Pokemon ScarletI completed the Pokedex yesterday. I don't have online but my brother does and he has Violet so I was able to get the version specific Pokemon by linking with him locally. The one tricky one was the third starter, but he got it from a co-worker and bred a new one for me.
This is the only Pokemon game I have ever filled the Pokedex in. Now I don't play every game. When I get a new Nintendo handheld I tend to get the first Pokemon that comes out since then and then generally lose interest and never get others until a new system. So I've had Blue, Ruby, X and now Scarlet.
Lots of focus has been on Scarlet's bugs and general jank. It's a shame because there's a reason this is by first complete Pokedex and it's because this feels like the Pokemon game I imagined as the logical progression of the series, when I assumed it would get a console release back on the Gamecube. You explore the world and can see Pokemon out in the field doing their thing in their natural habitat. This is what I always wanted. It's what I hoped X would be as a proper 3D Pokemon and was disappointed to find that it wasn't.
Now regardless of that and the bugs, it still has some clear design issues:
- Tera Raid Battles do not provide experience so they're not that useful. They do give you items and you can catch Pokemon using them but since you can't level up your Pokemon with them, I find I didn't do them often despite them being all over the map. Grinding to fill my Pokedex was a chore at the end but if I could have used the Tera Raids to do it I think that would have been more fun.
- Area Zero has no map. That makes it very difficult to find your bearings when you're in there. That just seems unfinished to me. Also when linked with my brother we could not see each other in Area Zero. That's just an unacceptable bug and without a map it made it even more difficult to tell each other "hey, there's a rare Pokemon over here. I'm, uh, near the big rock I guess."
- There is no way to mark anything on the map aside from one destination. A few times I found something I knew to come back to later and I couldn't remember where it was. Part of the game includes finding ominous stakes around the world. There is no indication where they are, which I'm fine with because I want to look over the whole map to find them. The problem is there is no indication of where they WERE. So I need 8 but I've found 6 or 7 but that was weeks ago and I don't remember where I already found them. So I see on the map areas where I think they likely would be and I find nothing. Was there one already here and I should look somewhere else entirely? Can't remember. If I could have marked the areas where I already found one it would have made it so much easier to narrow down where else to look.
- I barely used the sandwich system which seems like something they focused on that isn't that useful. The shops in the towns tend to focus a lot on this so the towns just aren't that interesting. There are lots of buildings that you can't access and the shops are the same sandwich shops or item shops that you find everywhere.
Still it's a great game but one that seems half-baked and unfinished. In that sense it shows how strong the Pokemon concept is that if you make a halfway decent open world game out of it, it's a lot of fun. I can't help but think that a later game building off of this will be really amazing. So if you're interested but don't intend on jumping in right this minute, it probably makes sense to see what the next Pokemon game has to see how it improves.
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