Sigh. I called it.
You’d think that the Pokémon company would be willing to hold off on gen IX for a little while since that might just interfere with PLA and BDSP sales, but nope. They gotta keep pumping out this stuff, only for it to be sub-par at best.
I’m a little curious why they went with Scarlet and Violet. The last few generations have all had names that correlate decently well with the themes of the game, and I’m struggling to think of any theming that would work with “colors that are just specific shades of other colors but people like my sister will insist that they’re actual colors.”
I’m ok with having another Western European country, but I’m hoping that they actually put the effort into making the region feel like the place it’s based on. SwSh didn’t outside of random one off steampunk crap and making every gym leader have a rabid fanbase chanting like it was a soccer match. Personally I hoped for another North American region, as we only have one in the mainline series and the continent is filled with far more distinct cultures than “business people.” But that’s just my bias talking, Spain (I think) is a great setting for a region.
I like the starters…. mostly. There overall much, much better than the crap we got last gen. The Galar starters are easily some of the worst in the series, rivaled only by the Johto starters. Luckily I think these are pretty good. I’m really not a fan of the fire starter. It looks like a bad fusion of appleton and totodile, 2 Pokémon I’m already not particularly fond of. I really do like the Grass and Water starters, and I was debating which one I liked better until I saw their names. Quaxly is an amazing name and I shall be choosing this if I actually get the game.
That’s a massive “if” by the way. After how irredeemably bad SwSh and BDSP were, I’m incredibly skeptical. I don’t think that anything in the trailer looked particularly bad, but that’s just a trailer. I’d be ok with sub-par graphics if they included the national dex, but this is Game Freak we’re talking about. Masuda couldn’t be bothered to hire a bigger team if his life depended on it, despite being given an ample budget. There’s absolutely no reason why every Pokémon that was in SwSh shouldn’t be here at the very least, as all they have to do is copy and paste from there, but they’ll think of one.
Personally, I can’t wait for them to not include any previous gimmick and instead force another 1-off gimmick in the game that’ll add absolutely nothing of value. They’ll probably use that as an excuse for why the rest of the game will suck.
If you couldn’t tell, I’m not particularly excited for this. It could be good, and every point I’ve made so far is absolutely just based on GF’s previous behavior and not any confirmed points on the game, but Pokemons track record has been shaky at best as of late. PLA was pretty good, it’s up to this game to determine if it was actually indicative of the franchise moving forward or just a fluke.
