pokemon scarlet is a mess. it runs like garbage, somehow worse than SW/SH AND legends arceus, which is a feat. the intro is 2 hours of straight dialogue, half the characters are either rebelling rich kids, a felon, or a guy with mommy issues, with consistent glitches throughout.

yet somehow, i found myself entranced through my 25 hours of playtime. the open-world and triple quest line adds a ton of stuff to do. i like the new setup of how everything is set out from the start, though i do wish levels scaled with gyms & weren’t set. the glitches and awful story are both so goofy that i couldn’t help but laugh.

i think that’s why i liked pokemon scarlet so much. a good chunk of the flaws are just so fucking stupid that i just laughed them off, and the others were good concepts with flawed execution. if given more time to polish, game freak could’ve made an excellent game. unfortunately, the game is just a messy clusterfuck that i still enjoyed quite a bit.