Jon Watson

I absolutely loved the TV series and would still recommend everybody watch them. This movie, however, I'd warn against watching. I feel like it more or less just ruins how you feel about the series as the ending of season 5 was great and actually felt complete. This movie in itself felt extremely random. Half the characters that you love and enjoy are completely missing with almost no explanation at all. The antagonist in it has almost 0 back story--you don't really even care or notice him until the end of the movie. The way they portrayed Aelfweard was as if he was a complete idiot who did not understand anything, completely ruining his character for an extremely silly plot that honestly felt super boring. The final battle scene was also super anticlimactic and by the time you get to the end you don't really care much for anybody as most of the people you did care about in the series aren't even in the movie aside from maybe 2 - 3 people. It's difficult to dislike the movie being a fan of the series but after sitting on it for a bit, I don't see how this movie was at all necessary, nor do I see it adding anything at all to the experience of watching the series aside from a lot of disappointment. I hope you're able to find more enjoyment out of the movie than I was.

I've decided to put two stars instead of one because at least the company is trying to do something new. That being said, however, this has probably got to be the worst Pokemon game I have ever played. The most common thing that people are talking about are the graphics of the game. Now, I should preface this by saying that I've never once had any issues with the graphics of Pokemon games. From the gameboy advance games, to Sword and Shield, all the way up to Legends of Arceus. I've enjoyed them, or at the very least, have not been distracted or frustrated by how the games have looked. Most of the time I've appreciated them. In Scarlet and Violet however, it is incredibly distracting and just so poorly done. Everything just looks awful. From the moment I started the game and walked around in my characters bedroom, it felt so strange to just walk around in a little circle. It felt super robotic and rough. As soon as you leave your house, you notice immediately the super low quality textures and how animations of Pokemon and even NPCs look super awkward. Nothing moves properly, none of the wild Pokemon. The textures look like they fit in a Nintendo 64 game. Your characters movements constantly glitch whenever you walk over rocks or little hills. Almost every time you go to fight a wild Pokemon or engage in any Pokemon battle, weird stuff happens: camera angles initially go bonkers and all over the place, the ground may disappear and it looks like everyone is hovering on air. NPC animations are also so strange. Whenever you heal up at a pokecenter, the healing person looks like they're typing fast or playing the piano but there's no keys at all? I found it very odd. I also found the average NPC movements to look strange, especially when they are walking. It tends to look a lot like stop-motion half of the time. A lot of things in the "open world" also serve no purpose. I found that I can't even interact with half of the NPCs, they don't even say anything. Also, you can't even enter majority of the stores, you walk up to them and go through the door (usually glitches and you walk right through it) then a menu pops up. Catching mechanics also do not feel that great. After playing legends of arceus, catching Pokemon in this game feels so uninteractive and quite boring. Makes the over world Pokemon feel kind of pointless at least with the random encounters you'd get in grass there would be some element of surprise. This is pretty much done for in this game. I am also still waiting for the story and characters to be enjoyable. Most of the story has felt super dry and the personality of characters feels lacklustre. If you want a truly fun and open world experience, I would absolutely not recommend this game at all. Play Legends of Arceus. The graphics are fine, the gameplay is very enjoyable, the exploration is significantly more fun, and even the story is better. The NPCs feel like they actually have character.