As someone who grew up watching the anime series of Pokémon but had never played a single game, Pokémon Scarlet is definitely a great introduction to the game series with its interesting takes on the ecology of Pokémons and the brand-new open world system.

In Pokémon Scarlet, you play as a student at the Orange Academy. At the start of the game, you have a very basic character creation which includes skin color and appearance. You can make minor changes to how your character looks like, but the choices are quite limited.

The game consists of three storylines: making magical sandwiches, defeating school bullies and becoming a champion. Each storyline focuses on a different character and provides different improvements as you progress. For example, Victory Road leads you to different gyms and challenge their leaders. This allows you to control Pokemons at higher levels. Path of Legends, on the other hand, unlocks new abilities of your mount, like gliding and swimming, that allows you to explore more areas. Thus, it is generally a better tactic to progress the three storylines simultaneously. After you finish all three storylines, a new area is unlocked and all three characters join your team to face the final boss. The plot is great with interesting characters that are unique, and leaves mysteries for DLCs.

Pokémon Scarlet changed from its traditional JRPG-styled maze map to a more diverse open world. Although my passion for open world games has faded away thanks to the repetitive open worlds like the new Assassin’s Creed and Genshin Impact, I believe Pokémon Scarlet did a good job in presenting a living world, while keeping it from becoming a boring repetitive routine. You can see Pokémons living in packs. There are buffalo-looking Pokémons running around the plain, smashing every player that it encounters. Another major change the open world system brings is the gameplay feels more fluent. The player gets to decide when to pick up a fight with an NPC. You can try to avoid the wild Pokémons if your team is not in good condition. This gives the player much more control than the traditional JRPG random encounter mechanism which can sometimes be frustrating. This is definitely an improvement in gaming experience. Yet I would still argue that the game would be better if the capture system in Pokémon Arceus is also included.

The game mechanism is not changed unsurprisingly. It is still your good old round-based Pokémon. With almost every generation of Pokémon games, a new battle mechanism is introduced. Through the power of some sort of magical crystal, you can change the type of your Pokémon. This mechanism does not seem too important to the gameplay in the single player mode and makes the game way too easy. Yet it would definitely be an interesting strategy for PvP players to plan out their moves with this mechanism as a secret weapon. The game also provides co-op mode. Players make team of four against a powerful Pokémon. This is an easy way to get powerful Pokémons with specific crystal types. This could require some grinding, but again you don’t really have to do this to complete the game. If you are not interested in multiplayer, battle system of Pokémon Scarlet is not that different, but if you are willing to spend some time getting a team of powerful Pokémons and play against other players, the new system would definitely bring unexpected twists.

After I have given Pokémon Scarlet all this compliment, it is time to point out some problems. My experience is generally interesting but not great. Since I did not play the game right after it was released, I would expect the game to be basically “bug-less”, but it was not. I encountered the first bug at around 5 minutes after I entered the game. Aside from the incredible number of bugs, the graphics of the game is below average compared to other Nintendo Switch games. A grassland far away would just be a huge chunk of green with very few details. Also, it is a Nintendo Switch game, so you only have 30 FPS on handheld mode which may be annoying when you are moving quickly. In urban areas, the FPS would sometimes be lower, depending on whether you are playing on Switch, OLED or Lite.

Overall, the plot and gameplay are great. If you are a PvP player, the new system would definitely be something to look into. Yet the release version consists of numerous bugs and the graphics is rather disappointing for a console that has been released for years.