Pokemon violet is one of the more recent entries in the mainline series and the version I'll be reviewing is the violet version.
The violet version focuses on exploration to the future in contrast to scarlet which is a focus on the past.
This new setting is based around Latin culture from Portugal and Spain taking note from what black and white had done with foreign countries outside of Japan being the source of inspiration for the newer regions.
Like in the mainline games it focuses on collecting badges and earning championship but it has 3 branching storylines you can take part in at anytime all required to reach the endgame that is and it was an interesting twist to the formula.
You’re a new student in the game that just recently enrolled in the respective academy depending on which version you are playing taking part in a treasure hunt where you can learn more about pokemon on your own terms.
There's also classess you can take for rewards to help you in the journey but its not like in persona where its mandatory its just come and go.
You can send your pokemon on their own depenidng on which you have selected to gather materials and fight other pokemon as a way of auto battling and while useful the pokemon you choose I think it could be from the techincal aspect of things wanders of on its own then where you wanted it to at.
Theres also the ability to trade,duel and hang out with friends online.
You can take out photos and selfies in the game.
Also the game builds on the open world side of things even more than arceus did and its large and very impressive. Its fully seamless and you can explore anywhere you want to in the world.
Theres the pokemon centers which are now streamlined into one place for healing,guides where to go next(not always the most helpful) and purchasing and exchanging items and moves too.
You can have picnics with your pokemon and bathe them for bonuses and also make sandwiches for bonus boosts for your pokemon as well depending on the recipies and ingridents you found on your journey.
Depending on which version you get kraidon or moriadon are your bike pokemon that gains other forms of transportation as time goes by when you complete the titan missions.
Battling pokemon is like in arceus you can sneak up and attack pokemon and start encounters on your own than so randomized.
The pokedex thankfully appears again after its absence from sword and shield.
Crystalize is a new feature that makes your pokemon more powerful and its useful in sticky situations.
The graphics is wii quality but even then, there is a lot more wii games that have aged well in graphics. That’s a symptom of a much bigger problem with the technical side of things I'll elaborate more on.
The character designs were strange, the new Pokémon designs and other areas of art were fine but the character designs looked really unusual and not in a good way case in point, some of the students looked really older than they should have been.
The game’s economy has to be the largest in a Pokemon game as if the developers were taking notes from SEGA/ATLUS’s games from persona 5 to yakuza since those games have a really huge economy.
The music was really good and Toby Fox has composed even more tracks now than in sword and shield and its really good. There was also Ed Sheeran’s music but it wasn’t really fitting with the game especially its story and it makes you wonder if that Nintendo spent more on Ed Sheeran’s music than they did on pokemon.
The endgame part of pokemon violet was unbelievable it really felt like a whole different kind of jrpg and the plotwists were just so unexpected and no way you could really predict it to happening.
There was quite a bit of pitfalls in it almost as if it were repeating the mistakes from past games.
The attacks some of the pokemon use can be pretty spammy and very overpowered.
The game has quite a bit of padding and filler in it that lot of it could be removed and not really have any significant impact on the story.
The technical issues is terrible I had the game crash on me while I was almost done beating the false dragon titan one time and much of the time the game slowed down on me a bit. I lost count on how many low resolution textures I found.
Xenoblade 3 had its technical hiccups but even then it still was playable on launch and its art and graphic direction had much better implemations than this game had.
The dialogue in this game especially in the English localization its really incredibly awful, as the game’s dialogue is littered with millennial and gen-z slang and even the story suffers from it as well too because of the focus on pandering to millennials and gen-z.
This game is an overall okay addition to the mainline series.
It gets 4 out of 5 stars.
I think its time for game freak to take some time off from pokemon and they should really consider bringing back drill bit and have genius sonority more involved in the mainline games.