As promised the reviews have started to pour in for the latest Pokemon adventures Pokemon Scarlet & Violet and the consensus on the games seem to be mixed with the game receiving 78 (at the time of writing) on review aggregation site, Metacritic The most glaring issues reviewers seem to have faced is performance, which were obvious in the trailers which have been shown leading up to the games release. The reviewers believe that there are some genuinely fun moments in the game, but that it isn’t a the progressive step forward for the franchise as some had expected. This is the first 3D open world adventure for the series and it doesn’t seem top be a progressive step up from the fairly well receive Pokémon Legends: Arceus (83 Metascore
“Here, Game Freak draws up an exciting new open-world blueprint for the Pokémon franchise, but appears to have lacked the time and knowhow to deliver it to spec. Compare this with June’s gorgeous Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which runs on the same console, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re beta testing an open-world Pokémon. With more time in the oven, this could have been genuinely exciting. As it stands, this fun-filled adventure asks you to put up with an awful lot more of the rough than the smooth.”
“Pokémon Scarlet and Violet takes two steps forward and one step back, much to blame for its performance on Nintendo Switch. Still, the new formula is solid and could very well serve as the basis for the next games in the franchise, with plenty of room to grow. With a whole new generation of Pokémons to meet and novel mechanics to master, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet will please new and old fans, casual or competitive alike.”
The basic mechanics of Pokemon remain largely untouched – it’s still catching, battling, and training as you remember it – and while that may be enough for many devotees, Generation 9 is a tougher sell for those who need more of a reason to engage with the series, impacted as it is by technical issues, mechanical oversights, and a lack of vision. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet should have been a bright and bold entry that sets the series up for future expansion, but an attempt to modernize while staying loyal to the past hasn’t really succeeded in doing either one – and the headache doesn’t help, to boot.