It's really just frustrating me with how un-great it is, i actually liked Sword and Shield AND Arceus despite how unambitious the former was, it just felt like a good Pokemon game, Scarlet feels like it's caught inbetween both of those good games, and what comes out is that horribly okay.
Terastallizing is by far the worst gimmick Pokemon has ever had, and i'm not a fan of any of the gimmicks, they're horribly forced and make you play a certain way every single time, and leaning them is a chore because you know they're just going to remove them in the next game, they're wastes of time that divert resources from actually improving the game. This one is so, so much more awful than all the others. Tera types can be anything for any pokemon, so type advantage as an entire concept is essentially thrown out the window when they're in play, any pokemon can be any type, but this doesn't even work in your favor because afaik the tera type is fixed to a specific pokemon and there is no way to change it, no idea how this is supposed to work in multiplayer, if it's even there. I encountered a gym leader who's main pokemon just doesn't have weaknesses due to their ability and tera type, not having any weaknesses at all is absurd, and a terrible way to try and create difficulty. The entire point of type advantages is so the game comes down to something other than just numbers, it's what makes the game about playing smart and not hard. Without type advantage the only solution to beating a pokemon that can one-shot all of yours is to just go and grind, and that's in a game where every single battle takes forever.
They still have yet to make the combat faster, it takes several minutes just for random battles sometimes. A good gym fight can take half an hour just because of how long it takes for messages and and animations to play out, and the animations don't look good enough for them to force you to watch them every single time. Fire Emblem has let you skip animations since 2012, technically 2007, and Pokemon still refuses to catch up on making the game more playable rather than more watchable. The performance wouldn't bother me as much if it wasn't making an already slow game slower.
The non-technical aspects of the game are very mixed. The region simply isn't interesting, the areas to explore just feel like stock video game settings, mountains, forrests, deserts, we've been here before. The civilized areas have some good detail to them, just not as much personality. I can remember the tropical setting of Alola, and the industrial setting of Unova, but even while looking at this game i find it's setting tepid and dull, and i can't say i feel like i'm going to think about it after i'm done playing it. The character designs are mixed, some are great, some are the most boring i've ever seen. There are some good new pokemon designs, but nothing killer.
The story and characters are a step-up, as they feel more unique and more expressive than any game before. The open-world nature of the game makes the story's lack of focus work in it's favor.
The open-world isn't a meaningful addition for multiple reasons, it's gatekept by level, it's not an interesting setting, and there's not enough to actually do in it. Being able to challenge the gym leaders in any order would be cool if it actually had a level-scaling system, instead they still clearly have a right way and wrong way to do things, it's actually made even more rigid by removing weaknesses to exploit, i don't see any way you're supposed to beat a significantly higher level gym leader, so a vast majority of all players are just going to go in the exact same order.
I can't see any reason why this game would be considered better than the previous two, it removes all of Arceus' improvements, and accentuates Sword and Shield's flaws.
Update: Starting to have fun with it again.
Terastallizing is by far the worst gimmick Pokemon has ever had, and i'm not a fan of any of the gimmicks, they're horribly forced and make you play a certain way every single time, and leaning them is a chore because you know they're just going to remove them in the next game, they're wastes of time that divert resources from actually improving the game. This one is so, so much more awful than all the others. Tera types can be anything for any pokemon, so type advantage as an entire concept is essentially thrown out the window when they're in play, any pokemon can be any type, but this doesn't even work in your favor because afaik the tera type is fixed to a specific pokemon and there is no way to change it, no idea how this is supposed to work in multiplayer, if it's even there. I encountered a gym leader who's main pokemon just doesn't have weaknesses due to their ability and tera type, not having any weaknesses at all is absurd, and a terrible way to try and create difficulty. The entire point of type advantages is so the game comes down to something other than just numbers, it's what makes the game about playing smart and not hard. Without type advantage the only solution to beating a pokemon that can one-shot all of yours is to just go and grind, and that's in a game where every single battle takes forever.
They still have yet to make the combat faster, it takes several minutes just for random battles sometimes. A good gym fight can take half an hour just because of how long it takes for messages and and animations to play out, and the animations don't look good enough for them to force you to watch them every single time. Fire Emblem has let you skip animations since 2012, technically 2007, and Pokemon still refuses to catch up on making the game more playable rather than more watchable. The performance wouldn't bother me as much if it wasn't making an already slow game slower.
The non-technical aspects of the game are very mixed. The region simply isn't interesting, the areas to explore just feel like stock video game settings, mountains, forrests, deserts, we've been here before. The civilized areas have some good detail to them, just not as much personality. I can remember the tropical setting of Alola, and the industrial setting of Unova, but even while looking at this game i find it's setting tepid and dull, and i can't say i feel like i'm going to think about it after i'm done playing it. The character designs are mixed, some are great, some are the most boring i've ever seen. There are some good new pokemon designs, but nothing killer.
The story and characters are a step-up, as they feel more unique and more expressive than any game before. The open-world nature of the game makes the story's lack of focus work in it's favor.
The open-world isn't a meaningful addition for multiple reasons, it's gatekept by level, it's not an interesting setting, and there's not enough to actually do in it. Being able to challenge the gym leaders in any order would be cool if it actually had a level-scaling system, instead they still clearly have a right way and wrong way to do things, it's actually made even more rigid by removing weaknesses to exploit, i don't see any way you're supposed to beat a significantly higher level gym leader, so a vast majority of all players are just going to go in the exact same order.
I can't see any reason why this game would be considered better than the previous two, it removes all of Arceus' improvements, and accentuates Sword and Shield's flaws.
Update: Starting to have fun with it again.