An Early Pokemon Interlude

So I’ve been playing Pokemon Violet for a bit now, and I have some thoughts. I haven’t gotten too far into the game, I’ve only done the first titan and first gym. I feel though that I’ve had enough experience to question what I’ve seen.

First things first, this whole game is just like the wild areas in Pokemon Sword and Shield, just with added towns. Even Pokecenters are no longer buildings, instead every Pokecenter is a shack, with a TM machine and a shop to buy Pokeballs and stuff.

A side effect of this is that the towns feel kinda small. You can easily just sail through them on the back of your legendary bike. Gyms in particular don’t help matters, what with being split into three different locales. You have the gym building where you sign up, an area for whatever gym challenge you have to do and then an outdoor arena for the gym battle itself. The other buildings are more just for show.

That being said, Mesagoza does feel huge, but that’s more because of the massive stairs going to the academy.

At least there is plenty of space. Large, grassy fields, rocky paths and canyons to fall down. While humans live in small villages, the Pokemon live everywhere. They all mostly wander around, looking for something to do. But I have another question here. Why are the new Pokemon really small?

Seriously, I don’t get it. It is so easy to run over a bunch of tiny Pokemon. If Pokemon Violet was real, then Miraidon would be absolutely covered in dead Smoliv. The amount of times I’ve had to stop because I have run over a Pokemon is getting silly. I suppose at least I get free olive oil, but still.

When it comes to new Pokemon, they do seem somewhat interesting, mostly because of their size. The early game throws a few baby Pokemon into play, and you can get Paldeian Wooper very early on. However at the same time, there are a lot of normal Pokemon too. Each area has its own biome of specific Pokemon, as well as a somewhat set level too. It is easy to walk into a higher level area, especially if you are on your bike legendary.

What I do find weird though is that the vast space between villages don’t seem to have actual names. Everything else has a name.

Another weird thing is that we basically have access to our boxes whenever we want. There is no need to go to a Pokecenter to swap Pokemon in and out of boxes. All your Pokemon are just there. And I think that’s a good choice because running back and forth between PCs was always a tad annoying. We now have easy access to all our Pokemon in one place.

I’ve not seen any proper glitches though. All I have seen are shadowy visual glitches, but they are easy to ignore.

Overall, I do think that this is a step forward for the Pokemon series overall, but there are definitely quirks that need to be smoothed out.