If you have played Scarlet & Violet, or even just read about it, you will know that the most recent games Pokemon games were pretty unpolished when they launched and haven't really been fixed three months later. There's no getting around characters and Pokemon in the middle distance awkwardly jumping around and catching your eye, or the litany of bugs you may still encounter while playing, and I'm not just talking about Combee and Nymble.

Yes, Scarlet & Violet still looks bad and, in a lot of ways, continues to feel bad. The feeling I get from the games I would like to celebrate though is the one I've been chasing since I picked up my very first Pokemon game 25 years ago. The one that makes me feel like a real Pokemon trainer. That should be one of the main goals of every Pokemon game in its main series. However, it wasn't until I was finally presented with an open-world Pokemon game that I realized nothing I have played before now has really achieved that goal.

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When I first learned Scarlet & Violet would be open-world games, I feared the worst. Not because it marked a first, potentially pretty poor attempt from Game Freak, but because I don't tend to do so well with open-world games in which you are effectively left to your own devices. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I like a game that leads me by the hand. In an argument pitting an empty, explorable map against one overcrowded with points of interest, the most important of which being clearly highlighted, I firmly fall on the overcrowded side of the fence.

nemona holding a pokeball in pokemon scarlet and violet

While everyone else celebrated the prospect of being able to build their own Pokemon adventure, I was worried a series I loved as a kid and pulled me back in through Sword & Shield was about to launch games I wouldn't want to play for more than a few hours. How wrong I was. Although led by the hand to ease you in, because not everyone playing will be hardened players of Pokemon games, you are then left to explore Paldea however you see fit. As someone who struggles to make even the most basic decisions, I thought I would be overwhelmed by the options. I was in a way, but that turned out to be a good thing.

When you leave Mesagoza for the first time, the whole of Paldea is your Cloyster (sorry). You can go wherever you like, and it wasn't until I stood there with all of those options that it hit me. This should have been the premise of every Pokemon game ever. For years, you step out of your childhood home and begin your journey to becoming a Pokemon champion by beating and catching some very low-leveled Pokemon. You are then directed around Pokemon's various regions in a linear fashion, catching increasingly more powerful Pokemon and battling tougher trainers and gym leaders as you progress. The games always making sure you're never in too much of a bind if you stick to the formula.

It would be incredibly unlikely that would be the case if Pokemon were real. My reality would involve awkwardly showing up to get my starter Pokemon, that Pokemon being flattened by the first wild 'mon I stumble upon - probably six feet outside of my hometown - and then ends with me scampering back home and locking myself in my room while I wonder what the hell I'm going to do next. Okay, my Paldea journey wasn't that on the nose, but it was more realistic than any other Pokemon journey I have been on before.

Pokemon Scarlet And Violet: The Trainers Standing In Front Of The Academy

The first few places I visited allowed me to actually assemble a Pokemon team. After that, when I really started to explore, I began to stumble into areas I clearly wasn't ready for yet. I got flattened by an overpowered Hariyama, failing to check what level it was before I engaged it in battle. I also found a cave filled with Pokemon that were all level 50 or higher, a location I rode away from as fast as my Miraidon would carry me and have not been able to find again since now I'm finally ready to catch what awaits inside.

I've also tried to beat gyms and take down Team Star bases in the wrong order. Again, a mistake trainers would make, and hopefully learn from, if Pokemon were real. Whether they were unaware of how powerful the gym's trainer is before battling, or were coming off the back of a big win with an inflated sense of exactly what they and their Pokemon can handle. There's supposed to be a learning curve, and figuring out exactly what you need to take down a gym leader so you can come back and hopefully achieve that has given me an incredibly good feeling multiple times now in Scarlet & Violet.

There's no doubt Scarlet & Violet aren't perfect games. They're also not the best Pokemon games. They can and should be the first step in the next generation of Pokemon games, though. Making them open-world has given me the Pokemon experience I always wanted that I didn't realize I wanted until my open-world journey had begun. Best of all, the beauty of Pokemon games is there are always more to come. Nothing has been revealed regarding what's next since Scarlet & Violet are still only three months old, but hopefully, they are the base on which the future of the main series of games is built.

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