Pokémon Scarlet & Violet Nintendo Switch preview: The BotW of Pokémon

Don’t look now, but Pokémon ScarletAnd VioletThe nickname may be earned Pokémon: Breath of the Wild.

Of course, this is by no means the first time fans of The Pokémon Company and Game Freak’s forever-running series of creature-gathering RPGs have imagined a Pokémon riff on Nintendo’s arguably most venerable game. In 2021, when The Pokémon Company unveiled the spinoff Pokémon Legends: ArceusPeople immediately compared it to The Legend of Zelda – Breath of the Wild. “Look,” they said. “It even has the same mountains!”

All of these comparisons were ultimately futile. Legends: Arceus was more akin to a Monster Hunter game, giving plenty of fodder for “Pocket Monster Hunter” jokes while dashing hopes that a Pokémon game would live up to the standard set by Nintendo’s totemic open-world masterpiece.

Well, next month’s ScarletAnd VioletIt might fit the bill. Based on a hands-on preview session attended by Polygon earlier this month — in which I played an hour of a custom Scarlet build from an unspecified midway point — the duo of games sure seems like it’s shaping up to carry the “Take a deep breath of the wild but make it Pokémon” mantle.

Pokémon ScarletAnd Violet are the ninth iteration of mainline Pokémon RPGs. This formula has been a standard for over two decades. A group of adorable monsters is your childhood friend. They are your friends, and you train, develop, bond with, then mold into small teams of miniature murderers. Your team will compete against other trainers with the aim of becoming the best. If you’re wondering, or worried, Pokémon ScarletAnd Violet don’t exactly nuke this framework from orbit.

While every Pokémon game iterates,And none have introduced quite so many fundamental swerves as Scarlet and Violet. It is not surprising that this series adopts an entirely open-world approach for the first time. Pokémon roam environments openly, rather than hide, sight-unseen, in disparate patches of tall grass. Quests are more varied than “defeat the other Pokémon.” You can, for perhaps the first time in the history of the series, get truly lost.

Also, how’s this for you, BotW superfans? You can climb anything if you see it on the horizon.

You get the legendary Pokémon early… as a mount

Pokémon ScarletAnd VioletPaldea (an island region in Spain) is where the action takes place. It was inspired by Spain’s IRL Iberian Peninsula. You can get around the world by walking, but your primary means of transit involves riding a version-specific legendary Pokémon: Koraidon (for ScarletMiraidon (for VioletBoth of them look like sentient motorcycles.

Image: Game Freak/The Pokémon Company, Nintendo

My session with ScarletKoraidon demonstrated a loyal steed and a wide range of movements. Leap off a ledge, and you can glide — just as you can in a certain game that totally redefined how players think about and approach open-world games. You can slide into a wall of cliffs and climb them. Best of all, there’s no stamina wheel.

It’s unclear when exactly Koraidon or Miraidon joins your team, but it’s far earlier than they would in other Pokémon games — typically around the seventh gym leader. Still, legendary Pokémon have historically been superpowered leviathans who can turn the tide of battle with a single move, not Steeds. It felt almost humiliating, almost like a degrading act, to chauffeur a mythical beast.

During the preview, a representative for Nintendo declined to answer questions on the record about when — or even if at all — Koraidon and Miraidon would be usable in battles.

There are many quests in the vast open world.

Pokémon ScarletAnd VioletYou can deal with three campaigns main, in any order.

• Victory Road This the standard Pokémon narrative that has you battling eight gym leaders, each of whom specializes in a specific elemental type.
• Path of Legends Path of Legends missions task you with tracking down and battling kaiju-sized versions of normal Pokémon. Klawf, the giant crab Pokémon revealed in September, is one such target.
• Starfall Street:Team Star is an antagonistic organisation in ScarletAnd Violet. Starfall Street mission: You raid their bases, then engage in an auto-battling minigame.

I spent the whole session finishing just one mission in each of these quests lines. That should give an idea of how complex these tasks can be. There are many other things to do in the world. There are many ways to make sandwiches. You can peruse various storefronts, including a dedicated shop for TMs, or single-use items that will teach your Pokémon new attacks. Customized outfits can be added to your character. You can also customize your character’s appearance with custom outfits. Needless to say, it’s a Lots.

Combat is generally easier than some other activities, though they can be more challenging in certain cases.

The preview build started me with a preselected team — including the newly revealed Bellibolt, who absolutely rules — set at level 25. The Victory Road mission was the first I did. It required me to defeat Brassius the leader of the grass-type gymnasium. There are many ways to get in on the action. most Pokémon games, you fight a series of lower-level trainers, all of whom specialize in a specific type, before taking on the leader. In Pokémon ScarletAnd Violet, you’ll instead have to complete a non-combat mission. Before I could fight Brassius, for instance, I had to find 10 Sunflora — a sunflower Pokémon first introduced in GoldAnd Silver — hiding around town. Only two of them fought back. Nintendo representatives seemed shocked at this. Apparently it’s random; usually just one puts up a fight.

Brassius, who used three grass-type Pokémon, barely did. ScarletAnd Violet use the same rock-paper-scissors structure that’s defined the series since its inception, where certain elemental types are strong or weak against others. Since Brassius uses grass(ius)-type Pokémon, I slotted my allotted fire-type first and wiped his whole team in three turns flat.

Image: Game Freak/The Pokémon Company, Nintendo

It’s imperative to note, again, that I was playing with a preselected team of Pokémon, all of whom were at a higher level than the rest of the Pokémon in the region. But it nonetheless raises questions about the game’s challenge factor. The trade-off for accessibility in recent series games has been viewed by purists as a negative effect. Those on the other side argue that Pokémon games are, fundamentally, meant for children; the lower barrier to entry isn’t a bad thing, they say.

Because what I did was not indicative for what the actual game would look like, I don’t know where it will end up. ScarletAnd VioletThis divide will be the landing place. After the preview, Nintendo representatives declined to answer questions about level-scaling and the relationship to the new open world structure.

Pokémon games have always told you where to go, what to do, and sometimes even how to do it, while keeping some esoteric aspects (Cough, IV TrainingThe secret of the ), is not accessible to anyone but the most dedicated players. They’re generally guided experiences, and rarely, if ever, overwhelming. The things I was able to play of ScarletMy experience was quite the opposite. It made everything clear to me and let me go. Y’know, like Take a deep breath of the wild.

Pokémon ScarletAnd VioletNintendo Switch will be open Nov. 18.