By: Daniel Kendle

And now, the saga… continues…

CHAPTER FOUR: THE PART WHERE I TALK ABOUT THE ACTUAL GAME

If I didn’t have to talk about playing the game in a review of a video game, I’d imagine that the 3rd chapter would’ve been a nice, if a bit depressing, conclusion to this article. However, the world doesn’t turn if I don’t either, and we’ve a review to return to!

I’ve been a bit of a nagging sag throughout this review, but here’s where I upturn this grave of an article: ‘Pokemon Violet’s’ a mixed bag of quality for sure, but I actually think its gameplay is pretty good, honestly. Nothing crazy, but the changes it makes to accommodate the game’s new changes and open-ended structure are generally-good most of the time. Shocking, I know – I managed to get a good amount of enjoyment out of this game, seeing how long this chapter is. To begin, I’ll go over the evolution (or lack thereof) of the Pokémon series’ core mechanics.

Pokémon’s had a main concept in-place since the very first games in the mid 90’s: catch creatures called Pokemon and use them to battle against other Pokemon in kid friendly sport. You play as a strong, independent 10-year-old child as you make your way across a region, fighting gyms with trainers using these Poke-animals things, until making your way to defeat the champion of the game – the apparent strongest trainer to fight, and become the champion yourself. Along the way you’ll catch many-a-critter, come across varied landscapes and routes, fight an evil team and uncover some kind of story. It’s a tried-and-true formula, and it worked for the years we’ve had these games on store shelves.

‘Pokémon Violet’ does most things listed above, though differently to account for its new structured setting and gameplay differences. You begin as a strong, independent 10-year-old child who’s just moved to Paldea to begin school at a fancy private school (as a side note, I’ve heard that, even though you can name your character whatever, their official title is “Florence,” which is fine, but considering you can give your character a variety of nicknames, ranging from “Joe” to “Cheeseboy” to “Gentle Ben,” it doesn’t really matter).

You meet [the neighbor] and the 2 of you become friends and head off towards school after picking a starting ‘mon, getting the choice between a grass cat, a fire crocodile, and a… duck. Being a man of integrity and known for only having correct opinions, I (obviously) pick the fire crocodile and head off.

[the neighbor] teaches you about catching Pokemon, and I think this is a good place to talk about catching the animals. To begin a battle, you either run into or throw a Pokeball at one, launching you into a battle screen in the world. You can click the buttons labeled either “Battle” (use elemental moves against the opposing creature), “Pokemon” (swap out one creature for another mid-battle), “Bag” (grab items from your inventory to use on your Pokemon) and “Run” (run away from the encounter).

“Run” and “Pokemon” are well-expressed through the blurbs above, so let’s focus on battling. A Pokémon can have up to 4 different moves at once, of which let you inflict damage or stat buffs and decreases to you or your battler. Each move has a certain amount of PP (power points), which dictate how many times a move can be used. Your objective in battle is to either cause an opposing ‘mon to faint by depleting it’s health (shown on a bar), or to catch it in a Pokeball.

When using a move, it can either be not very effective, standard, super effective, or have no effect on an opposing Pokemon, as part of the series’ type system with categorizing the fantasy creatures. As to not get too far down a rabbit hole, each Pokemon can have 1 or 2 types, usually being either elemental or very broad terms that reflect its appearance. For instance, that fire crocodile I mentioned earlier is a Fire type. Fire types are strong against Grass and Steel types, but are weak against Water and Rock types. Every type has different weaknesses, resistances and immunities, and having a Pokémon with 2 types lets them have a mix of the 3.

Anyways, one feature that’s exclusive to ‘Violet’ is this device that lets you power up your Pokémon’s moves. If you click the glowing button to the left of your moves, your Pokémon will be overtaken by crystals and become “terastallized,” which is a 4-dollar word to say, first off, but will also change your creature into having one, single type. This “Tera Type” can be either one of the Pokémon’s original types, or a completely different one altogether. This allows for a good amount of variety and strategy in battles, and if you’ve read my past JOYSTiCK articles, you’d know that I like games that feature at least a bit of strategy to them, and since the Pokemon series is a strategy series, any extra bit of newly-introduced gameplay folding to this genre is appreciated. I really like Terastallizing, it’s cool (they even give your ‘Mon a big hat to where during their transformed period, that’s automatically a win).

Moving away from battling for now, we progress through the beginning of the game on our way to school, which takes about an hour in real-time. We head up a lighthouse, stroll down to a small town area, and catch some more Pokemon. We make our way to the entrance of the city where your school is, and [the neighbor] battles you again before you both go inside. This battle is similar to the one from earlier on with her.

Now, before we continue, you may be wondering about that bike-dragon I mentioned back in Chapter 3. Well, before you go off to school, just after catching your first few Pokemon, you go see this hurt dragon and help him out of a scripted sequence in a cave, where after you decide to take him in and have him be yours. For the opening tutorial portion of the game he doesn’t do much, but after the introduction to your school, you’ll be able to ride him. Both ‘Pokémon Scarlet’ and ‘Pokemon Violet’ have unique mounts, but they’re not much more than variations of the same model, working pretty much identical to one-another. One just looks more prehistoric, and the other is an actual robot, letting the 2 be a sort of past and future pair. We’ll talk more about the mount later as we get into the open-ended majority of this title.

For now, I actually quite like the tutorial. In addition to setting up characters, your bike-dragon, and major gameplay elements, it’s also just a well-designed hour or so to begin with. But now, let’s talk more about school, the town it resides in, and the rest of the game.

You and [the neighbor] head inside the city gates and she leaves to go get you one of those Terastallizing devices I talked about earlier. Now you finally get to explore your first big-kid city, and I might as well go over some basics. I’ve talked a little bit about cities and how they’re kind of uninteresting in the game, but I’ll be the first to say that the beginning town – this large, somewhat-modern, somewhat ancient capital – is pretty cool, honestly. Being easily the largest town in the game has it’s benefits, and it’s probably the only city in the game that feels fully-furnished, like it was designed and plotted-out to its fullest potential.

Being so large, you obviously have to have a lot of stores to go into and buy things from. Kind of. Instead of past Pokemon games where you could enter a building and have a fully-furnished shop, now they’ve been replaced with menus with a select few things to purchase. This is definitely a downgrade in terms of quality, but at the same time I don’t think that having a simple menu to buy stuff from isn’t the worst idea, honestly. Like, yeah, it’s definitely less interesting to walk inside a shop selling clothes or whatever and be greeted by a selection of some boxes and words, but then again, what else are you doing in a store? You go to buy stuff, easily. So, while it’s not the most interesting thing in the world, streamlining buying stuff is fine, in my opinion. The only store in the game to have its own interior are these chain sandwich eateries, which is a weird choice, honestly (the “sock store” is RIGHT THERE, guys).

After exploring around a bit and some mishaps, you eventually make your way to school. I actually don’t have as much to talk about here as others may; you’re able to take classes here on your downtime during the main game, but I never did too much here. You’ve got a language class, an art class, a history class (this one I did try out, and it was pretty cool), among others. From what I’ve heard you get some rewards out of each class by “completing” them, so-to-say. From the history professor you get the locations of some vaults (of which are connected to those stakes briefly mentioned in Chapter 1; this’ll be talked about later), but the others I’m unsure of. Overall, a neat addition, but not one really for me.

Outside of that the school basically functions as a plot area. After being introduced to some class basics, you meet this professor in a video call, hiding down inside this big crater in the middle of the region, Area Zero. He (or she, depending on if you bought either ‘Scarlet’ or ‘Violet’) tells you to take care of your bike-dragon, as it’s weak and whatnot.

You also get an introduction to the 3 main plot lines of the game. The first is Victory Road, where you take on all 8 gyms and become the region’s champion, like I talked about at the beginning of this chapter. You also have the Path of Legends, where you have to take on these super-sized Pokemon to collect these special herbs they’re protecting. You team up with this kid you met earlier in the tutorial, who was leering around the lighthouse you visited before. After agreeing to the job you’re tasked with finding 5 different lairs of the jumbo creatures.

After time passes through a cutscene, you and your classmates are each tasked with an “independent study project” (woof) where you’re given an excuse by the game to explore the open-world. Once introduced to the project, you head outside with the boy from the lighthouse and [the neighbor], and you get a call from a mysterious stranger. They tell you that they need your help with disbanding a group of bullies known as Team Star, living in these large bases around the region. The stranger enlists you into an operation and you get the final plot line of the game: Starfall Street. And after learning you can RIDE your bike-dragon (again, “is the ball blue?”) you can finally set off on your journey, and really experience this new world.

I think the portion with you at the school as kind of boring, personally – it’s really just a half hour of text boxes and dialogue, and it’s never terribly fun, seeing as we’re practically being dragged through a dark ride where every 5 minutes you hear a line in the same vein as “school is love, and love is the most beautiful thing in the world,” like they’re licking your boots clean or something. That’s all you do. That’s all they do!

…and that’s not all that I can do! The heat death of the universe is quickening its pace (GOOD) and I can’t be bothered to talk into the void forever, so we’ll have to continue making this into a 4-parter. At this point the fabric of space-time is unraveling around my keyboard as I leave off this video game article devoted to talking about school and will next time cover something equally odd, like taxes! …or more school, sure!