I started a new game of Pokemon Violet, and realized I have very little memory of this game despite playing it less than two years ago. Back then I was really put off by the glitches, blurry visuals, and the baffling pacing of the game. It is possibly the worst written game I have ever played (due in large part to quantity). But the sticking point was the design of the open world did not work for me. Pokemon is a series where you’re overleveled even at the best of times, and so when I crossed borders into higher level zones I didn’t even realize it. The numbered areas don’t really make sense, and I did not enjoy exploring a new area only to discover everything is low-level. It also took some of the punch out of seeing new monsters when you catch their evolved form before seeing their non-evolved form. The whole thing fell very flat with me, and I figured I was just out of touch with the idea of what most people want from a pokemon game.
But it turns out, I like it a lot more in 2024 than I did in 2022. To gamefreak’s credit, the glitches are far less intrusive now. There’s still incredible amounts of slowdown, aliasing, low-res textures, and animations going about 10 frames per second, but it’s not game breaking and I can appreciate the tradeoffs more. While I still might prefer a more curated experience, the open world exploration feels more thoughtfully considered then I gave it credit for when I first played.
I think some of the textures also look better now then my memory at launch. You can actually see some details. Though it is kind of funny there just seem to be 3 materials on all of the 'mons. There’s the fuzzy 'mons, the reflective 'mons, and the goopy 'mons, and it’s kind of random which objects are which. The poke balls especially look like they are made of wet clay or something, and which I appreciate.
Now that there’s a little more detail visible, I like the monster designs a lot more too. In particular, I really like Hoppip! I’ve never really paid attention to it, in other games it always went straight to Bill’s PC, but I like in this one that he’s a happy lil fuzzy helicopter with toe beans.
I am also raising Fuecoco, Smolliv, Flittle, Aipom and rotating some others in and out. Next mission for me is to get one of them Girafarig evolutions. I like this party a lot more than last time when I played blind and was underwhelmed by the Grass Cat, Flamingo and Dolphin whose evolutions or lack thereof disappointed me. I’m having a good time with my crew now and like a lot of the new designs I’m coming across. This game was like a 4/10 disappointment, but now I found the fun in it and think it’s a real 7/10.
