Home » Pokémon Scarlet/Violet is a welcome step trailer for the beloved series – Gamereactor – Pokémon Scarlet/Violet

Pokémon Scarlet/Violet is a welcome step trailer for the beloved series – Gamereactor – Pokémon Scarlet/Violet

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Pokémon Scarlet/Violet is a welcome step trailer for the beloved series – Gamereactor – Pokémon Scarlet/Violet

For me, Pokémon games are in a special place. On the one hand, I still love the world of Game Freak’s cooking and love spending time in it, but on the other hand, it’s challenging not to notice the tiniest of innovations every time you fiddle. Of course, there are new additions frequently, but overall, I don’t feel like the mainline Pokémon game has taken a significant step in a long time. But that doesn’t mean there’s no innovation, as spinoff games have been doing some interesting things, including the more open nature of Pokémon Legends Arceus recently. It’s these innovations that get me excited about mainline games again, because it really feels like Game Freak is using them as tasters before making a major generational leap. Jumping to now, we have Pokémon Scarlet/Violet, and both games are getting very, very exciting, and I’ll know that because I got a chance to experience the former firsthand for about 90 minutes.

First, let me kick this elephant out of the room. The preview and experience aren’t the opening 90 minutes of the game. No, it’s been a while into the game, which means I have a diverse team of Pokémon around level 25, I have access to most of the map, the various abilities and moves of the rideable legendaries, and can handle Stages for each available path (Victory Road Gym, one of Legendary Road’s behemoth Pokémon, and Starfall Street faction base). While it did give me a good understanding of the land, it did mean that I still couldn’t understand some of the story elements, including how the trainer actually encountered Koraidon or Miraidon (it really depends on which version of the game you’re playing). Also, I didn’t choose my starter Pokémon, which meant I couldn’t add more to how the three performed in battle and in Paldea.

However, this later starting point did give me a good grasp of each new unique feature, in this case let’s start with the road to victory. This is very similar to what we’ve seen in previous Pokémon games. You travel to new towns around the world, visit gyms, take on challenges, and then eventually exit with the gym chief. During my preview time, I confronted Brassius, the leader of the grass gym, who asked me to first hang out in the local town looking for sunflowers, a very basic and straightforward game of hide-and-seek. The actual combat is typical, I saw two of his Pokémons that I had to take down, and the last one even used the new Terasstalling move to become a bigger threat. I should mention here that Terastalling, while beautiful, is very familiar, similar to Mega Evolution and Mega Boost, and doesn’t really feel like an exciting feature, even if it changes Pokémon typing. But anyway, once the fight was done and in the book, I got the gym badge, TM, and the ability to catch Pokémon to a certain level – again all the usual odds and ends.

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Pokémon Scarlet/Violet

The Path of Legends, on the other hand, is slightly different. At this point, I headed to somewhere in the Pardia region to find a giant Pokémon. Wandering, climbing, and gliding on Koraidon’s back (a super cool feature, by the way, that makes walking around in an open world exciting and less time-consuming), I pulled from a recent trailer The giant Clough was found, perched on the edge of a cliff.

After engaging with the Pokémon, I entered a boss battle, which was basically the same as a regular Pokémon battle, except that the opposing Pokémon’s health bar was in the top center of the HUD, and much larger than usual. After nerfing Clough’s health, it ran away, causing me to chase it for a final fight, and the Pokémon used one of the rare Herba Mystica ingredients you’re hunting to power itself. Shortly after Clough was defeated, a character named Arvin and I went into the den to collect some rare ingredients for ourselves, all for making sandwiches, which gave Kraidon extra exploratory abilities – such as being able to sprint. While less challenging than Road to Victory, it does feel like it has more of a narrative theme and baseline from which I can start to piece together the story and what’s going on around Paldea. After doing this, I got another badge.

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How about Xingluo Street, you ask? To me, this is the most contradictory of the three paths, as it makes my mission to get to the base of the interstellar faction and defeat one first by running around and letting my roaming party Pokémon do all the heavy lifting. Group of Star Gollum Pokémon. Here, you don’t really have to do anything other than guide your party to the next objective. No strategic battles or anything like that, you literally walk around the open world while your party Pokémon run around like bloodthirsty hounds sniffing out their next victim, frankly Say, it feels a little bland. Thankfully, the encounter was saved by a fight with base boss Meera, whose squad included a Torkoal, which can only be described as a highly modified car. This is a very unusual situation. It turned out to be the most demanding encounter of the entire conference so far and really got me thinking about strategy and how to beat her team. However, once the book was in the books, I got a badge (surprise, surprise) and a TM, almost like the encounter was another gym.

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I love the paths and the way they are offered because you can travel around and deal with them however you see fit. Thanks in part to open worlds (true open worlds, by the way), it’s a huge and welcome step for the series. You can explore Paldea as much as you want, battling roaming Pokémon, picking up items and crafting materials found around the world, and doing so in a seamless way, meaning there’s no transition to combat, you’re just in the open world Fight, and can see roaming Pokémon in the background as you do your business. It’s something Pokémon fans have been asking for for years, and it’s well done here. Of course, you can see that Game Freak has to be a bit conservative about how they offer this service – due to the Switch’s limited hardware capabilities – since the world isn’t exactly full of detail and life, even though it’s a step available in the legendary Arceus.

The only time I’ve noticed loading of any kind is when entering a building or major city in the area, where it’s completely walled and absolutely huge inside, otherwise you don’t have to worry about the important loading screens – even for Pokémon Center and Pokémon Market , they are now also in booths outside and around the world. I’d say wild Pokémon tend to pop into the frame and you can’t see them roaming in the distance, which is kind of a shame. But Paldea remains as charming and characterful as the region before it, with a wide variety of biomes to explore thanks to the inspiration it shares with the Iberian Peninsula, which spans Spain and Portugal.

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I also had a brief look at what a multiplayer game looks like, which allows you to team up with friends and explore the world without any limitations. You can ride around, fight Pokémon and trainers, take selfies with each other, jump into raid battles, trade, and all the jazz it seems to deliver in a super smooth and straightforward way.

This game does feel like a major improvement over the Pokémon formula. Not only in the new direction that its narrative or openness brings, making you really feel like you’re taking an adventure rather than a predetermined path, but in some of the finer details. The healing Pokémon in Pokémon Center now has new animations, the effects in battle are more detailed and visually impressive, the Pokémon have been tweaked to be less boring and data-centric, and more like a travel guide, Provides you with information about every Pokémon you encounter. Plus, you have more agency over how you customize your adventures, because now character customization is gender-neutral, there are plenty of options to adjust your appearance (both in facial design and clothing choices), and tech machines have are resolved so you can now craft them at the station using ingredients and items found around the world. It all feels fresh and unique rather than like a lazy sequel that succeeds thanks to the nostalgia and glamour this iconic series effortlessly delivers.

As you can probably see, I’m pretty excited about this game after experiencing it firsthand. It feels like Game Freak has functionally tested previous games for years, and then implemented all of them in Pokémon Scarlet/Violet to make it a real upgrade from anything before. It remains to be seen how all this will shape the full game, but for now, I think this promises to be a winner that will bring Pokémon back to the top. Not that it really left.

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