WARNING: Spoilers For Pokemon Scarlet And Violet
I personally think that this is one of Pokemon's worst mainline games to date. Which doesn't say a lot considering that the franchise went downhill after the DS era. From the horribly written story and characters to the long, grueling, and unenjoyable story mode, I have never owned a 3DS, nor played the 3DS games, but like i said, even though I never owned a 3DS, this is still the worst mainline Pokemon game. first off, the story. I don't think having 3 plots in one game worked for a Pokemon game. There should've just been fight the gym leaders, beat the champion, complete the game. It shouldn't have been all this "Fight The AI Professor" and "Academy Ace Tournament" stuff. The the main story takes so long to beat for a mainline Pokemon game and I don't think I would count the Academy Ace Tournament as Post-Game. And now, The Gym Leaders. None of them are that good. they're all very forgettable unlike how different regions like Kanto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh all have several rememberable gym leaders. The rivals in this game are arguably the worst we have ever gotten in a Pokemon game. The personalities of all 3 of the rivals just weren't that good. And next, the "evil" team. Team Star is such a joke and they shouldn't be making these cringeworthy catchphrases like "Hasta La Vistar!" and It's just so weird. What made past evil teams so good is that most of them had no reason to be evil. You see, you gotta make villains cold blooded and evil, and not bullied kids who want attention. The soundtrack, besides some songs, isn't that good. Open World? The map feels the smaller than Sword and Shield's map, and is not that good for a nintendo franchise's open world game unlike how Breath Of The Wild and Mario Odyssey, which came out 5 years prior to the game's release, and even non-Nintendo games such as Elder Scrolls V which came out 11 years before before this game's release, these games did the open world mechanic very well. The map isn't as big as you think, and you'll get bored of the open world after a bit. And Tera Raids are especially unfair even if you have good setup pokemon such as Garchomp and Scizor. Sure, I liked Paradox Pokemon and (kinda) Terastalization, but Overall, this game was really unenjoyable. And I would recommend you play any other Pokemon game if you are just getting into Pokemon and you already have a switch. And I hope the DLC improves this game like how DLC did improve Sword and Shield.