 Here is my full review and verdict of Pokemon Violet. Now this review is not only going to be about the glitches, the performance issues, the graphics. I am going to talk about those things too of course, but I will also thoroughly review and dissect the game, the actual game, how the content is, what you can do, how it feels as a mainline Pokemon game, everything. Now I got to play this game at the preview session a month before the release and I don't think anything have been done graphically since that version that I played, which I had hoped for. Now Scarlet and Violet are the same game essentially, it does not matter which version you pick up and you don't need both of them, just pick up the one with the cover Pokemon that you like the most, since that's going to be your mount throughout the game. And I personally like the Violet cover Pokemon the most. Now this is the first real open-world mainline Pokemon game, I mean with Pokemon Legends Arceus earlier this year, being a precursor test run with really big open areas. Now how is this game? It's rough, it's really really rough at the time of this recording anyway. It could almost make me cry seeing how badly this game needed at least another six months in the oven. We would not mind a tiny bit that they decided to delay this game, I feel like it is not polished enough to warrant a release right now. Now this video is sponsored by Skull and Co. My favorite grips for the Nintendo Switch, I've been a fan of them for years, I have talked about them so many times already. Skull and Co, they have the perfect grips for my hands and you can change it out of the actual grips, it comes with several like small one and a big one and I am using these ones. I have a link down below, I have a discount code also for you guys. Skull and Co, you cannot go wrong with them. I promise that you will love it. I have loved their grips ever since a friend of mine told me about them many years ago now. Skull and Co Neo grips, they are for the regular switch, the OLED switch and the switch light and it's good stuff. They are the best. Highly highly highly highly recommend. Check them out, link down below and I have a discount code. Thank you so much Skull and Co, I love you for sponsoring this video. Sorry. You are a young new Pokemon trainer starting out your Pokemon journey, you get your first Pokemon and you are pretty much let loose in the big open world, Depaldea region which is inspired by Spain and Portugal, if you didn't know that and you are a student at the academy and you get three major storylines to progress in. One involving Titans together with a guy that's looking for Herba Mysticus to heal his sick Pokemon, my favorite storyline. In my playthrough I focused on this storyline the most, which also grants your mount new abilities like gliding, sprinting, climbing, swimming etc. And then you have the normal storyline of doing eight gym badges to become the very best. This is what we are used to from earlier Pokemon games definitely. And then there is this Starfall Street storyline where you are basically infiltrating rebel camps. All of these objectives you can see on your map and the choice is yours, you can go wherever you want to unless you need a mount upgrade to get to certain points like you need the high jump to get to a certain area, you need climbing on your mount to get to another certain area. Now none of the storylines were really really interesting to me but they tried to have some comic relief sprinkled in here and there in the dialogue, in the cutscenes. But I am not playing Pokemon for the story, I have never done that. I'm more playing Pokemon for the gameplay. In the gameplay a lot of the things that you do in Scarlet and Violet are actually fun to do. The open world and the exploring and the picking up items that are sparkling on the ground, you know, exploring. That is fun to do in this game. That is what I did the most in this game. And the quick style battles like the let's go battle thing where you send out your Pokemon and they real time sort of... I did that a lot which is so much fun. I don't know why but I found that very enjoyable and I did that all over the place and all the time. I sent out my Pokemon and I watched it rake in some quick XP. Having a mount that you gradually get improvements for felt great and guys the multiplayer is good. Maybe not as good as it could have been if the game's performance was at least the decent which it isn't. But I did find enjoyment in the multiplayer of this game. Maybe that has something to do with the people that I actually played with. Making it fun. I traveled the lands together with Copper from the discard finding gimme goals together and she was showing me where she found some interesting Pokemon. You can play online together with friends and traverse the land and you both can do your own thing together in the world. My new favorite Pokemon is Bellybolt and I have definitely called him best boy as I planned to do. The world is really big there is a lot to explore and find and constantly looking for Shinies never gets old guys. All Pokemon battles are optional as you have to talk to Pokemon trainers to initiate battle with them which is kind of neat because sometimes you don't want to do that you want to do something else come back later and maybe battle them sometime later. You know the choice is yours again. Most Pokemon trainers though had only one Pokemon so the battles felt short which was my impression of the battles with the Pokemon trainers and this sort of brings me to how easy the entire game felt in my playthrough. I only ever wiped at the last bosses of the game which were fantastic battles. They were actually quite fun challenging and I had to think tactically but that for me was only at the end of the game. Other than that the entire game felt super easy for me and it was just never any real challenge. Pokemon level up so quickly and there's tons of rare candy and XP boosters all around and I am having Pokemon in my 70s already after only like 20 hours of gameplay. That is unheard of coming from older Pokemon mainline titles. It is just too easy. They changed up the gyms this time with having gym tests that you have to do before challenging the gym leader and they were things like finding a guy amongst people, sliding down a mountain in a quick race or rolling a ball to the goal those sort of things. These tasks were over as soon as they started though gotta say super short and that was kind of disappointing. The rebel camp infiltrations were also too easy and felt over as soon as they started also. The cities and towns they are okay they just felt rather empty with no real buildings that you could enter properly. Most shops are for food ingredients and some shops are for hats and headwear, glasses, backpacks, gloves and socks actual sock shops. There are not many actual clothes to choose from however you are always in your academy uniform which is so weird which only comes in like four different styles. So customization, clothing wise, not very good in this game. I feel like customization was way better back in the day on Pokemon X and Y. Why? All shops are disappointingly enough only menus. You cannot actually go into a store anymore. This is disappointing and sometimes it wasn't even completely obvious which doors were shops and which doors were not. I found that kind of confusing too. In earlier Pokemon games you entered people's homes often being rewarded by doing so. There is none of that here. HMs are entirely eliminated. No more handy use of a flash or rock smash and you can instantly fly and surf without having a Pokemon party dedicated to all of these things. All of the old HMs. Maybe I am an old timer and I remember this but that is completely gone from the game. But you can now make technical machines, TMs at the green stall at the outdoors Pokemon centers with items dropped by Pokemon. I used this system occasionally to get some better moves for my Pokemon. Kinda cute. I kinda like it but never did I feel like I had to grind for anything. The entire picnic business I only did a couple of times. You can make sandwiches with some buffs and you can shower or play with your Pokemon. The only reason I would see myself showering my Pokemon for real is if I want to evolve a Pokemon that is required to have a high affection value towards in order to evolve it. Other than that I see no point. The terrestrializing wasn't as fun as I had hoped. I ended up ignoring all of that because the animation for terrestrializing was too slow and there was no way to skip that animation even if I had seen it several times already and I think it should have been an option to skip those. Pokemon battles are traditional with elemental weaknesses and watching them play out however you cannot move freely around in combat anymore as you did in Arceus. Some Pokemon are actually hard to catch which adds a nice challenge and something that has just never changed is that we are still not using the combat altering items like axe attack and dire hit. You have two currencies LP and the regular currency. This had no impact on my playthrough. You can play online together with three other players which was good stuff and I got some sweet surprises from the surprise trade. Graphics. There are visual glitches, gameplay glitches, frame drops, stuttering, blurriness, short draw distance. The works. It's not a game that feels graphically and performance wise finished at all and I think the developers deep down they know this too. It ruins what could be a very enjoyable open world fantastic Pokemon experience. It is just not acceptable. This performance is the worst I have seen in a first part in Nintendo title ever. I am speechless with how this game runs which is a shame because it is a perfectly fine game otherwise. This has to affect. I have only played it in handheld but people say it's even worse to blown up on the big screen on TV. To our surprise though some cutscenes and close-ups are incredibly sharp and good-looking which is so surprising and it puts me off. Suddenly the game decides to look sharp and good but that only happens sometimes. The cities and the world designs are sometimes good. I mean I like the world. Animations are acceptable absolutely. There are around 400 Pokemon to capture in this world all with animations for every move that they can perform. It is a game that wants to look good. Maybe the Switch's hardware is holding it back from its true potential. What do you think? The map is at least good. There are desert areas, grassy and snowy biomes. Just a diversity in the world and the fact that every Pokemon has a unique portrait in the Pokedex is a cute detail. Music. Some of it is good some of it is really repetitive. Like the music that you start out with when you're designing your character it drove me nuts and I had to turn down the music while I was doing that. However there is still no voice acting in a mainline Pokemon game. Don't we think it is about time just about now? I mean why? Like actual why? Because sometimes it's just so weird to see characters just move their mouths in super big cutscenes. I mean I like the silent protagonist style that games like to do but at least make other and busy talk. Sound effects are absolutely stellar in this game. There is the Pokemon cries. You have the rivers, the torches, the menu sounds. It's all true audio satisfaction. Pokemon has always been really good with the sound design. The music is also sometimes techno and house music which I like and there's just not much to complain about in this section. A major complaint though is that the shinies in the world they do not give off any sparkly sound effect or anything which can easily make us miss out on getting any shinies. In Arceus we had that little sound effect going on when we were near a shiny Pokemon. There's none of that right now. The Pokemon doesn't even sparkle. I mean you gotta know what color a normal Pokemon is and you have to sort of know that seeing a shiny which is terrible. There should have been like a sound effect clue or something. A spark or anything. Now the music also reminds me sometimes of a tele-ame music with the use of flutes and some of the instruments that I just don't know the name of. Some of the music is actually super good gotta say. Verdict. Thank you for watching all the way until the word Verdict. It is bittersweet it's what I want to call it. But in a weird way I have also felt enjoyment within this game even though the performance has almost been cry worthy at some points. I've also just loved roaming around the big world just exploring doing my own thing building my favorite Pokemon party naming every Pokemon I catch the silliest names imaginable and even sometimes felt that old Pokemon magic and that is why it is a shame that it was released in this state. I am torn between these two feelings and it is not good. So here are some other complaints other than performance issues that I have with the game. Why isn't Pokedex and Profile in the main menu it would have made more sense to have them there instead of within the map. Why can't I see my friends in multiplayer on the small minimap and also I don't want my minimap to be rotating. I cannot turn that off. There are also other settings missing like disabling battle animations all together which I sometimes like to do and I don't like that shops are just menus. You know what the big focus on foods and ingredients I didn't do anything for me I'm sorry and sometimes arriving at new cities and towns just didn't feel as exciting as earlier. I don't know why I am giving Pokemon Scarlet and Violet a 7 out of 10 it is bittersweet right now. If they fix all of the troubles with the performance and you are a Pokemon fan it could actually potentially maybe be an 8 out of 10 because exploring the world and the open world it is fun and the multiplayer is good sort of thing. But as of right now it's a 7 out of 10. Now check out the NeoGrip from Skull and Co. link down below. Super good stuff. I am a big fan of Skull and Co. Check that out down below with my link. Now thank you so much for watching and I will see you later. Hit like on my video and leave a comment down below what you think. What do you think? Thank you for watching. Bye!