And on an entirely unrelated note, did this game give anyone else a pokemon and food related existential crisis??? They have actual beef and fish and pork and such??? where the fuck are they getting it from???

Like I know having characters eat your cuddly best friends isn't the best look from a marketing standpoint, but I'm sorry your world building is both boring and lazy and now you've created the world's dumbest plot hole because you are cowards. I want to know about how culture in this world was affected by the existence of pokemon and their lack of animals, and food is a big part of that! Are egg foods made of execute and/or togepi, or actual pokemon eggs? Are salads made of plants or pokemon or a mix of both? Are there many varieties of cheese made of moomoo milk like there is irl? Do people use Gogoat, Dubwool and Wooloo for milk, too? Do people eat the pokemon who are/grow fruit? Does Alcremie is moomoo milk????? Let me eat miltank and magicarp you fucks, they look delicious!!!

I honestly don't really know how to rate this game. I went into playing it with a relatively optimistic mindset, even if I had low expectations. I enjoyed the story while I was playing it, I liked how open it felt, I like a lot of the new pokemon (though I'd honestly say this has to be my least favorite pokedex of the 3D pokemon era so far). I had fun with the first few hours of game play.

But I don't know, looking back, I feel rather pessimistic about the whole thing. I really didn't have that much investment in this game's world or it's characters (with the exception of the trio of rivals), I didn't really have fun exploring or discovering things like I had with past games, and I honestly felt like all the post game content pre-dlc was very lack luster. I was sorely disappointment by the very limited character customization. I feel like this game offered an illusion of openness rather than any real depth or choice. I felt like the map wasn't particularly interesting nor memorable. Any replays of this game I've attempted have felt like pulling teeth.

And from a technical standpoint, I played mostly in handheld mode, so I didn't really experience many of the bugs, but my god this game is poorly optimized. And it was even worse during the few times I did play on the big screen.

So if I had to describe this game with one word, I would use the word "disappointing", which is honestly bizarre feeling because I went into this game with my expectations very low. If I didn't know any better, I'd say "maybe pokemon just isn't for me anymore," but I know that's not true, because I still really loved Legends of Arceus and more recently, Pokemon Infinite Fusion (which, I know, it's a fan game, it shouldn't count, but underneath it's gimmick it's literally just fire red/leaf green with a little unique content thrown in and a jhoto post game).

Maybe this game wasn't for me, maybe I'm not "getting it", maybe I'm just really fucking fatigued because of the 1 year release cycle and taking it out on this game. But I don't know how to feel about Scarlet and Violet.