Pokémon Scarlet and Violet could have been so much more

theverge.com:

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet arrived a little less than half-baked and buggier than any of the franchise’s previous mainline entries. But for all of the glitches, frame rate dropping, and straight-up crashes that plagued players as they first began exploring the Paldea Region, the promise of new DLC content gave many hope that the games would get some much-needed polish in due time.

The Hidden Treasures of Area Zero: The Teal Mask— this generation’s first DLC drop — delivered on that promise to a certain extent with its streamlined story and slightly different approach to presenting new locations in the larger Pokémon world. And that was even more true of The Hidden Treasures of Zero’s second chapter — The Indigo Disk — which established a number of promising connections between Paldea and Pokémon Black and White’s Unova Region.

In small yet significant ways, both halves of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’sDLC made the games as a whole feel closer to the finished product Nintendo and Game Freak probably wanted to lead with. But neither The Teal Mask nor The Indigo Disk ever really delivered in terms of fixing the things that felt fundamentally broken about this generation of core Pokémon titles, and the same goes for Scarlet and Violet’s newly released epilogue, Mochi Mayhem.

After years of the Pokémon games and anime making it seem like going to school was optional for young trainers, Scarlet and Violet turned getting an education into one of the key parts of one’s path to becoming a true Champion. Unlike the smaller schools that appeared in older games, Scarlet and Violet’s Naranja and Uva Academies were seemingly massive places where students were meant to meet new friends and monsters as part of a nontraditional educational