I played through Pokémon Violet finishing the main game, the end game and filling the pokédex with all 400 Pokémon and thought why not do a little review? Well, here it is.
The Pokémon series is now going fully open-world with Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. It’s clearly been on the cards for a while with the Wild Area in Sword and Shield and later having the Arceus game having a semi-open-world structure. This new structure to the game is what many, including myself, have wanted since first playing Pokémon Red or Blue back in the 90s. We finally have that dream realised. It’s just a shame there are so many issues with it.
I’m not saying the game isn’t fun, it is. It has its good points. It’s just disappointing that Game Freak have clearly rushed the game out. For example, the game is fun to play and exploring Paldea is actually a nice experience in a simple way, the problems with exploring arise when you see just how the game is being affected by its limitations. You have this, decent-looking world and then you have loads of pop-in, parts of the world vanishing and reappearing, glitches galore, slow down, framerate issues and there’s no real reason for it. I know the Nintendo Switch is a generally underpowered console, but I don’t believe the issues come from that, no, when you have other open-world titles that have far superior visuals and run better you have to wonder why? This brings me back to it clearly being rushed out.
I did say there are good points and there are. I like the story, will it win awards? No, but it’s simple and enjoyable, the fact that you have 3 storylines with the Gym Challenges, Team Star and the Titan Pokémon is a nice touch that gives you the feeling of more choice in how you can tackle the game. I like the new characters introduced and I think Nemona is probably the best rival in Donkey’s years. The music is as always really good to great. The gameplay in battling is pretty much as you expect, which for me is a little bit of a shame, I think they’ve gone a little backwards in the way handling pokémon is and how catching can be done since Arceus. I am hoping the next generation will move forward with the gameplay improvements from Arceus while building upon the better part of Violet.
Basically, they needed more time, and more ambition and they need to stop resting on their laurels, at the end of the day I did enjoy my time with Violet, it’s a fun game, and I can’t overlook the problems with the game, I’m very disappointed in some ways, I was hoping this would be the game I dreamed of, but the issues really stop that from being the case, for example, there are very little indoor areas and the few there are are almost all just identical boxes with a few people in, then you have these lovely towns with barebone buildings, it’s all so uninspiring.
I’m actually struggling with how to rate this, on the one hand, I had fun. On the other, it’s a rather shonky misfire. I think the technical issues really need to be addressed for later games, it’s been happening for the last few generations and I don’t know if that’s an issue of not caring because they know they’ll get sales or having to rush games out to keep the franchise moving forward at the same time. I, fortunately, can overlook the issues for myself, but looking at it from a general point of view I can’t give it more than 6 Pugsley’s.