The Road to Paldea is paved with good intentions – Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero DLC and Mochi Madness Epilogue Review
Happy belated Pokemon Day! To celebrate both it and the announcement of Pokemon Legends Z-A, I’ve finally gotten around to finishing my review of Generation 9. Please enjoy.
This review will contain spoilers for the base game of Pokémon Scarlet/Violet, the two parts of The Secret Treasure of Area Zero – The Teal Mask and The Indigo Disc as well as “Mochi Madness”- the Epilogue Event. Reader discretion is advised.
With the release of the Mochi Madness event for mythical Pokémon Pecharunt, we are officially at the end of the life cycle for the mainline Generation 9 games, Scarlet and Violet. I have played through the base game in its entirety twice, as well as a single playthrough of the DLC. Now is as good a time as any to give my overall thoughts and review. In general, I’d say the game is good with an asterisk.
Before we start this review, I want to cover the elephant in the room – the technical performance of these games is frankly unacceptable. I’m generally pretty lax on poorer textures or the occasional pop in of environments, that being said these games often slow down to such a crawl that it undeniably dampens the experience. I know there is no way that these games don’t release yearly, but a larger or more experienced team is required. I genuinely believe that Nintendo will step in if things don’t change, but I hope the Pokémon Company can make the necessary changes.
Generation 9 introduces 104 Pokemon, 121 with DLC, making it the third biggest generation behind Unova’s whopping 156 and Kanto’s original 151. All in all I think there’s a really solid group of Pokemon here, some great designs – Mabostiff, Clodsire and Bloodmoon Ursaluna are amongst some of my new favourites.
Each new generation has introduced a gimmick – Megas, Z Moves, Dynamaxing and now we have what I would argue is the most interesting gimmick thus far – Terrastalising.
Regional forms have taken a bit of a back seat this generation with the addition of only two (Four really as the second has three forms) of them, instead replaced by a new concept – Convergent Evolution. While this concept isn’t named in game, it’s the idea of Pokemon being different to an existing one, but still sharing characteristics – There are Wiglett and Wugtrio as well as Toedscool and Toedscruel, going from Moles to Eels and Squids to Mushrooms respectively. I love this idea, and I hope they continue to expand upon it in future titles.
Sub legendries is the term given to Pokemon who are more rare and unique but don’t quite match legendary – USUM’s Ultra Beasts fit this description since the term exists because of them. Generation 8 didn’t really have anything like that, but Generation 9 has them back in full force in the form of the Paradox Pokemon. Depending on your game, you will be able to access Pokemon that hail from the distant past or the far flung future, looking more Feral or more Robotic respectively. Personally (and seemingly the vast majority of fans online) prefer the past forms, but some of the future forms are cool too.
Having the box art legendary being the player’s companion and main form of transport is a very inspired decision. Much better than reaching the story climax, using the Master Ball and then boxing it. They’re your primary way of navigating the world, which is now open world rather than section based of Legends Arceus. It is in this open world that you’ll explore and discover the new way that the typical Pokemon experience has been presented.
Enrolling in each games respective school – Naranja/Uva Academy, you are swiftly given your task – to complete your ‘Treasure Hunt’. This boils down to the games three main “Questlines” as it were – Victory Road, Starfall Street and Path of Legends, which is the Gym Challenge, “Evil Team” and Battles against (In essence) Alpha Pokemon. These three paths have their own storylines but each also offer their own rewards – Pokemon obedience for the Gyms, Access to a range of new TM’s from Starfall and Enhanced movement for your ride legendary from the Titans. Splitting the Gym Challenge and Evil team, previously intertwined by contrivance alone, is good since the evil team this time around feel connected enough but also separate enough to not arbitrarily interfere with the gym challenge. You can also take part in classes in the school - these do offer some cool rewards but personally I never felt interested in attending them myself
The gyms once again follow the standard single type, though these are rectified somewhat by each leaders ace, which is a none gym type Pokemon that terastalises into the teams type – these are quite clever, the first two examples being a Bug Type Teddiursa or a Grass Type Sudowoodo. I still yearn for the possibility of gyms being based on themes rather than types, but that seems a pipe dream. We really, really should have had gym scaling though. The gyms can be tackled in any order for the first time, but there’s still a very obvious order with natural challenge increase. The Team Star bases didn’t need scaling, there can be a distinct power ranking. I realise that’s how they justify the gyms, but the gym challenge is an official organised thing, it could easily be scaled based on number of badges. Pokemon more than any other RPG has the ability to make interesting scaling. In a normal RPG you just alter health and damage, for Pokemon you can swap number of Pokemon, which stage of their evolutions, what moves they know. There’s so much potential. They didn’t even have to have 8 teams per Gym leader, could easily be like 4 different teams with two level scales.
Starfall Street is the name given to the questline in which the player deals with Team Star, comprised of students who no longer attend the academy. Despite the seemingly childish premise, the story behind this team is one of the better parts of the narrative presented in the game. The encounters with Team Star take place in one of 5 Team Star Bases and have two sections. The first I think is one of the games poorest elements. Selecting the first three members of your team, you engage in auto battling against 30 Pokemon of the bases type using the Let’s Go feature (Designed to make griding easier). You have 10 minutes to do this, but I never needed more than 3. These bits are just a bit of a slog. The second sections are just normal trainer fights which are a lot better. II also enjoy the fact the evil teams are less of a big deal now – Criminal Gang in Team Rocket was fine, Eco-Terrorists in Magma/Aqua were good, false saviours in Plasma were the limit. Team Galactic and Flare causing apocalypses was stupid. Hoodlums, Hooligans and the Disenfranchised are good. Would like to see Gen 10 go back to Criminals though.
The Titan Pokémon were an interesting addition, seemingly taking from the same idea source as Alpha’s from Legends Arceus, this time linked with Herba Mystica instead. I appreciate that these are all generation 9 Pokemon too, it’s not like it’s a new form but for example Gigantamax in Sword/Shield – it felt like there was more none Galar mons than there was that got the forms. This new format of Special encounters - Titans as well legendary pokemon being proper bosses is also a welcome change. It did start with Eternatus in Gen 8 but Generation 9 ran with it, I’m glad to see it getting so much usage here – opposing Box art legendary and then in the DLC - Bloodmoon Ursaluna, Lousy 3, Ogrepon, Terapagos and Pecharunt all getting boss fights.
On that topic, I didn’t like raid dens in Sword/Shield and I don’t like them here either. I don’t know what it is, especially because I like normal bosses, but the other styles just don’t do it for me.
Completing each of the three quest lines with their respective hosts (Nemona, Penny and Arven respectively), you unlock the fourth and final questline - The Way Home. Peronally I believe it is some of the best Pokemon storytelling the series has seen. Together the player and their three friends descend into Area Zero - the large crater in the centre of the map, for the big story ending. They tried having the friend group thing in X and Y but it didn’t really elicit much emotion. Here, I truly believed these four were genuine friends, and the in game dialogue (without voice acting, still) helps create more of an atmosphere when exploring. I won’t spoil the ending sequence, but it is very good, definitely worth the effort it takes to get there
Much like Sword and Shield before it, Scarlet and Violet forgo a third version and instead opt for two DLC’s, this time united under a single banner - “The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero”. Following those was the Epilogue event for the Mythical Pokemon Pecharunt, known as Mochi Madness.
Part 1 of the DLC – The Teal Mask – took the player and some random nameless students on an exchange trip to Kitikami, a Japanese inspired location. Existing mostly to set up new side characters Kieran and Carmine, with some old oni legends to play around with. Part 2 brings us to Kieran and Carmine’s school – Blueberry Academy. A prestigious battling school off the coast of Unova. The goal here is just harder post game battle stuff, which is pretty cool in of itself.
Teal Mask refers to the mask belonging to the first DLC’s Ogrepon, but the name ‘Indigo Disk’ proves to be a bit of a let down. Before you play it, you think “Ooh maybe it refers to the shape of the academy, or maybe Terapagos” but the Geeta just gives you an item called the Indigo Disk – the super important ‘access deep Area Zero’ key out of nowhere like it wasn’t super important in the base game.
Not sure if I agree with how the DLC is laid out either – I think Terapagos should have been the mythical rather than Pecharunt. In an alternate layout, you would still go to Kitikami on the school trip where the player would meet Keiran and Carmine as well as finding out about Blueberry and doing the Ogrepon storyline. DLC 2 would still be going to Blueberry for that stuff. The finale of the two would be to return to Kitikami to deal with Pecharunt. Mythical event has Briar taking you down further into Area 0 to find Terapagos.
Scarlet and Violet will prove to be a mixed bag for a lot of people. There’s passion at GameFreak, but they just don’t seem to get enough time to truly capitalise on it. Poor reviews from launch seem to have shaken the studio into action. While I did enjoy Generation 9, I can only hope generation 10 is the return to form the series deserves.
