I'm aware the game is universally lambasted but I'm having so much fun with it.
I was battling some woman and a group of five smolives walked by in the background and I noticed one of them had a black olive instead of a green one. After I won against the woman I ran up to the little one with the black olive and it was indeed a shiny. I named her Madeline.
The woman in the city who rates your pokemon's size says I have the thiccest jigglypuff she's ever seen.
spoiler
Sending out my tandemaus couple for the hundredth time only to find that they've started a family
is probably the most fun surprise I've ever had playing a pokemon game.
I think it is the best 3D pokemon game by far, even with the horrible optimization. So many features that I and many other fans have dreamed about are present in the game. That being said, there is still plenty missing and it does feel pretty half assed considering Pokemon is the highest grossing franchise of all time. Still having fun with it though.
It makes me feel like a mindless consumer to say it, but yeah I'm digging this game so far. Like really having a ton of fun.
Are complaints people are voicing about jank valid? Absolutely.
But is it a bad game? No.
Imo if you enjoy something, you enjoy it. Have fun. A lot of people are enjoying it anyway so it's not like you're the only one.
Seriously the open world is fucking barren. It looks like World of Warcraft circa 2005. Which is especially embarrassing given how beautiful the world in Arceus was.
Trainers don’t even force you to battle so I forget to fight them until I come back to get the bonus reward for the area and just cream them.
You don’t need to be reactionary and pretend a game is good because gamers are shitting on it lmao.
ANYONE WHO LIKES SOMETHING IS A REACTIONARY
No, everything has to be serious at all times and we cannot find any humor in the absurdity of hell world. The last time I smiled was on August 19th, 1991. I wear a dirty ushanka at all times, do not shave, and only take cold sponge baths because hot running water is bourgeoisie decadence. Every day at exactly noon I have the same meal of an expired Maoist MRE I store in a pit covered in old issues of a revolutionary newspaper. I sleep in a bed made of flags from every failed revolution so that they are never forgotten. In the evenings I stare at a picture of vodka by candlelight, but I do not allow myself to drink because there is nothing to celebrate. Every local org has banned me after I attempted to split it by assassinating the leadership. There is no plumbing in my house I shit in a brass bucket with a picture of Gonzalo and Deng french kissing in the bottom of it. My house is actually an overturned T34 in an abandoned junkyard in Wisconsin. I have a single friend in this world and it is a tapeworm named Bordiga that I met after ingesting spoiled borscht on 9/11 in the ruins of building 7 (I blew it up after finding that a nominally leftist NGO inside of it wasn’t sufficiently anti-imperialist, the attacks on the world trade center were a perfect revolutionary moment for me to enact direct praxis against liberalism). My source of income is various MLM schemes in the former soviet bloc that have been running for so long no one remembers who I am, they just keep sending money. I have not paid taxes since McGovern lost the Democratic nomination for president and my faith in electoralism died more brutally than my childhood dog after it got into an entire jar of tylenol. I own 29 fully automatic rusted kalashnikovs and three crates of ammunition entirely incompatible with them or any other firearms I own. My double PHD in marxist economics and 18th century Swiss philosophy (required to understand Engels) sits over the fireplace of my home, my fireplace is a salvaged drum from a 1950s washing machine that was recalled for locking children inside of it. I chose that washing machine model on purpose because I am anti-natalist. During the latest BLM protests I firebombed a Nikes outlet in the middle of a peaceful candlelit vigil. William F Buckley and I wrote hatemail to one another for 47 years until my final letter gave him an aneurysm. The only water I drink is from puddles. George Lucas and I dropped acid together during an MKULTRA southern baptist summer camp and he went on to write the movie Willow about our time together. The best way to test whether an electrical wire is live is to drool on it and shrimp salad is racist. You can make an IED out of potassium and the instructions are online thanks to Timothy McVey, who was actually a committed antifascist communist slandered by the deep state as part of operation condor. Every time a liberal files a restraining order against me, I carve a mark into the wall. I am running out of walls. When Amerika finally collapses I will be ready to lead the revolution. I am very smart and people like being around me.
The open world concept falls apart if you do any of the gyms out of order, as you become massively overleveled. Like being able to do the gyms in any order is one of the main features of this gen and it doesn’t even fucking work lmao.
funny that a years-old romhack managed to do that well but gamefreak can't
Nah, these games are awful regardless of the performance issues. The open world is bland and empty. There are no interiors to explore. You can’t enter houses or buildings anymore and the shops and pokecenters have been replaced with a menu. All 8 gyms have the same recycled design.
They fucked the difficulty even more by removing set battles. Still can’t disable experience share. The open world concept falls apart if you do any of the gyms out of order, as you become massively overleveled. Like being able to do the gyms in any order is one of the main features of this gen and it doesn’t even fucking work lmao.
I thought I was going crazy that no one else here was acknowledging any of this and insisting it was great beyond the jank. I was wondering if it was because Im so used to mmos and tripple AAA open worlds and even played the Crystal Clear that was linked further down so the dream senario of finally having an open world pokmon game didn't really impress me like it seemed to everyone else here? But someone else seems to think its a better story then black and white so maybe thats it?
Nintendo fans are the fucking worst, they will never be satisfied with any new game, if you enjoy it they'll call you a shill who likes anything Nintendo puts out, and then three years later they'll be all over the game when the next installment of the series come out and pretend they loved it all along.
Pokemon Violet is really fun. Many people are pooping and pissing their pants about it when I say I like it
Weird, my experience with Nintendo fans is the exact opposite: they historically have put their fingers in their ears to any criticism and expected you to love it regardless of blatant issues. This time it's a little different since the issues are so blatant.
I'm personally having a great time playing it too though, but I also recognise that the game has major issues and that the release schedule for this franchise is insane. Devs clearly need far more time than they're given.
Scarlet/Violet are by far the best written Pokemon games ever. Their story, or rather stories, are head and shoulders above any other game in the series, which admittedly is not a very high bar to clear, but it deserves to be acknowledged nevertheless.
The story about Arven's Mabosstiff is really sweet and I legit had tears in my eyes during every single one of those Team Star flashbacks where they were revealed to be a bunch of weird kids at school who found each other and became best friends, it's so corny but it worked so well for me. And those boss fights with the huge mad max style cars were amazing.
Hell, even the Elite 4 had so much personality in their interactions as well, not just with the player but with each other, more than in any Pokemon game ever before.
spoiler
The climax where you select the legendary from your party was like straight out of Undertale, it was uniquely creative for the series.
It's a night/day difference to Sword/Shield. Seriously.
The story about Arven’s Mabosstiff is really sweet
Bruh, the dog I grew up with looked exactly like a mini version of Mabosstiff. He was the family dog and he died this year at the age of 17 due to old age. So yeah, that part of the game hit me hard in the feels.
straight out of Undertale
Maybe Toby Fox helped with more then just the music? Lol
Yeah this is my first Pokemon game since the Gameboy SP days and I'm having a blast. It's me and my little leaf cat against the world
In my experience yes, although there's an auto-battling feature that I haven't used. I imagine if you have that going most of the time you get a good bit more exp than I've been getting.
Use the auto battle for getting the materials to craft TMs
A Pokemon will stop auto-battling and flee if their health goes critical, kind of like the Wimpy value in old MUDs. This is how I learned why you don't try to level grind on Squawkabillies.
Not really. The gyms are easier than ever because the gen's gimmick makes them effectively pure monotype instead of slipping in something to catch up people who just use a single super effective type. Note that they still do that, but then turn it into a pure monotype of the gym's type using the gimmick. Combined with the lack of a clear order it's also easy to end up overleveling them horribly, like I wound up doing the highest level gym 5th and then just sweeping all the others without even bothering about typing using the same pokemon that swept that gym.
The team base boss fights are tougher than the gyms because they tend to have better type coverage despite still sticking to a specific type.
I haven't really found any difficulty spike the way Sword/Shield had and I clearly remember Sun/Moon as having a higher general difficulty level overall.
Scarlet/Violet also lets you completely ignore one of the longstanding difficulty sources and that's a lack of early access to strong pokemon, because you'll find a bunch of great pokemon just wandering around as soon as you're past the lighthouse instead of being locked into picking from a very narrow range. Granted, Sword/Shield had the wild area to let you partially bypass that and they have in general moved away from "alright you got your trash bird, some kind of mouse, and a bug, go fight this guy who's ten levels higher than the wild pokemon around and has a lineup with type coverage to shit on everything you can have except for two of the three starters, hope you took one of those lmao" as a source of difficulty and generally give decent pokemon with relevant types, but Scarlet/Violet blows that away and gives you access to way more good options right off the bat.
Which also means never even bothering with a lot of them, like yeah I could use this spider I caught but it has dogshit stats and nothing's weak to it so just why. Just sweep everything with like two pokemon and replace them as needed, nothing forces leaning on the shitty ones anymore. They're officially redundant at this point.
Yes, mostly because you can go do a battle in an area where the NPCs have level 50 pokemon any time you want.
If you try to visit Victory Road early there's a trainer with level 50 Pokemon whose job is to gently suggest going another direction.
If you do the reccomend order and don't goof about toonmuch. The first trainer I found kicked my ass with strategy and It blew my mind. Haven't had a fight that good since though
It can be accidentally harder due to a lack of hand holding. Without being forced to do gyms in a specific order (despite them being designed in a specific order, some are definitely much easier than others) you can just blindly walk into a mid level town with a gym whose trainers and leader have Pokemon 20 levels higher than yours.
Also one of the north western routes to get to the normal gym (roughly level 30 pokemon, mid tier leader) puts you through an area with level 55 Pokemon. There's fucking wild Dragonite and Scyther on the way between the water (level 25-30ish) gym to the normal gym. I think they expected you to come from the east where you don't run into wild fully evolved Pseudo legendaries but it's not stated nor does the game even stop you from doing that.
Even the wild pokemon of the area might not be a good indication, for example I was surrounded by level 18 Marill and a level 20 goomy then triggered a wild battle with a level 33 Salazzle that 1 shot most of my team (around level 20-23) before I gave up throwing balls at it and ran. In the same vicinity there's a level 50 Leafeon which I also started a battle with and got stomped by.
Honestly I think it's more fun if you don't read any guides or recommended routes or walkthroughs and just rawdog the game.
Did I actually white out from starting a fight with a level ??? Paradox Donphan in the desert with only 3 gym badges and nothing over level 25? Yes. Do I like how that's possible in a Pokemon game? Absolutely.
Absolutely not, I’ve completely bulldozed every gym so far by just using one super effective move 3-5 times. I haven’t spent that much time dicking around but ended up 10 levels higher than the first two gyms.
They really hit something special with this one. Yeah, I wish it looked and performed better, but it's still a hell of a good time.
So did anyone else stumble into the desert and try and fight the
spoiler
Great Tusk in the desert
after beating the bird and the crab thinking it'd be easy and just getting steamrolled?
Nope, I cheesed it with Mud-Slap after it almost streamrolled me! I was nearly half way through the game before I realised there's no scaling... I just thought it had a messed up difficulty spike.
I think a bunch of the bad optimization is because most of the towns are in the overworld instead of being behind a loading screen door. Mesagoza has a loading gate and it’s noticeably smoother. Meanwhile, the Wild West biome behind the olive farm is so open and filled with trash mobs that the lighting engine can’t decide where the shade is supposed to be at sunset.
