By: Daniel Kendle

And now, the saga… is getting old…

You can tell this is a long chapter because I had to break apart this article like… eggs into 2 articles, in-between these 2 paragraphs. On a different note, however, we can finally break away from me going over the plot and gameplay in it beat-by-beat and talk about things in a looser order.

To start, let’s talk about the Victory Road portion of the game. After heading to the first gym, [the neighbor] accompanies you and promises to check up on you as you complete each story. Each gym is pretty simple: you first get registered, and then you have to complete a little mini-game before challenging the gym’s leader. These vary in quality – some are fun, like the one where you push around a big olive, the one where you slide down an icy slope like some kind of snowboarding-thing, or rounding up 10 of these sunflower Pokemon hidden around town. Then you’ve got the stupid ones, like where you have to take the “Emotional Spectrum Challenge,” oh boy! In this challenge you have to press a button to make a specific face in the super-duper narrow time frame of like, 10 seconds. That’s it, it’s so dumb that me explaining it here makes it sound better than it actually is, honestly.

Once completing the challenge you can challenge the leader and their Pokemon. Each leader has 3-4 creatures, with one at the end being a Pokémon not of their type specialty, but Terastallizing into theirs. For example, the Electric-type gym leader has a Ghost-type monster that transforms into an Electric-type later on into the battle. Defeating all of the members of their team nets you a badge, allowing you to train Pokemon of higher levels.

Once you’ve beaten the leaders of all 8 gyms you can take the Champion Assessment, where you take on 4 extra-powerful trainers and the champion of the region. You go to this previously locked-off area in the main town and head up a small passage towards this big white building. This is where the assessment takes place.

To begin, you need to take a small quiz. It’s easy, actually, it basically grills you on surface-level questions, like what starting Pokémon you chose, which gym and leader gave you the most trouble, blah blah blah. It’s easy, really, and once every question is answered you’ll be able to take on the league. I don’t really want to spoil much about the champion fight, or the end of this plot line, but I’ll just say that I actually think it’s handled pretty well, and I overall enjoyed it a lot. It’s probably my 2nd favorite out of the 3 lineup, and I think that, for being the only plot to be part of older games, it still holds up nowadays. Nothing super complex, but I like it, and I like [the neighbor] and all of the characters that appear in it (besides the internet streamer), so I think it’s a cool time.

My favorite storyline is the Path of Titans, personally, as I think it’s the most interesting. Like I said, on the surface it’s as basic as it gets: “BIG POKÉMON BIG? ME DEFEAT POKEMON” and all that. However, it definitely has the best story out of the 3 plots, if the most simple of structures.

First, the gameplay portion. In Paldea you’ll find 5 different Titans, each lurking around a specific area. There’s a big rock carb, a stork, a metal worm, a big fish with a tiny sushi-dragon as it’s friend, and depending on whether you bought ‘Scarlet’ or ‘Violet,’ either a past or futuristic version of an elephant Pokemon, coming from the crater region of the map. Each fight is split into 2 parts: the first has you fighting the Titan normally, only with a much larger health bar, and the second has it beefed-up from eating some of the herbs it’s guarding, and the boy from the lighthouse joins you. You 2 team up to fight each Titan in the second phase, and defeating it nets you access to the cave it was guarding, where you and the boy make a sandwich, and by giving it to your bike-dragon it’ll gain special powers. The powers it gets are quite useful actually, so you should be sure to… wait… ?

…Where’s that noise coming from? What’s going on?

Actually, because I’m writing this article (and generally just a pretty mean person) I know where that sound is coming from, because it’s time for our ‘HOW-TO DO’ section of this article. A new feature I’ve decided to introduce into this year’s batch of JOYSTiCK reviews is to have a section that goes over how to complete a certain section of each game that one might have trouble with. It’s my li’l gift to you; don’t say I don’t do anything for you guys.

| | “HOW TO: DEFEAT THE ‘LURKING STEEL’ TITAN: | |

The Lurking Steel Titan is the 3rd strongest Titan in the game, so out of the 5 it’s the middle-most in terms of difficulty. If your ‘mons are around level 30 or-so you’ll be fine. Since you’re able to do any parts of the 3 plot lines out of order (something I failed to mention earlier), you can do this whenever you want though. Whether you’re level 5 or 50, you can still take this on.

I mentioned earlier that I picked the fire croc Pokemon when starting the game, as well as how the Fire-type is strong against Steel-types. Looking at the title you’ll probably be able to see where I’m going with this, but having the croc is great for defeating the Titan. If you didn’t pick it, then don’t worry. There are plenty of different Fire-type Pokemon around Paldea for you to choose from, as well as any Fighting-types, which are also strong against it. The Pokemon guarding the herbs, named Orthworm, is a pure Steel-type, so it doesn’t have a secondary type that gives it any remaining weaknesses or strengths.

Each and every Pokemon has a unique ability that it can call it’s own, letting it have certain traits and effects during battle. Orthworm’s is called Earth Eater. Normally Ground-type attacks are super effective against Steel-types, but Earth Eater, like its name implies, makes it immune to the type, so be careful there.

As for the battles themselves, they’re not super hard. Just spam some Fire moves, and maybe some status-inflicting moves that make it paralyzed or go to sleep. Other than that, you’re free to collect the herb, being the Salty Herb. Making it into a sandwich and giving it to your bike-dragon will let it jump a lot higher than usual. This may sound dumb, but Paldea has a lot of cliffs and high-up edges for you to jump onto, making this needed perk or power-up really useful. It’ll help open up a lot of the world for you, so don’t snuff out its potential.

For a final note in this How To Do section, you can catch it in Area Three of the Eastern Province, a large quarry. Once you defeat the Titan, you can catch normal-sized Orthworm that only appear after it’s defeated.

…..

Like I was saying before I was “interrupted,” giving the sandwich to the dragon can give it powers that can aid you in transportation. The crab Titan gives you the ability to dash, letting you ride it faster than normal, the stork lets you swim over water, the worm I already talked about, the elephant lets you climb walls (this is the best one, in my opinion) and the fish and sushi dragon let you glide. Once you have all 5 herbs eaten and their powers, you’ll be at the apex of your dragon’s abilities and can explore the region in its entirety.

Now, unlike the Victory Road path, I don’t really want to delve very far into the story of the Path of Legends, because it’s actually pretty great, and I don’t really want to spoil too much for a first-time player. Basically, it’s very simple, but sweet honestly, and has a very fitting (if less grand) ending compared to the other 2 paths. I liked it a great deal, so that’s all I’ll say.

For the final path, Starfall Street, I don’t want to spend too much time talking about this plot because I don’t really like it. You essentially start a child-friendly coup against the bullies of “Team Star” or whatever, where you go around to all 5 of their bases and challenge them, where you have to defeat their leader in a battle and fight a dumb car. That’s it, that’s all you do! Just go to a base, challenge them, defeat 30 Pokémon by sending yours out to automatically-fight them (to do this, you just press a button and the Pokémon runs out and auto-battles wild Pokémon), fight their leader and – again – wreck that motor. It’s really boring, personally, and it doesn’t help that it’s accompanied by relatively-cringe dialogue.

The story revolves around a group of bullies who turn out to be the ones being bullied, crazily-enough. By going with the disguised principal of the school you go to, you bust up their operations and learn more about what really happened, and it’s just uninteresting to me. I also won’t spoil the ending, but it’s definitely the worst out of all 3 plot’s finales, involving a character that you barely see throughout the story. I did like the character enough, though, but they just don’t really feel all that satisfying to end with on.

Once the 3 stories are completed, you’ll unlock the ending of the game, The Way Home, where you go inside the crater with [the neighbor], the kid from the lighthouse and some girl named Nickel to find the source of the professor and your bike. Again, I won’t spoil anything that happens here (this was the extra area I was talking about in Chapter One, if you remember it. All I’ll say about the inside of the crater is that it’s really cool and pretty, and the source of that elephant Titan, as well as other “Paradox” Pokemon. That’s neither here nor there, and I really enjoyed the ending battles and story, and it’s definitely one of the best finales of a Pokémon game in recent memory.

…

Alright, now that we’ve talked about the main points of the game, we can talk more about gameplay rather than story. We’ll be going about in a looser manner; more piece-by-piece than anything else.

If you want to “craft” new moves for your Pokemon to learn, using the new auto-battling feature is a good way of collecting Pokemon drops, such as furs or scales. If you bring them to the Technical Machine Machine (or TM Machine), you can create new moves. While I didn’t craft a lot of moves – it’s a lot easier to just find them in the wild by themselves – Auto-Battling is insanely-useful. I mentioned it in the review of Starfall Street, but by pressing the R button you can send out a Pokémon to battle others by itself, as well as pick up items. This is great for grinding levels for your team and is an awesome feature.

Picnics are another cool feature. You can access them through the main menu, and setting one up lets you interact with your Pokemon team. You can pet them, play soccer with them… bathe them, and most-of-all, make sandwiches! When you make one, you choose a variety of toppings, slap them on some bread and eat it with your party, netting you special effects related to different types. You’ve got encounter boosts, letting more Pokémon of a certain type spawn, teensy and humongo powers, which dictate whether smaller or large ‘mons will spawn, and a handful of others. Also, buying other types of food throughout the stores of the region will net you effects too.

Now we come to my favorite non-story-related part of gameplay: the old stakes that you can find throughout the region. Eight stakes can be used to unlock a hidden shrine somewhere in the world, and with 4 shrines that makes for 32 stakes in total, with 4 different colors. Each shrine contains a legendary Pokemon to catch, with each being very powerful. And I’m not judging the designs for the new Pokemon in ‘Scarlet’ and ‘Violet,’ but the quartet definitely has some of the best designs in the region. This is an awesome feature overall, and I love their inclusion a lot, as they bring a good reason to actually explore the region outside of story stuff.

To just about cap-off this monster of a chapter, let’s turn our attention to Tera raid battles. These are crystals scattered throughout the map that you can enter and fight a Pokémon with a unique, random typing, letting you and either your friends online or AI trainers battle it out to catch it, similar to the Titan creatures. Each raid is under a time limit, and during harder raids later in the game, the opponent will often create shields to stall out the battle with. When you do catch (hopefully), you’ll be rewarded with not just the monster but also some random items, a lot of which are very useful. I like these Tera raids, but the harder they become (indicated by how many stars they have) the shields and the Pokémon become more and more annoying, culminating in 7-star raids, which are almost impossible without 4 friends with perfectly-optimized choices for ‘mons. You can only bring a single creature into a den with you at a time, and if it faints the timer will be cut shorter. Still, I do like these.

With that reel of features out of the way, I think that’ll do for gameplay in ‘Pokémon Violet.’ Overall, if there’s one thing the game succeeds in more so than any other, it’s this, and that’s probably for the best, honestly. While the game may not have the best graphics or region design, I do believe that it wins in the part that really makes a game a game. I obviously only scratched the surface in terms of the game’s contents, but I really only talked about stuff that impacted my play-through. Stuff like taking photos, online support and trading don’t concern me very much, and I just don’t have a lot to say about them that others haven’t. Like, Pokemon hasn’t had the best online options in the past, but here it’s pretty cool. Trading’s fun and I like photo-taking enough, but other than those, there’s not much else.

Also, I should mention that I haven’t played the additional DLC (downloadable content) that sold later in 2023. I do plan on it, but for now I’ll leave it be. Maybe in the future I can talk about the 2 side packages, I don’t know. But I digress; the game’s fun, that’s cool, so let’s move onto the last chapter, being…

CHAPTER FIVE: THE MUSIC… IS GOOD! (WOULDA THUNK IT?)

If there’s a universally-agreed upon truth about the Pokemon series, it’s that the games’ scores are capital-G GREAT. This chapter’s going to be super-short, but I just wanted to list some of my favorite tracks from the game. I unironically listen to this soundtrack all the time, it’s cool.

• The Treasures of Ruin theme is my favorite in the game, I love it. It’s so eerie, perfectly-fitting for how the beasts are these evil, malicious cryptids, locked-away in ancient shrines long ago.
• The theme for the boy from the lighthouse is really solid, I like it a lot, especially with how it feels very desperate (adding to his story in-game).
• The gym leaders’ theme is cool. Definitely not as good as the ones from the last games’, but still fun.
• I don’t care too much for the background themes of the West, North and South Provinces, but the EAST Province track goes HARD; I enjoy it.
• Finally, the song from inside the giant crater of Area Zero is really pretty. If you listen to it you’ll hear these melodic vocals, like from some kind of choir and whatnot. It’s super pretty, and gives off this “untouched for millennia” vibe the place has, but you’ll need to see that for yourselves.

I digress, but the music is really awesome, truly. Definitely the best part of the game alongside the gameplay. But with that, it’s time we bring an end to this article, finally.

CONCLUSION: ‘Pokémon Scarlet’ and ‘Pokemon Violet’ are very mixed bags in terms of quality. If I haven’t made it clear enough already, these 2 games have a range of really good, really-needed content, as well as stuff that makes me want to hit a wall really, really, really, really hard. For as much as the games are bogged-down by nonsense, though, I can’t bring myself to dislike them. In fact, I like these games. They’re nothing revolutionary for video games as a whole, but for the series they’re a massive departure from the old and into a new era for the franchise, and one that I’m personally excited to see what comes next.

There are parts that I didn’t talk about, but didn’t feel the need to, exactly. I can’t really factor in the designs of new Pokemon into my verdict because art is subjective and all that. I don’t concern myself with stuff others wish the game had, like voice acting, and that’s fine in my books. Not every review for the game needs to shed light on the product as a whole, just the parts that mattered to them. And in a way, that’s kind of like life. In it, we should strive to focus on things that truly matter to us, not dwell on myriad inadequacies that only bog down our lives. Seize the day, dear reader, and remember that life, while difficult, will always be in your hands with what to do with it. These games may be open worlds, but the true open world in life… is your imagination…

…is what a LOSER would say! I couldn’t care less about ending a 9,000+ article with lessons about the open-endedness of existence. What do you think I am, genuine? No, we (me) here at JOYSTiCK value integrity and dignity above all else, because we couldn’t be seen teaching the children of the world good morals. I review video games for school assignments; my viewpoint on mortality has the worth of a wet sponge. ‘Pokémon Scarlet’ and ‘Pokemon Violet’ got the big-kid rating of 7/10, and I honestly couldn’t see them any other way. They are games that are both really fun and kind of trash at the same time, but honestly, after sending my fingers into a coma writing all of this, I think that it’s for the best, really. Thanks for reading this entry of JOYSTiCK, and I will see you in a month or so.