Wow, been a while since we were here, huh? Over a year, in fact. And I still have to review that other DLC for The Outer Worlds that I've been meaning to get to...
I know with more recent events, you'd probably expect me to go with Starfield or Baldur's Gate 3 given that both of them are very much up my alley. And you'd be right! However, there's just a teeny problem I have currently have going on that is updating to the next console generation... I haven't done it, yet. I'm also currently on a Chromebook after my last laptop that was gaming capable finally went FUBAR on me, so I'm basically having to be stuck watching people play it for the time being.
Bummer, right?
It's also just a fact that I don't really have as much time as I used to have to spend on gaming. I am unfortunately no longer the nearly always broke not yet a college student that I was when I started this blog way back in 2011. I'm now a nearly always broke owner of an Associate's Degree still running this blog way now in 2023 - only now the focus is more on films, television, and running a few fanfiction series that White Wolf Publishing, Disney, and the BBC have been kind enough not to sue me into oblivion over.
I'm also (hopefully soon) in the process of getting a new job and moving across country, so reviews all over the map are potentially gonna be weird for a while (although I do have everything planned through October, so Horror Month 2023 is still good to go). So, if you've been bearing with me for this long, please bear a little longer.
...say, wasn't I supposed to be reviewing something? Oh, right, Scarlet and Violet. Spoilers follow from this point on, you have been warned.
Scarlet and Violet gives us the Paldea region, an island nation that is dominated primarily by the Naranja/Uva Academy (depending on which version). A school that teaches you how to command fantastic creatures in order to battle... wait a minute...
Oh no! OH NO! OHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOO! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
 |
| You must be mad, or you wouldn't have come here... |
...okay, I'm better now.
The game is not much like that beyond the visual trappings, thank heaven. You are a plucky new Pokémon trainer having just moved to the region from... somewhere?... and are immediately brought into events at one of the two aforementioned prep schools. I'm going off of Violet version, being that it's the one that I played, so I apologize if I miss any details that were different in Scarlet. Of course, this is Pokémon and we pretty much know that the differences are aesthetic at best in most cases between versions in the same generation.
The first plotline is the obvious one for a Pokémon game - Victory Road, where you travel across the land, searching far and wide to capture magical beasts into your hi-tech balls and then use them to beat up other people's magical beasts from their hi-tech balls. You beat up enough of these people's magical beasts and you get the eight badges for the region needed to go to challenge the (supposed) four greatest trainers in the land and become the best person who captures magical beasts and stuffs them into their hi-tech balls.
I will say, I am more than a little disappointed with the Elite Four - in particular Geeta, who is in the running for worst Champion in the series. Her team is poorly set up, doesn't really make any sense, and she did not even come vaguely close to smacking me down either time I battled her. On the note of her team, I will remind you that Lance in Generation II had three Dragonites, and her team is worse. It's honestly a shame, since they spend so much time building her up and then - like Vanilla Ice - she's left behind when it comes down to the wire. Sad, honestly.
 |
| He's my favorite... |
How do you get the herbs? Well, you beat up really big magical beasts - specifically five creatures that are sort of psuedo-legendaries.
The third plot line concerns the criminal team of the region - Team Star. Working with the enigmatic Cassiopeia and the head of the Academy, Clavell, the player is expected to hunt down and stop Team Star from their terrible, insidious plans to... bully people. Which you solve by beating them in Pokémon battles so they lose their street cred.
I'm not joking.
Yes, they try to make it out to be a "the bullies were bullied themselves" message... but it doesn't really work because we have literally no reason to care about any of these really, really forgettable characters besides Penny. Penny, spoiler alert, is Cassiopeia and is working in secret to bring down the team that she founded.
I didn't think we'd end up getting an antagonistic team worse than Team Skull, but Game Freak somehow managed it (I also don't count Team Yell, seeing as they were established very early on as not being antagonists in any real sense) with Team Star. It's just awful, but you unfortunately have to do this plotline as well as the other two in order to lead into the fourth and final plotline - The Way Home.
Seriously, this is an intense spoiler warning here. I'm serious, it's about to get rather out there even for a Pokémon game. I put it very succinctly on Twitter, and I was reminded of a conversation I had with my darling girlfriend Tina (hi, honey!) who is far more versed in JRPGs than I (just check her Twitter, trust me) at some point before Scarlet/Violet came out. We did come to the conclusion that the Pokémon franchise is not a good JRPG for all of its many, many good qualities and enjoyable parts.
I guess someone from Game Freak must have somehow honed in on that particular conversation and well...
...so here we go.
The Way Home has you recruiting your "rival" Nemona (who is so important that I didn't even mention her in the Victory Road paragraphs), Penny, and Arven to journey into the crater at the heart of Paldea - Area Zero - in pursuit of the region's Professor (Turo or Sada), who has been briefly speaking to the player via their Rotom phone throughout the game's main plot. It turns out that Arven is the son of either professor (with the appropriate Daddy or Mommy issues to match) and has been trying to seek them out all this time, hence why he's along. As for the others... the game says so.
Entering the crater, however, the player and the three tag-alongs descend deeper to find abandoned and destroyed research stations... and strange Pokémon that look suspiciously similar to existing ones. Getting to the heart of the crater, we find the Sixth Sense-esque twist: Professor Turo/Sada has been dead for the entire plot of the game and you have been speaking to an AI replicant, an AI replicant that completed Turo/Sada's time machine and have opened up a portal to the past/future, bringing the ancestors/descendants of existing Pokémon.
Then to top it all off, in order to save the timeline, you have to battle the AI inside the time machine in order to destroy it.
We are not quite at flying into space on a GIANT FLAMING DRAGON in order to PUNCH AN ALIEN IN ITS FACE-levels of awesome, but damn if we aren't insanely close.
That said, hats off to Game Freak for pulling this off. Death has been kind of an iffy subject in the series outside of Generation I and some unnecessarily dark Pokédex entries, so having a character having been dead the entire time - and actually acknowledging that - is not something I think a lot of people saw coming.
So, plot wise... 3 out of 4 ain't bad. Like I said, the Team Star stuff is pretty much just padding using characters that we really just don't have the time or inclination to care about (and the game really doesn't do much to get us to try), but the main plot of "caught Pokémon, fight trainers, become Champ" is more or less what you'd expect from the franchise at this point.
They try to talk it up as being open world and non-linear and while that's great... the gym leaders don't scale with the player, and neither do the specific areas on Paldea (not that I'd expect them to do that in the later case), so it's really more of an illusion of choice rather than actual choice. Not that it's bad, but it seems like of silly to claim it's one thing when it's very clearly another.
 |
| Ghost Monkey, that spectral monkey. Ghost Monkey, Chunky, that Spooky Monkey. |
We also don't have the National Dex back again, which is a point I've never been a huge fan of. As someone who has built a team for each game I've played (and most of them are sitting on Pokémon Home and have been since I transferred them from the 3DS games), I enjoy being able to take my teams along with me. Sure, not at the start of the game, but later on there's really no reason I can't just bring over my Kanto or my Johto team and apply some liberal boot to the game's hiney. I know things take time to program in and what not, but c'mon Game Freak! Take the time and bring them all home! Nintendo, let them take the time to work on it and bring them all home!
That said, Paldea probably has more new 'Mons than the last few regions had that I actually like. With 110 new ones to collect (including regional variants), everyone's bound to find something that they like. Don't get me wrong, my favorite in the franchise is always going to be HeartGold/SoulSilver (because I'm honestly a huge Johto fan and as far as remakes go it's basically been the pinnacle of the franchise for me), but Scarlet/Violet does what it sets out to do and changes just enough to keep things (for the most part) interesting. Pokémon has had highs and lows, but I'd definitely call this one a high.
Plus, with the The Teal Mask DLC coming out (of having come out by the time this review drops), we'll have even more to enjoy soon enough!
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are now available from Game Freak and Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch.
No comments:
Post a Comment