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GAMING REVIEW: How Pokémon Violet pulled me into the Pokémon world

   

Written by:

jaro235

Pokémon Scarlet/Violet takes place in the Paldea region, the ninth main region in the Pokemon series. The player enters the Naranja Academy along with their friends Nimona and Arven, as well as Penny, who they meet. Students are given three challenges to complete: Victory Road: (Collecting eight badges and defeating the champion), Operation Star Street (Battling Team Star Leaders) and Path of Legends (Battling Titan Pokemon). Along the way, they learn more about the Terastal phenomenon where Pokemon can change into their “Tera Type.”

I have been a huge Pokemon fan since my childhood days. I called myself the biggest Pokemon fan in Alabama. Even to this day, I still play Pokemon often both old and new games. However, I have not felt as passionate of the series as of late. I enjoy the games, but they do not excite me the way I used to get excited for them. This feeling changed when I started playing through Pokemon Violet.

While I love Pokémon Violet, it is probably the worst made Pokémon game to date. My biggest issue with the game is the presentation. The graphics do not look up to par with other games on the Nintendo Switch. What makes the visuals worse is frame rate– which can get so bad, the game starts to look like a slideshow. Technically, the game is a mess. Scarlet and Violet came out the same year as Legends of Arceus which leads me to believe the game was rushed. With its poor graphical performance, why do I enjoy Violet so much?

Life can be stressful with my job and bills. I am someone who gets stressed out about the smallest issues easily. I have turned to gaming as a stress reliever more than ever. For me, a good game is not necessarily one that is super polished or well-made, but fun is a requirement. My favorite games make me forget any stressful time I’ve had. Pokémon Violet gave me one of my most cathartic gaming experiences on the Switch.

My first impression of playing Pokémon Violet got me hooked with the overworld. Seeing wild Pokemon in the overworld, instead of having to encounter them randomly in the grass, motivated me to catch all of the Pokémon around me. I have never been a player who catches all Pokemon, but this game made it much more fun to catch Pokemon, with them roaming the areas. I knew from the beginning of the game that I would have a lot of fun with this adventure.

A lot of the small mechanics of Violet won me over, the biggest is traveling through the open world of Paldea. This game builds upon the wild areas of Sword and Shield which the whole game operates as a wild area. Scarlet and Violet are the first games that are open-world, and although not perfect, they have a solid region to explore leading to new landmarks and areas. 

Traveling the region is made all the more fun by riding legendary Pokémon as a bike. Miradon is the coolest bike with its speed and abilities which it gradually gets from the player defeating Titan Pokémon. I could spend hours of my time just wandering the Paldea region and trying to reach as many areas as I could before progressing in the game. The open world is not too big or too small making it fun to travel through regularly.

Seeing all of the Pokémon in the wild, rather than finding them randomly in grass encounters, motivates me to catch more of them. It also encourages me to explore more areas to find more Pokémon. One of my favorite aspects of this game is how much easier it is to find shiny pokemon. This is the only game I shiny-hunt in, because we can see the Pokémon in their shiny form in the open world. Any time I come home from work, I would just roam around the region and search for a shiny Pokemon, which proved to be relaxing at night. 

The gameplay has more variety than previous entries. While gym battles are still here, we now have titan battles and Team Star leader battles. In the latter, we face Star grunts in hordes before facing the leader on their Starmobile powered by Revarooms. I had a lot of fun with the horde battles watching three of my Pokemon plow through groups of foes. These are kinds of battles I have always wanted from Pokemon so I hope Game Freak continues to build upon them. There is a lot of variety in Violet to prevent the game from becoming monotonous.

I have also noticed that the game is more challenging than the last few Pokémon games. While the game is not brutally difficult, I found myself struggling much more in basic rival battles than I ever did in any of the battles in Sword and Shield. I even lost to Arven in the last battle with him. The difficulty curve makes it where the endgame battles become quite a challenge. I like this sense of challenge though, because it keeps the game interesting from beginning to end.

A smaller point, but one that made me personally happy, some Pokémon that returned! For example, the Mushroom Pokémon Breloom, who is in the in-game Pokédex outside of the Hoenn games for the first time. Breloom is my favorite Pokémon of all time and I could not use one in the main game or at all in the other Pokémon games for the Switch. Using my favorite Pokémon against newer Pokémon is one aspect that helped keep me engaged. I could even take my Breloom for walks around the region and interact with it! This is a minor detail, but being able to use my favorite Pokémon early on brought a lot of joy in my play-through.

Ultimately, despite all of its faults, Pokémon Violet is the most fun I have had playing a Pokémon game since Heartgold and Soulsilver in 2010. I got into this game a lot more than the other Pokémon games from the past ten years and I think I know why. All of the small changes lead up to make a more immersive experience in the Pokémon world. I feel more compelled than ever to catch all Pokémon, or at least as many as I can. Violet brought the world of Pokémon to life which makes me look forward to every time I turn the game on.

This article was written by Enhance’s friend Jared Jacoby and edited by team member Sidney J Floyd-Armstrong. Be sure to subscribe and keep an eye on the blog for more from our team and for more movie and video game reviews from Jared!

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