I hate Pokemon Violet. But I also can't come to hate or truly dislike. Honestly, I did have a decent amount of fun. I didn't complete the Pokedex for no reason. However, this game is flawed in so many numerous ways that I can't even really say the game is mediocre, it's actively bad in so many ways.
I want to give a forewarning though. This review will cover a lot of my feelings as the series as a whole as well as Violet, as I feel it's important to understand my view on this game. A great number of Violet's problems aren't just isolated to one game; it showcases the core flaws of Pokemon as a series. If you just want a review of just the game itself, there's hundreds you can read on here.
Anyways, for context, It has been years since I have played a Pokemon game. As a kid, I was really into it. I remember watching videos of creepypastas and scary easter eggs in Pokemon. Wanting to find some myself, I bought Pokemon Y in 2013. However, I ended up getting attached to it beyond that. Pokemon Y and Omega Ruby were easily my most two played games on my 3DS. I spent hundreds of hours completely every inch of those games and doing fun side things like shiny hunting and online battling.
It wasn't until Pokemon Moon where I played the game for an hour, got bored, and never touched the game again. Nor the series. For a while, I thought it was just Moon itself not really clicking. However, for the next 6 years, I felt nothing towards Pokemon. I stopped caring about new releases, and only got dragged back into the discourse due to community arguments over stupid stuff like the National Dex.
This release was shaping up to be no different. I didn't care about the game at all when I saw it revealed nor for anytime after that. However, in October, something happened. I was in the spooky mood, and out of nowhere, I had a sudden urge to play the original Pokemon Red. After spending a few hours with it, I finally understood Pokemon. The series is less about its gameplay, combat, world, or story, but rather catching creatures, getting attached to them, and training them. It's a game who's enjoyment is mostly built on the level of attachment you feel towards your Pokemon and your urge to fight on with them.
And for me, I fell into this feeling easily. I remember feeling for years that Pokemon is just worse Shin Megami Tensei, however this revelation made me completely reconsider how I look at Pokemon. In SMT, you never get to name your demons, nor do you ever get "close" to them. They're purely vessels for combat and progression. Pokemon is the complete opposite, where you're given generally mediocre combat encounters, but are left to create bonds yourself.
However, despite this realization, I still feel Pokemon is just generally not that good of a series, which really sucks. I can understand why so many people love it. Pokemon Violet in particular has so many cool concepts that got me super intrigued, which I will get into later. However, it's impossible for me to simply overlook the numerous issues I have with gameplay, combat, story, writing, visuals, music, and pretty much just every single aspect of this game.
This game has a pretty neat way to start you off. The first hour or two is your typical Pokemon fare, with the only new thing being the school setting. I don't particularly care for settings like that, but it's a first for Pokemon so I don't really mind it. After the starting area, your sent to the school for a few cutscenes before your thrust into the game. It sets you up with three different pathways to follow, which the game does a good job of building up intrigue for.
The Victory Road path is the classic Pokemon stuff, where you defeat 8 gym leaders, battling your rival along the way before facing the Elite Four and the Champion, Path of Legends is easily the most interesting, setting you off to investigate sightings of gigantic boss Pokemon across various spots on the map, and Starfall Street tasks you with taking down Team Star, seemingly a group of bullies, by a hacker on your phone. I really enjoy how it immediately throws all these points of interest at you and allows you to explore them in any order. It really feels like your going on an adventure more than any other game in the series.
The game also in this time sets up Area Zero, being described as this very strange and extraordinary place in the middle of a crater that causes most who go in it to never be seen again. You're warned to stay completely clear of it. I like how early they introduce it, as it was one of the aspects of the game that pushed me through a lot of the slog out of pure curiosity.
Anyways, I'd first like to start out with gameplay, as it's easily the part of the game I'm most conflicted on. Pokemon Violet is the first mainline game in the series to be truly open world, and it shows. While going around every nook and cranny was fun, the only reason I did it really was to find new Pokemon to catch. There's also the stakes, but they're so out of the way and decently hidden that I ended up just looking up the location for half of them, as exploring for them just felt more like a chore than anything. While new Pokemon could easily be argued to be enough to find, with it being the focus of the series and all, I don't feel the catching mechanics are varied enough to make it satisfying.
In this game, the only way to catch Pokemon is to just throw Pokeballs, and it's the exact same loop over and over. Get their health into red, try to put them to sleep, and throw whatever Pokeball type works best until RNG is in your favor. There's absolutely zero depth to it beyond that, which I think is a huge missed opportunity.
While I was playing the game, I kept on thinking back to another game, Bugsnax. That game intrigued me gameplay wise for similar reasons to Pokemon. While the creatures themselves are pretty basic in terms of design, the actual process of catching them was fun and varied. You have enough tools to where you can catch Bugsnax in so many ways, and for a lot you have to think outside the box, combining multiple of your tools together to catch some of the harder ones. Sometimes you also have to use the environment itself, or even other Bugsnax, to catch them. Some Bugsnax would also be too big to fit in your traps, or would break or burn them due to physical properties, and you had to find ways around this.
Pokemon needs to take notes from this game, since I think a Pokemon game that puts even a little bit more variance on how you catch Pokemon would go a long way to making an aspect I'm fond of much better.
There's also the combat of the game, which is fine. I used to think Pokemon's combat was shallow, however I've realized overtime how deep its systems go. I think the main issue is how the base game utilizes it. There's no inbetween of completely casual and completely competitive for this game. You either have incredibly bland battles between trainers that almost never throw serious wild cards at you, or you're online fighting the most cracked teams you've seen in your life with hours spent breeding and maxing out stats to create the perfect Pokemon. As someone who enjoys challenge, there's really nothing in this game that satisfied me gameplay wise.
However, surprisingly this game did have a good fight, to the point where it was one of my favorite fights in any JRPG. The only issue is that it was completely unintentional. The fight was against Grusha, the Ice gym leader. I have nothing to say about him, however the fight was much more difficult than expected due to the circumstances I went into it. At the time, my team's levels were in the mid to high 30's. The two gyms I had done before were super easy, and after exploring two entire areas with no gyms, I decided once I got to the mountain to push straight up to the top to fight the gym slightly early for some challenge. However when I got into the battle itself, I was terrified to see that the Pokemon were all 10 or more levels higher than my current team.
I immediately thought of just quitting and coming back when I had 5 or so more levels, but I decided that it didn't hurt to try. After a long fight that you can see detailed here, I barely snuffed out a win, and even then it was pretty much pure luck. While this fight was incredibly, it's hard to give the game too much credit when it wasn't intended. Though at the same time, I would've never had this experience had the game not been so open in progression.
However, that brings me to my next issue, progression. For the first half of the game, I like what it does. I set off to the east, as the game implies that it's trickier, and it starts off with the unconventional Titan Pokemon rather than sending you straight into a gym. The Titan and the gym were both easy, barely requiring any effort, however there was one other thing; the first Team Star base. They all follow really similar formulas. You have a short introduction scene before the base, and once you go in you have to defeat 30 Pokemon in 10 minutes (it takes like 1 and a half at most), before fighting the base leader on their giant Pokemon vehicle. This first Team Star fight was surprisingly somewhat challenging. It wasn't hard, but I found myself having to be pretty careful about which Pokemon I sent out, and it's the first time I had to use a revive. The Torkoal and the Revaroom are both super spongy and hit like trucks. It was a nice change of pace, and the good music (a new frontier for the series) helped build tension too. Just a fun fight overall. Sadly though, none of the Team Star bases afterwards got anywhere close.
Next is the big one; visuals and general performance. And yeah I'm not even gonna try, this game looks and runs like shit. I'll be honest, I don't think that the game runs that bad, I didn't run into that many issues. The main problem is moreso what it means. It is just simply unacceptable for a game of this caliper to be released in a state like this. Pokemon has been doing this for years, but never to this level. I don't care if Pokemon doesn't improve on a single aspect I just mentioned before this if it means fixing this.
The visuals themselves on the other hand aren't terrible, but there is a lot of room for improvement. I really like how all the Pokemon look in this game, the new textures just feel nice. I think this new style though causes the game to shift more towards realism, and I think that just causes more issues. Now, when the Pokemon actually look nice, it causes the shitty and playdoh world to stick out like a sore thumb in comparison. Now they'll either have to keep this contrast in, or put more effort into making the world look realistic, taking away from time that could be spent elsewhere.
Next I want to spend a little time on the music. I've never liked Pokemon music too much. I've always had a liking for the Gameboy games since I have a knack for how the Gameboy sounds, as well as the fact that Red's soundtrack can be weirdly unsettling and strange at times. The only song I'd say is directly scary is Lavender Town, which is a fantastic theme, but a lot also just have this strangely downing underside. Outside that though, I just find Pokemon music to not be bad, but kinda generic. Go to the channel "Pokeli", switch to "Popular" and listen to the first 4 or more songs. They all just sound generic and are fine at best. Violet is more or less the same with some tracks, though surprisingly it actually has some good tracks.
My favorite is probably the Team Star Grunt theme, which sucks since you hear it like 6 times throughout the game. And speaking of barely hearing it, there's also the Team Star boss theme, which while not as good, it still adds a great atmosphere to the fights, and is enhanced by the fact that the fights its used for can be actually slightly challenging. There's also the Area Zero theme, but I'll touch on that later. Overall the music is definitely a step up, but it's mostly just a handful of tracks carrying a lot of mediocre and forgettable ones.
Spoiler warning, I'm gonna go into depth about the story here. Pokemon has never been a series about story. Even its most diehard fans will tell you that it's nothing special in most games. Pokemon Violet isn't all that good either, but I found a lot of elements that I found surprisingly enjoyable, but sadly they never fall together in a way that's satisfying.
Before I tackle the individual paths, I wanna start with a story I didn't expect, that being of the school and its teachers. The social link system is pretty interesting, if basic. I did like spending more time with the teachers, but the links are all pretty barebones and are way too short for me to actually care about the stories told. There's potential for future games but here it just feels really underutilized. On a side note though, I did really like the classes. They're not just useless information and actually teach you about the systems in the game, which were all pretty useful. Nothing crazy but I actually enjoyed attending them.
I'll tackle story by each individual path, as each is pretty much a separate story. First is Victory Road, which just as its premise, is really basic in story. Your main rival Nemona is kinda basic. The concept is nice, a rival that has already become champion and is only fighting you due to wanting an actual challenge. She's pretty much a New Game+ player begging for an actual obstacle, and while its a fun idea that's well executed, that doesn't stop them from being pretty basic beyond that. You learn a little more about in Area Zero but it doesn't do enough to make me think she's that good of a character. The rest of the gym leaders are pretty unnotable. Just like Nemona they're fine but all very one note. Some like the normal type gym leader, Larry, are pretty fun but overall just kinda forgettable. As just with the gym leaders, I didn't care for the elite four either. It was nice seeing Larry and the art teacher again, but everyone else is super forgettable, especially the champion. I liked the final fight with Nemona, with both of you finally being on equal terms and Nemona not having to hold anything back It's a nice fight with a neat remix of her battle theme, but there's not much else to it. It's a very standard path, but that's the point.
Next is the Path of Legends. It's decent. It's nothing that special, but for Pokemon its a nice little tale. Arven's goals are believable, and he's just generally a fun and eccentric character. I do think it's paced a little off though. I think it would've been better to reveal Turo being Arven's father at the 3rd Titan, so we could spend the 4th going more into that, and the 5th allowing the focus to be on his dog. I get the end of the path and Area Zero is kind of for that too, but I still think there could've been a little more. The fight against Arven at the end is actually pretty fun too, with it being a decent challenge. I went to it way too early and had to return later, but even 10 levels later I still had a lot of trouble. His dog hits hard as shit and one shot most of my team. Also a side note, I really like how one of the Titans is a Pokemon from Area Zero. I was already spoiled on the paradox Pokemon, but it was still cool getting an in game glimpse at what awaited me inside. Overall a good path with an actually decent character and some nice world building, especially with Area Zero.
Next is Starfall Street, which I'm conflicted on. I don't have an issue with it, and generally I liked the story, but for some reason I just didn't really care, nor found it that memorable. The twist that the team was actually the people being bullied, not the bullies themselves was neat, but I don't have much to say outside of that. The leaders themselves are all pretty forgettable, though I did like the prevailing mystery of the leader of Team Star. There's also, Clive who is the best character in this game, but I found it strange that they just appeared at the bases for no reason and never returned after that, I would've loved to see more of him. The fight with Director Clavell was genuinely super cool, even if it was pretty easy.
The twist with Penny being the leader of Team Star was super predictable and kind of underwhelming. Like, of course the only character we've seen who has implied connections to Team Star and is shown to be good with computers is actually the hacker who's been guiding you around to the exact locations of each base with information on each leader. Her fight is pretty cool but sadly very easy. Overall I found this path the most disappointing, I think it just has too many characters for me to get attached to. This game is already spread out between 30+ characters between the teachers, the gym leaders, and Nemona and Arven, so adding another 6 with their own sad story just didn't click.
Finally, after all paths, you get the final path; The Way Home. Before I get into it though, I wanna mention two things. First is that I'll be talking about all aspects of this path and Area Zero, since it's so separated from the rest of the game that talking about it all at once feels better. Also, there's the Violet book. I discovered it by accident while exploring the library, and it was easily the thing that made me the most intrigued in the game. Seeing all these small glimpses into Area Zero was super fascinating, and I liked the general mysterious, otherworldly feel to it all. The final entry in particular was super interesting to me, with this strange disk entity made of overlapping crystal plates. I immediately guessed this was the final boss and was super excited to see it.
The Way Home starts off super interesting, putting you in a party with Nemona, Arven, and Penny. I haven't seen this in a Pokemon game before and it was pretty cool. Finally though, you fly down to Area Zero, and this was by far my favorite point of the game. I have a huge liking for "paradise" areas in game, with bright, exaggerated colors and the atmosphere of this perfect, sculpted environment built by something much higher than you. Area Zero captured this feeling perfectly and I loved every second of it. It's also the only area in the game to disable Miraidon for story reasons, forcing you to traverse on foot and truly take in the entire location. The music for this area too is just so good, and plays into the atmosphere perfectly. It also does this really smart thing of sounding simultaneously like an ancient jungle and a futuristic city, playing into both the themes of Scarlet and Violet. This area is WAY too good for this game, and I really wish it was in an actually good one.
As you walk down further into the crater, your party actually starts to have conversations. They go by super quick, and I have no clue how they expect most people to be able to read this WHILE walking around and exploring, but it's not too bad. The dialogue is surprisingly decent. Nemona is still as one note as ever, but Arven and Penny have surprisingly good chemistry. They bounce off each other super well and their conversations together are fun. The group also goes into more detail about their personal lives and themselves (especially their parents), and it was done in a generally believable way. It didn't feel as stilted as some of the dialogue in this game, it flowed nicely and the characters felt more realistic than before. I just wish it didn't go by so quick so it could settle more.
The Pokemon in this area are also pretty cool, though I'll be honest, I really wish they were more creative with the Paradox Pokemon. All the ones in Violet are just robots, nothing more. There was so much potential here, like clones, mutations or even alien versions of Pokemon, but no they're just all robots. They're generally pretty cool, but overall I just found myself disappointed. Scarlet does it better overall, even if the past theme doesn't do it for me personally. I do like some of them though, especially Iron Bundle, Iron Thorns, and Iron Valiant.
Going back a bit, the story and lore are even more interesting than expected. I don't know how well known this is, but you can find books in the stations that I nearly miss, which act as logs by Turo. It catalogues his excitement of Area Zero and his interest in the crystals, before ultimately building a time machine and creating a machine that can automatically catch Pokemon from the future and bring them to the past. As they go on you can even see Turo slowly lose himself, which hints at what's to come. The big reveal is pretty cool. Having the professors of this game not only be secretly dead the entire game, but to be revealed to be genuinely insane and completely losing themselves was very unexpected. Not because the game didn't build it up, it actually does quite well and gives many hints, but rather that I just didn't expect the series to go in a direction like this, especially with modern Pokemon. The AI professors were really interesting too, being versions of the professors who saw through their craziness, but were unable to change anything due to their programming. The battle with them is super cool but sadly pretty easy.
Finally, you get to the legendary fight, which was honestly pretty simple and disappointing. However, the whole thing with you having to select Miraidon in the menu where he usually is, with an option to send him out is a super cool idea. I love when games do meta shit with their menus and UI, and this is a prime example of that. Just before it also messes with the text box, having the Ai's name change into the security system. The ending with the Ai Turo gaining back himself for a moment, and realizing that the only way to stop the protocol is to send himself to the future was a nice way to end it.
Overall, Area Zero is just way too good to be in this game. Is it perfect? No, not by any means. It's brought down by a lot of the game's aspects to be that good. However, it is easily the best executed part of the game. It plays into so many of my tastes well, and it genuinely makes me excited to see more stuff like this in future games. I don't know if I'll ever be able to play another Pokemon game after this one, but Area Zero will always cause me to second guess myself. It single handedly brings this game up by a point, and it makes me feel dirty giving it a 5/10.
Before I end off the review, I wanna go into a lightning round of various pros and cons I couldn't fit anywhere else. Starting from the top:
-I really liked the Ruinous Pokemon. The concept of Pokemon mainfesting from the pain and suffering caused by ancient objects of mass destruction is so cool. I'm not super huge on the designs, but the process of discovery and reveal of these Pokemon are awesome. Catching them was a bitch though.
-Thank god they introduced relearning moves in this game. Genuinely such a good decisions that allows you to customize your Pokemon to your liking. While I never used it in my playthrough for challenge purpose, it'll be insanely helpful to competitive fans.
-Miraidon feels super clunky to control and move around. I always found myself bumping into Pokemon randomly and it was super annoying.
-I love that Pokemon are size accurate now. Small Pokemon are now actually small as fuck, and the big guys are really big. I don't think we'll ever see Wailord again now.
-Shiny hunting sucks. Not only are a lot of the new shinies in this game super disappointing and samey, but they removed the sparkle effects both on the field and in battle. You can't tell if you've found one unless you look really closely, which goes against the laid back grind shiny hunting was before.
-Why wasn't the Disk entity ever brought up again?? It's heavily implied to be the creator of the crystals, however you never see it. Teralizing in general isn't really all that explained, and it's super weird. Also is it just me, or was anyone else expecting the final boss to be the Disk where you do a Tera raid with the Area Zero team? It felt like a perfect ending and I was genuinely shocked to see it not done. I pray there's DLC that does it instead cause it's massive missed potential.
-Union Circles are super bare bones. Multiplayer Pokemon is an awesome idea but it felt a little too beyond their scope.
-Teralizing is a pretty neat mechanic. Being able to change a Pokemon's type once per battle is a super interesting mechanic. It feels more fair and less gimmicky than the other gimmicks in this series.
-Customizations options are all really good in this game. I like how much you can change your character visually. My only gripe is that you can't change your clothes, which is such a strange decision but it's whatever.
-Speaking of customization, why do you have a dorm if you can't customize it? Such a strange decision.
-What's the purpose of those exclusive Pokeballs you get from completing the Pokedex? Is it just too keep? The Beast Ball got me excited Ultra Beasts were in this game but nope. Very strange.
-Trainer battles are really boring in this game. The only time I got challenged was when I accidentally found a trainer 10 levels higher than me and they beat my ass. I battled them a lot early on but later I just stopped.
-The lack of voice acting is so weird. I wouldn't mind it if there weren't multiple cutscenes that were animated with voice acting obviously in mind, with even lip movement, but there's just nothing. Not even just the random beep noises a lot of games have, just nothing. This also would've helped in Area Zero so you could explore while listening instead of stopping and reading.
-I like how quick and easy trading is. Made completing the Pokedex so much more bearable.
-There's a postgame, but I didn't bother. It just seems to be rematches against the gym leaders, which could be fun but after 65 hours I am burnt out on this damn game. Maybe one day though.
-This is present in all Pokemon games, but I really like how attached to your team you can get. Every single member in my final party has a notable moment they pulled off in battle, which is much different than all the other games where I can't remember a single member (outside of Red of course).
-This is the first game I've ever played where I had to mute the credits theme.
In the end, Pokemon Violet is a strange game. I think it exemplifies every single thought I have about Pokemon as a series. It has countless cool ideas, and even executes on them well sometimes, but a huge majority is just mediocre to outright terrible. The catching and team building, and Area Zero are easily the best parts of this game, everything else lacked in multiple noticeable ways. I can't help but feel like a lot of the problems could've been ironed out with another year or so of development, but considering the state of modern Pokemon, that's never going to happen. Will we ever get a good Pokemon game? I don't know. This game makes me equally excited and scared of the future of this series. Either way, I can't lie when I say this game has me interested in at least seeing what's next.
I want to give a forewarning though. This review will cover a lot of my feelings as the series as a whole as well as Violet, as I feel it's important to understand my view on this game. A great number of Violet's problems aren't just isolated to one game; it showcases the core flaws of Pokemon as a series. If you just want a review of just the game itself, there's hundreds you can read on here.
Anyways, for context, It has been years since I have played a Pokemon game. As a kid, I was really into it. I remember watching videos of creepypastas and scary easter eggs in Pokemon. Wanting to find some myself, I bought Pokemon Y in 2013. However, I ended up getting attached to it beyond that. Pokemon Y and Omega Ruby were easily my most two played games on my 3DS. I spent hundreds of hours completely every inch of those games and doing fun side things like shiny hunting and online battling.
It wasn't until Pokemon Moon where I played the game for an hour, got bored, and never touched the game again. Nor the series. For a while, I thought it was just Moon itself not really clicking. However, for the next 6 years, I felt nothing towards Pokemon. I stopped caring about new releases, and only got dragged back into the discourse due to community arguments over stupid stuff like the National Dex.
This release was shaping up to be no different. I didn't care about the game at all when I saw it revealed nor for anytime after that. However, in October, something happened. I was in the spooky mood, and out of nowhere, I had a sudden urge to play the original Pokemon Red. After spending a few hours with it, I finally understood Pokemon. The series is less about its gameplay, combat, world, or story, but rather catching creatures, getting attached to them, and training them. It's a game who's enjoyment is mostly built on the level of attachment you feel towards your Pokemon and your urge to fight on with them.
And for me, I fell into this feeling easily. I remember feeling for years that Pokemon is just worse Shin Megami Tensei, however this revelation made me completely reconsider how I look at Pokemon. In SMT, you never get to name your demons, nor do you ever get "close" to them. They're purely vessels for combat and progression. Pokemon is the complete opposite, where you're given generally mediocre combat encounters, but are left to create bonds yourself.
However, despite this realization, I still feel Pokemon is just generally not that good of a series, which really sucks. I can understand why so many people love it. Pokemon Violet in particular has so many cool concepts that got me super intrigued, which I will get into later. However, it's impossible for me to simply overlook the numerous issues I have with gameplay, combat, story, writing, visuals, music, and pretty much just every single aspect of this game.
This game has a pretty neat way to start you off. The first hour or two is your typical Pokemon fare, with the only new thing being the school setting. I don't particularly care for settings like that, but it's a first for Pokemon so I don't really mind it. After the starting area, your sent to the school for a few cutscenes before your thrust into the game. It sets you up with three different pathways to follow, which the game does a good job of building up intrigue for.
The Victory Road path is the classic Pokemon stuff, where you defeat 8 gym leaders, battling your rival along the way before facing the Elite Four and the Champion, Path of Legends is easily the most interesting, setting you off to investigate sightings of gigantic boss Pokemon across various spots on the map, and Starfall Street tasks you with taking down Team Star, seemingly a group of bullies, by a hacker on your phone. I really enjoy how it immediately throws all these points of interest at you and allows you to explore them in any order. It really feels like your going on an adventure more than any other game in the series.
The game also in this time sets up Area Zero, being described as this very strange and extraordinary place in the middle of a crater that causes most who go in it to never be seen again. You're warned to stay completely clear of it. I like how early they introduce it, as it was one of the aspects of the game that pushed me through a lot of the slog out of pure curiosity.
Anyways, I'd first like to start out with gameplay, as it's easily the part of the game I'm most conflicted on. Pokemon Violet is the first mainline game in the series to be truly open world, and it shows. While going around every nook and cranny was fun, the only reason I did it really was to find new Pokemon to catch. There's also the stakes, but they're so out of the way and decently hidden that I ended up just looking up the location for half of them, as exploring for them just felt more like a chore than anything. While new Pokemon could easily be argued to be enough to find, with it being the focus of the series and all, I don't feel the catching mechanics are varied enough to make it satisfying.
In this game, the only way to catch Pokemon is to just throw Pokeballs, and it's the exact same loop over and over. Get their health into red, try to put them to sleep, and throw whatever Pokeball type works best until RNG is in your favor. There's absolutely zero depth to it beyond that, which I think is a huge missed opportunity.
While I was playing the game, I kept on thinking back to another game, Bugsnax. That game intrigued me gameplay wise for similar reasons to Pokemon. While the creatures themselves are pretty basic in terms of design, the actual process of catching them was fun and varied. You have enough tools to where you can catch Bugsnax in so many ways, and for a lot you have to think outside the box, combining multiple of your tools together to catch some of the harder ones. Sometimes you also have to use the environment itself, or even other Bugsnax, to catch them. Some Bugsnax would also be too big to fit in your traps, or would break or burn them due to physical properties, and you had to find ways around this.
Pokemon needs to take notes from this game, since I think a Pokemon game that puts even a little bit more variance on how you catch Pokemon would go a long way to making an aspect I'm fond of much better.
There's also the combat of the game, which is fine. I used to think Pokemon's combat was shallow, however I've realized overtime how deep its systems go. I think the main issue is how the base game utilizes it. There's no inbetween of completely casual and completely competitive for this game. You either have incredibly bland battles between trainers that almost never throw serious wild cards at you, or you're online fighting the most cracked teams you've seen in your life with hours spent breeding and maxing out stats to create the perfect Pokemon. As someone who enjoys challenge, there's really nothing in this game that satisfied me gameplay wise.
However, surprisingly this game did have a good fight, to the point where it was one of my favorite fights in any JRPG. The only issue is that it was completely unintentional. The fight was against Grusha, the Ice gym leader. I have nothing to say about him, however the fight was much more difficult than expected due to the circumstances I went into it. At the time, my team's levels were in the mid to high 30's. The two gyms I had done before were super easy, and after exploring two entire areas with no gyms, I decided once I got to the mountain to push straight up to the top to fight the gym slightly early for some challenge. However when I got into the battle itself, I was terrified to see that the Pokemon were all 10 or more levels higher than my current team.
I immediately thought of just quitting and coming back when I had 5 or so more levels, but I decided that it didn't hurt to try. After a long fight that you can see detailed here, I barely snuffed out a win, and even then it was pretty much pure luck. While this fight was incredibly, it's hard to give the game too much credit when it wasn't intended. Though at the same time, I would've never had this experience had the game not been so open in progression.
However, that brings me to my next issue, progression. For the first half of the game, I like what it does. I set off to the east, as the game implies that it's trickier, and it starts off with the unconventional Titan Pokemon rather than sending you straight into a gym. The Titan and the gym were both easy, barely requiring any effort, however there was one other thing; the first Team Star base. They all follow really similar formulas. You have a short introduction scene before the base, and once you go in you have to defeat 30 Pokemon in 10 minutes (it takes like 1 and a half at most), before fighting the base leader on their giant Pokemon vehicle. This first Team Star fight was surprisingly somewhat challenging. It wasn't hard, but I found myself having to be pretty careful about which Pokemon I sent out, and it's the first time I had to use a revive. The Torkoal and the Revaroom are both super spongy and hit like trucks. It was a nice change of pace, and the good music (a new frontier for the series) helped build tension too. Just a fun fight overall. Sadly though, none of the Team Star bases afterwards got anywhere close.
Next is the big one; visuals and general performance. And yeah I'm not even gonna try, this game looks and runs like shit. I'll be honest, I don't think that the game runs that bad, I didn't run into that many issues. The main problem is moreso what it means. It is just simply unacceptable for a game of this caliper to be released in a state like this. Pokemon has been doing this for years, but never to this level. I don't care if Pokemon doesn't improve on a single aspect I just mentioned before this if it means fixing this.
The visuals themselves on the other hand aren't terrible, but there is a lot of room for improvement. I really like how all the Pokemon look in this game, the new textures just feel nice. I think this new style though causes the game to shift more towards realism, and I think that just causes more issues. Now, when the Pokemon actually look nice, it causes the shitty and playdoh world to stick out like a sore thumb in comparison. Now they'll either have to keep this contrast in, or put more effort into making the world look realistic, taking away from time that could be spent elsewhere.
Next I want to spend a little time on the music. I've never liked Pokemon music too much. I've always had a liking for the Gameboy games since I have a knack for how the Gameboy sounds, as well as the fact that Red's soundtrack can be weirdly unsettling and strange at times. The only song I'd say is directly scary is Lavender Town, which is a fantastic theme, but a lot also just have this strangely downing underside. Outside that though, I just find Pokemon music to not be bad, but kinda generic. Go to the channel "Pokeli", switch to "Popular" and listen to the first 4 or more songs. They all just sound generic and are fine at best. Violet is more or less the same with some tracks, though surprisingly it actually has some good tracks.
My favorite is probably the Team Star Grunt theme, which sucks since you hear it like 6 times throughout the game. And speaking of barely hearing it, there's also the Team Star boss theme, which while not as good, it still adds a great atmosphere to the fights, and is enhanced by the fact that the fights its used for can be actually slightly challenging. There's also the Area Zero theme, but I'll touch on that later. Overall the music is definitely a step up, but it's mostly just a handful of tracks carrying a lot of mediocre and forgettable ones.
Spoiler warning, I'm gonna go into depth about the story here. Pokemon has never been a series about story. Even its most diehard fans will tell you that it's nothing special in most games. Pokemon Violet isn't all that good either, but I found a lot of elements that I found surprisingly enjoyable, but sadly they never fall together in a way that's satisfying.
Before I tackle the individual paths, I wanna start with a story I didn't expect, that being of the school and its teachers. The social link system is pretty interesting, if basic. I did like spending more time with the teachers, but the links are all pretty barebones and are way too short for me to actually care about the stories told. There's potential for future games but here it just feels really underutilized. On a side note though, I did really like the classes. They're not just useless information and actually teach you about the systems in the game, which were all pretty useful. Nothing crazy but I actually enjoyed attending them.
I'll tackle story by each individual path, as each is pretty much a separate story. First is Victory Road, which just as its premise, is really basic in story. Your main rival Nemona is kinda basic. The concept is nice, a rival that has already become champion and is only fighting you due to wanting an actual challenge. She's pretty much a New Game+ player begging for an actual obstacle, and while its a fun idea that's well executed, that doesn't stop them from being pretty basic beyond that. You learn a little more about in Area Zero but it doesn't do enough to make me think she's that good of a character. The rest of the gym leaders are pretty unnotable. Just like Nemona they're fine but all very one note. Some like the normal type gym leader, Larry, are pretty fun but overall just kinda forgettable. As just with the gym leaders, I didn't care for the elite four either. It was nice seeing Larry and the art teacher again, but everyone else is super forgettable, especially the champion. I liked the final fight with Nemona, with both of you finally being on equal terms and Nemona not having to hold anything back It's a nice fight with a neat remix of her battle theme, but there's not much else to it. It's a very standard path, but that's the point.
Next is the Path of Legends. It's decent. It's nothing that special, but for Pokemon its a nice little tale. Arven's goals are believable, and he's just generally a fun and eccentric character. I do think it's paced a little off though. I think it would've been better to reveal Turo being Arven's father at the 3rd Titan, so we could spend the 4th going more into that, and the 5th allowing the focus to be on his dog. I get the end of the path and Area Zero is kind of for that too, but I still think there could've been a little more. The fight against Arven at the end is actually pretty fun too, with it being a decent challenge. I went to it way too early and had to return later, but even 10 levels later I still had a lot of trouble. His dog hits hard as shit and one shot most of my team. Also a side note, I really like how one of the Titans is a Pokemon from Area Zero. I was already spoiled on the paradox Pokemon, but it was still cool getting an in game glimpse at what awaited me inside. Overall a good path with an actually decent character and some nice world building, especially with Area Zero.
Next is Starfall Street, which I'm conflicted on. I don't have an issue with it, and generally I liked the story, but for some reason I just didn't really care, nor found it that memorable. The twist that the team was actually the people being bullied, not the bullies themselves was neat, but I don't have much to say outside of that. The leaders themselves are all pretty forgettable, though I did like the prevailing mystery of the leader of Team Star. There's also, Clive who is the best character in this game, but I found it strange that they just appeared at the bases for no reason and never returned after that, I would've loved to see more of him. The fight with Director Clavell was genuinely super cool, even if it was pretty easy.
The twist with Penny being the leader of Team Star was super predictable and kind of underwhelming. Like, of course the only character we've seen who has implied connections to Team Star and is shown to be good with computers is actually the hacker who's been guiding you around to the exact locations of each base with information on each leader. Her fight is pretty cool but sadly very easy. Overall I found this path the most disappointing, I think it just has too many characters for me to get attached to. This game is already spread out between 30+ characters between the teachers, the gym leaders, and Nemona and Arven, so adding another 6 with their own sad story just didn't click.
Finally, after all paths, you get the final path; The Way Home. Before I get into it though, I wanna mention two things. First is that I'll be talking about all aspects of this path and Area Zero, since it's so separated from the rest of the game that talking about it all at once feels better. Also, there's the Violet book. I discovered it by accident while exploring the library, and it was easily the thing that made me the most intrigued in the game. Seeing all these small glimpses into Area Zero was super fascinating, and I liked the general mysterious, otherworldly feel to it all. The final entry in particular was super interesting to me, with this strange disk entity made of overlapping crystal plates. I immediately guessed this was the final boss and was super excited to see it.
The Way Home starts off super interesting, putting you in a party with Nemona, Arven, and Penny. I haven't seen this in a Pokemon game before and it was pretty cool. Finally though, you fly down to Area Zero, and this was by far my favorite point of the game. I have a huge liking for "paradise" areas in game, with bright, exaggerated colors and the atmosphere of this perfect, sculpted environment built by something much higher than you. Area Zero captured this feeling perfectly and I loved every second of it. It's also the only area in the game to disable Miraidon for story reasons, forcing you to traverse on foot and truly take in the entire location. The music for this area too is just so good, and plays into the atmosphere perfectly. It also does this really smart thing of sounding simultaneously like an ancient jungle and a futuristic city, playing into both the themes of Scarlet and Violet. This area is WAY too good for this game, and I really wish it was in an actually good one.
As you walk down further into the crater, your party actually starts to have conversations. They go by super quick, and I have no clue how they expect most people to be able to read this WHILE walking around and exploring, but it's not too bad. The dialogue is surprisingly decent. Nemona is still as one note as ever, but Arven and Penny have surprisingly good chemistry. They bounce off each other super well and their conversations together are fun. The group also goes into more detail about their personal lives and themselves (especially their parents), and it was done in a generally believable way. It didn't feel as stilted as some of the dialogue in this game, it flowed nicely and the characters felt more realistic than before. I just wish it didn't go by so quick so it could settle more.
The Pokemon in this area are also pretty cool, though I'll be honest, I really wish they were more creative with the Paradox Pokemon. All the ones in Violet are just robots, nothing more. There was so much potential here, like clones, mutations or even alien versions of Pokemon, but no they're just all robots. They're generally pretty cool, but overall I just found myself disappointed. Scarlet does it better overall, even if the past theme doesn't do it for me personally. I do like some of them though, especially Iron Bundle, Iron Thorns, and Iron Valiant.
Going back a bit, the story and lore are even more interesting than expected. I don't know how well known this is, but you can find books in the stations that I nearly miss, which act as logs by Turo. It catalogues his excitement of Area Zero and his interest in the crystals, before ultimately building a time machine and creating a machine that can automatically catch Pokemon from the future and bring them to the past. As they go on you can even see Turo slowly lose himself, which hints at what's to come. The big reveal is pretty cool. Having the professors of this game not only be secretly dead the entire game, but to be revealed to be genuinely insane and completely losing themselves was very unexpected. Not because the game didn't build it up, it actually does quite well and gives many hints, but rather that I just didn't expect the series to go in a direction like this, especially with modern Pokemon. The AI professors were really interesting too, being versions of the professors who saw through their craziness, but were unable to change anything due to their programming. The battle with them is super cool but sadly pretty easy.
Finally, you get to the legendary fight, which was honestly pretty simple and disappointing. However, the whole thing with you having to select Miraidon in the menu where he usually is, with an option to send him out is a super cool idea. I love when games do meta shit with their menus and UI, and this is a prime example of that. Just before it also messes with the text box, having the Ai's name change into the security system. The ending with the Ai Turo gaining back himself for a moment, and realizing that the only way to stop the protocol is to send himself to the future was a nice way to end it.
Overall, Area Zero is just way too good to be in this game. Is it perfect? No, not by any means. It's brought down by a lot of the game's aspects to be that good. However, it is easily the best executed part of the game. It plays into so many of my tastes well, and it genuinely makes me excited to see more stuff like this in future games. I don't know if I'll ever be able to play another Pokemon game after this one, but Area Zero will always cause me to second guess myself. It single handedly brings this game up by a point, and it makes me feel dirty giving it a 5/10.
Before I end off the review, I wanna go into a lightning round of various pros and cons I couldn't fit anywhere else. Starting from the top:
-I really liked the Ruinous Pokemon. The concept of Pokemon mainfesting from the pain and suffering caused by ancient objects of mass destruction is so cool. I'm not super huge on the designs, but the process of discovery and reveal of these Pokemon are awesome. Catching them was a bitch though.
-Thank god they introduced relearning moves in this game. Genuinely such a good decisions that allows you to customize your Pokemon to your liking. While I never used it in my playthrough for challenge purpose, it'll be insanely helpful to competitive fans.
-Miraidon feels super clunky to control and move around. I always found myself bumping into Pokemon randomly and it was super annoying.
-I love that Pokemon are size accurate now. Small Pokemon are now actually small as fuck, and the big guys are really big. I don't think we'll ever see Wailord again now.
-Shiny hunting sucks. Not only are a lot of the new shinies in this game super disappointing and samey, but they removed the sparkle effects both on the field and in battle. You can't tell if you've found one unless you look really closely, which goes against the laid back grind shiny hunting was before.
-Why wasn't the Disk entity ever brought up again?? It's heavily implied to be the creator of the crystals, however you never see it. Teralizing in general isn't really all that explained, and it's super weird. Also is it just me, or was anyone else expecting the final boss to be the Disk where you do a Tera raid with the Area Zero team? It felt like a perfect ending and I was genuinely shocked to see it not done. I pray there's DLC that does it instead cause it's massive missed potential.
-Union Circles are super bare bones. Multiplayer Pokemon is an awesome idea but it felt a little too beyond their scope.
-Teralizing is a pretty neat mechanic. Being able to change a Pokemon's type once per battle is a super interesting mechanic. It feels more fair and less gimmicky than the other gimmicks in this series.
-Customizations options are all really good in this game. I like how much you can change your character visually. My only gripe is that you can't change your clothes, which is such a strange decision but it's whatever.
-Speaking of customization, why do you have a dorm if you can't customize it? Such a strange decision.
-What's the purpose of those exclusive Pokeballs you get from completing the Pokedex? Is it just too keep? The Beast Ball got me excited Ultra Beasts were in this game but nope. Very strange.
-Trainer battles are really boring in this game. The only time I got challenged was when I accidentally found a trainer 10 levels higher than me and they beat my ass. I battled them a lot early on but later I just stopped.
-The lack of voice acting is so weird. I wouldn't mind it if there weren't multiple cutscenes that were animated with voice acting obviously in mind, with even lip movement, but there's just nothing. Not even just the random beep noises a lot of games have, just nothing. This also would've helped in Area Zero so you could explore while listening instead of stopping and reading.
-I like how quick and easy trading is. Made completing the Pokedex so much more bearable.
-There's a postgame, but I didn't bother. It just seems to be rematches against the gym leaders, which could be fun but after 65 hours I am burnt out on this damn game. Maybe one day though.
-This is present in all Pokemon games, but I really like how attached to your team you can get. Every single member in my final party has a notable moment they pulled off in battle, which is much different than all the other games where I can't remember a single member (outside of Red of course).
-This is the first game I've ever played where I had to mute the credits theme.
In the end, Pokemon Violet is a strange game. I think it exemplifies every single thought I have about Pokemon as a series. It has countless cool ideas, and even executes on them well sometimes, but a huge majority is just mediocre to outright terrible. The catching and team building, and Area Zero are easily the best parts of this game, everything else lacked in multiple noticeable ways. I can't help but feel like a lot of the problems could've been ironed out with another year or so of development, but considering the state of modern Pokemon, that's never going to happen. Will we ever get a good Pokemon game? I don't know. This game makes me equally excited and scared of the future of this series. Either way, I can't lie when I say this game has me interested in at least seeing what's next.