I treat revisiting Pokemon games like comfort food: if I’ve had a long week and don’t want to play something as story-driven as Baldur’s Gate 3 or intense as late-game Diablo 4, I’ll hop back into a Pokemon save file and fill out my dex a little more—or maybe even start an entirely new adventure.
I did this recently with Pokemon Violet, intent to enjoy the game for its strengths – great music, Pokemon designs, and a fairly decent story – rather than its considerable number of weaknesses. While I could get over the choppy framerate and slow UI this time around, I soon realized I wouldn’t be able to get over the horrid art direction that leaves the region of Paldea incredibly bland to explore once, let alone twice.
From the opening Spanish-themed shores of Cabo Poco to the tiered, Japanese-inspired rice fields of the DLC’s Kitakami region, Paldea is easily the least artistically impressive Pokemon game to date. I am fully aware that most Pokemon games render their worlds in pixels, yet at the same time, those pixels lead to some creative artistic decisions that make the shores and beaches of Hoenn feel distinct from the icy mountains of Sinnoh. Even the games rendered in crude 3D on the 3DS – X and Y and Sun and Moon – brought their worlds to life far better than Scarlet and Violet.
Skipping over Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which has a similar drab art direction, and looking back at Pokemon Sword and Shield provides some answers as to what might’ve gone wrong. Sword and Shield begins in Postwick, which introduces rolling hills and charming gardens that immediately give the Galar region a distinctly English aesthetic. This continues throughout the adventure with the castle-themed Hammerlocke, the whimsical Ballonea with a mysterious fairy-filled forest surrounding it, and the Slumbering Weald that harkens back to ancient English legends of knights and kings.
However, this personality doesn’t extend to Sword and Shield’s biggest feature: the pseudo-open world Wild Area. This free-to-explore zone in the center of the map is by far the least visually appealing part of the game, with low-res textures and a free moving camera with no visually stimulating sights to see no matter which way you look. In fact, the closest you might get is a bridge in the center of a map or a lone, ghost-plagued tower tucked away in a corner. It is, in essence, the progenitor of Scarlet and Violet’s lack of visual personality and a clear sign that Game Freak cannot develop an appealing open-ended area.
It’s not like it’s impossible to do on the Nintendo Switch, either. One only has to take a glance at something like Breath of the Wild or Xenoblade Chronicles 3—or even the Definitive Edition of the original—to see gorgeous environments aren’t a limitation of hardware but a failure of visual design.
Scarlet and Violet suffers far more than Sword and Shield simply because the entire game is set in an open world with few indoor buildings. Sure, the central city of Mesagoza has some color that contrast the white and beige architecture, and Levincia features some futuristic lights, but having them all set outside leaves them looking like open wounds on the landscape rather than interesting places to visit, especially from a distance. The final area of the base game, Area Zero, almost gets there with its hazy bright lights and waterfalls bespeckled with rainbows, but even then it feels largely empty and forgettable.
As a result, the Pokemon adventures set in Paldea will go down as the first that I cannot find it in myself to replay. This is a shame because I think Game Freak Pokemon games will, from this point forward, be fully open world, unless it’s a remake or a spinoff. I do have some hope for the upcoming Pokemon Legends: Z-A, as I enjoyed Arceus’ fresh game mechanics immensely, and it’s set all within one city. For whatever games come after that, a foolish part of me still holds out hope that Game Freak will have learned from Scarlet and Violet’s mistakes and we’ll actually get an open world with an interesting place or three to visit.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is available now.
