Don't let the rating fool you; Pokemon Scarlet is a deeply flawed, frustrating experience that is dead set on sabotaging itself throughout its run time. It has earned four stars despite its best efforts, and in the hands of a competent studio the game would have easily been a five. Its only saving grace is a formula that is tailor made to psychologically satisfy people on the most base, primal level. Anything one's higher functions might appreciate or notice is woefully under-cooked.
I suppose the latter is the best place to start; what exactly doesn't work here? In a word: everything. The game's frame rate is extremely inconsistent. Whether in the over world, in a battle, in a cutscene, wherever, one will be dealing with varying degrees of sub-30 frames. This even causes an amount of desync with the audio in the cutscenes. Had the frame rate been locked to a low number, that would have been frustrating but mostly fine. Instead, the game oscillates wildly when determining which extremely low amount of FPS it wants to present at any given time thereby ensuring the player will never get used to it.
The speed of the game is another element that drags it down. The game is slow. Glacially, monumentally, horrifyingly slow. This mostly manifests in the battles, which seem shackled to an engine that predates most of the series's fan base. Any stat change in battle takes a couple of seconds to come across to the player. Any attack needs to have its animation play out. Status effects like poison or sleep add time to every turn when their effects are possibly the easiest to automate.
What's frustrating about the issue is that it had previously been solved. The ability to turn off all of these animations has been mysteriously removed. This is a vexing change as it presents literally no gain to the player at the cost of their agency. Put more simply: who wanted this? Who wanted to lose options? This one change likely adds more than an hour to the average player's time with the game.
I need to beleaguer this issue further: Not long into the game I caught a big crab guy. This guy's ability was that when he would get hit four of his stats would change. Rather than playing the stat change animation once for all four, or two times for both the positive and negative stat changes, it played it four times. Every time it got hit in battle! My ability to use my favorite guy was impacted by the 60 seconds of waiting he'd add to my fights. It quickly became apparent that the optimal strategy for playing Pokemon was to dick around on one's phone while the battle's various loading screens played themselves out.
Speaking of loading, for some reason there's a ton of that going on as well. Not the typical loading screen, but every action Pokemon take in battle has a one to two second bit of loading before it comes through. Even throwing a Pokeball has this issue. Nothing at all feels smooth in this game, and that weighs more heavily on the player the longer they play.
The dual release nature of the game is also a glaring problem. I don't know how Gamefreak has been enabled in doing this for years, but whatever, I bought this game too so I cannot complain. Still, it is a transparent way of gating content for dollars. The core conceit of the game, the reason it works at all, is the "catch them all" ethos. This just doesn't work when the player knows from the onset that several of their favorite guys aren't in the game so Gamefreak can sell marginally more units. It's an incredibly anti-consumer move that should be called out every release cycle.
The story of the game is also a fumble. The framing device for the proceedings is a school. The player character takes classes, bonds with their teachers, and picks up little sidequests from the school. Or, they would, if anyone knew that content was there. So much of this content is essentially hidden from the player, as they are never told it is there nor incentivized to explore the school and find it. I imagine most people completed their game with taking the final exams nor getting their bond with their teachers to the highest level. It's hard to categorize it as a throwaway when this school veneer is the loudest of the game's design. Your character can never change from their uniform yet they will almost never actually go to class? A missed opportunity for a more satisfying integration of the school elements with the larger game systems.
Adding to the frustration of all of these issues is that they were fixed. Pokemon Legends Arceus, a singular release that was solidly constructed, was a major step forward for the franchise. It was fresh, fun, and a new take on the same formula. Arceus was developed as Scarlet was coming together, so it's not shocking the Scarlet doesn't borrow anything from that game, but man does Scarlet feel like pure regression. Arceus's frame rate was fine. Battles were quick and smooth. It had no partner game that siphoned off content. Hell it didn't even have DLC. The time travel story, while not extremely satisfying, was thoroughly referenced through to the end. It was a rock solid experience that will surely be forgotten now that we can see the sales divide between it and Scarlet. Gamefreak had a perfect opportunity for evolution with their franchise, but unfortunately it looks like they're going to press 'B'.
So then, what saves Scarlet from being abject garbage? Well, it's a Pokemon game. The core conceit of exploring a world, catching guys, training guys to evolve, and bonding with a team is a fun one. If anything, Scarlet proves that formula is impossible to bomb. If anything, the formula is heightened by the open world, a change to the series (A change first seen in Arceus) that I quite enjoyed. That, plus the appearance of Pokemon in the open world rather than traditional tall grass, made hunting them down an enjoyable experience.
As always when I play these games, I completed my Pokedex, and unlike past games in the series this isn't a tedious endeavor. Only the holdover mistakes from ghosts of Christmas past rear their ugly heads: some Pokemon must be traded to evolve; others only appear in Violet. With 400 guys to find, doing so in an open world is a big upgrade from having to shuffle around tall grass and sit through encounter loading screens for hours on end.
Another system that benefits from the open world is the progression through the story, or stories. Pokemon Scarlet has three different campaign threads for the player to follow and complete at their leisure. All three of these were enjoyable on some level, though there is a clear ranking to the quality here. The Team Star battles come in last place, with the titan Pokemon hunt winning out. Still, the ability to complete these and there various stages in whatever order the player wishes is a level of freedom I truly was not expecting. It was a necessary step to follow through with the promise of open exploration, but I wouldn't have been surprised to see this bungled as well. Regardless, what we got is what works best for the conceit of the game, and this is probably what will stick with me most after finishing up with Scarlet.
It's hard to understate this. It was fun to leave the "first" gym battle for the last of my 18 events just so I could bully some bug Pokemon. It's fun to climb a mountain range you've never been to before only to fall off the other side and land on some new gym you weren't expecting. It's fun to make a plan and then have it get sidetracked because you got lost. I cannot possibly imagine a Pokemon game without this set up, at least not one in the mainline series. If anything sticks around from Scarlet, I hope this is it. Hopefully Gamefreak doesn't then remove the map feature for seemingly no reason.
The common discourse about Pokemon Scarlet is something along the lines of "Wow this game is buggy but I've having fun! Look at these wacky glitches!", which is an accurate sentiment, but it's also a dangerous one. This game is fun in spite of itself, and any amount of forgiveness levied simply because of enjoyment is an anti-consumer attitude. We should not accept games this broken. We should not overlook flaws that run this deep. This game is fun, yes, but it could have been so much more than it is right now. These "wacky" glitches actively detract from the experience, and in dunking on the game that should never be forgotten.
Gamefreak has continuously been enabled by Pokemon. People are psychologically primed to enjoy collecting. The Pokemon themselves are often designed by committee to appeal to the most people as possible. The studio does not have to try to have a hit with these elements, and it's difficult to say that they were trying with Scarlet. Regardless of the game's quality, that feeling pervades the experience: nobody cared when making this. They shipped a broken, chugging game and just didn't care because it would make a billion dollars anyway. And it did.
It's up to all of us to personally decide how we feel about this arrangement. I knowingly bought the game so I'm a culpable party, but voicing dissatisfaction is important. Enjoying a flawed, janky experience is fine too should one do it knowingly. But the "Don't care; had fun" sentiment that seems so popular is a destructive one, and the destruction wrought is on this franchise.
I suppose the latter is the best place to start; what exactly doesn't work here? In a word: everything. The game's frame rate is extremely inconsistent. Whether in the over world, in a battle, in a cutscene, wherever, one will be dealing with varying degrees of sub-30 frames. This even causes an amount of desync with the audio in the cutscenes. Had the frame rate been locked to a low number, that would have been frustrating but mostly fine. Instead, the game oscillates wildly when determining which extremely low amount of FPS it wants to present at any given time thereby ensuring the player will never get used to it.
The speed of the game is another element that drags it down. The game is slow. Glacially, monumentally, horrifyingly slow. This mostly manifests in the battles, which seem shackled to an engine that predates most of the series's fan base. Any stat change in battle takes a couple of seconds to come across to the player. Any attack needs to have its animation play out. Status effects like poison or sleep add time to every turn when their effects are possibly the easiest to automate.
What's frustrating about the issue is that it had previously been solved. The ability to turn off all of these animations has been mysteriously removed. This is a vexing change as it presents literally no gain to the player at the cost of their agency. Put more simply: who wanted this? Who wanted to lose options? This one change likely adds more than an hour to the average player's time with the game.
I need to beleaguer this issue further: Not long into the game I caught a big crab guy. This guy's ability was that when he would get hit four of his stats would change. Rather than playing the stat change animation once for all four, or two times for both the positive and negative stat changes, it played it four times. Every time it got hit in battle! My ability to use my favorite guy was impacted by the 60 seconds of waiting he'd add to my fights. It quickly became apparent that the optimal strategy for playing Pokemon was to dick around on one's phone while the battle's various loading screens played themselves out.
Speaking of loading, for some reason there's a ton of that going on as well. Not the typical loading screen, but every action Pokemon take in battle has a one to two second bit of loading before it comes through. Even throwing a Pokeball has this issue. Nothing at all feels smooth in this game, and that weighs more heavily on the player the longer they play.
The dual release nature of the game is also a glaring problem. I don't know how Gamefreak has been enabled in doing this for years, but whatever, I bought this game too so I cannot complain. Still, it is a transparent way of gating content for dollars. The core conceit of the game, the reason it works at all, is the "catch them all" ethos. This just doesn't work when the player knows from the onset that several of their favorite guys aren't in the game so Gamefreak can sell marginally more units. It's an incredibly anti-consumer move that should be called out every release cycle.
The story of the game is also a fumble. The framing device for the proceedings is a school. The player character takes classes, bonds with their teachers, and picks up little sidequests from the school. Or, they would, if anyone knew that content was there. So much of this content is essentially hidden from the player, as they are never told it is there nor incentivized to explore the school and find it. I imagine most people completed their game with taking the final exams nor getting their bond with their teachers to the highest level. It's hard to categorize it as a throwaway when this school veneer is the loudest of the game's design. Your character can never change from their uniform yet they will almost never actually go to class? A missed opportunity for a more satisfying integration of the school elements with the larger game systems.
Adding to the frustration of all of these issues is that they were fixed. Pokemon Legends Arceus, a singular release that was solidly constructed, was a major step forward for the franchise. It was fresh, fun, and a new take on the same formula. Arceus was developed as Scarlet was coming together, so it's not shocking the Scarlet doesn't borrow anything from that game, but man does Scarlet feel like pure regression. Arceus's frame rate was fine. Battles were quick and smooth. It had no partner game that siphoned off content. Hell it didn't even have DLC. The time travel story, while not extremely satisfying, was thoroughly referenced through to the end. It was a rock solid experience that will surely be forgotten now that we can see the sales divide between it and Scarlet. Gamefreak had a perfect opportunity for evolution with their franchise, but unfortunately it looks like they're going to press 'B'.
So then, what saves Scarlet from being abject garbage? Well, it's a Pokemon game. The core conceit of exploring a world, catching guys, training guys to evolve, and bonding with a team is a fun one. If anything, Scarlet proves that formula is impossible to bomb. If anything, the formula is heightened by the open world, a change to the series (A change first seen in Arceus) that I quite enjoyed. That, plus the appearance of Pokemon in the open world rather than traditional tall grass, made hunting them down an enjoyable experience.
As always when I play these games, I completed my Pokedex, and unlike past games in the series this isn't a tedious endeavor. Only the holdover mistakes from ghosts of Christmas past rear their ugly heads: some Pokemon must be traded to evolve; others only appear in Violet. With 400 guys to find, doing so in an open world is a big upgrade from having to shuffle around tall grass and sit through encounter loading screens for hours on end.
Another system that benefits from the open world is the progression through the story, or stories. Pokemon Scarlet has three different campaign threads for the player to follow and complete at their leisure. All three of these were enjoyable on some level, though there is a clear ranking to the quality here. The Team Star battles come in last place, with the titan Pokemon hunt winning out. Still, the ability to complete these and there various stages in whatever order the player wishes is a level of freedom I truly was not expecting. It was a necessary step to follow through with the promise of open exploration, but I wouldn't have been surprised to see this bungled as well. Regardless, what we got is what works best for the conceit of the game, and this is probably what will stick with me most after finishing up with Scarlet.
It's hard to understate this. It was fun to leave the "first" gym battle for the last of my 18 events just so I could bully some bug Pokemon. It's fun to climb a mountain range you've never been to before only to fall off the other side and land on some new gym you weren't expecting. It's fun to make a plan and then have it get sidetracked because you got lost. I cannot possibly imagine a Pokemon game without this set up, at least not one in the mainline series. If anything sticks around from Scarlet, I hope this is it. Hopefully Gamefreak doesn't then remove the map feature for seemingly no reason.
The common discourse about Pokemon Scarlet is something along the lines of "Wow this game is buggy but I've having fun! Look at these wacky glitches!", which is an accurate sentiment, but it's also a dangerous one. This game is fun in spite of itself, and any amount of forgiveness levied simply because of enjoyment is an anti-consumer attitude. We should not accept games this broken. We should not overlook flaws that run this deep. This game is fun, yes, but it could have been so much more than it is right now. These "wacky" glitches actively detract from the experience, and in dunking on the game that should never be forgotten.
Gamefreak has continuously been enabled by Pokemon. People are psychologically primed to enjoy collecting. The Pokemon themselves are often designed by committee to appeal to the most people as possible. The studio does not have to try to have a hit with these elements, and it's difficult to say that they were trying with Scarlet. Regardless of the game's quality, that feeling pervades the experience: nobody cared when making this. They shipped a broken, chugging game and just didn't care because it would make a billion dollars anyway. And it did.
It's up to all of us to personally decide how we feel about this arrangement. I knowingly bought the game so I'm a culpable party, but voicing dissatisfaction is important. Enjoying a flawed, janky experience is fine too should one do it knowingly. But the "Don't care; had fun" sentiment that seems so popular is a destructive one, and the destruction wrought is on this franchise.
3 Comments
If I didn't know better I'd say this was a professional review, given how little the score matches the text!
I agree with Leonardo
LeonardoMF93
1 year ago