DS or even before, this is actually a balanced game, I actually had to think and strategise and try when battling trainers and bosses. I started playing this series at XY, and whilst I've played plenty of these games now, every mainline game that's released in this series since I've started has been a cakewalk and I always end up beating them within 48 hours of getting them. Here, however, it took me almost a week, I needed to actually grind (which is much less of a pain thanks to the let's go feature), and it was so satisfying!

Will definitely keep playing this as time goes on, good to see that this series is finally on the up for the first time in years.