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StarTopic Pokémon Scarlet & Pokémon Violet |ST| Who You Callin' Paldea, Friend?

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I may or may not have stayed up till 3:30 AM and played 7 hours in a row, beating the main story in one stitting. I will neither confirm nor deny these alligations

But anyway, MY THOUGHTS! (spoiler free)

- Overall, the Terrarium is awesome. The diversity in biomes is great and gives us pleanty of neat areas to explore, and a great variety of pokemon included. The biomes all feel like distinct, detailed enviorments with stuff to discover around every corner. The highlght was the music. If you know you know, but I POPPED OFF hearing the wild and trainer themes, even when I knew what was coming beforehand.

- Difficulty was ramped up to 11. I planned to go in with a fun Godzilla/Kaiju themed team and very quickly discovered this DLC is not playing around. Doubles battles, competive items, and actual good strategies will be employed by every trainer, and the important ones will need you to be on your A game.

- It seems to me like the performance is better? It was a pretty smooth time playing the DLC without much of the issues plauging the main game, especially the weird texture issues. I've yet to go back to Paldea/Kitikami and see if it's better across the board, but to me it feels like the Terrarium performs leaps and bounds better than the main game. It's not perfect, but for the first time in Scarlet/Violet the performance wasn't a drastic distraction for me. Your mileage may vary on this one.

- Story wasnt really a focus this time. I did enjoy the new characters and they had great interactions. Goes by really quick though, you can sail through the entire thing in a few hours. I personally found a lot of the final mission to be a tad anticlimactic. Between the main game and DLC 1, this is easily the lightest on story, which is a suprise given you expect it to be the most, but atleast the characters were fun.

Overall, I had a great time with it.

My team: (I'm not the kind to normally use legendaries on a playthrough team, but I figure it would be fun this time to try out a themed team and the Paradox's just worked for it..... and I still ended up having a good amount of difficulty with them!)

Kong - Rillaboom
Godzilla - Tyranitar
Rodan - Roaring Moon
Mecha Ghidorah - Iron Jugulis
Mecha Mothra - Iron Moth
Titanosaurs - Walking Wake
 
Ugh, Inkay still requires you to play in handheld mode to evolve it. You can't just flip your controller (and you can't just flip the console on its own and keep the controllers upright either).
 
After beating the DLC there is a bonus scene to discover that I think ties a bow on the Area Zero storyline.

A journal in the depths tells you how to trigger it.

It also sent me back to the main menu when it was over. And it changed the title screen.


EDIT: LOL this Team Star quest is great

EDIT 2: LMAO Mela still walks like that without her boots
 
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Only just started Teal Mask, have to get use to the gen 9 sludge performance again. I do like the new area you get to explore and the story seems interesting.
 
It's really nice that each of the areas have one 6-star raid, due to how rewarding those are. Sure they're not all easy, but great teammates will help out.

Is it me, or does the Terarium reward a substantial amount of Tera shards in the overworld? I noticed that the overworld spoils tend to give a much bigger number compared to the ones in Paldea and Kitakami. It's convenient for sure so I'm not complaining.

Thank you for reading.
 
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I never expected to be as into the Synchro Mode as I am!

Being able to seamlessly run around as ANY pokemon is something I did not know I needed. I'm not even one of those guys who cares all that much about Following Pokemon, but here it's like they straight up built Mystery Dungeon right into the game!

I really hope this becomes a mainstay (And it sounds it might be given how much they lean into it being a "prototype")

I can tell I'm gonna take like a thousand screencaps with this. This is the games REAL photo mode!

dF5zHFY.jpg


lnF1L2P.jpg

WDR4SUu.jpg
 
Lugia667 said:
yeah since the story directly continues from it
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Actually you don't have to beat Teal Mask, I started it went to the region, beat the first battle, spent the night there, then the next day after some talking I got informed to go back to Naranja Academy and there I met director Cyrano who offered me to travel with him in Bluberry. Then the part 2 started.
 
Shit post: I wonder if the play as a Pokemon mode is to test an open-world Mystery Dungeon game 🤭

—————

In other news, can’t play the DLC because I’m making a replaythrough of past Switch Pokemon games, trying to complete their Dexes before storing them in Pokemon Home.
• Finished Let’s Go Pikachu, but I’m only some Pokemon away to finish the Dex

• Replaying Sword, still at the beginning (Wild Area)

• Will replay Bright Diamond and Legends

Itll be like a month pr two before I can touch Scarlwt again
 
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Rampo360 said:
Actually you don't have to beat Teal Mask, I started it went to the region, beat the first battle, spent the night there, then the next day after some talking I got informed to go back to Naranja Academy and there I met director Cyrano who offered me to travel with him in Bluberry. Then the part 2 started.
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I noticed that as well, I wonder if you go there asap how the level scaling works.
 
Playing through the DLC on my Scarlet for the new exclusives, in the Terarium Perrin actually has some unique dialogue if you talk to her with the Growlithe she gave you in her party.
 
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Well I found my first roaming shiny in the DLC, a shiny Grookey!. I don't really like the Grookey line at all but I'd said I'd use the first shiny I found, so I guess I'm embracing the ape.

EDIT: Woo two shinies in an hour! My eggs finally gave me the Alolan Ninetales I was hoping for.

GBhW5WRaYAAhMWO
 
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So many shiny Pokémon. I caught a shiny Scraggy who politely walked up to me, then my Pokémon refused to knock out a shiny Milcery in auto battle, and then two feet away from that was a shiny Geodude. I think I caught another but I can't remember what it was.
 
TheQuietone said:
So many shiny Pokémon. I caught a shiny Scraggy who politely walked up to me, then my Pokémon refused to knock out a shiny Milcery in auto battle, and then two feet away from that was a shiny Geodude. I think I caught another but I can't remember what it was.
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Has the Shiny rate been altered or something? Seeing lots of these posts haha
 
Concernt said:
The Terrarium seems to have a considerable density of Pokémon actually on screen versus the base game.
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Gotcha! That makes sense. I encountered some Shinies in the base game at the first areas, and I presume it’s because I had encountered them countless times during the journey
 
ziggyrivers said:
Gotcha! That makes sense. I encountered some Shinies in the base game at the first areas, and I presume it’s because I had encountered them countless times during the journey
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Honestly, maybe I'll catch flack for this, but I dare call the Terrarium... Impressive technologically. There. I said it. The density of Pokémon, the fact they don't pop in and out of existence like say, Area Zero, the improved visuals and lighting, the Terrarium feels like a half step generational improvement, and I'm impressed. I think people miss the forest for the trees when talking about technical aspects of Pokémon games. Consider that Monster Hunter Wilds' big gimmick is hoards of monsters. Pokémon has been doing hoards for years, on weak hardware, and now they have mass outbreaks in already densely populated areas in an open world with full multiplayer, AND your Pokémon can come out of its ball, you can wonder trade in fhe background, or even control said Pokémon.

It's not a technical marvel. It's rough around the edges. But if it weren't for the glitches, I think this game would be kind of impressive.
 
Concernt said:
Honestly, maybe I'll catch flack for this, but I dare call the Terrarium... Impressive technologically. There. I said it. The density of Pokémon, the fact they don't pop in and out of existence like say, Area Zero, the improved visuals and lighting, the Terrarium feels like a half step generational improvement, and I'm impressed. I think people miss the forest for the trees when talking about technical aspects of Pokémon games. Consider that Monster Hunter Wilds' big gimmick is hoards of monsters. Pokémon has been doing hoards for years, on weak hardware, and now they have mass outbreaks in already densely populated areas in an open world with full multiplayer, AND your Pokémon can come out of its ball, you can wonder trade in fhe background, or even control said Pokémon.

It's not a technical marvel. It's rough around the edges. But if it weren't for the glitches, I think this game would be kind of impressive.
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I’d like to think that the Terrarium is demonstration of GameFreak maaaybe taking to heart criticism about technical performance, possibly signifying that Gen10 will be a veeery optimized, open-world Pokemon experience
 
ziggyrivers said:
I’d like to think that the Terrarium is demonstration of GameFreak maaaybe taking to heart criticism about technical performance, possibly signifying that Gen10 will be a veeery optimized, open-world Pokemon experience
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As far as I've heard, Gen 10 will likely be an Unreal Engine 5 based NG Switch game, so pair that with their clear passion, vast art team and although strained by time constraints, sometimes clearly competent engineers, and it could be really something.

I don't expect it until 2026, for the anniversary, in the meantime I think we'll get a Legends game, though I think I've mentioned that before.

Still, better hardware, more outsourcing, a new engine they don't have to develop themselves, and more time, they should definitely have a better go at things.
 
The Terrarium has me interested. And but so I just looked, and the DLC is thirty five dollars? That seems so high! Is it worth it for a casual, non competitive Pokemon fan?
 
Red Monster said:
The Terrarium has me interested. And but so I just looked, and the DLC is thirty five dollars? That seems so high! Is it worth it for a casual, non competitive Pokemon fan?
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The two waves together, the DLC is about as big as the base game, but a bit less story. I'm not sure I can call it worth it for sure, they went a bit mad with the price.
 
Concernt said:
The two waves together, the DLC is about as big as the base game, but a bit less story. I'm not sure I can call it worth it for sure, they went a bit mad with the price.
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It might have been worth it if the game didn't run worse and worse the further I get into the dlc. I've fallen through the floor twice in the past hour and had a crash.
 
Concernt said:
As far as I've heard, Gen 10 will likely be an Unreal Engine 5 based NG Switch game, so pair that with their clear passion, vast art team and although strained by time constraints, sometimes clearly competent engineers, and it could be really something.

I don't expect it until 2026, for the anniversary, in the meantime I think we'll get a Legends game, though I think I've mentioned that before.

Still, better hardware, more outsourcing, a new engine they don't have to develop themselves, and more time, they should definitely have a better go at things.
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If you don't mind elaborating, "heard" from your own personal sources or via rumors you've seen shared?
 
kirbyfan407 said:
If you don't mind elaborating, "heard" from your own personal sources or via rumors you've seen shared?
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Oh no, just based on rumours I've seen lol.

Also they're hiring for Unreal Engine, that's pretty telling

If I share something specific I know I'd put it in [ hide ] tags.
 
Red Monster said:
The Terrarium has me interested. And but so I just looked, and the DLC is thirty five dollars? That seems so high! Is it worth it for a casual, non competitive Pokemon fan?
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I have a similar question. I haven't bought the base game yet (was waiting for stability/performance improvements or a Switch 2 version announcement and ultimately was leaning towards skipping the generation), but some of the stuff the DLC is doing has me intrigued. However, I'm a very casual, non-competitive player. I do not strategize beyond type advantages and balance on a team and don't want much challenge in a Pokemon game. Thinking seriously about Held Items and Abilities? Nope, not me. So I wonder if I should disregard being interested in the DLC if I ever get around to this game.
 
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Im ngl, have to wonder if GF plans on adding more DLC to SV. Just to fill something for 2024.

There's obviously the unreleased extra DLC involving Pecharunt but I feel like that isn't exactly "the end".
 
ZephyrPhoenix said:
Im ngl, have to wonder if GF plans on adding more DLC to SV. Just to fill something for 2024.

There's obviously the unreleased extra DLC involving Pecharunt but I feel like that isn't exactly "the end".
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I remember thinking about this for Sword and Shield. Updates, regulations and tournaments continued, but content finished up after a year.

I deeply hope you're right, and Pecharunt (which I believe risks being the first Pokémon in a while to debut in a game with no Dex entry for it, since the Paldea dex didn't expand for its events in the past) is evidence of it but how long can or will it go, really? I think continuous updates to keep Scarlet and Violet alive are a great idea, either which way. Mythical and legendary events, even new Pokémon or small battle related changes and challenges.

I think the dream scenario for Scarlet and Violet over the next few years, until Gen 10, is since it'll be the hub for official competitive Pokémon, it could get quarterly updates with new supported Pokémon until it has the National Dex (they've already done most if not all the work necessary to do so, and with regulations listing allowed and disallowed Pokémon, it's not like they'd affect competitive.), a next gen performance patch, maybe some small quests like Arceus got.

But we don't live in a world of dreams, and I fear the next few years will continue to have yearly releases with the last game abandoned as soon as possible. 😕
 
I think Sc/Vi will be the “main games” for a while because something tells me the B/W Remakes will be as minimal and straight-up as the BDSP remakes, and SwSh stayed as the main games until S/V came out
 
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BassForever said:
It might have been worth it if the game didn't run worse and worse the further I get into the dlc. I've fallen through the floor twice in the past hour and had a crash.
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this is doing a lot to push me away from buying the DLC. I played Scarlet for 30 hours, but I never got used to the abhorrent performance, not for a single second. Is it really, truly worse in the DLC? That seems impossible.
 
Red Monster said:
this is doing a lot to push me away from buying the DLC. I played Scarlet for 30 hours, but I never got used to the abhorrent performance, not for a single second. Is it really, truly worse in the DLC? That seems impossible.
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The DLC, at least part 2, is more visually dense and a bit more complex than the base game, even if the world is smaller, so yeah, it has issues. It's improved since the base game at launch, but it still feels like playing in slow motion sometimes. No longer bad enough to cause me motion sickness though.
 
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Red Monster said:
this is doing a lot to push me away from buying the DLC. I played Scarlet for 30 hours, but I never got used to the abhorrent performance, not for a single second. Is it really, truly worse in the DLC? That seems impossible.
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On top of what Concert said, the game really seems to struggle if you warp back and forth between the maps. I jumped from the teal mask dlc to the main game to stock up on items the dlc area didn't sell and back, and suddenly Kitakami textures weren't loading properly and I kept falling through the floor.
 
Just encountered a hell of a glitch re: DLC mechanics use in mainland Paldea.

Flying over and around Mesagoza causes some serious problems, it loads in, loads out, goes to high detail, then low, sometimes the loading zone triggers, sometimes it didn't. I tried flying straight up into the sky from the middle of Mesagoza and was met with a black-out followed by reloading in the player house in front of the Mom, while my map position stayed in Mesagoza.
 
BassForever said:
On top of what Concert said, the game really seems to struggle if you warp back and forth between the maps. I jumped from the teal mask dlc to the main game to stock up on items the dlc area didn't sell and back, and suddenly Kitakami textures weren't loading properly and I kept falling through the floor.
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Concernt said:
Just encountered a hell of a glitch re: DLC mechanics use in mainland Paldea.

Flying over and around Mesagoza causes some serious problems, it loads in, loads out, goes to high detail, then low, sometimes the loading zone triggers, sometimes it didn't. I tried flying straight up into the sky from the middle of Mesagoza and was met with a black-out followed by reloading in the player house in front of the Mom, while my map position stayed in Mesagoza.
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With these impressions, I think I'm going to give up my thoughts of purchasing the game eventually on Switch. I'll continue to wait either for a Switch 2 patch announcement (once user reports of how it runs are out) or Gen 10. I don't want to deal with "falling through the floor" glitches and soft crashes that may or may not be solved by repeatedly closing and reopening the game.

I initially had some hope that the mechanics added in the latest DLC meant they were doing a tech overhaul for how the game handled loading, but it doesn't seem like that happened.
 
kirbyfan407 said:
With these impressions, I think I'm going to give up my thoughts of purchasing the game eventually on Switch. I'll continue to wait either for a Switch 2 patch announcement (once user reports of how it runs are out) or Gen 10. I don't want to deal with "falling through the floor" glitches and soft crashes that may or may not be solved by repeatedly closing and reopening the game.

I initially had some hope that the mechanics added in the latest DLC meant they were doing a tech overhaul for how the game handled loading, but it doesn't seem like that happened.
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Yeah, I get that. For me, Scarlet + The Hidden Secret of Area Zero is super fun, probably one of my favourite RPGs and one of my favourite Pokémon games, but it's held together with food and string and staples...

Getting errored out to Poco Path from Glaseado was weird, but being error-handled all the way back to mom was something else.

Also having flown well up, they didnt make any changes to the north east of Paldea; it's clearly an island, and since they didn't adjust that for the added height, seems intentional. So what does Kalos connect to in its South West? Presumably one of the train lines from Lumiose is Wyndon bound, but that makes me wonder why the Isle of Armour didn't play on a Chunnel, and instead had an inexplicable flying taxi terminal. Ugh. At this point we're never getting answers. Paldea is an island, southwest Hisui is uninhabitable, and Galar is isolationist!
 
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Concernt said:
Yeah, I get that. For me, Scarlet + The Hidden Secret of Area Zero is super fun, probably one of my favourite RPGs and one of my favourite Pokémon games, but it's held together with food and string and staples...
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Totally. I've heard great things! (Though I've heard the towns are disappointing, which is a negative.) And I'm okay with some performance weirdness. For example, I'm pretty sure Legends Arceus isn't locked to 30 by any means and I played that a lot. Same goes for games like Jedi: Fallen Order on PS4, though that was a case where the performance and glitches were getting in the way of my enjoyment a bit. But performance worsening the longer you play (or the more you move around) would be really distracting personally now that I know about it, and glitches like falling through the floor are big deterrents in games for me.

Fingers crossed the next game is a step up in terms of stability.
 
kirbyfan407 said:
Totally. I've heard great things! (Though I've heard the towns are disappointing, which is a negative.) And I'm okay with some performance weirdness. For example, I'm pretty sure Legends Arceus isn't locked to 30 by any means and I played that a lot. Same goes for games like Jedi: Fallen Order on PS4, though that was a case where the performance and glitches were getting in the way of my enjoyment a bit. But performance worsening the longer you play (or the more you move around) would be really distracting personally now that I know about it, and glitches like falling through the floor are big deterrents in games for me.

Fingers crossed the next game is a step up in terms of stability.
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If it's any help, I've never experienced falling through the floor, but it has crashed on me once.

As for the towns? Yeah. They're bad. Kinda nice to look at, but at least in Sword and Shield you could still venture into a fair amount of them. They have door portal things, you can walk through the door, but you just end up in a graphical void. The interiors that do exist are reused (including from base game to DLC), and often where you'd want an interior there isn't one (shops are just full screen menus, for instance).
 
Concernt said:
If it's any help, I've never experienced falling through the floor, but it has crashed on me once.

As for the towns? Yeah. They're bad. Kinda nice to look at, but at least in Sword and Shield you could still venture into a fair amount of them. They have door portal things, you can walk through the door, but you just end up in a graphical void. The interiors that do exist are reused (including from base game to DLC), and often where you'd want an interior there isn't one (shops are just full screen menus, for instance).
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Interesting. I hope Gen 8 and 9 are ultimately looked back on transition generations leading up to a refinement with Gen 10. With Gen 8 introducing the Wild Area, its DLC continuing that design, and then getting both Legends Arceus and Gen 9 with their designs...it does feel to me like Switch was an evolutionary period for them.
 
kirbyfan407 said:
Interesting. I hope Gen 8 and 9 are ultimately looked back on transition generations leading up to a refinement with Gen 10. With Gen 8 introducing the Wild Area, its DLC continuing that design, and then getting both Legends Arceus and Gen 9 with their designs...it does feel to me like Switch was an evolutionary period for them.
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Absolutely, top to bottom, it was. Despite its many faults, it's also my favourite era of Pokémon, and immediately followed my LEAST favourite era. It's been a huge mechanical and design step-up from Gen 7 and especially Gen 6, even if you can see where time constraints are crushing it.
 
I love gen 9 despite its extreme warts and flaws. I get why many people bounced off it hard, but it's the most I've enjoyed a mainline Pokemon since gen 5.
 
Concernt said:
Also they're hiring for Unreal Engine, that's pretty telling
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tbf, they're also making Project Bloom, publishing by Private Division, so Unreal Engine hiring could be for that.

One thing is, if they're going to make new game on UE, they have to split some revenue for Epic, don't know if TPC (Nintendo, GF, Creatures) going to like that idea much. D/P remake is different because it was made by other studios, and remake will never be sold as much as new gen.
 
SNP said:
tbf, they're also making Project Bloom, publishing by Private Division, so Unreal Engine hiring could be for that.

One thing is, if they're going to make new game on UE, they have to split some revenue for Epic, don't know if TPC (Nintendo, GF, Creatures) going to like that idea much. D/P remake is different because it was made by other studios, and remake will never be sold as much as new gen.
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BDSP still sold huge, while the balance of not having to create and tool their own engine, alongside a presumably extremely favourable deal with Epic given their size, probably isn't a big hurdle.
 
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