Pokémon Scarlet (2022 Video Game) User Reviews

Needed more development time

[DoctorDragon · 8/10 · 5 January 2023]

Performance: 2/10 Story: 9.5/10 Gameplay: 9/10 Characters: 9.5/10 New pokemon: 7/10 Graphic: 4.5/10 Themes (music): 10/10 Total: 7.35/10

This game is visually bad, no doubt with that. It needed more care with the environment, the performance, the cutscenes, the lag, it's clear that it's incomplete.

But, and this is important to point out, the story and gameplay is very good this time.

I liked this game much more than Pokemon Sword and Shield, this one has a soul.

First of all, traveling with the legendary Pokemon from start is the best idea ever. The way the story is introduced is very sweet and the more you play, the more you get involved.

The fact that you can explore freely the entire map from start (after the pretty long tutorial) is very cool, adding a sense of real adventure to the game.

I played without ever using the teracrystalization (the new mechanic), this led to a slight increase of the difficulty of the game that I appreciated a lot during my gameplay.

The new pokemon are mostly bad, but there are a few that I liked a lot, so overall it's fine.

As said before, the performance of the game is the biggest letdown. I think that with 1 more year of development this could have been the best Pokemon game ever.

I give it an 8, because after being disappointed with Sword and Shield, I enjoyed a good old but new Pokemon game.

Go Catch a Pikachu.

[ThunderKing6 · 8/10 · 20 November 2022]

It all started with the gameboy black and white where you needed double AA batteries. Now I'll be retiring from the Pokemon scene.

Pokemon Violet and Scarlett is where it ends. It started with colour (Pokemon red) and its about to end in colour Pokemon Scarlett. How about that!

I am writing this review on Novo 20 2022.

About: A kid with a single mom gets a pet and most battle other animals and people with animals and become The Pokemon Champion of the region.

Story and production: so far the story is somewhat the same as past games. However now the kid is in school going on a Pokemon journey.

Honestly I don't read all texts because it gets boring after a while. That being said there still are no voice overs and I find that unacceptable. How hard is it to hire someone for 15 bucks to voice this game? There are many desperate people out there. No more text reading. My finger can't spam A much longer.

The graphics are fine. Animation is not the best but it's a step in the right direction for Pokemon. An example is the walking looks goofy.

Pokemon will disappear if you save the game or switch Pokemon order.

It's a highly easy game. Exp share after many complaints are still back and permanent. Catching Pokemon has never been so easy. On average it takes 1 Poke ball toss to catch a poker monster.

Trainers still only use an average of 1 Pokemon vs you with 6.

They also still have dumb grunts.

Your rival is a strong tall female. Yay! It also still has another loser Ally in your group.

The game is more like an open field than open world. When you enter shops you right away get a menu. It's not like Sun and Moon where you can actually enter and walk around a shop. Nope. You enter and there is a menu pushed in your face.

There are many buildings you can't enter.

There are tons of The NPCs that you can't interact with. When you stop near them and press A they don't turn and say anything to you. Instead for some it will show a bubble on top of their body with texts.

NPCs don't ini battle anymore. Remember in past games when you tried to dodge NPCs and when they spotted you you had to battle them. Now that's gone and it's lame. I liked trying to dodge them and having them challenge me.

The quick battles are very useful. Sometimes makes me feel like I'm bullying the pocket monsters because I can beat 10 Pokemon in 1 minute.

Items randomly pop around which is cool. Though no more neat sound effects when you pick up an item or a TM.

One funny nugget you can attempt suicide with your NPC by jumping off buildings and cliffs and not RIP.

The gimmick they use is called terastallize. It's like a pixalalited mega form. It looks ugly and makes you slightly OP. I don't like Megas, Gigantamax, z moves or terastallize etc because they make the game unbalanced and hash.

Still no new Dragonite variant. While boring Salamance gets another.

As for starters they need to move away from water grass and fire types. It's been done ALL THE TIME.

Also no new Eeveelutions.

Overall it's a good fun game so far. I'm not a fanboy btw. I'm just a guy that has played Pokemon for over 20 years. I've critize past games but this one I like this one.

Highlight: The Cat starter is pretty cool. My team is unstoppable.

Main Intelligence: 1 for Pokemon because they don't mind being enslaved.

Do any worthless Mutts appear?: Yes. They have one annoying dog that annoyingly barks when it's in frame. It's annoying.

Is this game worthy?: For my last Pokemon game before I retire it's does what it's supposed to do and I say yes.

Should you play this game?: I'm a little bias seeing how I'm going to call it a Pokemon career, I say yes. You grind, catch Pokemon, battle. It's been the same concept for over 20 years. Anyone complaining is only complaining to jump on the bandwagon of negative Nancy's or because a Youtuber hates the game haha!

So yeah play this game for you and go catch a Pikachu. I saw one and I killed it because Pikachu is hash. But if you like Pikachu then go find one and enjoy this game.

Pokemon. It's in the game.

The future and past

[londonelim · 9/10 · 28 August 2023]

This game is about the future and the past and how it affects Pokémon. The future Pokémon can be caught in Pokémon Violet and that is not what I'll be talking about, I will be talking about Pokémon Scarlet. The past Pokémon can be caught in Pokémon Scarlet, the game allows you to partner up with Koraidon, (who has the best shiny out of all Pokémon just saying) they allow you to glide, jump, run fast, battle using them, & swim. This Pokémon game is one of my favorites at the moment it allows you free roam, do stuff at your own speed, and way more. It should've had more time in development because of how glitchy and bad it was on release but it's been getting better with patches, I do wish there was a option to ride other Pokémon though instead of just one.

Made for a 10 year old

[sgnr-05863 · 5/10 · 31 December 2022]

Understandable the game really targets the story towards young kids . I haven't played any of the recent games however this made me glad I hadn't.

Most of the core elements apart from the story lines were pretty good tbh . I had no problem with how the battles went , and the titans were quite cool to fight even though the story was still quite cheesy .

However , both the gym's and the star battles as whole were very excruciating to sit through , I thoroughly didn't enjoy finding out what the secret menu item was or giving a man his wallet . I understand it's a new age were the villains aren't actually villains but Jesus Christ there was maybe one guy out of like 12 who wasn't a 'Saint' and he was just a bore , so on the whole the gym trials were boring and tedious and the fights were just like normal .

Team star was no better however, not once did I care about them or their story as it really wasn't engaging or shown at all . But we did intact get a monologue about friendship after we defeated each one with a little 1.5 year flashback and don't get me started on that stupid automatic fighting thing were you had to waste a couple of minutes just running around telling your Pokémon to attack 30 others .

Finally , the ENTIRE ending for all of the storylines may have been the worst part of the game . Taking on the elite four to then battle the greeta to then battling nemona was long even if you enjoy a good battle . To also having to battle director 'Clive' then battling penny and then having a 20 minute sequence were penny rambles on about friendship and then that gets resolved ( gosh never thought it would've been penny ) . I think if I had clomped Arven's storyline first I would've enjoyed that the most however I didn't therefore it was just another extension to my boredom . Sada's twist was the best of the many it kept me at least a bit entertained.

The things I hated most definitely were the cutscenes and all the photos taken after a getting a badge , that actually really pissed me off .

Bishop and Flower Trick the GOAT(S)

Unfinished

[cdboucher-66792 · 2/10 · 18 December 2022]

Disclaimer: I did not make it past the intro before turning the game off in bitter disappointment.

This is an OK Pokemon game that is set in a poorly implemented open world. If you are expecting performance like Breath of the Wild you will be disappointed. This game's open world is outperformed by not only the wild area from SwSh, but the entire Legends: Arceus game performs better, and that one had noticeable stuttering.

Now for the gameplay. Controls are stiff, every time a cinematic starts or ends there is a noticeable 2-3 seconds of non-responsiveness while the game "switches" between the gameplay and cinematic frames. I kept thinking my joycon was disconnecting. Any NPC or Pokemon more than a few feet away drops frames like nobody's business. I was in the university library and stood next to the student study booths. Just by turning my camera I had students popping in to the study booths right next to me.

I can forgive the technical issues, since there is at least the hope that they will patch those out. But then I saw the cinematic introducing Koraidon. Oh man what a mess. In the cave scene where you get ambushed by a Houndoom, it is set up like a no-win battle, which is fine for narrative purposes, but the entire scenario design was so poorly implemented that I had to put the game down for a minute. Here is how they played this out:

I get to click "fight". Then the game skips the "choose an attack" box altogether.

A message popped up saying "Houndoom used Crunch" the game then did nothing for about 3 seconds as it switched to "cinematic mode" in cinematic, Houndoom uses Roar to send my Pokemon back.

What. This is such poor scenario design I'm certain they had an intern set this up. I could have (and have in the past) made this scenario better in RPGMaker. If Houndoom is supposed to use Roar in a cinematic, why does it even know Crunch? Roar should have been the only move in its set, or better yet have the whole fight be a cinematic. It skipped half of my turn anyway so what does it matter?

Obviously they aren't going to patch out this horrid scenario set-up, since it isn't a bug, just sheer incompetence from the scenario designer. Played a little more, but turned it off after laughing at the pop-in NPCs in the university for a bit.

2/10 if this wasn't a borrowed copy I would be returning it. Planned on getting the duo pack with my wife, now neither of us want it.