Pokémon Scarlet and Violet

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet
More like Pokémon Buggy and Glitchy mess, the roughest Pokémon mainline game in the series. They make the spin-offs look amazing in comparison.
Protagonist(s): Florian/Juliana Genre(s): Action role-playing Platform(s): Nintendo Switch Release: November 18, 2022 Engine: Proprietary Engine Developer(s): Game Freak Publisher(s): Nintendo Country: Japan Series: Pokemon Predecessor: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Successor: Pokémon Legends: Z-A (Upcoming)

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are role-playing video games developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for the Nintendo Switch on November 18, 2022.

They are apart of the 9th generation of Pokémon, are the ninth (or tenth if Pokémon Black 2 & White 2 are counted) games in the series and are the second main series titles to be released on the Nintendo Switch (third if counting Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which released the same year 11 months prior to these titles). They are the first open-world games in the series and were highly anticipated by many fans before they were released to the public.

Bad Qualities

1. It is a major downgrade from Legends: Arceus, which was one of the most innovative games in the series, and was an overall fantastic game, as it features inferior game design, numerous bugs and glitches, several removed features, barebones difficulty and overall reverting the series back to infamy when Sword & Shield were released and was followed by the release of the infamous Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl, meaning that the series hasn't changed at all which is the main reason why these games are hated by fans in the first place.
2. Poor release timing: This game pair was released the same year as Legends: Arceus just 11 months apart from each other, which itself was released 2 months after Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl (often considered to be the worst games in the series by fans), which is not very good for the series since it already had a yearly release cycle starting with Sun & Moon with new version, remakes, main games and DLC packs, and having two games released the same year resulted in the franchise suffering from oversaturation and many people leaving the series in favor of other franchises due to the yearly release cycle made worse by having three games in the series be released in the same year and the franchise's toxic fandom that are often infamous for attacking people who hate the newer games and harassed the developers of Palworld for their designs.
3. The game was extremely buggy at launch, filled with multiple glitches such as Pokémon glitching and falling out of the map during battles, buggy AI, models stretching, etc. Thankfully these bugs were later fixed in updates. Despite this, however, like WWE 2K20, the game introduces new bugs with every update which makes the game more glitchier than before.
   • In fact, the bugs were so bad to the point that Nintendo started issuing refunds to their players after various complaints.
   • Infamously, a new bug was introduced in a new update that would corrupt one's save file.
4. Very limited character customization compared to the previous 3D mainline games, you only have one outfit in which is your school uniform, and the only items you can buy for your character are glasses, gloves, shoes, hats and socks.
   • However some new clothing options would end up being available for the The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero DLC.
5. The game runs poorly even for Nintendo Switch standards, as it lags at various points in the game and even slows down the experience to a crawl. The game sometimes runs at 15-20 fps in most areas.
   • Despite new DLC coming out for the game, none of them have shown to fix the performance issues.
   • In fact, it was reported from a user on Twitter that his copy was running at 0 FPS after he installed the DLC for the games, and the footage he shown was proof of his statement, which shows that the performance issues are also getting worse as well.
6. The game environments are pretty lazily built, as some of the areas have copied and pasted buildings rather than completely new buildings, the lack of variety of trees, etc.
7. The game still lacks voice acting, even for modern game standards. It still uses textboxes for dialogue, and the cutscenes feel lifeless without it. Heck, even Pokémon Sword & Shield had voice acting for Pikachu and Eevee, so why couldn't Game Freak afford voice actors here?
8. Like Pokémon Sword and Shield and Pokémon Legends: Arceus, the Pokedex is stripped down and various Pokémon from past games do not appear here. There are barely any Pokémon from previous generations, and it feels like the roster is very lacking.
   • In fact, many of the Pokémon can only be obtained in paid DLC. Which means that Game Freak is pretty much following Electronic Arts' and Bioware's practices of stripping base content just to add it back in DLC.
9. Unlike the previous titles, the legendary Pokémon Miraidon and Koraidon are easily obtained in the Prologue as a mount. Rather than being obtainable after beating the game, making the Legendaries feel pointless unless you use them to explore the areas.
10. The game was likely rushed out for the holiday season, due to the lacking amount of content, the false advertisements in the trailers and various bugs and glitches.
11. The forced EXP share is still present in these games, and it's just as bad as it was previously in Sword & Shield, Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl and the Let's Go games, since they make the player's team way too overpowered, and also are made worse by the lack of level scaling, which makes Scarlet & Violet one of the easiest games in the series to date, due to this factor in mind.
12. The world design is huge, but rather empty and confusing to roam around in, due to the lack of checkpoints and the open-world environment it's built around, and since there is so much to do that it becomes pretty tedious and boring traveling through the Paldea region, as there are many side-quests to do and due to the rushed game development, it wasn't fleshed out properly and results in poor game design in general.
13. It rehashes several elements from Sun & Moon, the seventh generation titles in the series, which were released almost eight years ago, as not only do Koraidon and Miraidon serve the same roles as both Solgaleo and Lunala, but the Paradox Pokémon are the same as Ultra Beasts, and many of the characters in this game are mostly clones of those who were in Sun & Moon, with Arven being a male version of Lillie, and the starters themselves seem to have numerous similarities with the Alola starters, such as Fuecoco and Popplio being music themed, Sprigatito and Litten becoming Dark types with their final stages, and with both Quaxly and Rowlett being based on flying birds.
    • Even the new Pokémon introduced are the same as the Alola Pokémon, with the Treasures of Ruin being the same as the Tapus, and the Spidops line being a clone of the Dewpider line respectively, and the Smoliv line being a clone of the Bounsweet line, and also Squawkabilly being a clone of Oricorio, and some other examples like the Gimmighoul line being a clone of the Meltan line and Veluza being a clone of Bruxish.
    • Not to mention that Terastallization is the same concept as Z-Moves, whereas with this new gimmick, it's about changing types whereas with Z-Moves, it's about increasing the power of a move of every type.
    • There are even some mechanics and gameplay features lazily reused from Sun & Moon, such as Titan Pokémon being the exact same thing as Totem Pokémon, and the new Gym challenges being the same as Island Trials.
    • There's also other similarities between Gens 7 and 9, such as both of them introducing eight three-stage lines, heavily focusing more on the story, and even down to the Paldea region itself being a sub-tropical region in the same veins as Alola, thus proving making Gen 9 the most unoriginal generation to date.
    • This could likely be due to the fact that Scarlet & Violet started development after Sword & Shield were released and didn't have any time for planning out the region properly, or fleshing out any potential concept, since some parts of these games feel very tacked-on like the open world game design, and the new Paradox forms (which were made into separate new species from their original counterparts), and considering the lack of regional forms and some aspects of these games feeling unfinished or missing, it's pretty clear that there wasn't enough time for Game Freak to give Scarlet and Violet more originality, and since the new games were being made during the COVID-19 Pandemic, it perfectly explains the missed potential they have and how they should've started developement way earlier and given more time to plan out new concepts and implement more creativity to make a good product, which sadly didn't happen, making this case rather unfortunate at best.
14. To address the Pokémon in the Pokéball: Despite Pokémon Scarlet and Violet encouraging the Player to go and battle the Pokémon Gyms, Titan Pokémon and Team Star in any order they choose, there is no level scaling in this "open-world game", since the game allows the player to start at anywhere in the game, which isn't a bad thing, but the main problem is that it makes the game's difficulty super unbalanced since you can easily catch over-leveled Pokémon very easily, and if you start with Geeta first, then the game will be rendered as way too easy by default, and the player won't struggle at all with the later parts of the games. On the flip side, despite taking on either the Pokémon Gyms, Titan Pokémon and Team Star in any order, you would still run into over-leveled Pokémon that can wipe out your team in one hit if you're not careful. In other words, you're still encouraged to play the game linearly.
    • To make things even more baffling, is that Nemona will challenge the Player with a line-up of Pokémon that mirrors the amount of Badges that he/she will have. If they could do that for a single NPC, why couldn't they have done that to all of the Major Battles?
    • This, once again, could be the result of Pokémon Scarlet & Violet being rushed in time of the Holiday season.
15. Plot holes:
    • In the Violet version, considering Miraidon is a robot. How is it able to taste food if robots never taste food due to the absence of taste, a robot that is capable of eating is still unable to actually taste food, even at temperature, considering Koraidon is a living animal, shouldn't Miraidon have been taken to a power source to bring back it's energy?
      • Because of the game just being a Pokémon swap, the stories are basically the same, due to laziness.
      • Granted, there are other fictional robots or artificial Pokemon who also eat food, not just power source, such as Metagross, Duraludon, or Alolan Muk. What's still strange is that some artificial Pokémon don't have mouths, while others have, so how are they able to eat? Which are evident when they consume berries or regional snacks, as foods. Even other non-Pokemon robots are seen eating foods like Susie from Kirby, which is evident when she eats her ice cream parfait during one of her Celebration pictures in Kirby: Star Allies, yet all of them can be unaffected though.
    • How does Kieran enter the Blueberry Academy all by himself at the end of the Teal Mask DLC, just because he wants to challenge the player aggressively?
16. Inconsistent difficulty, with some NPCs' Pokémon being able to do high damage.
17. Some of the new designs have received criticism for looking either terrible or bland, as some of them use the old Gen 1 design philosophy instead of what Gens 5-8 went with and it results in most of them either looking less like Pokémon and more like bad OCs, such as Flamigo, which is just a regular Flamingo with no unique design elements (even its name is literary just Flamingo without the letter "n"), and the Future Paradox forms, which are just robotic versions of older Pokémon with zero differences and have been criticized for not following the monster inspiration the franchise is known for with its designs and instead revert to reusing old designs and turning them into robots, which is beyond lazy and uncreative.
    • There's also some missed potential with some of them, with Dudunsparce and Annihilape being major examples since they're the same as their pre-evolved forms with only a few changes, as Dudunsparce looks more like a Mega Evolution of Dunsparce and Annihilape looks more like a regional form of Primeape and that's it.
      • Other examples include Pawmi's evolutions, where the Pawmi, Pawmo and Pawmot (in evolutionary order) are identical to each other, only the coloring and size that differentiate, the evolved forms of the Starters, the evolutions of Lechonk and Dolliv, and many more like Maushold (same problem as Pawmi, Pawmo and Pawmot) and Revavroom.
    • A major missed opportunity with the new roster is the lack of Iberian influences, and only some of them like Lechonk, the Smoliv line and Bombirder have them in mind, while most of them utilize the same Japanese inspiration that the series is known for while some of them use influences from France or China.
      • To be fair, other regions have had the same problem, like Kalos featuring a Ninja and a Luchador (Greninja and Hawlucha), and Sinnoh featuring a Pokémon based on Napoleon (Empoleon), but most of the roster stayed true to the country they were based on (especially both Alola and Galar), while Paldea on the other hand despite being based on the Iberian Peninsula doesn't have any at all and only has a few of them instead, which is a shame.
    • There are also questionable choices when it comes to the cross-gen evolutions introduced this generations, with the biggest examples being both Kingambit and Archaludon, as despite being great designs, are evolutions to Pokémon that nobody wanted to see receive evolutions, since both Bisharp and Duraludon felt finished to most people and were already good Pokémon in both in-game and competitive (with Duraludon also having a BST of 535, which is the same as a fully-evolved starter), and some have already been criticizing them for being over-designed and ugly.
    • In fact, some designs were clearly plagiarized from Fakemon designs by fans on Instagram, which gained a little bit of controversy online, such as Palafin which got copied from a fan-made Dolphin Pokémon created by Bulbbyboi (who immediately noticed the similarities between the two designs and was shocked that Game Freak copied his Fakemon designs) back in 2020, Scovillain who was stolen from another fan made Pepper Pokémon known as Burnipper created by diegomonsterlab (who was shocked to see how similar both Burnipper and Scovillain were to each other) back in 2021, and Tarountula being a clone of a Fakemon from a project called Aetis Region by aetis_fakemon called Weavara (which was also created in 2021, a year before Scarlet & Violet were released to the public). This could indicate that the development for both Scarlet & Violet was very troubled since both titles started development after Sword & Shield were released and was developed alongside Legends: Arceus, which could've meant that Game Freak didn't have enough time to develop them, which could be the reason why many of the designs were rushed and a few of them were stolen in the first place.
    • Speaking of Fakemon, it was a massive missed opportunity for Game Freak to start a contest that allows fans to create designs for Scarlet & Violet so that they could be inserted into the titles and become official Pokémon, since it could've made the roster very unique and give it more life and personality due to how poorly-designed most of the newer Pokémon are in these games, and considering that Capcom actually allows fans to submit content into their games such as with Megaman where they allowed Robot Masters by fans to be submitted into the games during the 1990s, and since many Fakemon designs are known to be creative and well-designed, it could've allowed Game Freak to communicate with their fans and let some Fakemon into the games with a similar type of contest that Capcom usually does since it would allow them to listen to some of the criticisms that the newer titles have received, improving the series' reputation overall, and giving them what they want in general.
      • Sadly, this is unlikely to happen due to Nintendo being extremely prejudiced against fan-created content and being very strict to what their developers can do with their franchises, since series producer Junichi Masuda has stated that Game Freak are not allowed to use any fan-made designs created by fans to put into their games. Also, since Pokémon Uranium (a fangame released in 2016) was taken down by Nintendo themselves as usual, this could be why Fakemon will never be in any of the mainline games ever and why should things like a submission contest for fans to insert their designs into the games will never happen at all at this rate.
    • Even some of the legendaries look pretty bad, with the major example being of the new Mythical Pecharunt, who looks just terrible in it's opened form, and also the Paradox Pokémon who look way too similar to past Pokémon but with Dinosaur Pieces and becoming robots for both sides, which is very lazy, and only exist to coincide with the Legendaries Miraidon and Koraidon, who already fine on their own and could hold their own as unique Pokémon themselves if they evolved from Cyclizar, but sadly, that wasn't the case.
      • Another example includes the Treasures of Ruin, which all look terrible with the expectation of Wo-Chien (who looks actually decent and feels like an official modern gen Pokémon), as they look weirdly designed and both Ting-Lu and Chi-Yu look like they come from different franchises altogether.
18. While the graphics are nice and a major improvement from the last Switch titles, they're nowhere near as refined or polished as other Switch titles since nearly all of the textures and models look like they came from a PlayStation 2 title or an early Xbox 360 game or even worse, a generic Chinese mobile game. This is the same system that can run amazing looking Switch games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, Kirby and The Forgotten Land, Splatoon 3, and Bayonetta 3 (the last four of which were released the same exact year before Pokémon Scarlet & Violet).
    • There are also other graphical issues within the games aside from presentation, such as constant pop-in and the models for the Pokémon becoming low poly if the player is a distance away from them either a tiny bit away or close to them, which can look jarring at times.
19. The online system is extremely barebones and mediocre, due to it relying solely on Nintendo Switch Online, which is often criticized for being an awful program for various reasons, and it also has the same problems as the same one from both Pokémon Sword & Shield and Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl, and despite the improvements, the poor performance prevents it from being that good in the first place and can be frustrating for players of Competitive Pokémon battling.
20. Extremely slow pacing during battles and gameplay, since it nearly takes either 10-15 minutes during a fight with either the Gym Leaders or Rivals, and some quests can take forever due to the characters have low speed and overall sluggish walking animations, which is made worse by the aforementioned poor performance of these games, making these the least fun titles in the series. Even Pokémon X & Y has better pacing that.
21. Several missed opportunities:
    • There are only 4 regional forms this time, due to the presence of Convergent Species and Paradox Forms, which is sad since they're a beloved feature since Gen 7 and there should've been more of them in these games.
      • They also excluded Regional Evolutions (with the exception of Clodsire), despite being a great expansion upon regional forms, and there are still 5 of them in the game.
    • Aside from regional forms, there are only 2 lines of convergent species, which is disappointing, since they were a really good idea and instead, Game Freak focused more on the Paradox Pokémon, which are new Pokémon that contradict the world of Pokémon and are a terrible idea overall.
    • There these Dragon/Normal-type Pokémon called Cyclizar, who in term of design are striking similar to the game's box art mascots, yet they have no connection to them whatsoever, this game could have went the Pokémon Sun & Moon route by having Cyclizar evolve into one of the Legendary Pokémon depending on what game they have.
    • There are also some lines introduced in these games that feel unfinished (the Capsakid line, the Nymble line, the Tarountula and the Shroodle line to name a few).
    • Berries are meant not just for consuming, but also used for recipes, yet they never used them for sandwiches, which are disappointing. Instead, there are food ingredients, vegetables, and fruits, as well as Herba Mysticas, used for sandwiches.
    • Since the intro before starting the game is just "PRESENTED BY GAME FREAK" the proceed to the game's title and the classroom with or without the Scarlet/Violet book, it could have been redone with the cinematic intro just like other previous games do. This makes the title cards look bland in comparison.
      • Granted, it happened to Pokémon Legends Arceus, but at least the title screen changes the environment, but still lacks an animated intro.
      • Even after the player sees the real Professor Sada/Turo, the title screen simply changes from daytime to sunset, making it look worse than before. It could have been better to have both the daytime and sunset sceneries change instead of getting stuck to one title screen changed.
22. The gym battles are rather weak here, and have nothing interesting about them expect for the new Terastallize gimmick, which actually doesn't change anything about the fights with the expectation of the Pokémon having a different type but there aren't any unique and clever ways of utilizing the gimmick at all, as only Iono uses the gimmick to it's full potential since her ace Mismagius has the ability Levitate, which makes it immune to Ground-type attacks and since it Terastallizes into an Electric type, it means it won't have any weaknesses since Ground is the only type Electric is weak to, which was the only time in the game where the Gym Battles actually felt unique and more different than previous games. It should be mentioned that most of them are still way too easy and don't serve much of a challenge to the player at all, and can easily be defeated if you choose Fuecoco as your starter and start with Grusha, making the games even easier.
23. Shockingly atrocious game balance, since some of the abilities and moves were nerfed yet some were left unscathed such as Astral Barrage, which is a move that has no drawbacks and was available on a Pokémon that was so broken that it was banned from Smogon's battle simulator, Pokémon Showdown, and yet they didn't nerf Spectrier nor Shadow Rider Calyrex and Astral Barrage which were desperate of needing to be nerfed due to suffering from insane Power Creep, but Regieleki's Transistor ability was nerfed despite actually being a balanced ability, and changes such as nerfing Grassy Glide to 55 base power despite being a decently balanced move that was only advanced by priority in Grassy Terrain, were pointless and shows how much of a poor job Game Freak did balancing these titles.
    • Surprisingly, some Pokémon that didn't get buffed became more overpowered like Volcorona and Regieleki (who actually got nerfed this generation).
24. Bad PR marketing, with the Pokémon HOME update for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet being delayed for no reason, and Nintendo barely advertising the titles before they were released to the public and showing a trailer with an awful framerate and hidden Pokémon that spoiled pieces of the new games.
25. While Synchronization is an amazing mechanic, there is one fatal flaw that prevents it from being extremely useful and that is not being able to jump, since it would be helpful to traverse some of the routes and roadblocks that prevent the player from that occasional secret area, and would also be helpful for parts where it is impossible to be able to get to that certain area that the player wants to go to, and while it does make sense for some Pokémon, since they might not be able to have a jumping ability be implemented onto to them, but others could've been great candidates for that potential ability and look like they could be able to jump onto certain platforms, or onto places that are hard to reach for the player themselves, but sadly, it isn't like that and the only thing they can do is just walk and attack, that's it, preventing the mechanic from being beneficial for the player and instead making it very trivial overall.
    • In fact, the mechanic isn't even useable in Paldea or Kitakami and only can be used in Unova and that's it, making the mechanic very situational and gimmicky overall.
26. Several features from Pokémon Legends: Arceus were scrapped for no reason, and only some features made a comeback in these games, in fact, there are also features from older games that were also scrapped too, such as Fishing, Bike Riding (since the Legendaries fill that mechanics role now in these games), Fossil Pokémon (due to the presence of Paradox Pokémon), not being able to go into buildings and shops (easily the worst offender of this example), Pokémon remembering moves that their pre-evolutions can learn (which is bad for anyone who is into Competitive Pokémon on either Smogon or VGC tournaments), and the ability to change sceneries in the title screen.
27. These games are infested with Power Creep, since the games rely more on strategy and offense with it's battle system thanks to the already mentioned game balance problem, which can be seen in some parts of the main game and online competitive mode where some Pokémon are so overpowered and broken that it can make the game either easy or unfair (and in some cases with the added risk of using over-leveled Pokémon against weaker trainers, completely simple and basic) and some trainers use tactics for their Pokémon that break the games very easily and cause many problems with the battle system and overall mechanics of the games themselves.
28. The Tera Phenomenon is way too broken and unbalanced, since it can allow any Pokémon to change their type instantly depending on what type you can give or the games give to you, which sounds good on paper. However, the main issue is that it can make already powerful Pokémon completely broken and almost makes the games less fun since if you change into a type that is super effective against one of the Gym Leaders, then the game would become even easier and along with the lack of level-scaling results in the player becoming over-powered.
    • In fact, it has heavily affected the competitive scene, since the gimmick is so broken that it has resulted in some Pokémon getting banned on Smogon due to how broken some of them are when using the gimmick such as Volcorona and Sneasler for example.
    • It should also be mentioned that both Protean and Libero got nerfed due to the presence of this gimmick, meaning that Pokémon who have it as their hidden ability would have to resort to using their other ability instead since Pokémon who have it as such are mostly Starters and their main abilities are rather situational at best, thus making them get overshadowed by more powerful threats overall.
29. Unlike The Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra, the DLC does nothing to improve the flaws of these games and just makes them worse, such as the Kitakami region being less open than Paldea and the performance issues getting even worse than before.
30. Underwhelming post-game content, as the Battle Tower is absent for the first time since Gold & Silver, and instead is replaced with rematches with the Gym Leaders and Nemona, which isn't much and are extremely easy overall. The only thing that these games offers in terms of replay value is more Tera Raids, which overall is rather lacking since Sword & Shield at least had a side-story and the Battle Tower, as well as the Max Raids, and other titles had side-quests and allowed the player to catch Pokémon they haven't caught yet, which is absent in these games. This is likely due to them being rushed in development.
31. There are numerous invisible walls everywhere in the game, namely in the flying and swimming sections of the game, which can distract players very easily.
32. Mochi Mayhem is a rather disappointing way to conclude the game's narrative, since the event has an extremely cringeworthy story that involves the Mythical Pecharunt possessing your friends and everyone in Kitakami, and has numerous nonsensical moments throughout that are used as comedic effort which is very jarring overall, and the fight against Pecharunt is ridiculously easy since it has mediocre stats with the exception of physical Defense, making it easy for multiple fast Special attackers such as Gengar and Landrous to OHKO it instantly and once you catch it, the event is over and that's it. Most of the battles are generic trainer battles and the event is only an hour long and not really very interesting when compared to past events from Diamond & Pearl or Ruby & Sapphire for that matter.
    • On top of that note, it tries way too hard to be humorous with the dancing animations, but fails due to how awfully animated the humans look when dancing, since they dance like chickens and mostly exist just to become meme material and that's it.
33. Players are forced to complete the entire Pokédex during the main campaign, which is a problem due to the tedious and overly-complicated evolution methods for some of the Pokémon, and occasionally Wild Pokémon will refuse to be caught from a single Pokéball, which makes doing this task extremely annoying and frustrating, as the games don't do a very good job at providing the players on how to do this and some of them will just resort to using the Internet to research some of the evolutions methods and how they work, meaning that these games won't give you any tips on how to do this, and the players will often struggle on doing this task.
    • Same thing applies to the DLC, though it's nowhere near as annoying since there are less Pokémon in the Kitakami Pokédex and the Blueberry Pokédex than previous ones, but still.
    • Probably the most infamous example being evolving Gimmighoul into Gholdengo, which requires 999 Gimmighoul coins to do so, which is painful since Gimmighoul coins are very scattered around Paldea in hard to find places that are very well hidden and sometimes impossible to access, and while some are easy to find, it still doesn't help the fact that it's still annoying to do this task, which adds to the tedium of completing the Pokedéx in general.
34. The Tera Raids, while an improvement over Max Raids, are rather sluggish and boring since they take way too long to finish, and due to the aforementioned slow pacing of the battles, it makes them a chore to play, which is made worse by the fact that all four players have to share turns fighting one single Terastallized Pokémon while the timer is draining, and some of them are very luck-based, which can make them unfair at times.
35. Overpriced: each game cost $60, which is way too expensive and doesn't justify for the lack of content. God Of War: Ragnarok and Elden Ring were released for $70 (For PS5) to $60 respectively and offered way more content than this.
    • The bundle that was packed with the DLC and main game is even more expensive, costing at $90 (which again is way too much since both the DLC campaigns are far too short to justify the high price and don't really add much to the game's content).
36. Team Star is easily the weakest villainous team in the entire series, as they have absolutely zero character development and are just generic school bully stereotypes that are wholly uninteresting, and are made redundant by the end of the story since it's revealed by Penny is their leader, who is one of the main characters and later becomes your friend later in the story, which makes them pretty pointless villains with weak motives, with the only good thing about them being their designs and that's it.
    • Not to mention that in to additional to them having incredibly weak boss fights, they also have huge miss-potential. In the battle against Giacomo who is one of the first members of Team Star to be fought, it's revealed that the final Pokemon that he uses is a Revavroom that's in a car-suit that he also rides, as well as having a type that is Dark. This gives off the impression that later battles agents the other Team Star bosses will have a Revavroom that's in a vehicle-like suit that they ride, as well as lead into some creative battles strategies that involves fighting them, but not only do the four other Team Star bosses use the same Revavroom that's in a car-like suit, but their battles don't do much aside from being one of the main side-quests in these games.
37. False Advertisings:
    • Hisuian Zoroark is seen in the initial trailer, but it does not appear in the final game, but rather Unovan Zoroark. Instead players can unlock it by purchasing the Hidden Treasure of Area Zero DLC.
    • Kieran is seen having his first hairstyle in the Indigo Disk promotional artwork, but in this DLC, his hairstyle is changed at the end of Teal Mask. However, the second promotional artwork of the Indigo Disk does fit.
38. Bland local multiplayer. Despite being a great idea in concept (considering that you are now allowed to travel with 3 other people and both versions being able to share the same experience as each other, which is a first in the series thus far), has many of the same issues are still present in the multiplayer mode, and the only time that 4-player action happens within the battle system is with Tera Raids. And sadly, the Battle Royale mode from Sun & Moon doesn't return for this brand new feature, by the way, making the addition of local multiplayer in a new Pokémon game feel wasted and overall botched by awful execution and poor programming overall.
    • In fact, the only thing that the local multiplayer mode does is having to be able to evolve Finizen into Palafin within the Union Circle, which makes evolving Finizen very frustrating and since its stats are mostly abysmal, it makes getting a Palafin an absolute nightmare and unnecessarily pads the game out even further.
39. It has ruined the reputation of both the franchise and Game Freak because of it's poor optimization and questionable gameplay decisions, and also the fact that despite all of the complaints gamers and fans alike have given towards them, they still sold over 10 million copies at launch due to being the most pre-ordered titles in the series, and it's all due to the toxic Pokémon fandom being way too soft on the newer titles and attacking on more mature fans for criticizing the state of the series nowadays, and since they are now making DLC for these titles despite the numerous issues during it's lifespan, and the fact that they are now marketing the new roster with toys, trading cards and utilizing them in the new anime series, Pokémon Horizons, and are now making plush dolls out of them. It shows how Game Freak, The Pokémon Company and Nintendo are unable to take any form of criticism, and refuse to improve the quality of these games and instead continue to milk it until it dries out when Gen 10 is released, meaning that the series will never improve because of this.
    • It should also be mentioned that these games should've been delayed since it's clear that the 3 year cycle for each generation of the series has gotten stale, and since the series is now having yearly releases, it goes to absolutely NO ONE'S surprise that this cycle needs to be expanded to 10 years and Game Freak should focus more on developing each new title and less on trying to advertise them with merchandise and adaptions just to hype toxic fans up and gain more profit from sales as a whole. It should also be obvious that the TCG and the anime needs to be stopped so that they can just focus on new games and so that the extremely toxic fandom can die down and that people can move on to better franchises such as Persona, Tales of..., and the recently released Palworld (the latter of which surprisingly did a far better job than Scarlet & Violet in every way despite the controversy surrounding that game). It also wouldn't hurt if the series were to go on hiatus for a decade just like Scooby-Doo or at least get rebooted by a different company just like what Disney should have done to Nickelodeon.
    • In fact, they've already confirmed the release date of The Indigo Disk DLC, which is likely have even more problems than the base game itself, meaning that they still haven't learned their lesson and will still continue to milk the series forward due to how popular and beloved it is worldwide.
    • However, there is somewhat a glimmer of hope fans had that if Game Freak learned from their mistakes with Scarlet & Violet, or better yet, let another, more talented developer have all the rights of the main series and give it more love and care than what they (Game Freak) had done, then Gen 10 would be a massive improvement over those games, as well as bringing back the features from its predecessors (especially Pokémon Legends: Arceus). But for now, only time will tell.
40. As of 2024, just like what 2K did with WWE 2K20, Game Freak has abandoned this game pair and is currently working on a new game for the series Pokémon Legends Z-A. And as a result, the game pairs' bugs, glitches, and performance issues will likely never be fixed at all.

Good Qualities

1. The graphics are a huge step up from the previous mainline title Pokémon Sword & Shield, the Pokémon models have also received a big overhaul in which they are more detailed and more expressive.
2. Like Pokémon Legends: Arceus, the game is more open-world. Despite the unbalanced level scaling, you can take the gyms in any order you want.
3. Some of the new Pokémon designs are great, especially the three starter Pokémon (Quaxly, Fuecoco, and Sprigatito), two of the cross-evolved forms (Kingambit and Farigiraf), and the two new legendary Pokémon Miraidon and Koraidon.
   • Even of the newly revealed Pokémon from the DLC such as Archaludon and Ogerpon are amazing in general.
   • In fact, Lechonk and Ogerpon have become beloved in the community for how adorable they are, thus have several memes made out of them and are considered to be some of the cutest Pokémon designs of all time.
4. While extremely easy to obtain, Miraidon and Koraidon are extremely useful to explore the areas in the game.
5. Making sandwiches is extremely fun to do, since you can choose any ingredient you want and still have it to your liking, which is a major improvement upon the curry system from Pokémon Sword & Shield, and you even get a cute cutscene where you and your Pokémon eat the sandwich together, which makes this new feature a nice addition to the series.
6. The soundtrack is fantastic, with several memorable tunes like Penny's battle theme and Area Zero as an example of this, since they add tension and thrill to the game and really fit the section of the game they're in overall.
7. Despite being downgraded from Pokémon Legends: Arceus, some features from the aforementioned title actually do indeed return such as size variations and not having any battle transition screen when activating a battle with a Wild Pokémon, which does mean that Game Freak did at least try with some aspects of these games.
8. The final boss is incredible and a very unique take unlike most previous games, were the final boss is either the Champion or the Player Characters' Rival. This time the final boss is the professor that started your adventure.
   • This is the fourth time in the main series with a unique final boss, after Pokémon Black & White (with Ghetsis), Pokémon X & Y (with AZ, though he could be considered more or less like an epilogue boss of that game pair) and Pokémon Legends: Arceus (with Arceus).
9. The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero DLC would finally add a lot of missing Pokémon and add clothing options for your character.
   • Although, even with the DLCs, many of the fan-favorite Pokémon are not included while some of the others do.
10. The The Indigo Disk DLC added a new feature called Synchronization, which will allow you to control and play as your own Pokémon, giving some nods to the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fans.
    • In addition, this DLC features interior customizations for League Club, custom throwing animations, rematches for coaches, and the ability to fly for Koraidon and Miraidon.
11. The characters are likable and well-written, especially Nemona and Arven (who have the most character development during the main story and are very relatable overall).
    • Speaking of Arven, his relationship with his Mabosstiff is a major highlight of the story itself, as it's shown he cares for his Pokémon a lot and the bond they have is just adorable, especially when he feeds him.
12. The controls are smooth and responsive, despite being hampered by the slow pacing and awful performance of these games. This is one of the many things that people have praised these games for, since they don't feel sluggish nor clunky, which does makes running around the Paldea region fun at times.
13. Despite most of the new Pokémon designs being bad, the designs for the new human characters are actually pretty good, as they're designed in the same style as New Pokémon Snap, and it shows since they have a good blend between cartoony and realistic, especially Iono (whose design has been praised by many fans for looking cute and adorable). Even the player characters look good as well, with the same applying to the rival and DLC characters too.
14. It does improve upon the flaws of Sword & Shield and Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl with a better map design and smoother controls, though not by much sadly.
15. It has one of the best stories in the entire franchise, as it's about you bonding with Miraidon and Koraidon throughout your Pokémon adventure and you meet many different faces with them getting tons of character development and many emotional moments, with tons of backstory and lore put into certain story elements that add onto the franchise lore and give the games a cinematic feel, which is rather new for the franchise, and the usage of drama and slice-of-life make the story feel more organic and deep when compared to other games in the series, and is on-par with Black & White in terms of having a deep and interesting story.
    • Speaking of Black & White, it has a good blend of darkness and mystery and is just as good as the story in those games.
    • And even if with Team Star being lame villains, it's still a major improvement over Sword & Shield which had one of the worst, most poorly-written stories in the entire franchise with numerous plot holes and inconsistencies, which is absent within the story of Scarlet & Violet.
    • The ending is also extremely emotional, especially the quote "I inherited all the thoughts and wishes of the Professor, and so I understand better than any... Your mother/father truly loved you."

Reception

Scarlet and Violet received "mixed or average reviews", according to review aggregator Metacritic, making them the lowest-rated core series Pokémon games on the platform.

According to The Pokémon Company, Scarlet and Violet are the most pre-ordered titles in the series' history. Within three days of its release, the games had sold over 10 million copies worldwide, including 4.05 million in Japan alone.

They are often considered to be the weakest titles in the series by Pokémon fans due to the high amount of glitches, and the lackluster game design and overall presentation, and even some video game reviewers such as Nathaniel Bandy and Jim Sterling were highly critical of them, while several Pokétubers and other reviewers such as The Completionist still loved them.

Trivia

• These are the first two main series games since Black 2 & White 2 to have a color-related word in their title name.
• They're the first two games since Black & White to introduce over 100 new Pokémon, as previous generations normally introduced less than that, due to the overabundance of new forms introduced and the limitations of 3D graphics on the 3DS.
• They were the last two Pokémon games that James Turner worked on, as he left the company back in June 2022 to found his own video game company.
• They were the most pre-ordered titles in the series, which was a major reason for the successful sales launch.
• There was originally going to be a convergent species form of the Magikarp line according to the data of the Japanese version, but for some reason were scrapped and replaced by the Toedscool line and the Wiglett line instead.

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