#ngl i thought it'd have a super sad ending for some reason but i'm so happy it didn't end the way it did

[kieuecaprie]

KieueCaprie's 2022 Games Complete List - Entry #38

#38: Pokémon Violet

Started 🚩: 18/11/22 Finished 🏁: 19/11/22

(Final team and spoilers in the Read More, if it actually works)

This game... I really wanted to like, I really did. I found the open worldness of Pokémon Legends: Arceus to be great and I thought that while this game still looks like it just came out of an early Gamecube-era title, I figured it'd still be fun.

And it is, do not get me wrong, but, well... it's... a hot mess.

Where do I even start that hasn't been touched upon by THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of people before? Bad performance, sub-par texturing, sloppy bug testing, etc. But underneath it all, you can see where they actually tried, the gameplay loop, while not as good as PLA, is still somewhat engaging, even if it's a step back from what we're used to from the former, the music are complete bangers, the story is the best we've seen since Gen 5, although the bar gradually started to go underground since then, with SwSh being... pretty bad ngl, so it wasn't very hard to clear it but they did and then some.

The characters are significantly better too, a step up from what we got in Gens 7 and 8, and the villain team is actually quite nuanced and has a REASON to be antagonistic, something that was last seen in Gen 7 with Team Skull.

So, why, why is this game so frustratingly bad? The bugs and performance issues are incredibly glaring and it really gets in the way of my enjoyment sometimes, even though I have FUN with the game. We got what is the equivalent of an early beta build, a launch day early access title, from a AAA development studio. Who's to blame? I don't know. I'm going to be mad at the higher ups for effectively mismanaging all this because three years and having to move onto another project almost immediately after is not at all healthy.

I want to like it, really, I do, but it just makes me sad.

TL;DR - I'm having fun with this game, I've had fun with this game, it has a lot going for it and I'm saddened that this game could've been great were it given more time in the oven.

Initially, I was skeptical about the paths but I found myself getting invested in making Arven's Mabosstiff feel better by gathering herbs for him by defeating titans, learning more about Team Star's past and why they do what they do, and absolutely destroying Nemona's team and praying she'll stop stalking me (spoilers: she won't stop).

The Elite Four and Champion in this game are nothing to super write home about, besides Larry, who is by far the best character I've ever seen in Pokémon. A complete normal boring John Everydayman who, ironically, manages to stand out from everyone else by just being the most boring person you've ever seen, and that's what makes him interesting.

The finale was cool too, you get to go inside the crater with your lizard fren and you find all these weird Pokemon that came from a time machine in the middle of the crater and it turns out that the professor is a robot and the real one was dead all along! (I actually didn't expect that to happen, let alone in a mainline pokemon game)

The true final boss fight was also pretty tough and challenging, even after having swept through the E4 and it felt like I was fighting Dennis and N back-to-back all over again.

And yes, I got Ed Sheeran Jumpscared at the end. Goddamn it.

[jashne-bahaaraa]

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