Here's the expectedly harsh DF breakdown of Scarlet/Violet. To dispel that 'weak Switch can't handle big open world games' narrative some people are adopting to defend the game, they compare and contrast it with titles such as Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Breath of the Wild, and Game Freak's own Pokemon Legends: Arceus.
It's a shame, because Scarlet/Violet do seem like fun games, despite everything. I wonder if we'll eventually hear Cyberpunk 2077-esque reports about crunched developers desperate to string a coherent product together to meet a deadline.
@Octane You see a buggy, unfinished game rushed out to launch.
@Ralizah Crazy seeing it next to Arceus, it looks really rough. Arceus had its problems but I thought it actually looked pretty nice a lot of the time, especially the sky and some of the lighting.
@kyleforrester87 It really is a step down in almost every way. Arceus looks better (the trees are still pretty ugly, but I only expect so much from this dev), performs MUCH better, was relatively bug-free, had greater draw distances, was significantly higher res both docked and undocked, featured responsive gyro aiming for when you threw a pokeball, and, of course, really shook up the entire gameplay loop of Pokemon, where you could catch Pokemon out in the field instead of being yanked to a separate battle screen every time, had to avoid being ambushed by wild Pokemon, etc. It was also surprisingly tough for a Pokemon game.
If you married all of those improvements to a game with multiple towns, gym battles, etc., you'd have close to an ideal 3D Pokemon game. Which Scarlet/Violet could have been if they'd been allowed to develop something according to a more realistic timetable.
@Ralizah SV doesn't have the option to throw Poke Balls at wild Pokemon, that's fine by me. You can however throw out your first Pokemon to auto-battle wild Pokemon.
What's annoying is that they removed the aim option that was present in Legends. You press R and you throw your Pokemon in a random direction. That's fine if there's one Pokemon on the overworld, but if there are a dozen, you cannot aim in a specific direction. This game is literally one step forward, ten steps backwards.
@Octane I've been making heavy use of Let's Go mode. It's useful and, honestly, pretty hilarious at times. The first time I used it was particularly amazing: my Pokemon ruthlessly slaughtered an entire wild tribe of Lechonk, and then proceed to hunt down and kill, via surprisingly protracted chase, a terrified straggler that attempted to flee from the carnage.
And yeah, the lack of pokeball aiming is pointless and annoying. It makes trying to target Pokemon in trees a pain. Why take that out? The aiming in Legends: Arceus worked perfectly!
@KAIRU Very true. Obviously some people are actually enjoying it, but it really does seem like it's almost Cyberpunk 2077 level of bad for at least some people. I don't ever plan on playing it as I'm not into Pokemon, so I will never experience it for myself, so that's about that for that for me talking about them. Unlike Cyberpunk 2077, these will never end up being great games like that is now though.
@Octane I don't understand. If I hold ZL and lock on, I can either throw a Pokémon and initiate a battle with ZR or activate Let's Go mode with R and have the Pokémon in front attack the Pokémon that I'm locked on to.
It took me a bit to get into it, as the tutorial section is boring as hell, but I'm enjoying my time with Pokemon Scarlet. In spite of all of its considerable flaws, there's a fun game underneath.
Abandoning the traditional Pokemon progression structure with these last two releases is the best thing they could have done.
Holy crap, that Necromancer you fight in Chapter One of Tactics Ogre is an absurd difficulty spike. I've been playing for hours since and nothing has come nearly as close to how hard that was. Really odd design.
That aside, this game is addictive as hell. It does a really bad job at tutorialising anything, but it also becomes half the fun when you finally figure out what something does by accident. I also love the option to add AI profiles to your units. I wish they offered more granular options for how they behave, but for the most part it works really well. The game has a lot of classes, and it isn't always clear what a unit's role or kit is, so I just let the CPU make use of them on the battlefield and when I see how they use them, I can make more informed choices with them.
I'm still not really sure I am gearing anyone correctly, I'll get units with say a sword and like 9 out of their stats would be buffed if they used a bow instead, but all their skills are built around a sword, so I guess they are designed to use a sword? But then why does a bow make their stats better? No idea! But I'm quite enjoying bumbling myself through to see what happens when we get into a battle.
I’m probably going to end up buying Pokémon Scarlet or Violet at some point this week. I know it has its issues, but there’s something about the Pokémon setting that really appeals to me.
I finally finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3 over the weekend! 4 months and 120 hours that took me. It’s certainly not the longest game I have played, but I am really struggling to think of a single player game that I played over such a long period. XBC2, for example, I played over 200 hours in 1-2 months. Pillars of Eternity 2 and Divinity OS1, both around 100 hours in 1 month.
I’m really not sure why it took me so long. The story didn’t grab me immediately, but I really enjoyed exploring. I tried to avoid fast travel as often as was realistically possible, so often I’d jump on for an hours play and basically just get distracted looking at the gorgeous environments, fighting a few monsters and enjoying the soundtrack, while making no actual story progress. I also have had a pretty difficult few months in some ways so it has been a welcome escape that I have not wanted to rush to the end of.
The story really gripped me after about 60-70 hours, and stayed interesting to the end. In the end though, I was worried I would lose interest so called it quits with the side content and pushed through to the conclusion. I have to say I enjoyed the ending a lot, despite not getting closure on a few things. And it also doesn’t help that playing it over 4 months I was literally forgetting entire characters and plot points from earlier in the game, so overall I’d say there are quite a few plot points that just didn’t make sense to me… but it doesn’t really matter.
Now I have seen the credits, I have gone back to exploring the map and dealing with the optional content, of which I have loads left. Really, this is how I enjoy the game the most, so I plan to keep playing it like this for a while with the pressure to see the ending entirely off.
Excellent game, overall better than XBC2 and up there with my favourite Final Fantasy game. It really pushes the Switch, too.
Very keen to see what they do with the story DLC, and what the developers do next.
@kyleforrester87 XC3 is destined to be a bit controversial, I think, due to the way the game is structured and paced. I wasn't sure how to describe it at first, but I watched a film recently about a couple of cannibals who fall in love while driving across America, and I realized that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is very much the JRPG equivalent of a road movie. The eventual destination of the plot is less important than the journey there; self-discovery and experiencing the world trumps a focus on setting up elaborate series of crazy plot twists. Thus, I believe, the laser focus on fleshing out in-group dynamics, the far more meaningful and elaborate side-quest writing, the fixation on existentialist themes about finding meaning where none exists, the transitory nature of life, showing how various groups of people adapt to similarly bleak social circumstances, etc.
That's... unusual for a JRPG, though, and particularly for a Xenoblade Chronicles game, where the plot is usually the end-all, be-all aspect of the experience, and all of its build up is in service of the almighty Plot Twist. The game does do a bit of that near the end (especially that long stretch of cutscenes and boss fights between chapters five and six), but even the fighting God moment with the final boss, which I'm beginning to suspect is a contractually obligated aspect of this genre, works far better thematically than it does as the capstone to the story.
By the way, I hope you hadn't already been spoiled on the reveal that Rex went Full Chad as an adult. It's SUCH a funny little detail that it didn't take long for people to start spamming it all over the internet.
If XC2's expansion is anything to go by, the expansion might end up rivaling or exceeding the quality of the main game itself. I'm very excited to see how the story DLC pans out.
@Bentleyma It's a fun game. Go in expecting jank and you'll be able to laugh about the performance stutters, the terrifying NPC faces, the numerous visual glitches, etc. It's broadly worth it to play another Pokemon game where you're left alone to do as you please most of the time.
@Ralizah Make sure to put your thoughts on Bones and All in the movie thread, I love Luca Guadagnino but the premise alone makes me not want to watch it at all so I’d appreciate your input!
@Ralizah lol I didn’t quite know what to make of the photo of him with the women and the babies, but having looked into it, that’s pretty funny. Fair play to him, his life must have been pure hell frankly but he seemed to take it all on the chin during the game! I am assuming Nia is Mio’s mum, though not sure how all that was supposed to play out frankly. Maybe I’ll find out more as I carry on with the Hero Quests. Enjoying having her back in the party as a Hero, though.
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