I have never had more mixed feelings about a game in my life

Playing Scarlet and Violet felt like I was playing the beta of the best Pokémon game of all time.

Gnart being that one friend that doesn't understand what everyone's talking about.

Best way to describe them are fun bad games. The frame rate and general performance can’t be justified in 2022 but man will you have fun playing the games, especially if you’re a Pokémon fan.

Pleaseeee Black and White was perfection. It's the closest to a JRPG in terms of the scope of the story and the cast of characters are pretty fun. Black and White 2 being the only sequel they have had in the main games is such a breath of fresh air.

At this point, they have no excuse not to include voice acting.

The best analogy I could think of how Scarlet and Violet compared to previous main line Pokémon is like going from Sprite to a Japanese Marble Soda

Arceus was amazing. It truly captured the experience of roaming to catch them all

As someone who’s played from Yellow all the way to Violet, I definitely think peak pokemon was Black and White/Black and white 2. I love all the mainline games so much but I’d love to see them pick up older side games again. Like pokemon ranger or mystery dungeon

12:30 I think my issue is besides the world feeling kind of empty (seriously can't go into random buildings) There hasn't been a Pokemon that "set the world on fire"....Legends Arceus was risk for gamefreak, and they didn't have confidence, and we praise them for doing something different. But that game and SV still like prototypes for something that could be better.

Idk about anybody else here, but as an adult the most fun that I get from pokemon is the building aspect. Mixing and matching your mon's moveset and abilities to the point they become the thing you want them to be (dps, stall, support etc) and having them perform to the max is seriously fun and satisfying.

Comparing them to other Pokémon games and saying it's good is easy, the second you try comparing it to anything else everything falls apart Imagine how hard pokémon Sword/Shield would have flopped if it released as a new franchise, 2 years after BOTW came out. It would just be called amateurish and sloppy and no one would have disagreed.

No, Pokemon is like Isekai for video games, very accurate Hell, Arceus was actually an Isekai

Is Joey living under a rock? The water starter (idk the name I don’t care about sv) is getting memed on so hard for being the least popular. There are so many pictures of the Pokémon centers in Japan only having the water starter left in shelves.

I bought a physical copy and although it lags a bit sometimes, it's actually been pretty good. It's probably my new favorite next to Arcues.

6:17 It was mostly in jest, but this is more or less how I explained to my brother why I was picking up Scarlet. Sure, it looks like the game has a lot of problems, but... I mean, what am I supposed to do, just NOT play the latest entry in the franchise that's been an integral part of my life for over 2 decades? Perish the thought!

I bought a physical copy around December 2nd and yeah I’ve experienced lag and odd camera angles at most but I think there was a recent update patch that helped fix somethings, I haven’t run into many bugs. I too just finished the main story yesterday. I think the human character designs are all really good, some of those Pokémon evolutions they don’t really change, also so many Pokémon are tiny but that’s all I got

One possible improvement for mainline pokemon games in the future is adjusting the team that gym leaders use based on how many badges you already have, while keeping some gyms harder than others within their badges bracket. We'd go from 8 gym leaders to technically 64. That sounds fun!

I liked ultra sun and moon, not for the story, but for the little extra bits. All the random pokemon you could interact and play with, the pyukumuku I could yeet for cash. I hated the story, the incessant cut scenes and the substitute hm gimmick. But the little charm points (including mantine surfing) and actually I liked finding the totem pokemon. All the extra bits were good the main stuff was not 😂 i also really liked team skull

I really do think peak Pokemon were between gen 3 and gen 5 with black and white 1 and 2 being the Magnum opus of Pokemon I love how B&W went from the most underrated Pokemon game to most overrated one

The only problem with making a triangle other than fire/water/grass is that if you dont use any types from the original trio, and each type in the triangle has the same relationship with each other, the only other trio you can use is Rock/Flying/Fighting.

Fun fact about the starter types in this game: The secondary types of all the starters are super effective to the starter they are weak too! For example the water starter is part fighting which is super effective to the dark typing of the grass!

DS-era games were peak in my opinion

I've said it for years, despite being a Pokemon fan myself, I've always thought that Pokemon, as a JRPG, is a mid-tier franchise. Once you play Dragon Quest, Persona or any Final Fantasy game; You'll never look at Pokemon the same again.

To me, all the criticism the scarlet/violet has gotten about framerate and technical issues are perfectly valid. The game is constantly on the verge of bricking my switch even on the digital version. But I also feel not enough credit has been given to the story and gameplay, which is the best it's been since black/white. I feel like most people who see no redeeming features in scarlet/violet are just mashing through dialogue just to hate the game more and it really sucks to see.

I got the physical copies of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet for my gen 1 switch. All I've been experiencing are minor ones like pokemon going into walls and the ground disappearing during battles and pokemon evolution. I would probably assume that those glitches happen whenever your online during multi-player mode

I haven't really gotten too far into it, but as someone who is very impartial to Pokemon, someone who has no real big connection to the series, nor has even beaten many of the games, I am enjoying this one so far. I'm not in love with it, but to say I haven't had any fun would be wrong. Like what Joey said, the three branching stories is a neat idea that I like stumbling onto in my own pace. The gameplay is still similar to Arceus, one of the very few Pokemon games I really enjoyed, and catching Pokemon is pretty fun and simple (Though I will say, I do still think it is a heavy step back on not allowing you to capture Pokemon whenever by throwing PokeBall, It was the main aspect of the gameplay I found fun in that game). The world, though still visually not impressive, does feel more thought out and structured than in Arceus, many times I find myself looking out in the distance and say "What's over there?" And head over there. Though I was able to overlook the performance issues, it's still pretty bad how this game looks, and really destroys the immersion. Comparing this to how Arceus plays feels like Night and Day. I also wish it was truly open world. You can't visit the gyms in any order, or else you have to grind to death, which makes going back to the earlier gyms an absolute breeze. I chose to do this, going to the Water gym first (which I believe is the 4th gym you are meant to go to) had a decent grind and beating it. Then realized the next gym had an average level of like 50, with my current pokemon at the time still being 30. I really didn't want to grind again, so I had to go somewhere else. Would have liked to choose who to go against whenever I pleased.

As a person that stopped playing Pokémon at Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, Violet and Scarlet was pretty good. It wasn’t a 10/10 game but it definitely offered enough for an older fan to jump back in and have an enjoyable time. I liked the open world elements, the 3 branch story, the ending, and the fact that there’s tons of post game stuff. They added plenty of stuff after the game ends to keep your attention. It was definitely good.

Im just waiting for that ONE Pokémon Game/Generation, that truly "Lights the world on fire". Pokemon has some of the most amazing world lore I've seen, but these games are so mid-tier, also the fact these new games feel inactive and empty I think Legends Arceus (for completely changing the formula) to Scarlett/Violet (being more traditional open-world) are giving people some hope, maybe Gen 10-12 we'll get that. But Given Pokemon Company (GameFreak, Creatures and Nintendo) I doubt it.

"a couple of frame drops" Bro, it drops to like 3fps every time you jump or go through a city

I hadn’t heard of the physical copy thing - I have a physical Violet and it has run MOSTLY well. I had a few issues but it was nothing major.

From what I have seen from the Biggest Poketubers, and the concensus from the community is that this is the best or at least top 3 pokemon game ever, even with all its performance issues , people still put it up at the top. Honestly the performance has never really even bothered me. I just wished they would add a hard mode, add an in game battle simulator like showdown, and would have done level scaling. Also added a slight sparkle to the shinys, as some are just impossible to see. But then again, this is also the easiest game to catch shinys in.

I was waiting for a Garnt Fate reference bc lowkey you can compare the two. Different Fate entries are like how each Pokemon game differs from each other.

Damn, I feel like an outcast only having played all post gen 5 games and still loving Pokemon

I have a physical copy and I have not encountered a major bug. Just that one in tera raid battles when you don't see the damage immediately and the occasional frame drop or stuttering.

I would say you would like the new game if you enjoy collectathons. I played it on a whim, thinking it would be garbage, and was mostly pleasantly surprised. Despite some of the annoying pop in problems, and lack of any kind of excitement in towns, I think it was more enjoyable than X/Y, Sword and Shield, etc The exploration is boring, but there's a decent gameplay loop and several new features meant to make doing basic things more convenient. I enjoyed rotating my team while doing a bunch of autobattles, which is this new quality of life thing that doesn't use up PP and can make the rock paper scissors thing a little more involved and fast. I personally still feel like my favourite game would be Omega Ruby, then the Gold/Silver remakes, but that's probably my nostalgia talking Still, there are surprisingly a lot of neat new ideas which made me feel like there actually might be a future for the franchise Oh, but: if you check out the game, I would strongly recommend going for the first two Titans when the world opens up. The rewards for doing so will save you lots of time and make going through the rest of the game more fun In addition to the auto battle thing, there is sort of an auto-heal thing in the menu. There's also convenient option to move held items between your party. You literally just press L, select and move it. It's such a small addition but it is super nice, because it used to be so annoying to have to go into a menu, take the held item, go to your other menu, pull up to another menu to give the item, etc. The other great feature that I would definitely recommend looking at is relearning moves. It costs *nothing* and there will always be a selection of stuff even if you just caught a Pokemon. It is basically the ability to freely swap between any moves that the pokemon is able to learn at that level (or any moves it could have learned at a lower one). If you evolve, more moves might open up. Ex: I evolved my Growlithe to an Arcanine. If you look at Arcanine's moveset online, it has a list of moves it supposedly learns all that level 1. You can access them immediately and swap between moves as much as you like

Honestly I enjoyed the game alot. My biggest criticism is the no voice acting, atleast for the animated scenes, the lack of voice acting but sound effects for other things in the scenes made it feel hella awkward. That and no cue for Shinies. I think it's bullshit that they didn't make shinies sparkle or glow at all and have to bank on knowing that they look like to tell if it's a shiny but the problem is, some shinies are VERY similar to the original so it's hard to tell, especially if you are riding your pokemon and speeding through.

For years I forgot what it was like to actually feel interested in a Pokemon story. SV's stories and the main cast of characters...jesus, it really makes it obvious how LITTLE they tried in the past, and how much passion in writing went into SV. I've always been bugged that Pokemon games were never seemingly written by people who actually cared about a good story. The only thing they were concerned about was getting you around the region by gyms and the the villain group being tied to the legendary as the grand plot. But SV actually having character driven stories with real personality and actual effort....God I really hope they keep at it for the future games.

i love watching trash taste and they talking about stupid and cool stuff and it's so funny

i just found this channel.... well now i know what to listen to while at work lol

I got 1 gen past Garnt to X and Y and the only thing i think that saved it was character customization…

My expirience was low frames regularly in any area with more than 3 moving models, very rare crashes 3~4 times after hours of play over several days and heavy frame drops on ride pokemon. The plot was the most "anime" of the series I think, but the new pokemon added this gen were about 75% good additions, the AI for battles was a little too simple and by and large starters and evolutions were 50/50 good to bad.

11:52 I don't think this point holds very true, since one of the main purposes of getting a new Pokemon game is to explore a new region, so what would be the point in exploring a new region if there's clearly nothing going on in it and you can't interact with it in any meaningful way?

Also, if you guys want to play genuinely fun Pokemon games with great story and depth, check out the mystery dungeon series. It's really good.

Legends Arceus is a mainline game. And probably the only one where you won't really understand what's happening in the story if you haven't played previous entries. 😅

I feel that the initial reaction to gen 5 made game freak stop giving it their all when making games, gen 5 had many great ideas that never came back: Hard Difficulty, 150 new Pokémon, good story, etc. Idk about gens 8 or 9 but playing gen 6 really made me feel underwhelmed.

The issues were really small for me. The story was fun and I loved the sandbox.

S&V feel like they could've been some of the best mainline titles if only they had more time in the oven. A lot of people complain about the Pokemon design and all that jazz but I really don't get them. The only thing holding the game back for me is all the bugs, the empty feeling world, etc. For me this game could've been like B&W but in 3D but sadly it fell short. Like some have said, it felt like the beta or the prototype for the best 3D mainline entry I recommend more people play B&W tho. Garnt did play some of the really good games but B&W and its sequel was really really good. Like sure some people don't care about story but it is a good entry to play to experience the peak of the DS era before going 3D. Since it was a culmination of everything they had learned and implemented in before making the move to 3D. Edit: Anyways a bit off topic but I wish we got a new Mystery Dungeon game. I miss that series.

I think saying its a childrens game is a disservice to children, so are most Nintendo games but they don't lack quality children deserve better.

It's a comfort series for me that's usually like a 6 or 7 out of 10 but I know what to expect and at the end of the day, there's always shiny hunting so that's good enough for me.

My favorite DS-3DS era pokemon generation was X and Y purely cause it came out when I was in college and me and my friends got super into the competitive teambuilding side of things cause that generation made teambuilding so much more painless as well as the addition of mega-evolutions. The story was meh but gameplay wise it was super fun and seeing the original starters get love in the form of great mega-evolutions was a big highlight for me as well.

Wrong Arceus has been confirmed to be a main line game by Game Freak!

from a game mechanics standpoint scarlet and violet are peak pokemon. it's never been easier to optimize your pokemons stats. trying to beat the Battle Frontier in pokemon emerald without having a bunch of pokemon with perfect natures, evs, ivs, moves, and items is the biggest challenge in any mainline pokemon game. if you count hacking in fully optimized pokemon, i say 4th gen is peak pokemon specifically for Heart Gold and Soul Silver. -it has a toned down but still challenging Battle Frontier -it's the only game to perfect the pokemon following mechanic -it has the first 493 pokemon aka the best pokemon -it's a remake of the 2nd gen games, in other words they somehow found a way to improve perfection -it's in the 2D era of pokemon which is the best era -good soundtrack, good story, you can battle Red in the postgame -it's in the same gen as Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, which are also great games in conclusion HG/SS is peak pokemon

It's ok to say it's bad, but still enjoying it. No need to defend the game.

I will say as someone who's played Pokemon for a very long time: Pokemon designs have absolutely gotten lazier. Most of them don't look original or creative, or distinct. It's very hard nowadays to distinguish a newer Pokemon from a fan design of a Pokemon(like their OC Pokemon that they'd create if they were a designer or animator for Game Freak). They look generic like genetic video game monsters and don't really feel like if you were shown them in a vacuum, having never seen them before, you'd be able to attribute them to the Pokemon franchise. It also feels like, relative to the older generations of Pokemon, the art style and animation has become a lot more minimalistic and cartoon-y. I think it's a consequence of having to continually come up with new Pokemon for each game and having them also match the theme of the region. But it still has the result of watering down the overall quality of Pokemon design.

I thought the mechanic of harvesting Pokemon into TM's was creative and useful. It makes killing Pokemon for XP not so vain by not leaving a Pokemon carcass to waste.

I haven't really played any of the newer games. Instead I've been revisiting "older" games I missed out on. BW/B2W2, Conquest ect. and I've been having a lot of fun. Next time I'll try out the Mystery Dungeon series

I think Legends Arceus is probably the only recent Pokémon game which is a must-play: It switches up the gameplay, it is much more difficult and mature, it has a unique art style and even the open-zone aspect is really enjoyable. Scarlet & Violet have the same issue as other recent mainline Pokémon games: It is rushed, partially unfinished, underwhelming graphic-wise and too easy because GameFreak still tries to cater the game to 9 year-olds when most players are in their 20s. It's not a bad game and I did enjoy playing it but compared to other Switch games in 2022 such as Bayonetta 3, Legends Arceus and even previously released games such as SmashBros Ultimate and Breath of the Wild, Scarlet & Violet are significantly lacking in quality control. I wish GameFreak would focus on updates and DLCs for their games and then release a completely new game maybe three to five years later, ensuring its quality and innovativeness. Bayonetta 3 was released 8 yeats after the previous title, and although every game of that series has minor issues, overall they are all strong, high quality games which are enjoyable in 2022.

The story and music in this one is amazing! Connor if you see this, this story is almost as good as Gen 5!

I am getting mostly since I haven't played Pokemon since Alpha Sapphire and have gotten the bug to want to see how it has changed

Pokemon Scarelt & Violet does have problems, but ignoring them for one second makes these games the best Pokemon has to offer in terms of ambitions. Legends cleared a path for SV to follow, and while the major critiques is the lack of proper compression for this game to run well, content of this game is incredible and easily the most "satifying" to do like Legends.

The way Joey describes Doctor Who seasons always throws me off haha

i've never had any of these glitches? is it just like that when streaming?

Story is better than I expected it to be, but it's still subpar to the Pokemon Black/White (1 and 2) story. Those games went HARD. But Scarlet/Violet did have some story elements - especially the titan one and the Area Zero story - which went pretty hard.

Besides the game performance, everything else was pretty cool. I chose the duck and though their final Evo was cool. I would rank the final Evo as Skeledirge > Quaquavel > Meowscarada

People really need to start putting respect on Gen 5, those are still the best looking games in the series, and easily have the best story.

I got to hard disagree on Joey’s statement on Gen 3 being the peak of Pokémon. Gen 5 imo is the peak of Pokémon, all of the issues of gen 3 and 4 dealt with like the physical/special split. New additions with a great story makes Black/White and Black2/White2 the best Pokémon has ever been Also his take on Pokémon being like GOT is so painful. Pokémon is a series where every game is independent of each other with small references to the games before. GOT is a series the main story is the same regardless of the season. A person can play gen8 or gen3 and not need to play the games between to understand. You do the same with GOT and you don’t get anything.

I've had so much fun with this new game. I'm always smiling or looking at something new. Sun and Moon was "press A for the illusion of control on this railroad", this game is actually at your own pace. Even as a picky artist, I still enjoy the environment. Sometimes I wish it was a little more detailed HOWEVER.. I'm usually way too focused on the mons to worry about the environment too much. At thia point, I just hope that the team involved can get what they need for whatever project is in the future; Give artists room, rest, and ample time, and they'll make something beautiful. The money will come no matter what, so it might as well be something that's fun and quality.

Joey was thinking of Kingdom Hearts when making the Game of Thrones comparison.

this game is like the definition of a 7/10 which is really sad cuz like story is an 8 music is a 9 characters/new pokemon is like a 9 gameplay is like 9 then the graphics and performance drag the entire experience down so much to where its hard to call it anything other than just "good" in good faith. rlly sad cuz while it doesnt bother me it can ruin the experience from so many other people and stop them from enjoying something thats actually rlly fun

I wish pokemon would take the Zelda route where even though it's bare bones on the catalog, the moment a new game drops you know it's a banger. I feel the devolpment team just needs more time to work on these games. My friend noticed that they improved the walking animations and the pokemon animations dramatically from SwSh which shows that they are indeed working on these games, they didn't even make the Gen 4 remakes that came out last year because they have been busy on this alone. Game Freak needs to be allowed more time and Pokemon Company wants more money so time isn't allowed.

Didnt play black and white. But black and white 2 are probably the best games in the series. Most new pokemon, alot of old returning pokemon. A half decent story, and the biggest post game of any pokemon game

I was screaming for the whole ongoing story bit "ITS PRECURE 😭"

The truth is I agree with Garnt analogy of isekai to Pokémon games.

The best way to describe Pokémon scarlet and violet is a incredibly entertaining trash heap

For me personally, Gen 4 (specifically Platinum) was peak Pokémon for me. It started to go downhill after that

I have the physical version. The occasional frame rate issue, sure, but no crashes or anything even close to that level. Not even the Pokémon appearing/disappearing thing that Joey mentioned.

I have it Physical copy and honestly I didn’t have any bad experiences with it in day 1. Abit choppy in some parts but never had a crash or felt like it was struggling. I had seen all the issues I guess I was just lucky or I’m like Joey and can’t tell the difference XD

Real talk for a minute, why does everyone care so much about "true" open world games? Yeah there are loading screens between zones in Arceus, but the textures don't look like the N64, the performance is decent, and you won't fall through the ground or clip the camera into the void. Its character models don't randomly half vanish in cutscenes. The zones are big, navigating is actually dangerous, and hunting pokemon is fun and mechanically involved. I could not care less that there's a loading screen to go from the marshlands to the mountain area.

Black and white 2 for me was peak pokemon. Great story and an amazing endgame experience

Black and White was my first Pokemon game ever. I started at the peak.

One thing that pokemon never misses in, is their battle music

So who is telling them that Ash is retiring from Pokemon Anime so that they can talk about the anime with the greatest legacy ?

Ruby and Sapphire brought in the Running Shoes and 2 bikes!!!

The frame rate and lag aren't the best but looking past that it's a really fun game. It's my first Pokemon game and I never really used to like Pokemon but it's so fun I really love it. Just a shame they have horrible deadlines.

I was really hoping Joey would go into spoilers a bit because the story is genuinely bonkers

Thank you guys for highlighting B2W2 as the peak of Pokemon and generally well loved by the community! It’s definitely my favorite and I’ve played through so many saves that I highly suggest new players to try it out

Peak pokemon like if we talk about how amazing the story was, I have to say Pokemon black and white and black 2 and white 2. Team plasma and N were such well written villains and antagonist. But in terms of peak rival, I'll go with silver from the pokemon gold and silver series.

peak pokemon is alpha sapphire we up!

the thing with pokemon game is that despite the game being marketed and tailored toward children the mechanics behind the game are much more complex than most expect and don't seem to ever be properly taught by the game itself. the competitive side of the game has so much potential but it's not really a side children will go much toward until they get much older.

Nah the water duck is probably least by a long shot, it's either fire croc or weed cat

Where did gigguk get that anime water bottle??

Honestly don't like how everyone says there's 3 main story lines in scarlet and violet when every pokemon game has had 2 to 3 storylines anyways. the only difference is taking it on in a different order.

Nobody likes Quaxly bruh

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet looks like it should have voice acting.

The best thing to do in pokemon is play competitive that’s the only way to be interested in new gens, because you wonder how the meta game will develop with the new pokemons

It's like JoJo, the characters change with each iteration but some characters and concepts from previous iterations still exist in the world and appear occasionally, the world is overall connected to but each arc is mostly independent.

5:54 how does garnt link everything back to either isekai or domestic girlfriend?

Its Nintendos cod.

I completely agree with Joey, also what people don't understand with the comparison with BoTW is that in that game the npc density is really really low, there's massive spaces without any npc and most zones with enemies are just spread groups of 5 enemies at max. or single big monsters that go alone, on the other hand in the pokemon game there's a ton of spawning moving pokemon in every region so it's quite obvious it will consume far more resources and will limit the performance of the game. I'm not saying Pokemon is a better game than BoTW, but comparing the performance of one and the other without taking in account npc density and spawn rates of the npcs it seems to me quite pointless. As Joey said, this pokemon needs some improvements but the formula has taken a very good step in the right direction in 3 of the main aspects, world, story and interaction with the pokemon. SW/SH's world was cool at times but terrible at exploration, the story was beyond bad and the interaction with the pokemon almost non-existent so bashing this game for improving in almost all aspects it seems to me just hating for the sake of it.