Gonna abstain from giving this a star rating. This might be a tough thing to swallow, but Pokemon Scarlet and Violet do not deserve your praise, even if you think they do.

If you had fun with these games, unironically, please keep that shit to yourself. I'm not saying these are the worst games ever made. I can certainly understand why people are enjoying them in spite of the massive flaws. It's pokemon, the gameplay loop is the same, and the music rocks. Of course you're enjoying it.

What I think a lot of people don't understand is that there are people behind these games, behind TPC and Game Freak, and all around the games industry who are affected by this franchise. Game Freak has been experiencing massive crunch for a long time, starting with them being dragged into 3D game development, kicking and screaming. Recent years have created even more crunch. Interviews with developers during the release window of Sword and Shield said that Game Freak was working on a HD backlog of high quality pokemon models and animations, and that turned out to be a flat out lie. Legends Arceus, despite all the praise it got for switching the formula up, is still fucking disgusting to look at, and it has clunky controls and mechanics. BDSP were outsourced entirely and were awful excuses for video games. Given all of this, I am still reluctant to blame the developers at Game Freak. Pokemon is a multimedia francise with strict deadlines that also must align with merchandising, anime, and trading cards. The Pokemon franchise has been overcome by corporate greed, period. Endorsing Scarlet and Violet given their quality level, even if you still personally enjoyed the games, sends a horrifying message to the games industry, TPC, and Game Freak that flat out says, "I am okay with developer crunch and half baked products! If you sell me this, I will buy it!"

Discourse with this series has also always been bad, with genwunners dominating conversations, and players prioritizing pokemon walking around behind the player as opposed to pokemon games telling competent stories with interesting bosses (looking at you, johto apologists), just to name an example. Dexit took the already garbage-level pokemon discourse and plunged it deeper underground. Players chose to complain about the lack of Tropius and Purugly in Sword and Shield's pokedex, instead of focusing on the rushed story, poor quality animations, empty towns, lack of voice acting, the list goes on...

So many gamers care more about their instant gratification instead of the lives of real human beings, and I think this issue extends far beyond pokemon. If you go to Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick's Twitter replies, a vast majority of his hate comments don't even pertain to his horrifying harrasment scandals or massive corporate greed. It's Call of Duty fans begging him to fix their game. This is a deep rooted social problem with gamers in the midst of consumer culture, and pokemon fans aren't exempt.

To reiterate, if you enjoyed Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, keep that shit to yourself. The lives of developers are more important than your instant gratification. I swear to god, if I see one more post on r/pokemon titled “unpopular opinion…but I actually love scarlet and violet” with tens of thousands of upvotes, i'm gonna lose it.

If you still want to try this game out, buy it secondhand.

Definitely has its problems in the dungeon and world design departments but its charm is irresistible. Awesome soundtrack and art style, one of the best Zelda stories, and good characters. While Ocarina of Time was about growing up, Wind Waker is about being forced to grow up. You aren't "the chosen one", you aren't inhabiting some kind of magical fairytale world, and your call to action wasn't from a talking tree. Your sister was captured, the world is flooding, and your grandmother is spiraling. What's left of Hyrule has gone to absolute shit (and you didn't even need to set foot in a temple of time), and now it's your job to fix the colossal mess that the older generation created? You had to prove your worth as a hero not because it was your destiny, but because nobody else would step up. It's graphical style was seen as unpleasant when the original game released in 2002. And I think that reaction mirrors the way Wind Waker attempts to unlearn generational patterns of selfish inaction and mediocrity. We've come to appreciate this game's artstyle nowadays, and applaud Aonuma and co.'s progressiveness and willingness to bring change. And I believe those lessons can be applied to our own lives. The kids are alright - you don't need to be the "chosen one" to change the world.

Also, I'm gonna say it. The final scene in this game where link kills ganondorf is cooler than the one in twilight princess. Rawest moment in video games.

"I am no one. I am nothing but an endless abyss."
- The Phantom, Turnabout for Tomorrow

Dual Destinies is poorly written and creatively bankrupt. I'm honestly impressed by how the game simultaneously derailed the existing continuity and character arcs established in previous games, while also delivering a half baked and childish new storyline that leaves the series nowhere to go in the future.

The “dark age of the law” was a comically awful overarching theme and having villains like Aristotle Means, a guy who genuinely believes lawyers are supposed to lie and forge evidence, is proof of how allergic the writers are from creating actual interesting or thought provoking character drama and moral arguments.

Do we not see the hypocrisy of this story when Phoenix Wright himself used underhanded means (forging evidence, rigging a jury) to justify the end goal of beating Kristoph Gavin and absolving himself in AA4? Like we literally had an interesting “does the end justify the means” moral argument set up for us in the previous game and we throw it all away for this 4Kids ass good vs evil plot line that is resolved by exposing a nameless, faceless villain whose goals were never explained?

Speaking of, the actions of the "phantom" in Dual Destinies was motivated by his desire to cover up his previous crimes from 7 years prior. You might be asking, "what motivated him to commit the crimes of 7 years ago, like disrupting the first rocket launch?" Too bad! There's no explanation! But don't worry, catching him ended the dark age of the law anyways!

There are so many “gags” that just fall back on moments from past games like Trucy only showing up with the panties, turning Apollo’s “I’m fine” into an actual character trait (wtf bro😭), and Phoenix being regressed to a compulsive bluffer. Apollo as a whole is literally a completely different character who shares none of the same motivations and thoughts he did in the previous game. You know how he was consistently at odds with the way Phoenix carried himself and raised Trucy? And how he trusts his clients less? Now, Apollo sees him as a mentor and gets complimented on how similar he is to him. Phoenix also has no reason to exist in this game, he appears to be way less capable, completely undoing the ultimatum he dealt with at the end of Bridge to the Turnabout.

Athena and Blackquill's story is by far the most competent part of this game but it still feels underwhelming given the shared screentime with the other protags, filler cases, and terrible phantom story. Why couldn’t we have had a story about the immorality of Blackquill’s death penalty?

Like the gags, the music is super derivative of past games. So many tracks are uninspired remixes (or straight up ports like guilty love?) although there were a few original bangers like the cross examination themes.

The DLC was mid filler. The fact that they decided to make DLC filler cases at all, in what's supposed to be a narrative-driven mystery series, should tell you how depraved this game truly is.

The mood matrix doubles down on the childish dialogue with conversations like "My sources are telling me you were thinking happy thoughts when you should be thinking sad thoughts." Actual elementary school dialogue, and it pervades through the entire game's writing too, drenched in incredibly cringy anime tropes.

It really feels like the devs wrote themselves into a corner here. They wanted to tell their own story with Athena and Blackquill, but they wanted to bring Phoenix back too. So they had to bring Trucy back. Which meant they also had to bring Apollo back. Oh, and why not give Pearl and Edgeworth a couple seconds of screentime too? Since Athena and Blackquill's story resolved at the end of this game, there is literally no way any of these characters can grow. Dual Destinies toppled the reputation of Ace Attorney in one fell swoop.

Please, by all means, explain to me why having a villain with no name, no face, no backstory, and no clear motivations somehow isn't enough to instantly classify this game as garbage.