I don’t want my games to pull their punches, and Scarlet and Violet certainly don’t. The discourse around quest logs aside, Scarlet and Violet could use some demarcation of where the Pokémon levels increase or decrease beyond “you can’t get here without a specific ability.” As it stands, you’re liable to spend hours running into difficulty spike after difficulty spike with no guidance on which way is the right one.įor some players, that kind of trial by fire is ideal, and I count myself among them. Worse, there is no way to know whether the next Gym, Titan Pokémon, or Team Star base you want to take on will be anywhere near your level or if it will smash you into the ground. Whom you can fight and how strong they are begins to vary wildly - and in some cases seems to have no bearing on where you are in the game. The southern regions of Paldea do a good enough job of keeping opponent Pokémon levels constrained, but once the game opens up with the ability to swim, all bets are off. That spike happens constantly in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. The Normal Gym can also be something of a wall, as it’s the last one you’ll face before a giant spike in the levels of Pokémon you’ll need to fight.
That’s not to say there aren’t genuinely challenging fights, because many of the later Gyms - Psychic and Ice, in particular - have teams custom-built to take down the unprepared. This means that these games aren’t difficult because of the surprises the tough trainers have in store, but because you might enter an area far beyond what you can handle.
As such, it’s easy to get lost and find yourself facing down Pokémon near level 30 when most of your team is in their middle teens. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have sacrificed that predictability - or learnability - for a vast, non-linear experience that they insist has a critical path you can deviate from at almost any time. Before, a sudden Pokémon fight could set you back hours of progress, but you always knew where to go next and what to expect and could prepare accordingly. Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have open worlds, and it lends a feeling of unpredictability to their difficulty. However, the newest entries in the Pokémon franchise take that concept to the extreme, with differing results. And with a larger world with more to do, getting around those walls was less of an issue.
You’d be hard-pressed to hit many walls in Pokémon Sword and Shield until at least the last few Gyms. However, recent titles have added more ways to train your Pokémon, introduced new types and moves to create more balance, or generally made the games easier. Many earlier titles have sharp teeth, tremendous difficulty spikes, and some borderline unfair sections, probably partially due to developer inexperience. While Pokémon has undergone some changes over the years, one of the largest is to its difficulty curve.
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