A breath of fresh air that leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth for reasons that should be obvious for everybody by now. I had a total blast with the ~40 hours I played of both the main story+a good chunk of the postgame content that Violet had to offer, but it was marred by the notorious technical performance issues that indicate an unpolished, untested, and rushed game. I did not encounter any bad glitches or bugs, but there were countless instances of rough assets and unpolished sequences, you can just tell that this game is held together by scotch tape and elmer's glue. Game Freak and The Pokemon Company clearly have some serious work to do as it pertains to optimization and deadline crunch for future entries if they want to be able to stand in the realm of triple A gaming and continue to move the Pokemon franchise forward as they are clearly endeavoring to do with both this release and this year's other release, Legends Arceus. I have never been one to have a huge emphasis on graphics or small performance issues in my ratings, but this game forces my hand. It's inexcusable for a game from the world's largest and most recognizable gaming franchise to have this many issues with simply running stably. The game looks ugly too, which is more excusable in comparison, but everything visually about the environments and assets just screams "rushed". Game Freak, give these employees some more time to make the game, man. It's not like they didn't try (although there is a point to be made about mailing it in when you know it's going to sell 20 billion million copies in day one because, duh, it's Pokemon), but there clearly needs to be some serious changes to the release cycle.

With all that being said...

No shame, I really, really enjoyed these games once I began to cope with the performance problems. Once you go "well, ok" and begin to immerse yourself in it, you realize that the game has a great soundtrack, a cast of new Pokemon that hits more than it misses, some really good characters that feel alive and fun to engage with, and the best story in a Pokemon game since generation 5. The world is varied and is fun to roam around, especially on the rideable legendary Pokemon. These are probably the best Pokemon games since Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, which speaks to how great these games would be had they been polished without any technical issues from day one. I'm sure the performance may be patched in the future, possibly, but the poor launch can't be ignored.

TLDR I really like this game but jesus christ man