alright, i'm 20 hours in. taking it very slow. ended up going violet for the future paradox pokemon, and because the look of miraidon grew on me. i bought it in person and the person at the register said that violet was beating out scarlet by a lot as far as interest
the technical issues are very present but not a huge deal for me. i dont get the headaches, and im not bothered by the bad textures at all. i do notice them, but it's whatever. the framerate problems are sometimes noticeable but ive never had anything drop to like, 1 frame per second like in some of the clips you see. i get used to them. i have never been bothered by pop-in, people go bananas over that when they see it and i think it can be done tastefully. i dont think it's done well here but it doesnt take me away from the things i want to do
things do lower their animation rate when they're far away, which looks ridiculous. they should have handled that more elegantly, but it really only bothers me around cities, and im having fun roaming around the map. the fps and ugliness of the game also comes out in the cities. that part is rough. the game has the most trouble when it's cutting from shot to shot and things have to reload, which happens a lot during cutscenes, which i dont care about much anyway
the thing that kills me the most as far as technical problems is going through the box/pokedex. even going from box 1 to box 2 and back to box 1, it unloads and reloads every. single. sprite. and, slowly. it's hell. the only crash i have had in 20 hours was from doing this
i like the terastal mechanic. it's innocuous but adds an interesting layer to things. it switches things up when you find a roaming terastallized pokemon and you don't know what type it's going to be, so you fight it blind. i like that. the raid battles, you know in advance, those are more standard.
i like the auto heal button. i like that instead of going through your TMs and seeing which pokemon can learn it, you can look at one pokemon and it shows you all the TMs it can learn. i like the "let's go" mechanic that speeds up battling, it's fun and satisfying and even acts as its own little minigame (your pokemon may or may not be able to efficiently fight in this mode, so you have to strategize a little bit). i like the open-worldness of it. there are some areas that you aren't supposed to be able to get to, but i'm able to cheese over ravines and up mountains through hundreds of hours of practice in bethesda games. and that makes the game very nonlinear (a good thing).
as far as the pokemon designs, i intentionally didn't spoil them for myself so im enjoying seeing them as i go. not that i like them all (many are ridiculous, some i think are neat) but it's fun seeing them and going "oh what the fuck"
for people on the fence or maybe excited for getting it later, i think if you have a ton of games to play, it will be jarring for you to go from one good-looking game to a terrible looking one that exhibits bad decision making, even if unique and fun. if this is up your alley in particular, then it's a new pokemon game that takes a few steps forward and a few steps back and you'll probably enjoy it for that reason
