Pokemon Scarlet review
Playing this alongside Crystal has made me do a lot of reflection on what Gen 9 means.
Gen 9 are games that abandon that which I think made the series great RPGs. When people talk about Pokemon, I don't think they acknowledge how they are as actual RPGs. Sure, everyone is forced to engage with them on that level, but the actual structure of the game isn't acknowledged often enough. Pokemon is not an island, it was crafted from generations of RPG enhancements made over years to inform the final product that we got nearly 30 years ago. In that regard, Pokemon has historically worked so well. Badges act as tangible moments of progress through the game, acting as a waypoint for your progress and marks your overall growth as a trainer. Codifying your progress with a boss, and receiving actual rewards for doing that in the form of large amounts of EXP to promote level ups and generally powerful TMs to bolster your team's strength. That doesn't even speak to badges and HM acquisition acting as natural gates to promote player engagement and to promote further world exploration.
It's a system which worked so, so well. And Gen 9 has thrown it away. There are tacit attempts to try and maintain it, to have some sense of status quo. But it fails to do so. Badges are no longer good indicators of your game progress. They can be done theoretically in any order, meaning you can often steamroll gyms if you are the kind of person who goes off and explores, or heck if you just don't get around to a lower level gym. The lack of scaling means that the game rarely has these big moments that test your strength. I am not inherently against having an open ended approach to the world either! Johto tries doing that, doubly so with the Kanto post game, and it works there. But the level curve was messed up in Johto when doing that, and every Kanto gym leader is leveled and balanced to post-Elite Four teams. Making this the sole way you approach the game loses any sense of progression that Pokemon used to expertly nail.
And there is world exploration benefits as you work your way through other parts of the story. Korraidon gets more ability to interact with the world. But it's not quite the same, it just makes the world traversal include less friction. That isn't inherently a bad thing, but it doesn't have the same tangible progress than the watershed moment that is receiving Surf in old games.
Kids who were 7 when Sword and Shield came out are entering their teenage years. The Switch being one of the most successful consoles of all times means that what Pokemon is will have a significant impact on how a generation views the series. In a few short years, there will be an entire age range of internet posting aged teens whose main mode of Pokemon interaction is this smoothed out version that abandons what I think made the series great. Game Freak doesn't care about me. They have plenty of supporters who will someday view this as the standard for the series. They know that they can wait me out
This is a game of 'buts'. I can't make any definitive statements about it before I find myself coming at it with the obvious reasoning Game Freak had for the decisions that they made. I disagree foundationally with many of those decisions. However, the game is balanced and designed around what they made. It is a solid video game to engage with, even if I think it is a failure of a traditional Pokemon game. But, I don't think Game Freak wants to make traditional Pokemon games anymore.
I initially wrote the below first, but I felt like it better fit the structure of my argument when taken later. These are random thoughts I have regarding positives and negatives that I feel when engaging in the generation.
- It's almost hard to consider Gen 9 to be in the same core franchise from Gen 7 and earlier. Gen 8 was a transition period, emphasizing more group content for powerful rewards (raids, tera battles), open world content, and making the options for raising powerful Pokemon easier than ever.
- The removal of mandatory trainer battles from the routes significantly de-emphasizes the battling in a way that I think is largely negative. I don't think there's an answer to this with the open world format, either. It turns battling from your main mode of engagement in the game into something that is done when the player decides that forward momentum is necessary as opposed to a requirement to make any progression.
- Every single rough edge from Pokemon has been sanded off. What limitations were there to force you to make challenging choices are completely gone. You are provided no friction in your world interaction and way that you approach battles.
- It's too easy to make extremely powerful Pokemon. Pretty much every mon's learnset has been adjusted in such a way that, at higher levels, they will always have powerful options in combat so long as you're accounting for the boons and banes of a given mon when selecting your moves.
- The open world itself is... dubious. The main interactions you have with it are engaging in optional content like terra raid battles or collecting the very plentiful items that litter the world. Breath of the Wild thrived at being an open world game because, at any given time, you were most likely going to find something interesting that you want to go to. Pokemon doesn't have that.
HOWEVER
- Gen 9 perfectly nails the joy of catching new Pokemon. The removal of the national dex also, to me, encourages me to push myself and actually try to complete the pokedex. I've never sat down and done it, but every time I've engaged, I always am tempted to get extremely into catching all the Pokemon. I will say that Pokemon catching itself is simplified later in the game, with there being a general flow of starting a battle, throwing a quick ball, and praying. I would say around 70% of the time this works. Many might think this is a bad thing, but honestly I view it as a positive. It makes actually filling out the pokedex less taxing.
- I think the EXP Share has been largely refined to the point where I no longer think it's a core detriment to a player's enjoyment. I no longer feel like my team is hyper leveled to the point I can steamroll everything like I did in gen 6. This is something Game Freak has refined and iterated upon quite a bit over the years, so it's not exclusive to Gen 9.
- TMs being single use again I thought would suck. However, they're so plentiful and the game makes it very unabrasive to engage with, that I am for it.
To conclude, do I like Gen 9? Despite what I've said, I do, when taken on their own and not within the context of the 30 years of Pokemon history and a lifetime of engaging with this franchise. They are solid, well crafted games that obviously have a lot of thought put into them. Technical issues on the original Switch aside, it's a competent game. But it's not what I want from Pokemon.
Whatever Gen 10 is, I will be there. I need to see what they do next. I think they are working to rediscover what made Pokemon popular in the first place as opposed to relying on tradition to achieve sustained success. I wouldn't call myself positive or optimistic. Just a curious onlooker with too much emotional involvement in these colorful characters.
