Scarlet & Violet Should Make Us Optimistic for Pokémon’s Future

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are almost universally rated as the worst mainline Pokémon games of all time. IGN gave them a 6/10 (its worst score ever for a mainline game) and Metacritic gave them an averaged 71.5/100 (also the worst score given to a mainline game). The fan reviews are much harsher. Fans gave the games a 2.9/5 on Google, with more one-star reviews than five-star reviews, and a brutal 3.4/10 User Score on Metacritic. These games do have some pretty glaring flaws, including poor optimization and performance at launch, a questionable art style, and an absence of difficulty scaling to go along with their open world. Despite all of this though, I genuinely believe that Scarlet and Violet show us that the Pokémon games are moving in a bold new direction and that there are better days ahead for the franchise, if Game Freak can navigate a few obstacles along the way.

Here are five reasons why we should be optimistic for future Pokémon games:

SPOILERS AHEAD

A Fully Open World

Pokémon fans have been asking for a fully open world, nonlinear game since the days of the N64. Well, we finally got it, but the technical challenges presented to the dev team proved too much for its successful execution. It’s hard to make excuses for the biggest media franchise on the planet but there’s something I’d like everyone to keep in mind. The last two generations of Pokémon have made massive technical jumps as far as world building.

Let’s use the popular comparison of the Zelda series. Six years ago, Breath of the Wild came out for the Nintendo Switch after five years of development. That same year Pokémon launched Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon on the 3DS. While I think we can agree that the Pokémon Company (as a business) should have taken more of a quality over quantity approach over that six-year span, the dev team has been asked to do a lot over a relatively short time. Going from a 240p, fixed camera, linear game design to a Full HD, free 3D camera, fully open world is a massive jump.

Yes, blame the higher ups of the Pokémon Company for not giving their team more time to develop their games, but I don’t think this will be a continuing problem (at least not as severe as generation nine). Scarlet and Violet have built the framework for future open world Pokémon games, and I have to assume that this will allow the dev team much more time to polish those assets and to build new ones. On top of that, less hardware restrictions should allow for better texture rendering and less compromise when optimizing future titles. The picture being painted through several online sources (link below) is that the successor of the Switch will be in the ballpark, and most likely exceeding, gen eight console performance (PS4, Xbox One). So even if the business machine that is the Pokémon Company won’t allow increased dev time, I’m very hopeful that the performance issues of Scarlet and Violet, which are at the forefront of the game’s poor reception, will be significantly improved in the near future.

All that said, moving to a fully open world was absolutely the right move for this franchise. Pokémon has always been about the player’s journey, choosing and building your team, and exploring a new region. The next logical step was to allow the player to choose their own path through the region. The options for world building, exploration, traversal, and interactions with pokémon and other characters is exponentially increased. Moments in past games where we were given a taste of this kind of freedom were often those games’ most memorable moments (think soaring in ORAS or the open world sections of Sword and Shield). While I am nostalgic for the 2D games aesthetic, wandering through a seamless open world, seeing and interacting with Pokémon in the wild, is what I imagined as a kid, playing those early Gameboy games.

Multiple Storylines and Great Finale

Scarlet and Violet present the player with three separate, but intertwined storylines early on in your adventure: Victory Road, Starfall Street, and the Path of Legends. Victory Road is the classic, beat the gyms, challenge the elite four, become the champion Pokémon formula. I do think that this iteration stands out thanks to a diverse and interesting set of characters, particularly due to the memorable gym leaders and your rival Nemona. The evolution of Nemona from your mentor to rival, to surpassing her and becoming champion isn’t particularly interesting but she’s a well written and likable character filling a classic role.

Starfall Street tells the story of bullying victims ganging up and becoming the bullies themselves. I think this storyline had the most potential but ultimately suffers from poor execution. In contrast to a generic children’s bullying story, Starfall Street starts to paint a picture that, whatever was going on behind the scenes, was so brutal that it formed a counter bullying uprising called Team Star. The resulting clash leads to the original bullies, Team Star, and several faculty members to drop out of school or resign. Team Star then forms bases and builds Pokémon powered battle vehicles across the region. Like a lot of this game, it feels like the stage was set for Starfall Street to be a more impactful experience, but the conclusion feels rushed and a little too convenient to feel realistic. Gameplay wise the potential for these to be challenging boss fights is undermined by no level scaling and a forced, tedious auto battle assignment to unlock each base’s boss. The storyline or gameplay here isn’t anything to write home about, but the positive aspect here is Pokémon’s willingness to expand the kinds of battles you experience in a mainline game. If they implemented a boss fight questline in the future to be something like the Noble Pokémon battles in Legends Arceus, they could add a lot to their traditional formula.

Path of Legends, to me, is the best part of the game’s narrative leading up to the final questline. Arven, who starts the game as an insufferable jerk of a character, is gradually revealed to be a caring person who has been dealt a really tough hand. The story of Arven’s injured Mabosstiff and neglectful professor parent really struck me. Not quite a tearjerker, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get choked up trying to heal this 1950s mafia boss dog. Not only was Arven’s story written well, but the gameplay revolving around raid style boss fights, the rewards granting you different ways to traverse around the world on your legendary mount, and the questline seamlessly leading you into the finale at Area Zero, all makes the Path of Legends feel well thought out and helps weave itself and other aspects of the game together.

All three storylines come together to set the stage for the game’s finale, The Way Home. In my opinion, this is the best conclusion to a Pokémon game since generation five. Banding together with the allies you made throughout your journey, you finally get to descend into The Great Crater that’s been teasing you the entire game. The cinematic cutscenes are well done, and seeing all the main characters interacting together as you approach the game’s climax is a fun experience.

The final encounter with the professor’s AI is one fitting for the end of a 30-40 hour RPG experience. The stakes are high, as failure would lead to the destruction of Paldea. The discovery of the real professor’s death and final message left for Arven is a sad but satisfying conclusion to Arven’s search for answers. And the final battle itself, while scripted, doesn’t feel like it in the moment and guarantees one of the most epic in-game battles in franchise history.

Those are the main storylines that the game outlines for you, but there’s even more than that. Your journey with Miraidon or Koraidon makes you feel more connected to the game’s box legend than ever before, and there’re plenty of narratives to discover within the Academy’s Classes and Ace Tournament. The multiple storylines in Scarlet and Violet, like the rest of the game, could use more polish. However, the fact that we’re getting multiple storylines, a greater variety of gameplay, and open world, non-linear exploration, shows the potential of this new generation of Pokémon games.

The DLC (kinda)

To be clear, I’m talking about the DLC from a content perspective here. I’m not thrilled that the best content for the last two generations will cost you a whopping $90 to experience, but that’s a discussion for another time. What I will point out is that the content in The Teal Mask and especially The Indigo Disk, is excellent. The Teal mask feels like an extension of the base game as far as its performance and gameplay. The world is a little sparse, poor performance in busy areas is still an issue, and for the majority of your time in Kitakami, you go through the motions of non-threatening repetitive battles. The highlights here are the brother-sister duo of Kieran and Carmine, the photographer Perrin, and the new pokémon, Ogerpon. Kieran and Carmine may be the best written characters in the series, and I feel like I want to (and probably will) write an entire article dedicated to their character development. Both are 3-dimensional, with complex motivations that evolve as the characters grow and react to the events unfolding around them. Perrin is a bit unrelated to the rest of the story but she’s a charming character and her side quest is an awesome reward for building your Kitakami Pokedex. Ogerpon is neat too. Her story is a bit predictable but not bad, as a Pokémon has a pretty cool gimmick and is fun to use in battle.

The Indigo Disk takes the best parts of the Teal Mask (great characters and new Pokemon), and layers on a bunch of awesome new content, while simultaneously freshening up the underlying Pokémon formula. Through the entire Indigo Disk DLC you will be participating in double battles. Not only that, but your opponents will be high level and actually use competitive strategies. This change makes the DLC feel unique and lets you employ new in game strategies. Pairing my drought Ninetales with Walking Wake and blowing mons away with Hydro Steam is completely unnecessary, but fun nonetheless. BBQs were surprisingly satisfying to complete in a group and are well worth the effort to earn more interactions with the interesting cast of characters in the game. The side quests needed to face the Blueberry Elite 4 are fun and feel like what the gym challenges in the base game should have been. Limitless flight is fun. The Synchro Machine is fun. This DLC is just fun to play through. The best part again (for me), is the characters. Kieran’s conflicted emotions and desire for power after Ogerpon chooses you over him in the Teal Mask, spill over and drive the plot of the Indigo Disk. Carmine continues to become a true ally and friend after seeing that you care about her brother. Perrin is back with another cool reward for building up your Pokedex. The other new characters do their job to help drive the plot and sprinkle a little more drama on top of the situation.

The epilogue is as fun as it is ridiculous. It’s funny, the music is great, and it brings all the friends you’ve made along your journey together for one last adventure. It’s a lighthearted and fun way to conclude the game’s story. I must assume that Game Freak gave its developers more time to build out the worlds and narratives in the DLC. My optimism comes in again knowing that these developers know how to make fun games with engaging characters… given time.

Interesting Characters

I’m not going to expand on the characters individually anymore (in this article) than I did in the sections above. I just think that I need to pull this point out as its own section given the massive leap in the quality of the supporting cast in this game (the last 2 generations gave us Hau and British Hau as our rivals). I think this is the best cast of characters in the franchises’ history. By having so many individual storylines, we get to spend a lot of time with each character and many of them get to have a personality independent of pokémon battling. Even a lot of the side characters stand out and have become fan favorites. A few that stick out to me are Larry, Ryme and Perrin. Scarlet and Violet do an excellent job with their cast of characters. It’s probably where the game shines the brightest.

Raid Events

The Tera Raid Battle Events in Scarlet and Violet are a great way to hold player interest after completing the game. They kept the best parts of the Max Raid Battles in Sword and Shield and improved on the bad (like having to sequentially attack). The seven-star raids are a genuine challenge for veterans of the series and often require specially trained Pokémon and collaboration with your party members. Introducing new Pokémon or version exclusives adds an extra layer of incentive for these events. The Mew vs. Mewtwo raid was especially cool and I really hope they do more events like that in the future.

Conclusion

I know I’m being very forgiving with this list and there’s nothing wrong with expecting more from the biggest media franchise on the planet. However, I also think we might be so focused on the technical shortcomings of these games, that we’re missing the things they do well. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Paldea. With their first open world game under their belt, I have faith that Game Freak will be able to smooth out the rough edges we’ve experienced in Scarlet and Violet. I think these games have laid a great foundation for Pokémon games to come.

Link to the Polygon article that collects the sources for Switch 2 performance expectations:

https://www.polygon.com/nintendo/23899504/nintendo-switch-2-release-date-power-name-games