Damn, very conflicted feelings on this one. Disappointment out of the gate: the presentation is far below where it should be. I shan't bore with details of performance quality, as that is well trodden ground. Less discussed but still relevant is the story presentation, which is a step above Sword & Shield for sure, but still subpar featuring framedrops, poor and few animations, and a general absence of polish. The region is severely lacking in character, though some towns stand out as quite well-realised.
However, over the course of a game this long I adapt. All these issues become like rain, noise that I barely notice. And what lies underneath that noise is a damn fine game indeed.
While lacking in character, the region is actually really well designed, with great verticality, plenty of nooks and crannies, multiple routes, and true freedom. The open world is no lie; the player is welcome to explore right into high-level areas if they want. Smart decisions are made about how to balance the high-level Pokémon the player can catch, and how experience is handed out by these and trainers' Pokémon, to keep the player from becoming over-powered. This is achieved without level-scaling, thank god. I don't want a smooth difficulty curve in an open-world game, I want pure chaos, and Scarlet is more than happy to oblige. That some objectives were rendered trivial didn't matter to me, as this was the result of pushing myself to do late-game challenges while under-levelled, and thus the ease of these objectives was a product of my agency.
While the story presentation is problematic, the actual story itself contains a number of high-points and is generally well-written. It all comes together at the end, featuring a surreal final area with an atmosphere that actually feels bolstered by the game's unsightliness and poor performance. The climax has pretty great presentation, and is unusually bold and emotional for a Pokémon game. At least one, probably more, of the Pokémon I caught have canonically killed actual humans. Absolutely crazy.
I rinsed this game. I did literally everything. I caught all 400 Pokémon, I did all the main and side quests, I redid the final post-game objective until I'd beaten all the randomised opponents you can fight. Fuck, I even did the exams. I love this game... but I can't give it more than a 3.5/5. It's a great game buried in a miasma of awful, undercooked, unpolished nonsense. While I have much disdain for the Pokémon Company's business practices, Game Freak proved in 2022 that they can do great work, putting out the two best Pokémon games since generation 5 in the same year despite the massive time pressures placed on them. My sincere hope is that Game Freak can now thrive within the awful system they find themselves in to put out even better work, using Legends: Arceus and Scarlet/Violet as starting points to iterate, improve, and polish these two styles of Pokémon game without needing to start again. I'm cautiously optimistic.
However, over the course of a game this long I adapt. All these issues become like rain, noise that I barely notice. And what lies underneath that noise is a damn fine game indeed.
While lacking in character, the region is actually really well designed, with great verticality, plenty of nooks and crannies, multiple routes, and true freedom. The open world is no lie; the player is welcome to explore right into high-level areas if they want. Smart decisions are made about how to balance the high-level Pokémon the player can catch, and how experience is handed out by these and trainers' Pokémon, to keep the player from becoming over-powered. This is achieved without level-scaling, thank god. I don't want a smooth difficulty curve in an open-world game, I want pure chaos, and Scarlet is more than happy to oblige. That some objectives were rendered trivial didn't matter to me, as this was the result of pushing myself to do late-game challenges while under-levelled, and thus the ease of these objectives was a product of my agency.
While the story presentation is problematic, the actual story itself contains a number of high-points and is generally well-written. It all comes together at the end, featuring a surreal final area with an atmosphere that actually feels bolstered by the game's unsightliness and poor performance. The climax has pretty great presentation, and is unusually bold and emotional for a Pokémon game. At least one, probably more, of the Pokémon I caught have canonically killed actual humans. Absolutely crazy.
I rinsed this game. I did literally everything. I caught all 400 Pokémon, I did all the main and side quests, I redid the final post-game objective until I'd beaten all the randomised opponents you can fight. Fuck, I even did the exams. I love this game... but I can't give it more than a 3.5/5. It's a great game buried in a miasma of awful, undercooked, unpolished nonsense. While I have much disdain for the Pokémon Company's business practices, Game Freak proved in 2022 that they can do great work, putting out the two best Pokémon games since generation 5 in the same year despite the massive time pressures placed on them. My sincere hope is that Game Freak can now thrive within the awful system they find themselves in to put out even better work, using Legends: Arceus and Scarlet/Violet as starting points to iterate, improve, and polish these two styles of Pokémon game without needing to start again. I'm cautiously optimistic.