Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are one of the best Pokémon games out there. I feel glad that I got to experience it when they’re released. They’re a step up from even Pokémon Sword and Shield, even though those games were good, these games are really good. They’re also good if you don’t let others try to shove their opinions down your throat or gaslighting you into hating these great games.

The gameplay is a mix between a traditional Pokémon game and Pokémon Legends Arceus, however unlike Pokémon Legends Arceus, Scarlet and Violet is not segmented into areas that you had to go back to the hub world to access the other parts, it is a true open world game, a first in the series, and honestly that other system in PLA felt a bit clunky.

In the earliest part about the game, you acquire the mascot legendary, though you don't battle with it yet, instead you can ride with it, which is a nice solution so you're not overpowered in the storyline until the climax since they're not usable as proper Pokémon. This is one of the reasons why the legendaries for both games are currently tied for my 3rd favourite pokémon of all time. The experience of having your legendary pokémon as riding pokémon honestly feels really great. Though initially, you can only move and jump, though in the Path of Legends storyline, you acquire Herba Mysticas that each gives you more traveling abilities, such as dashing, swimming, jump higher, glide and wall climb. Honestly, jumping higher and gliding really do feel like a Spyro game, as that’S how you do it in these games as well.

The graphics to me are amazing; I love how the world and the pokémon look, very colourful, very vibrant. There are various biomes you can explore, a bunch of ruins, and even the ten sights of Paldea. At first you might think that these are small areas as tourist spots, but they’re actually useful because they become fast travel locations especially when you’re far from a Poké Center. Also it’s quite interesting to see select pokémon behaving in their environments, such as eating fruit from a tree or reacting to various weather conditions in the overworld. Such as Sandygast looking like it’s melting under rain, or light and floaty pokémon like Jigglypuff or Hoppip getting blown away by the wind.

The new Pokémon are really nice, and sometimes clever. While Squawkabilly looks goofy, it’s actually clever in the sense that its invasive nature and its pompadour is a reference to the rock n roll invasion, though another way to look at it is it represents street gangs. Other pokémon are also inspired by animals or things from or related to Spain, where Paldea is based on. Even if there’s some pokémon that don’t look like they fit Spain, they’re still nice regardless. People say that there’s a bit too many dog pokémon in the games even though there’s three of them with evolutions, but as I saw in a video by HoopsAndHipHop, those three dogs, Maschiff, Fidough and Greavard, might be a secret trio that references the children’s nursery rhyme, Rub-a-dub-dub, where one line mentions, a butcher (Maschiff, a baker (Fidough) and a candlestick maker (Greavard).

This game also introduced a handful of cross evolution pokémon, one of them features the first pokémon that evolves from a pokémon in generation 5 that’s not a mega evolution, that being Kingambit. Even the least impressive cross-generational pokémon, Dudunsparce, have an interesting gimmick, that being that there’s a 1% chance a Dunsparce evolving into Dudunsparce would get three segments in its body, which would make it an interesting pokémon to shiny hunt.

Speaking of shiny pokémon, you can see shiny pokémon in the overworld, and in many cases, can be easy to get to them. For example, while Sudowoodo runs when its tree disguise failed, if it’s a shiny, it runs slower, allowing the player to catch up with it. Another example would be the aforementioned Sandygast melting in the rain. However if it’s a shiny Sandygast, it doesn’t melt.

This game also introduce a creative group of Pokémon, named Paradox Pokémon, which are versions of existing pokémon but from different extremes of timelines, such as Past Paradox pokémon, prehistoric versions of pokémon exclusive to Scarlet, and Future Paradox Pokémon, future robotic versions of pokémon exclusive to Violet. While their existences are controversial, they’re important in the climax of the game and it deepens the games’ lore.

The Terastral Phenomenon is one of the best mechanics introduced in a Pokémon game. Who knew simply changing a pokémon’s type into something radically different be enough to throw some people off? Especially if you use a pokémon that’s quadruple weak to ice moves, like Salamence, but you terastralize them into a Steel type and not only do you resist ice, but if you use a Steel type move, you get more than a STAB boost and hit hard against the pokémon you’re normally weak too.

The Tera raids are fun and fast pace compared to Dynamax raids from Pokémon Sword and Shield, as they felt slow since you had to wait for everyone to chose a move and wait for everyone to perform the move. In Tera raids, anyone can attack at will. Tera raids can get intense, especially the higher stared raids, including some 7-star event Tera raids.

The main story is divided into three parts. Those being Victory Road, Path of Legends and Starfall Street. Each road can be tackled at the same time, and it’s really recommended to do that, as some gyms can skip a bunch of levels, but missions in the other storylines can get you to these levels. While Victory road is your traditional Pokémon storyline of gathering 8 gym badges and beating the Elite Four and Champion, it’s still a good road to take. While Nemona can come off as a supporting yet stalking character, in the post-game story she actually explains why she’s like that, and it’s pretty depressing, as her battle prowess would put her in a lonely situation as people doesn’t want to battle her because she’s too good. This is why she doesn’t want to lose a battle loving friend, like the player.

Starfall Street focuses on what’s in my opinion, the best written villain team in the region; Team Star. It’s also a humbling experience as in the games’ pre-release, we think that they’re a group of school bullies, but as we take on each of the five Team Star bases, we get a glimpse on their backstories, and it turns out that they’re misunderstood, and are victims of bullying themselves. It wasn’t until the five admins of Team Star grouped together, lead by Cassiopeia, the leader who these admins never seen who they are until the end of this storyline, launched an attack on these school bullies. An event that caused much scrutiny on the former staff of the academy. It’s a really good take on the Pokémon villain team where it deals with a touchy subject, which in this case is bullying. It all goes really well in the end of this where the Director of the academy forgave them, especially when he learned about what happened, because he wasn’t around when that event happened. Also the revelation of Cassiopeia’s identity pulled a well made double take, though I’m not going to reveal who it is here.

While Victory Road is good and Starfall Street is great, Path of Legends is really great, as this one has a lot of emotional weight put in it. The way you fight the Titan Pokémon really feel a bit like battling the Totem Pokémon in Pokémon Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. Your rewards for fighting these Titans are upgrades to your ride pokémon via Herba Mysticas. And I can’t help but feel like finding these Herba Mysticas feel like finding Time Gears in… a certain game. Though the real emotional punch is Arven’s Mabosstiff, who after being injured in Area Zero and trying every way to heal him to no avail,

including trying the Poké Centers, he would turn to a mysterious book; the Scarlet or Violet book, depending on the game, to find Herba Mysticas in an effort to heal his precious Mabosstiff. The emotional roller coaster ride takes the most swings in the final part of the road, where it looks like the efforts are futile, with Arven ready to give everything up, until something perked it up and wanted to play with Arven, to his relief.

Speaking of Arven, despite how rude he is to you, especially to your ride pokémon, you’d expect to believe that he’s the main villain of the game. That is until he revealed to you what happened to his Mabosstiff, where your first impression of him got turned upside down. There’s a good reason why Arven won a game award for best fictional video game character, as he’s really well written.

Even though you’d complete all three story quests, it only unlocks the fourth and final one; The Way Home, which acts as the endgame of the storyline. While Path of Legends is really good, this one is amazing. I'd say that this final storyline is on par with Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky. This is where you join with your three friends together to get to Area Zero after the game’s professor simply asks you to get there for an emergency. Speaking of PMD Explorers of Sky, when you enter Area Zero, the upper area of Area Zero feels like the Hidden Land, which kinda makes sense since these two areas are off-limits via different means in their own games. It’s here where your three friends show more about their backstories. When you enter the deep cave part of Area Zero, I can’t help but notice how it’s similar to Crystal Crossing. This place feels beautiful.

Then we get to the Zero Labs at the deepest part of Area Zero, where you see the second specimen of your ride pokémon scaring your ride pokémon into submission. Honestly, seeing our Koraidon or Miraidon’s faces in that scene made me heartbroken and it bothered me for the rest of that day, which is a great indication that the more you use them, the more you see them interact with other characters throughout the game, the more attached you get to them. To me this scene is why they’re tied as my 3rd favourite pokémon of all time.

Then the big reveal; the professor who seldom talked to throughout the story is actually an android replica. They revealed that the real professor died at the hands of the aggressive Koraidon / Miraidon when trying to protect your own Koraidon / Miraidon. They also revealed that they’re the one who got the Paradox Pokémon to get in the world via a time machine and would potentially cause the Paldea region to get ruined. Yeah, my first thought for that is “oh god they made a manmade Dimensional Hole.”

The peak of the climax is also really cooler, I feel like it’s cooler than Volo’s battle in Pokémon Legends Arceus. Especially when the android professors warned you that the time machine’s protocol would overtake them, as they become literal battle machines. However even if you defeated them, another protocol activates, even the android couldn’t believed that the original professor would do such a thing. This second protocol proved to be more dangerous than the other one as it locks everyone’s Poké Balls except for the original professors’ before it sends out the aggressive Koraidon / Miraidon. Except your ride pokémon that once belonged to them, so you’re able to battle in a mirror match. It also feels satisfying, seeing your ride pokémon taking down its bully in the process. The cutscene after that is very reminiscent of Grovyle’s sacrifice in PMD Explorers of Sky, where both characters would get into the time vortex. This is a really big reason why I love Pokémon.

While the story is really good, as good as the Generation 5 games’ story, these games’ lore is really deep. You can check the Scarlet/Violet book and find lore, even the history classes in the academy provides more lore and fuels theories. Even Greta’s mysterious aura makes people have theories. Her team may be awful, but it would cause people to theorize if she would do it on purpose. The sub-legendary pokémons, the ruined pokémon, being Wo-Chien, Chien-Pao, Ting-Lu and Chi-Yu, offered more lore and questions. Even the symbols on the logos of Scarlet and Violet can be found in parts of the game, and even they have more lore and questions. I feel like these games are the most lore-filled games ever, and I thought Five Nights at Freddy’s lore is complex.

At the time of writing this, there has been two parts of an expansion pack announced: The Teal Mask and The Indigo Disk. Looks like the Teal Mask has something to do about something that’s not part of the original storyline, however the Indigo Disk features Terapagos as its mascot, Terapagos looking like the Disk Pokémon featured in the Scarlet/Violet book. To me this would feel like the Teal Mask is like the post-game section of PMD Explorers of Sky about Shaymin’s Village, the Scizor world explorer, Aegis Cave and the Manaphy Arc, because the Indigo Disk’s focal point is Terapagos, a pokémon strongly tied to the storyline, this would be like the Darkrai Arc in PMD Explorers.

In conclusion, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are phenomenal games as a whole. The gameplay is great, the story is amazing, the lore is rich, the pokémon are fascinating, really, everything about these games are fantastic, to the point that I might be jaded and would feel like generation 10 would be underwhelming to me. Even if there are glitches, they’re pretty funny. Heck, some of my other favourite games have pretty funny glitches; no games are perfect, because otherwise, they’d be boring to poke around. Who doesn’t love to poke around their favourite games? To me, the characters and the storyline kept me pushing forward in these games because they’re so much interesting. Since in the end, I feel like my love for these games are like my love for PMD Explorers of Sky: the best treasure I’ve ever found for myself.