By: Daniel Kendle

Let’s start off with a metaphor. Again.

Okay, so you’re at home one day watching TV, and you get the sudden urge to do something productive with your life. So, you naturally head on over to the kitchen to try and create the next great American dish, only to open up the sugar jar and have a rabid weasel pop out. Oh, the horror! It bites you in the upper-most vertebrae (somehow) and runs away.

Being immortal (and the subject of an already-strained metaphor), you magically-shrug off the blistering wound and pop off the lid to the salt shaker and out pops one of those fake rubber snakes magicians use, except replace “fake” with “real” and “rubber” with “blood-driven.” It – again – bites you and also runs off (?).

At this point you’re feeling hopeless, and in one last ditch attempt to eat you open up your patented… bean drawer, and see it: a shining beacon of light, being a glistening can of ‘Jean’s Beans’ is waiting on the shelf. ‘Huzzah!’ You think to yourself, ‘I have found the light at the end of a tunnel of suffering!’

But… Why is your kitchen like this? This new flat you bought has weasels and walking snakes in it, yet also contains some normal stuff too, like beans. Why is that? Why aren’t there either just normal kitchen items instead of animals, or some kind of hydraulic torture device instead of beans? Why are there genuinely good parts of this kitchen, yet also stuff that inflicts great pain onto your physical body? Why is this kitchen so lopsided in terms of quality?

…..

‘Pokémon Scarlet’ and ‘Pokémon Violet’ are the (relatively) most-recent games within the franchise of the same name. Being the first truly “open-world” entries in the 28 year-old series, the games have garnered a very desicive reaction. Selling over 10 million copies in just 3 days, they’ve become one of the fastest selling games in recent memory, but with that success comes the large amount of generally-negative reviews and returns of the product.

But why? Why do these 2 games carry such a degree of inconsistency? We’ve had controversial ‘Pokemon’ games in the past – especially on the Nintendo Switch – but none to this scale. These games are different from past entries in not just their contents, but their reception.

So, to solve this mystery, it’s time we take a deep look into the pair. This is my first open-world game (I’ll explain what that means soon) that I’ve reviewed here, and I want to give it my all. I’d like to go in-depth into every meaningful mechanic and element of these titles that I cared about.

The only part I’m not touching is the story, because I’m not really the kind person to talk on that matter; I don’t focus a lot on a game’s story in my articles because I just don’t care as much about plot in games as I do gameplay, personally. I just don’t think I’m fit to speak on the matter. However, I will be mentioning story beats whenever needed to explain something better.

So, with introductions out of the way, let’s put on our detective caps and sleuth our way into ‘Pokémon Scarlet’ and ‘Pokémon Violet:’ the most middling experiences I’ve had in a while.

CHAPTER ONE: THE PROSPECT OF AN OPEN REGION – ON THE HALF SHELL

I think that we need to start by having a look at past games in the franchise, and how they’ve tackled their regions – the fictional settings where the games take place in. We’ll also briefly glance at the linearity in previous ‘Pokemon’ so we can therefore talk more about ‘Pokemon Scarlet’ and ‘Pokemon Violet’s’ region, and how being open-world implements new changes and impacts the series. I’ve had to rewrite this entrance a few times now, but I think this’ll help paint a good picture of the most subversive part of these games.

Most ‘Pokemon’ games since the very beginning have released 2 versions, which is why I’ve been discussing the newest games as a unit (I personally bought ‘Pokémon Violet,’ however, so I’ll just be talking about that game for the rest of the article). Each game in a pair is structured about the same, with minor differences between each, such as the types of Pokemon that you can find there. Pokemon exclusive to each version of the pair of games are called version exclusives, a whole sort of “is the sky blue” kind of label.

The regions, however, generally stay consistent between the pairs of games. To summarize, a region in these games is basically a fictionalized landmass where the story takes place in, usually being vaguely based off of real-life areas. For instance, the first games in the series, ‘Pokemon Red’ and ‘Pokemon Blue,’ have their regions based off of the Kanto region of Honshu, Japan, the biggest island making up the country (funnily-enough, the region in the games is also called Kanto, the only time in the series where the IRL and fictional locations are under the same name).

Regions before ‘Pokemon Violet’ were made up of 2 main types of locations: routes and towns. Towns are what you think: locations with buildings, roads, the like. Routes were the connecting lines; small or large paths that contain the Pokemon for you to actually catch and train with to use for battle. Combined, they formed a structured path for the player to follow as they went about their journey.

However, different games varied in their linearity. From generations 1-5 of games, routes and towns were usually very complex: structured trails and cities that had lots of depth to them, and routes especially were essentially point A to point B concepts, but had branching cutoffs and split paths. They weren’t maze-like, but instead each route in a game was a deeply-layered and invigorating experience. That’s not even to mention extra unique locations in routes or towns, such as towers or ruins, which often had even more content of their own.

Then, in generations 6-8, it felt like some major shift happened – for the worse. Routes eventually turned into small, short, simple paths that almost-never tried to divert off the main trail. You could even traverse an entire route in a matter of seconds; THAT’S how bad it got. No cool extra locations, barely-to-no unique mechanics… if there’s one thing to take away from the regions of newer games, its that they’ve become far more cramped, dumbed-down experiences.

This goes for towns as well: before they could reach giant sizes, but even smaller settlements were still full of lore and content, stuff to see and do. Now some “towns” were merely 2 houses right next to each other. Both acting as copy-pasted mirrors of one-another. It was miserable.

But with ‘Pokemon Violet,’ we’ve now gotten the exact opposite: a large, sprawling map to traverse in any way we desire. But now that we’ve gotten some history out of the way, how does this new formula impact the region design? How does ‘Pokémon Violet’s’ region stack up against both past and modern region design?

To start, routes aren’t actually a thing anymore! After a few minutes of slow buildup, we’ve now got “areas” instead, which are basically ways to split up the north, south, east and west parts of the map. Each directional province has multiple areas, and each is usually different from one another. For instance, “South Province, Area One” is a humid meadow-y land, with twisting hills and a small marsh. Meanwhile, “South Province, Area Two” is an olive orchard, with aged, beige grass and populations of olive trees.

Then there are areas that aren’t just called “Area #.” For instance, the western Province of the island has multiple Areas, but also a desert called Asado Desert. There’s a lake called Cassaroya Lake. There’s a foggy wood called Tagtree Thicket. I could list more (including one I’ll save for later), but we’ll talk more about the entire region itself for now.

In comparison to past ‘Pokémon’ games, this new region’s a lot more realistic-looking than others. Past games’ regions had mushroom forests, electric caverns and the like, whereas Paldea (apparently the name of the island) is lacking those. We’ve instead got [relatively] average roads, a quarry, some grasslands, a mountain, stuff like that. Nothing out of the ordinary for these games, but it’s missing a lot of the mystical locations of prior titles.

And that segways into a problem I have with Paldea as a region: it’s very bland. Unlike other open-world games which usually have varied landscapes and memorable places, ‘Violet’ instead has mostly biomes, with towns occasionally. In the game, there’s a set of 10 sights that operate similar to our world’s wonders of the world, though when you go to one they’re literally just a big waterfall or some rocks or whatever, it’s boring. The whole world is boring, actually, and that’s one of ‘Pokemon Violet’s’ biggest problems.

In terms of landmarks and locations, you’ve got these watchtowers that give you a nice view of the surrounding area, as well as some assorted items. They also function as waypoints for you to zip to at the press of the button. These are alright; most games with a sizable setting have things like these, and it’s no different here. You’ve also got 4 lighthouses in the 4 corners of the island that function almost-identically.

And really, besides towns and squad bases (something we’ll take a look at in the “gameplay” section of this article) that’s kind of… it? Like, you’ve got some ruins with unique collectibles and ‘mons, ancient stakes to find and pull out of the ground (another prospect for “gameplay”), and… bridges, but overall the world’s pretty empty with its main attraction being its biomes. But other than having different species of Pokemon and maybe some geographical variation, they don’t really do a lot of other stuff. I think having geographical differences of biomes impact gameplay would be super fun, honestly.

For instance, maybe in the mountains you could be stuck in a permanent light snow that causes fog to appear. You could bring a Pokémon that could breathe fire and the fog could dissipate, revealing items you couldn’t find before. Or, maybe the desert could be filled with quicksand, and you could traverse it normally, or breeze across it with a critter that could dig around and surf you across the sand.

The franchise did something like this before with HM’s, moves that you could teach your Pokémon to bypass certain roadblocks preventing you from continuing the game. These were generally annoying nuisances, so we don’t want a repeat of that. They were annoying because you had to replace a move first to teach a creature the HM, so instead of prohibiting the amount of moves you can have, just have a Pokemon meet the standards required (ex. fire-breathing, “diggable”) in front of your team. You could also just ignore the benefits provided and play the game normally.

To end this section, we’ve talked about the emptiness of the region and the missed opportunities with Areas, so let’s talk about cities. In ‘Pokémon Violet,’ there are a good few towns to its name, each pretty different from one another. You’ve got a small olive-farming town, a super-modern city, a multi-leveled waterfall town, one with cool art pieces and natural sights, and so forth. Each town has multiple shared buildings: a place to heal your team of ’mons, a battle court, some shops, and the gym. We’ll look deeper into the latter later.

I’m generally mixed on how I feel about the towns in ‘Violet.’ On one hand, they generally look alright and all feel unique from one another, normally for the better. On the other hand, they’re pretty void of content. One port town has an auction area, which is cool. Another has a game where you roll this giant olive into a goal, and you’ve got some other sparse games to try out in a couple others, but besides those you don’t have much to do in them. They’re pretty, but are mostly just set dressing for the story.

In the end, Paldea is fairly-okay, with some alright sights but very dry amounts of stuff to do. It doesn’t sustain itself enough to provide content after beating the game (or during it, to be frank), and almost-definitely needed some more time in the oven before the game’s release to add more. It’s a good start, but an okay final product.

This may be the end of going over Paldea in general, but stay tuned as PART II will delve into graphics and glitches in the game.