General Discussion

I gonna be honest, I had a good time playing S/V. Yes, the performance issues were rampant and simply can not be ignored. I’ve had my fair share of janky experiences.

BUT, I respect Game Freak for experimenting with a different gameplay style, even if it wasn’t the smoothest. Legends Arceus became one of my favorite games of the Pokémon franchise because of this experimental style.

They also gained my respect for experimenting with the story. After SW/SH’s “story” (if you could even call it that), my expectations did lower a bit when S/V was announced. But, to my pleasant surprise, I was genuinely impressed with the story line. Like, when was the last we had a story in a Pokémon game that takes a dark turn near the end?

So yeah, if I would rate these games, I’d give it a 7/10. Good step towards a new direction, but performance is just as important as everything else. Give the people at least one more year and you would be grand.

I really enjoyed the game when it first came out. I played it for like.... 12 hours straight and it was for SURE my most hyped game for the year. Even more so than TOTK.

I finished the Pokedex almost immediately because it was so much fun to run around and hunt all the different Pokemon, plus I really liked the new Pokemon that were introduced this game. The story was also pretty neat like everyone else here is saying.

That being said, I have not touched the game at all since I finished the Pokedex. The appeal of adventuring with a friend is kind of lost on me, and the grind to raise a competitive team is too much time commitment for me in S/V, especially compared to the QoL improvements that were lost in the move from Sw/Sh (DLC).

Edit: TLDR, YES I recommend the game if you want a fun game to sink a week into. No if you want a longer gaming experience over several hundred hours (at least until they add more things to do post-game).

[quote name="@DragonsOfLegend" date="2023-07-02 13:23:48" ] They also gained my respect for experimenting with the story. After SW/SH’s “story” (if you could even call it that), my expectations did lower a bit when S/V was announced. [/quote] I only recently got and beat Shield, and you couldn't be more right about the story. It's so lacklustre compared to SV's story... The only good elements were a couple of the characters, specifically Bede, Marnie and Piers.

I didn't care for it, the open world felt empty and uninteresting, the story was the best part but even then it was only really good compared to other pokemon games, pokemon battles are as slow as ever seriously game freak just look at any other turn based rpg to see how to make battles feel like less of a slog...I'd say its worth it if you really like pokemon and unfortunately options for monster collecting games are limited. Honestly take my opinion with a grain of salt though my love for pokemon has waned over the years, and no its not "new games bad" (although I forever dislike the jump to the boring 3d models) but even the older games feel just so slow. Maybe its because I got into smt and while that series has its own flaws in its games it at least feels worth it to play each game for a different experience.

@Denali1050 best storyline so far weighed down by unfortunately poor performance and graphics

if it was allowed more time in the oven it would be my favorite pokemon game EVER. it's still absolutely worth playing!

[quote name="DinosaurFeathers" date="2023-07-02 14:53:46" ] I didn't care for it, the open world felt empty and uninteresting, the story was the best part but even then it was only really good compared to other pokemon games, pokemon battles are as slow as ever seriously game freak just look at any other turn based rpg to see how to make battles feel like less of a slog...I'd say its worth it if you really like pokemon and unfortunately options for monster collecting games are limited. Honestly take my opinion with a grain of salt though my love for pokemon has waned over the years, and no its not "new games bad" (although I forever dislike the jump to the boring 3d models) but even the older games feel just so slow. Maybe its because I got into smt and while that series has its own flaws in its games it at least feels worth it to play each game for a different experience. [/quote] Yeah I think the jump to 3D graphics was a mistake. It's clear that the super strict 4-year development cycle they have currently for Pokemon is just not suited to all the development time they need for 3D development.

Couldn't get into them personally. The open maps were nice but they were...really bland and I encountered so many bugs that it really drove me away. My partner got the two of us S&V and we both kind of struggled to enjoy them. For the price tag the level of issues we encountered felt pretty unacceptable especially from such an established gaming company.

The pokemon designs were generally pretty good though!

Still haven't played it yet, but just to say I don't have any real strong opinion on the games themselves. Probably not my favorite region but I don't entirely hate it, either. Some designs I liked, the concept of using a single pokemon for all of your TM needs sounds pretty convenient and an open world and being able to go to any gym in any order sounds pretty cool for a newly-established theme in a game as well, although I believe there may have been romhacks that have used the go to any gym concept before. Thought the idea of picnics was cute, though. I heard about people who absolutely loathed this game, I hear people who actually enjoyed it quite a bit, I hear about people complain about it being an absolute Bigg Riggs of a glitchfest, others say they've never encountered any problems. Again, can't say for myself since I haven't played it but that's just things I've heard from others who played it in a small Pokemon themed Discord server.

If there's one thing I'd like to say though, I think they should wait between games a little more, put a little more time into it, y'know?

Okay okay now that I got the serious stuff out of the way, unless you specifically are the guy at GameFreak who designed these guys you cannot convince me that little Ceruledge and Armarouge are NOT based off of something besides knights in the slightest...

PERSONAL TAKE? Go for it.

Does it have issues? Well, yeah. As someone with *glance* 150 hours in the game, I've experienced my fair share of them. That said, I don't think the issues are as bad as everyone makes them out to be. Most of them (in my personal experience) have to do with online functionality or framerates. Other than that? It just feels like a pretty average video game.

Personally, I think a lot of the reason it's regarded as having a bunch of issues is because it's a Pokemon game, and people have really high quality expectations, which the game doesn't meet. (Should the game be a higher quality? Yes, absolutely, it's a Pokemon Game. Does the mediocre quality make it unplayable? Absolutely not.) I've definitely played games with more or similar issues, and as things stand, I think S/V is fine.

Actually, I think it'll definitely become one of my favorites once I'm done being burnt out on it. Well, maybe. Right now it's probably the one I want to play least, sitting just above Shining Pearl. I'm in a state right now where my options are to Shiny Hunt or Build Teams, and I don't really wanna do either of those things.

It's pretty good for shiny hunting, in all honesty, but I don't like the sandwiches. They take all the fun out of it for me by making it a bit too easy. I'm not someone who likes to hunt at base odds; but sandwiches aren't my thing either. That said, I do really like the overworld shinies. I like to just... roam, when I'm hunting, and because you can despawn/respawn stuff super quickly just by walking in and out of range, it makes hunts really fun! I like to Masuda Method WHILE I'm roaming, and I think Chesnaught will be my next target.

Also, I think this has my favorite story out of any pokemon game I've played (Which is to say, nothing earlier than XY, but I've played everything mainline since then). I love Arven (Sorta "meh" on the other two, but I don't think Nemona's as annoying as a lot of people say she is haha) and the main story is super fun! I was practically SCREECHING when I got to the end,, hhhh it's so fun

Also? I think Paldea has a lot of great pokemon designs. I managed to use an entire team of Paldean-native pokemon for my playthrough, and each and every one of them was a pokemon I actively enjoyed and wanted. I didn't feel like any of them were there just to check off a typing-coverage box.

I think my biggest issue is that I just... can't love the art style. I find it more tolerable than I did at first, but simply put, I just don't like the graphics. Everything feels almost... too smooth? Plastic-y? Uncomfortable? Also, the lack of character customization for clothing makes me completely unattached to my player character. I like my character from Pokemon Y more than the one I used in Violet, and considering the comparison in how many hours I've played both games... yeah, I don't know how I feel about it.

That said, there are also a bunch of improvements this game makes, primarily in the battle department. I love that you can just buy bottle caps and mints super easy, plus the EV training items are available literally in Mesagoza for like 10k pokedollars each. I had a fully EV trained team before the first gym (same as in my recent g6 playthroughs, haha). I don't personally have an issue with the TM system, but I can 100% see why competitive players would.

I think I prefer raid dens in Sword/Shield to in Scarlet/Violet. They're a lot easier to find in SwSh, both because they don't move and because they have massive light pillars showing which are active. It made grinding through them a lot more fun than grinding through the raids in S/V.

I definitely think that S/V is a solid game, and worth playing. It's not the best game they've ever produced, but it's far from the worst. With 150 hours, I can't say that I don't enjoy it at least a little bit, haha.

hey!! avid pokemon fan here and to me? sv is ABSOLUTELY worth a buy. i know my game was probably lucky but I experienced 1 glitch my entire story run, and all it led to was me 'blacking out' and respawning at a PokeCenter. The character designs are really cool, I like the music and the scenery- it isn't the prettiest game, as I've seen people comparing it to ToTK, but where ToTK has been in the works for literal years, SV was not. the main issue with it is that the lakes lag a bit, but that's it! I had a ton of fun with it, and I think you would too!! /gen