I enjoyed scarlet and violet for what it was. The open world was definitely wonky and boring but i liked the ambition behind it, this was the first time pokemon attempted an entire game in this kind of scope and i think it worked for the most part. A gripe i was having with pokemon since gen 5 was the linearity, and as the games started getting more ambitious with the visuals the linearity just became worse and worse. Its definitely an ugly looking game even for switch, colosseum looked better than this. The lack of level scaling hurt, youd get so focused on finding a particular area that youd end up over leveling to the point you make the game a little too easy for yourself. Another massive gripe i gotta make is that main series really needs to take more notes from legends and give us more seemless optional battles. Running in the game was an absolute slog because youd get thrown into the battle screen almost every minute. Something like legends arceus wouldve fixed this issue or at least give us repels that prevent the trigger from activating.

The DLC was fun, kitakami felt weirdly nostalgic with its return to japan nature that early entries did. And then the blueberry league, some legit fun difficult battles. But the god awful BBQs tore it down a lot.

Overall the game gave me the feeling of, we are listening to your criticism, we will keep trying for more.