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IconWhat is a Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Review like?

Before the release of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, the developer Game Freak told players that they can go wherever they want, an open world. I think this claim ends up being a marketing gimmick, a little joke that we're all going to go nuts about later. From the moment you leave the hallowed halls of Uva Academy in the game, that promise is perfectly fulfilled, with open-world, open-ended gameplay, and everything is great. Scarlet and Violet’s wonderfully innovative design has fascinated the trainers, but after entering the game, it is not so perfect, frame drops and freezes are just the most obvious bugs.

The experience of the trainers in the game

Given the lack of level scaling in the game (as is traditional with Pokémon), exploring Paldea at a steady but unguided pace will inevitably lead you to encounter enemies at various points that are either more challenging or too easy. Playing against a Trainer just a few levels above you can be exciting, especially when an unexpected Pokémon on your team comes to claim victory and rack up a lot of EXP. Against Team Star in particular, I had multiple tense moments, such as when their giant car Pokémon nearly destroyed my lesser-leveled team as I made my way down more challenging paths.

Traversing the grassy plains and rocky deserts of the land of Paldea is made easier thanks to the Legendary Pokémon you get at the start, depending on whether you're playing Scarlet or Violet. Either way, this Pokémon can be used as a bike and upgraded to a new movement option through one of three main storylines. Sprinting, climbing, and swimming upgrades are all helpful for quickly traversing the vast Paldean expanse, but one of those upgrades, the gliding ability, can't quite match the ability we got in Legends: Arceus earlier this year. It's better than nothing, but I'm disappointed that you lose altitude almost immediately while gliding, shattering my dream of jumping off the top of the highest mountain and soaring across the map.

When you look closely at the details there, the realization that almost the entirety of Scarlet and Violet is their interconnected outdoor areas is even more apparent. Towns are unique, colorful and full of character. Each one has different buildings and landmarks, like the windmills in Artazon or the fishing grounds in Porto Marinada, and obviously a lot of thought went into modeling them in relation to the different and specific locations in and around real-world Spain. But for the most part, that's where the thoughtfulness ends. Most buildings are facades that you can't enter, with nothing to do around them. Most stores are just menus that open up when you interact with the door, and big city storefronts repeat themselves over and over again.

Scarlet and Violet's three main stories—one about common Pokémon gym challenges, one about a group of delinquent students, and one about five powerful "Titan" Pokémon—is an idea that Game Freak has managed to maximize the effect. By giving each story its own leads and main characters rather than mixing them together, some really good characters are able to shine. I don't think I've ever loved a gym leader as much as Larry, a normal leader, and I was a little choked up by the Path of the Titans episode when I learned what my classmate Yavin's true goals were. Of course, it's still a kid's game—don't expect Nier: Automata to have depth here—but there's a lot of humor, cleverness, and heart in Scarlet and Violet's work, which culminates in a bombastic ending that's surprisingly tough for the magical. baby games. All told, it took me about 35 hours to get to the credits, and I've played another 15 hours of hearty endgame PvE content since then, and haven't quite finished every side quest and found every secret.

While the combat system remains largely unchanged from past Pokémon games (and certainly doesn't include any of the funnier twists I liked in Legends: Arceus), one major new addition is the expected generational battle selection gimmick: Terastallizing. It's a fancy term for temporarily giving one Pokémon in your party a super powerful single type and a cool new gem hat, but the most interesting thing is that any Pokémon can have any Tera type, including types they would not normally have. This makes for interesting and unusual combinations, such as a dragon-like Cloyster or an electric Gyarados. While some of these unusual Tera types can be found by exploring Paldea, the best and most interesting combos are obtained through Tera Raid battles, Scarlet and Violet's final answer to Sword and Shield's excellent Dynamax raid.

Like Dynamax raids, up to 4 players can participate in these limited-time battles to defeat and capture super-strong Tera Pokémon with strange Tera types. Tera raids are also a major improvement over sword and shield raids, as you no longer have to sit back and watch all of your opponent's attacks every turn--everyone moves at the same time. This is a huge time saver. I'm having a great time finding interesting Tera Pokémon, and am pretty optimistic about its potential to keep the Scarlet and Violet community alive and healthy for the next year or more -- if technical issues don't kill it first.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is also full of weird bugs. They mostly manifest as small, amusing, or innocuous issues, like being able to move at twice the speed when a second controller is plugged in for some reason, but there are more serious issues as well. For example, for some reason, two of our guide writers suffered a nasty crash while approaching a ladder. At one point, there were two items sitting on the ground that I couldn't pick up or interact with at all until I advanced further into the story - and then they mysteriously started working again.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is also full of weird bugs.

If you checked IGN before posting, you've probably seen the review I'm working on, I'm holding off on grading the review mainly because I can't try the online features of Scarlet and Violet - a good thing I did because online added A whole new layer of weirdness. In addition to all the technical issues above, I've had whole new issues when surfing the web - one time my friends were invisible while riding their bikes, and another time the bike became invisible so my friends squatted weirdly in mid-air. I've seen everyone's face get stuck in a different expression after using the camera app, resulting in a permanent look of shock or frustration. A friend of mine shows up in a strange YMCA pose at the door of every building I enter, despite being far from my area. There were multiple communication errors that forced us to disband and regroup the group to continue playing, a time-consuming process in itself. Oh, and there's also a really weird moment where my friend briefly transforms into a giant noodle man. Local co-op seems to have slightly fewer weird bugs than online co-op (my co-op teleported weirdly on the map on my screen for no reason), but overall it still runs as badly as everyone else.

That's a huge shame, because like the rest of The Scarlet and Violet, the actual gameplay ideas in its co-op system are promising, if not improved. Between debilitating bugs, my friends and I can pretty much do side by side in Scarlet and Violet almost everything you can do alone, if not explicitly co-op. They're able to complete the early game story events I've already done, and I jump to the next town to do some endgame stuff they haven't visited yet. I get to take pictures with them, have picnics together, make ridiculous sandwiches together, and watch them fight wild Pokemon. They can also fight trainer NPCs in the wild, but it's a weirder situation because you can't actually see the Pokémon fighting, so the two character models just stand there and stare at each other while fighting the player's friends Can walk through the middle of the battlefield and make weird expressions in battle. The skeleton of a good co-op system is mostly there - they just feel like they're held together with some wire and string.

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We all hope that the official can pay attention to the errors in the game and fix them as soon as possible. That's all we've sorted out for how to get a Shiny in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, and we're happy to help you out. You are also welcome to buy Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Shiny and Pokemon SV Held Items at PKMBuy.