pokemon scarlet and violet have both taken a rigorous kicking from the online community in recent weeks over performance issues and frankly thats fair my own pokemon and scarlet review highlighted these very same issues and theyre as extensive as they are migraineinducing but with all the talk around frame rates and hilarious videos of pokemon brundleflying together i feel the more obvious issues have overshadowed some discussions that are just as critical and more interesting than simple programming errors to put it bluntly i think its wrong to assume that scarlet and violet would be goty crackers if only you could beat out all the technical issues and hit 60fps there are lots of odd hiccups at a fundamental design level but what fascinates me is that theyre largely tied to mechanics that were considered exciting in the prerelease hype pokemon scarlet and violet have listened to a lot of fan demands in their construction of paldea but now theyve given us what we want im starting to wonder why we wanted them in the first place be careful what you wish for i guessthe open worldimage credit nintendolets start with the big one paldea was sold to us not as a tangled knot of interlocking routes but an open world that could be explored freely and in any order fight the gyms backwards find whatever pokemon you want take your newlyacquired starters to the most dangerous depths of the realm sounds sexy but sorry to say that the abandonment of structure completely plays against pokemons levelling system see without level scaling players are punished much more than theyre rewarded for going off the suggested path if theyre rewarded at all to draw an example fighting beasties tougher than you in say breath of the wild is valid because a player skill is more important than raw stats so talented fighters can still beat the odds and b the huge rewards make it worth the risk but theres not a lot most pokemon players can do to beat higher level threats without engaging in boring exploits and the rewards dont make this kind of independent spirit worth the hassle you can go anywhere but you really shouldntplus theres the clear criticism that game freaks compact team size and quick turnover rate might not play well with the greater demands of large open world gaming and if youve got to produce these games frequently corners will inevitably end up being cut such as frame ratesimage credit nintendoread moreimage credit pokemonfor the first time ever i wont use starters in pokemon scarlet and violetit doesnt help that more of that large open world might have to be running at once because two players could be occupying it at entirely different points coop was a big selling point before scarlet and violet landed in our laps and now im not entirely sure why it certainly sounded appealing recreating the little bands of wannabe champions we