Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet

[MindFreak]

Just took down 2 Gyms in an hour which leaves me with just 1 left. Really disappointed by this, they are piss easy and the Gym tests are absurd and just not any fun, except the double battle warm up which was basically just battles like it should be. It was still too easy, though. They really should have had some level scaling options. That said, Garchomp and Ceruledge are absolute beasts that can take down Nemona and Gyms by themselves. 

Still need one Titan and two Team Star bases. 

In general, the game is decent fun but everything is just made trivially easy since they have made the Pokémon too underlevelled to accommodate the open world structure. Only found 1 Pokémon I couldn't defeat, it was a level 75 Terrastelyzed Lucario in a cave but I was able to escape. 

The game is also stupidly slow. The battles drag out because every action is followed by a delay, and because walking about is just slow. Luckily the world isn't that big. 

Even though the game is a technical failure, I haven't actually encountered anything other than graphical glitches and a single sudden crash. That's at least something. 

I haven't even made my final team yet. Still dragging a Clodsire along but can't settle on which Pokémon I want.

Edited November 28, 2022 by MindFreak

[Josh64]

I'm kind of enjoying this in short bursts but the technical aspects really bog it down, and I'm not usually one to care about that kind of thing. I almost wish I had played this first, before Legends Arceus, because that game just does everything so much better. 

Catching Pokémon is such a slog now, of course in PLA I would fight some, but it was just so great also being able to sneak around and throw a Pokéball at them, or lure them closer with some berries before going in for the kill. I can understand them getting rid of the no-battle insta-catch, to make it more like a traditional Pokémon, but why take away the manual aiming of the ball? I absolutely loved how fluid it felt with motion controls. As well as that, sending your own Pokémon out to autobattle is a chore as you have to go into the menu and manually select the top Pokémon in your team that you wish to send out - the menus were just SO much faster and more intuitive in PLA.

I would have assumed PLA was the basis for this, and it got built upon into a full Pokémon game, but it doesn't seem that way at all. Also, WHAT is with the sluggish-ness? Starting battles and the battles themselves have second long delays before each action, which again wasn't present in PLA. WTH‽

Like I said, I would be enjoying this game a hell of a lot more had I not got used to and loved the great QOL improvements found in PLA. 

On the plus side, I haven't found any actual glitches, just plenty of graphical ones - That camera sure does love panning under the floor. The FPS decisions are just insane to me too, I understand the logic of lowering the FPS of objects/people far away, but why include it in a cutscene that's near the very start of the game (the classroom!) - Either pre-render the cutscene on a machine with more power (ala the mega water in Paper Mario) or just have less students in the class. The windmill is a pet peeve as well, I was stood on a hill and the windmill in the distance must have been 1 frame a second or less. At that point just have the windmill stand still, I could at least tell myself it's not windy over there right now lol. 

The graphics are so inconsistent too, the Pokémon and humans actually look pretty great, I love the textures on the 'mon, and the hair of the humans is incredible, but then so often you'll come across a literal N64 quality texture on someones shirt pocket, or flag, or wall - the consistency just is not there. 

I am really not too fussed on graphics usually, the Switch is my main console of choice, but this game consistently breaks my immersion with things like the extreme FPS dip of distant (or even very close lol) objects and the constant clipping into the world. I want to and do enjoy this game but I really hope they bring out a patch else it's going to forever be tarnished by these technical issues for me. If Game Freak aren't capable of an open world they shouldn't just go ahead with it regardless, they should scale it back and break the world up into sections ala Arceus. 

Also the 10 million sales, do you think that will inspire them to patch or make them more complacent. On the one hand they've sold millions with this buggy mess, on the other they have the largest audience ever to witness what a state the game is in.

Edited November 28, 2022 by Josh64

[Glen-i]

12 hours ago, Josh64 said:

Catching Pokémon is such a slog now

Catching one Pokémon is slower then PLA. But actually filling in the Pokédex is about 20 times quicker.

Catch a Pokémon in most games, and you get the Pokédex entry, but in PLA, you'd have to catch 20 of them and see it perform a specific move 25 times to do the same thing. That actually made me drop the game for months. Ridiculous padding to hide the low amount of Pokémon.

I also think Sca/Vi handles learning new moves better. Having the option for the game to stop you to tell you your Pokémon can learn a new move is a lot better then how PLA had it quietly happen on the side. I missed a lot of new moves because I didn't notice the tinchy pop-up notification.

[Hero-of-Time]

13 hours ago, Josh64 said:

Like I said, I would be enjoying this game a hell of a lot more had I not got used to and loved the great QOL improvements found in PLA. 

I felt the same. For me, in many ways PLA should have been the foundation of how to build an open world Pokemon game and then Game Freak should have built upon that. Use the things that worked and take out the things that didn't. The game also looked and ran a lot better than what is on offer here. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed both games but I found PLA to be the better of the 2 games by a country mile. I've never been one to going into much depth with the Pokemon battle and that's probably why I feel the way I do. I do appreciate what Glen said about the padding though. It was a lot of busy work but I don't mind doing stuff like that in games, hence me doing random and stupid stuff for trophies/achievements.  

[Ashley]

36 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Catch a Pokémon in most games, and you get the Pokédex entry, but in PLA, you'd have to catch 20 of them and see it perform a specific move 25 times to do the same thing.

That's not strictly true. There were various ways you could complete the entry which allowed you to tailor it around your specific play style. I actually liked what it offered in that regards. 

[Glen-i]

3 hours ago, Ashley said:

That's not strictly true. There were various ways you could complete the entry which allowed you to tailor it around your specific play style. I actually liked what it offered in that regards. 

But no matter how you went about it, it was still multiple times longer then every other Pokémon game. The game was a glorified version of Pokémon GO with a tacked on battle system.

PLA does a few things right, don't get me wrong, but I imagine both games being developed around the same time is why some of the QoL stuff didn't carry over to this game.

Will be interesting to see what stuff will be brought over to the next mainline game after this.

[Sheikah]

No, they don't. Only people who have a sibling they plan on playing with ever buy the double packs. By that logic, loads of multiplayer games (Splatoon, for example) these days should get this same criticism.

You'd be a complete idiot to buy two for yourself.

That's not true at all, I know back in the Red and Blue days many people who bought both games to get the different Pokémon. And since Gold and Silver there's been different legendaries too, so even more incentive. Unless things have changed in terms of what you get on each game then I imagine that a sizeable chunk of people still buy both.

[Ashley]

33 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

But no matter how you went about it, it was still multiple times longer then every other Pokémon game. The game was a glorified version of Pokémon GO with a tacked on battle system.

PLA does a few things right, don't get me wrong, but I imagine both games being developed around the same time is why some of the QoL stuff didn't carry over to this game.

Will be interesting to see what stuff will be brought over to the next mainline game after this.

Yeah it did require multiple times, but it was at least more creative. Different strokes for different folks and all that and I imagine our view points are defined by our play styles anyway (I don't care about catching em all). 

I do like how PLA did a good job of incorporating (or retrofitting) it's mechanics into the story and that is one of them. 

[Glen-i]

2 hours ago, Sheikah said:

That's not true at all, I know back in the Red and Blue days many people who bought both games to get the different Pokémon. And since Gold and Silver there's been different legendaries too, so even more incentive. Unless things have changed in terms of what you get on each game then I imagine that a sizeable chunk of people still buy both.

The thing that's changed since then is online compatibility. It's not even remotely difficult (and a lot cheaper) to find someone online with the opposite version to you to trade those version exclusives. Hell, the past two generations have even provided methods to get the other cover legendary without trading yours away.

Getting both version's exclusives is so much easier then it was in the 90's.

[Sheikah]

The thing that's changed since then is online compatibility. It's not even remotely difficult (and a lot cheaper) to find someone online with the opposite version to you to trade those version exclusives. Hell, the past two generations have even provided methods to get the other cover legendary without trading yours away.
Getting both version's exclusives is so much easier then it was in the 90's.

Problem with that is if you trade your legendary for the other one then you don't have the original one anymore. Some people want to keep both, not just have a tick mark in their Pokédex.

[Hero-of-Time]

20 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

Problem with that is if you trade your legendary for the other one then you don't have the original one anymore. Some people want to keep both, not just have a tick mark in their Pokédex.

They get around that in this game.

Spoiler

You keep the legendary you ride on and in the post game you can finally use it in battle. You then get to battle another one. If you catch it then you can trade this spare for the other version legendary.

 

[Ashley]

4 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

They get around that in this game.

  Spoilers (Reveal hidden contents)

You keep the legendary you ride on and in the post game you can finally use it in battle. You then get to battle another one. If you catch it then you can trade this spare for the other version legendary.

 

Spoiler

How legendary can they be if a school kid can catch multiple?

 

[Hero-of-Time]

2 minutes ago, Ashley said:

  Regarding that (Hide contents)

How legendary can they be if a school kid can catch multiple?

 

Not very. 

[Glen-i]

7 hours ago, Sheikah said:

Problem with that is if you trade your legendary for the other one then you don't have the original one anymore. Some people want to keep both, not just have a tick mark in their Pokédex.

Yeah, and in the past two generations, there's been a way to get both. Sword/Shield gave away the other legendary via Mystery Gift. Meanwhile in Sun/Moon, you can get the unevolved version of the cover legendary. Trade that to someone with the opposite version and have them evolve it to get you both.

And going by the fact that H-o-T posted something. I'm gonna guess that pattern continues.

[MindFreak]

All gyms taken defeated, all Team Star bases dissolved, and all Titans calmed. Just need to defeat Elite 4 and the final-final boss of Team Star to be done with the game. It hasn't been bad but I must say that the gyms were simply too easy without any level scaling. I was far overlevelled when I finally challenged the Alfonada gym.

I still haven't settled on the final member of my team:

Spoiler

Ceraledge
Meowscarada
Garchomp
Pawmot
Tinkaton
Clodsire - to be replaced

My team is quite vulnerable to ground with three of them being weak to it. Fire isn't good either. 

It seems that a lot of the new Pokémon are dark or ghost types so they don't fit into my team as I already have one of each (which is stupid, I know, but I like Ceruledge a lot and Meowscarada is a good grass type on my team).

[Glen-i]

33 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

It seems that a lot of the new Pokémon are dark or ghost types so they don't fit into my team as I already have one of each (which is stupid, I know, but I like Ceruledge a lot and Meowscarada is a good grass type on my team).

You need to be more like me. Doubling up on types don't matter, because Pokémon is easy enough that you can get away with it with some decent strategy.

My current team struggles with Dark types, but I don't care! 

Your other point though, the funny thing is that if you were to tackle each task in order of level, you'd find the difficulty curve to be actually pretty good. Once I started following this map, I found my team to be on around equal level to my opponents.

You see the problem though, right? Some of these placements are incredibly counter-intuitive. That level 27 place actually barricades your path to the level 24 place. Luckily, my Koraidon could swim, so I could get around that.

My cousin, meanwhile, got sidelined by the level 44 Titan because she went Pokémon hunting in the desert, where the Pokémon were around level 28-ish.

And don't even get me started on why Level 45 is all the way down there.

Currently, we're up to our 12th badge, which means level 44 Titan is next, but I imagine most people choose east or west at the start, work their way up, and then grind whenever a level jump occurs, which leaves them vastly overleveled for half of the badges they eventually have to return to.

[Ashley]

 

Quote

Ver. 1.1.0 (Releasing December 1, 2022)

Season 1 of Ranked Battles will kick off, allowing you to enjoy Ranked Battles through the Battle Stadium.

Please check the in-game notice for more details about Ranked Battles Season 1.

An issue has been fixed that caused the music to not play correctly during the battles with the Elite Four and the Top Champion in the Victory Road path.

Other select bug fixes have been made.

We are aware that players may encounter issues that affect the games' performance. Our goal is always to give players a positive experience with our games, and we apologize for the inconvenience. We take the feedback from players seriously and are working on improvements to the games.

 

[Hero-of-Time]

18 minutes ago, Ashley said:

Our goal is always to give players a positive experience with our games, and we apologize for the inconvenience. We take the feedback from players seriously and are working on improvements to the games.

As if they didn't already know the state of the product they put out. Feels weird this is coming from Nintendo when it really should be coming from Game Freak. Had Nintendo developed the game then there's no way it would have been released right now. I imagine they would have delayed it to get it working as it should have been.

[Ashley]

It might be standard practice for the publisher to post patch details, even if it's written by the development studio. 

[Hero-of-Time]

2 minutes ago, Ashley said:

It might be standard practice for the publisher to post patch details, even if it's written by the development studio. 

Indeed but I was more on about the apology. 

[Glen-i]

Doesn't mention anything about fixing the single RNG seed issue with multiplayer battles...

Granted, I won't be ready for competitive battling for ages due to my more meandering progress then usual, but I hope that's fixed by the time I'm ready.

[Dcubed]

3 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Indeed but I was more on about the apology. 

That's also going to be the case.  As the publisher, It'll be up to Nintendo to publicly relay whatever Game Freak has to say.

3 hours ago, Glen-i said:

Doesn't mention anything about fixing the single RNG seed issue with multiplayer battles...

Granted, I won't be ready for competitive battling for ages due to my more meandering progress then usual, but I hope that's fixed by the time I'm ready.

It's Nintendo's policy to not disclose precise details about patch notes & bug fixes; so they won't discuss exact fixes they've made unless they're very specific, like a crash bug or music fix (Otherwise, the best you'll get is "Changes have been made for a more pleasant experience").  But I guarantee you that this is going to be the very first thing that Game Freak will work to fix, because it is legitimately game breaking.

Edited December 1, 2022 by Dcubed

[Eddage]

Found a shiny Mareep, made sure to turn off autosave, then didn't actually save. Of course I knocked it out 

[Glen-i]

2 minutes ago, Eddage said:

Found a shiny Mareep, made sure to turn off autosave, then didn't actually save. Of course I knocked it out 

Next time, use a Quick Ball on the first turn. Especially if it's an unevolved and easy to catch Pokémon.

[Glen-i]

Reports going around that this patch has mitigated some of the slowdown issues. Mostly noticeable in towns.

It's a promising start, but other issues (like pop-in) are still around.