{"id":654,"date":"2022-12-14T12:48:05","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T12:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/?p=654"},"modified":"2024-01-04T14:12:48","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T14:12:48","slug":"review-pokemon-violet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/?p=654","title":{"rendered":"Review: Pok\u00e9mon Violet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve been out of the pok\u00e9 fandom for a while. There was a time when my nerdy self could name every pok\u00e9mon from every generation, but there were only four generations then. And now there\u2019s nine. I\u2019ve placed Legends Arceus<\/em> and enjoyed it, but I hadn\u2019t played any game since gen 5 before then. To echo the sentiments of Grandpa Simpson, I used to be with it, but then they changed what with it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Anyway, Violet<\/em> is pretty similar to Arceus<\/em> in its free world roaming play, although it\u2019s important to stress that it\u2019s not world roaming in the sense of Breath of the Wild<\/em>. There are barriers in the new region of Paldea, and if you reach them, like Animal Crossing<\/em>\u2019s Lyle, you ain\u2019t goin\u2019 nowhere. But the general lack of a prescribed structure is still nice. Like previous main series games, you\u2019ve got those eight gym badges, but you don\u2019t have to do that straight away. You can try and take down Team Star (no, they\u2019re not as good as Team Rocket, but then who is?) in their various hideouts, or you can take on the mysterious titan pok\u00e9mon (a similar concept to Arceus<\/em>\u2019 totem pok\u00e9mon). Or you can roam around Paldea and fill that pok\u00e9dex with as many \u2018mons as you can catch. You could take the bold option of not doing any gyms and trying to catch pokemon that are far, far more over levelled than your pok\u00e9mon then have fun watching them refuse all your commands in battle situations. Or, like my good self, you could catch a team from scratch, spend a while battling other Pok\u00e9mon and adding to your dex, and then have a full team of pok\u00e9mon that you\u2019ve trained\/jacked up on experience candies (the pok\u00e9 friendly equivalent of steroids), then go pulverise all the gym leaders and the pok\u00e9mon league with a team that always obeys you. You do you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve also got the new challenge of tera Pok\u00e9mon (again, similar to Arceus<\/em>\u2019 totem Pok\u00e9mon), and you\u2019ll also gain the ability to use terra powers during battles, and encounter tera raids (a similar concept to dynamax raids in Sword<\/em> and Shield<\/em>). This makes for some nice animations as well as some powerful \u2018mons. And there\u2019s some decent post-game content to enjoy too, with some particularly stunning visuals when you reach the fabled Area Zero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the gameplay is decent and the visuals are generally impressive, what\u2019s less impressive is the ultimate fact that Violet<\/em> and Scarlett<\/em> simply aren\u2019t finished products. Environments like Area Zero look great, but the frame rate is beyond atrocious, not to mention the cell design. In this Area Zero bit, for example, you\u2019re journeying with a few other characters through some hulking mountains. However, I turned my character around at one point and one of the following NPCs was literally…in the mountain. As in, they could still move forward when my character moved forward, but at that specific point in time, they were just blending in with surfaces they had no reason to be blending in with. This was a major problem with Arceus <\/em>too, and the fact that these games have been released in the same year is concerning. Sure, it\u2019s nice to get multiple games in the same year, but this should never be at the expense of competent debugging. The frame rate is beyond shocking at multiple points, and it\u2019s clear that, in the game\u2019s current condition, the Switch just can\u2019t handle it. My console even logged me out of the system a few times due to \u2018errors\u2019, presumably because it just couldn\u2019t function. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the movements on screen are beyond laughable. There\u2019s are town with a windmill, and this windmill is supposed to moving like regular windmills. Is it? No. It\u2019s a moving like a fractured cacophony of bullshit (easy now, Nancy, it\u2019s just a children\u2019s game). And there\u2019s a girl running with her pok\u00e9mon in a stadium. Are they actually running? No. They\u2019re just a series of fractured, delayed graphical failures. I was reminded of that meme from Arthur <\/em>where that character has a mushroom badge and they declare they\u2019re a failure. If you don\u2019t know what I\u2019m referring to, that\u2019s cool. Nintendo did a patch update recently to apparently sort out numerous glitches like those mentioned above. Did it patch things up? Did it fu \u2013 (whoa there Nancy, calm it down now). If you\u2019ve happened to watch the fourth YouTube episode of Don\u2019t Hug Me I\u2019m Scared where Red Guy gets annoyed at the computer, touches it and then everything turns into a delirious hellscape, that\u2019s what this game feels like a lot of the time. Even if Nintendo had fixed these visual incongruities, that\u2019s not the point. You shouldn\u2019t send put a \u00a350 game to the public when it\u2019s clearly not finished. Even looking at the pathetically small debug team during the end credits, it wouldn\u2019t have broken Nintendo\u2019s bank to hire ten times the number to spruce things up a bit. At the end of the day, Nintendo should\u2019ve spent at least six more months tightening shiz up, and this could have been a great game. As it is, it\u2019s just a fairly enjoyable game that could\u2019ve been so much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Also, Dachsbun is a certified good boi, and I definitely didn\u2019t name one of these dudes after my dog)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been out of the pok\u00e9 fandom for a while. There was a time when my nerdy self could name every pok\u00e9mon from every generation, but there were only four generations then. And now there\u2019s nine. I\u2019ve placed Legends Arceus and enjoyed it, but I hadn\u2019t played any game since gen 5 before then. To echo the … <\/p>\n

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