Pokemon Violet: Completed and Thoughts!

 Of course, this is Pokemon, so there isn't really an "end", with all the Pokemon catching and raising and all. But I've completed the story and caught the legendaries and I've seen the substories as well, so I just wanted to give my thoughts on the game.

Honestly not too sure what type of screenshot to use, since I missed the opportunity to take a picture of the ending credits, so I'm gonna leave it imageless this time.

So yeah, it was actually pretty impressive. The story actually made me kinda cry, which the series has definitely not made me do since ever. Yeah, BW didn't.

There were three stories and one finale, and I think it worked. The characters were generally nice, lots of details into their motions. I personally don't think Open World means Good! But I think they did fine with that too. 

Hmm, it's getting kinda monotonous. So yeah, lots to compliment about the game. So let's talk about the not-as-great stuff.

First, yes, there are plenty of glitches, but most of them revolve animation during multiplayer sessions, and I think that is forgivable. However, the game just sometimes decides to crash. Throughout my playthrough, the game only crashed once. It was when I evolved a Pokemon near the Pokemon Center, and I think the camera went into the Pokemon Center or something. And then it crashed. Thankfully, there is Auto-Save in this game, so I did not lose that much progress. And in general, auto-save will really help mitigate the losses of the crashing, and if you are doing something like hatching eggs that won't save automatically, you will probably save if something good happens anyways, so yeah.

Next, the Raids. I think it is because it is supposed to be real-time, but oh gosh, it is stressful when you want to attack and you just freeze in place for a few seconds. Or the enemy Pokemon moves 3 times before you do. And the high-level raids require a lot of preparation and if you do online, just one bad player will make it impossible to win. Ugh. And you almost definitely have to use buffs and debuffs, which honestly reduces the variety of strategies that are viable.

But I think the biggest problem of this game is the lack of... I don't know, cuteness?

Look at the any non-major character. Do you see anyone cute? Any Lasses? Girls in swimsuits? No. No. You see these weightlifting monst... I mean, ladies and the closest thing you get are the students, who don't even have a set design. You know how Hex Maniac gets so much fanart? Good luck finding much for SV's trainers. 

The named trainers aren't really that much better, but there are a few designs that target us, so it's not as bad.

On a related subject, the protagonist needs to be able to wear more stuff. It's clear that you are allowed to wear skirts. So uhh... can I change out of these shorts?

Also, Larry is great too.

All in all, a great game and although there are some bumps, I think the devs did what they could and even added lots of small details like Jigglypuff being blown away in the wind with the time I got.

That said, I wouldn't say something silly like, "They should have not released the game until it was done!" Making games is a business. Most glitches are harmless. And it's the holiday season. There's a reason Nintendo is a giant, billion-dollar company. You don't get there by not taking good opportunities.