Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are the most feature-rich entries in years

videogameschronicle.com:

Pokémon is a series that rarely takes great leaps between generations. Being the largest media property in human history, it can frankly do what it wants, and as such, has never felt like a series that’s been desperate to be in lock-step with the rest of the industry.

It’s difficult to comprehend that after 26 years of games, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet mark the first that are truly open world, two decades after the genre dominated and saturated 3D games. And for some, simply making a classic Pokémon game in the traditional style would have been fine – and still sold comically well – but that’s not the case for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. For the first time in an age, it feels like Game Freak is flexing its muscles in the main series.

Where Pokémon Sword and Shield felt like an attempt to simply get a Pokémon game out on the new hardware, and iterate later, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet deliver three games worth of ideas in one, with changes to a 25-year legacy that feel like a team taking onboard the often repeated idea that Pokémon doesn’t change to heart.

With a huge amount of content, a massive world to explore and an extremely exciting post-game (details of which we can’t mention), Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is bursting at the seams with ideas, even if it does feel like those ideas are a little ahead of the ageing platform that houses it.

Instead of one main story quest that largely involves collecting 8 gym badges and facing the Elite 4, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have 3 main story paths. One path is dedicated to the traditional Gym system, one has players chase down enormous titan Pokémon (similar to Pokémon Legends Arceus’ Noble Pokémon), and a third has you take on a horde of 30 Pokemon while running through an enemy