168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Scarlet & Violet is not a good entry in the Pokemon series. When it comes to mainline games, it might be the worst of all - we each have our personal preferences, but Scarlet & Violet is by far the most broken generation yet, as well as the one that most failed to take advantage of the technology available to it. While Gold & Silver pushed up against the capabilities of the Game Boy Color, Scarlet & Violet has no interest in testing the Switch, and even then, can't work properly. But Indigo Disk, the second part of The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero expansion pack, has just shown us what could have been.

It's not all doom and gloom with Scarlet & Violet. The embrace of an open world adventure was long overdue, and despite the teething problems, constitutes positive progression for the series. The lack of level scaling and generic emptiness of the world are considerable marks against it, but overall, there was a step forward amongst all the steps back. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Legends: Arceus already showed that open world could be done better, and Scarlet & Violet 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:built on theཧ direction of ღthe Wild Area. It's just a shame it took until the Indigo Disk for that vision to be realised.

Pokemon Violet Indigo Disk Meloetta Spawn Bush

Pokemon has a habit of taking back its best mechanics to water them down with worse versions down the line (Megas into Z-Moves into Gigantamax), but I think the Thundurus is out of the bottle on open world play. Like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy and turn-based combat, Pokemon's old town to town mechanic is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:to𝐆o dated for the mainstream audience it craves. So we'll continue to see games in wide open spaces, and hopefully, we'll see them better than Scarlet & Violet. That's where Indigo Disk comes in.

The Indigo Disk is a bit of a do-over for the game, with a new Elite Four to be challenged, although there is no gym system to earn the right to face them. However, it is post-game content and features extremely high level Pokemon, so it's no mere victory lap. Pokemon hasn't so much struggled with challenge as it has deliberately shied away from it with the short-sighted idea that each game is someone's first so the 25 years plus of existence should be forgotten about. So it's always a happy reminder that Pokemon does know how to kick it up a notch when it wants to.

Base Pokemon games have consistently maintained a three year gap between releases, despite games taking longer and the impact of the pandemic, so we shouldn't be surprised that the latest Scarlet & Violet effort fared significantly better with an extra year of development time.

Rather than beat gyms, each gym leader has a challenge for you. Initially, they can seem insultingly easy, especially if you're used to being patronised by Pokemon games. Crispin will want a sandwich, for example. However, to make this sandwich you'll need to gather fresh ingredients by trading and fighting, and can even unlock a unique cutscene by going above and beyond expectations.

Player posing with Hydrapple in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet.

All of this takes place in a reimagining of the Wild Area, which splits the world into four biomes. It's still not thinking as big as Pokemon really should - it's still mostly empty space with a changing aesthetic - but it does feel like we're getting closer to a lived in world that matches the tone of the challenges we face there, and even tells a story of its own. It's the best thing Scarlet & Violet has done, and while the bar was low, it's better to have something to take from this low point in the series than just a laundry list of what not to do.

Pokemon Scarlet & Violet's main function in the Pokemon canon is as a cautionary tale, but before the Indigo Disk, I feared it might cause the series to regress further into the stale safety of ideas long past their selling point. Now it has a clear way forward, and following Legends: Arceus and Indigo Disk, the future is looking a little brighter than it did before.

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