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Another mirrored post from my Cohost! Be sure to follow me over there if you want to see more.

So I streamed about 9 hours of Pokémon Scarlet last night so I thought I would write down my initial impressions so far. Most of my comments are going to be in comparison to Sword, as I played through that whole game in the lead up to this one's release, and I only played a bit of Arceus when it came out earlier in the year so don't have a huge amount of knowledge about what changes originate from that game. I spent a large amount of that time mostly just exploring the opening areas so I have only gotten as far as defeating the first gym, with no progress on the other two main questlines.

I've seen a fair few videos of wacky glitches being posted around but I haven't really encountered anything to that severity so far. The closest I've encountered is that sometimes if you engage in a battle on the slope, the camera sometimes peaks at the infinite abyss below the map for a brief moment. I did close and restart the game in the middle of my session while I went to get a coffee since I had heard there was a memory leak issue. The game does have some pop-in and framerate issues, but honestly I expect that on the Switch at this point.

There's been a lot of changes to the UI which have definitely been appreciated. The main X menu is now a short vertical list on the right side overlaid over the gameplay, sorta similar to the older 2D games, and your current party of Pokémon have been moved out of a sub-menu and are just on the left side of the screen for easy access. In addition you can simply press a single button while highlighting a Pokémon to instantly move them to the lead position, or automatically heal them with whatever items you have on hand. The party sub-menu has been replaced with direct access to your Pokémon boxes, and the Map and Pokédex have both been moved out of the menu to their own separate buttons (Y for Map, - for Pokédex). The Pokédex itself has a sort of bookshelf design in this, and the animation for adding a new Pokémon to the self is honestly quite satisfying. Lots of positive improvements in my opinion, the only gripe I can think of with the UI so far is that I kinda dislike how the enemy health bar fades in and out repeatedly during battle animations.

There's not really much to say as far as the battling itself is concerned, it seems mostly unchanged outside the fact that battles take place out in the world rather than in a dedicated arena. I haven't used the Terastallizing feature enough to really solidify my opinion on it yet, I like that it isn't limited to certain areas like Dynamax was, but instead they limit it by requiring you to "recharge" your ability to use it after every use, which has kinda discouraged me from using it.

Roaming the open world definitely feels better. I especially appreciate that picking up items doesn't force you to stand still while a fanfare plays, you can just pick things up as you run past them even when riding you lizard friend. I also appreciate that the aforementioned lizard doesn't take up a slot in your party, which I was a little worried about. I assume you'll be able to using him in battle near or after the end of the game.

The new Pokémon designs I've seen so far are generally good, there's only one I can think of that I don't really care for. As far as the starters are concerned, I think this is the best selection of starters we've had in a while design-wise, I went with the weed cat for my playthrough but I honestly like all three of them.

I don't really have much to say on the story so far since I'm not that far in. All I will say is that so far Team Star seems like the lamest enemy team we've gotten so far, but I'll see how their questline pans out before coming to my final conclusion on that.

Looking forward to continuing my playthrough tomorrow, this game is probably gonna take my a bit with how much I spend wandering about and picking up items lol.