After completing both DLCs for this game, I can confidently say it is one of the most fun games I have ever played. Ever since childhood I have been a Pokémon fan. I started with Pokémon Ruby and even went back from there to play Gen 1 and 2. I still remember going to Radioshack with my grandpa and picking up that shiny red box. I recall opening it gingerly and thumbing through the manual, because I was an idiot who forgot my Gameboy at home. Then my papa taking me to eat, then the supermarket before FINALLY going home and jumping on the couch to play the game for the rest of the day. I remember being stuck in the back of the truck, unsure how to get out, but once I did the rest is history.

The design of this generation is fantastic. From the mons to the architecture, the art is beautiful. It makes you feel like you’re on a real adventure. The character designs are also great, though I do question how a toddler is in the Elite Four… Regardless I believe the art portrays each character in a unique light and adds to the atmosphere of the world meaningfully.

The game also presents some challenges in regards to battles. Team Star is an intermediate challenge as their Star Mobiles are quite difficult to take down. The Titans are usually a wash however and gym leaders are hit or miss. Geeta herself is not a satisfying conclusion to a moderately difficult Elite Four either. All trainer battles being optional also lends to the feeling of ease throughout the adventure. This does incentivize exploration and catching above all else, which is a core aspect of the experience, however, porque no las dos?

While the main story is not very difficult and the Teal Mask is more story focused, the Indigo Disc DLC presents many challenging battles; especially when you only utilize the mons available in the Terrarium (which the game actually incentivizes when you face Drayden). I lost quite a few battles until I EV trained and used more competitive strategies/ held items. This added difficulty was welcome. I enjoyed trying to come up with a strategy to beat the Elite Four member, because it has been so long since the series has had difficult battles. Sword and Shield did contain a moderate challenge in comparison, but this DLC has been some of the most fun I've had in a Pokémon game in a long time.

Although the content available after beating the main story (without DLC) is not expansive, the changes to the systems of Pokémon as a whole greatly increased the amount of play time available while also lessening the grind and lowering the barrier to entry when it comes to competitive team composition. These improvements include experience candies, ability capsules and the ability to change a moveset on the fly. It is extremely easy to train a competitive Pokémon. Making this accessible has opened up my own desire to compete. Before you had to put in a lot of time to even train one competitive mon, but now you can train a whole team within the matter of a few minutes.

Because of the way you encounter Pokémon in the game being so frequent, it causes you to run across more Shiny Pokémon than ever before. Though the rates have not been changed since the vanilla game, it is way more common to come across shiny Pokémon. Some may think this diminishes the value and excitement in finding a shiny Pokémon, but it actually fosters a more interactive method to encountering these Pokémon. It incentivizes you to complete the game to obtain the shiny charm, as well as compete in Terra raid battles to obtain Herba Mystica; they allow you to create sandwiches to increase these odds further. Encouraging the player to partake of all systems within the game lends to the overall design philosophy behind the game. “Everything you do matters.” 

From a game design perspective they lowered the barrier to entry for every aspect of the game. Because they made competitive items available to purchase at any time, it allows players to experiment with battle styles and allows NPC trainers to utilize those items. The Indigo Disc DLC has challenging battles where trainers will use these items in a competitive format. This difficulty is warranted, because the player has access to these items as well. These changes acknowledge those that have competed before, while giving new players a chance to break onto the scene.

I have not spent this much time in a Pokémon game after completing the story since… ever! The Battle Frontier in Emerald never interested me, but hunting for my favorite Pokémon as shinies brings me so much joy that it has become a problem. Now I am date skipping to get outbreaks for the Pokémon I want. Something I always thought was so tedious, is now something that I thoroughly enjoy doing. That has been my experience with Pokemon Scarlett. This generation of course has had some terrible performance issues, but the overall changes to the Pokemon formula here are welcome and breathe new life into the series. I will be a Pokemon fan until the day I die, and I will play every game that comes out, even the less than ideal ones. I will enjoy the series even more if it continues in this direction.