Rolled the credits in this the other day.
I'm inclined to do so anyway, but given the incredibly divisive nature of Scarlet (the version I played, so I'll stick to that label) even by famously barbed Pokémon series enthusiast standards, some context might be of use. I'm a lapsed series player following in my experience a common pattern: caught into the swirling rapids of the Pokémania of the late '90s, bolstered by the multimedia marketing approach, which fueled enjoyment and engagement with the first three series generations in their contemporaneous periods, after which interest dwindled and dropped off--pre-pubescents deal with a lot and one seemingly unchanging series had run its personal course in those few short, tumultuous years. Generation VI and the move to 3DS hardware and a full-time 3D presentation "brought me back" to gauge where my interest stood so much later on, and the conclusion was that it was more nonexistent than ever--later perusing of the series trajectory at large has lead me to believe that was more the fault of that pair of games on an individual level than some fundamental fault of the shared concept, but one bad or dull experience poisoned the well for the rest to an extent. I have again kept my distance since, except for tangents like Let's Go and Legends: Arceus--games that do not necessarily inform or conform to the conventions and expectations of the main branch and so are more easily judged by their individual merits.
Pre-release of Scarlet, I was caught up in a personal merry-go-round of circular rationalizations of why I wouldn't need to play it--most of the vtubers I watch would be anyway, and that vicarious experience ought to be enough--meaning that I absolutely would be and was only futilely trying to talk myself out of a decision that had already been made. By this point I know there are enough things in the universal Pokémon game loop and design style that don't leave me asking for more: the slowly-animating and resolving battles, the "simplistic if not committing to the granularity and human element of competitive play" RPG mechanics, the formulaic predictability of the general structure the narratives and player journeys generally take--everything that attritionally needled my adolescent affection full of holes in its day. These things are absolutely in place for Scarlet; it does not promise or deliver a series revolution in any shape or form that I could point to as meaningfully distinct, even with its center-stage open world concept. The illusion of free roaming is strong in it, and the opportunities to push beyond expected boundaries are present and welcome, but for players that simply want to go on a ride through a scenario crafted for the new region, there is a topographically and mechanically guided path through the expanse which if followed, leaves the game feeling and playing much the same as any other more narrowly sequestered series experience--just with a different presentational scale and the emotions it evokes, whether of awe or exhaustion.
Similar paradoxical feelings may be aroused by the technical performance intrinsically interwoven into every facet of said presentational gambits made by the game. They are already things of infamy, having subsumed and defined much of the game's reputation as it lives on in hearsay, critical evaluations and personal anecdotes; I have no interest or cause in denying any of it, but to simply state that it is as bad or worse than anyone's heard, and qualitatively it made little effect on my time with the game. I tend to find broad concepts like "open worlds" more engaging the more technically rudimentary and low-spec they are; the friction between the ambition of scale and the hardware struggling to convey and realize the promise becomes part of the spectacle and fascination in a way. From that angle, Scarlet is a carny beyond measure, as one cannot look away from its constant pratfalls and gaffes that it commits through the sheer indignation of its fundamental existence. None of it is deliberate, and both developers and audiences likely wish it were otherwise, but they did not congeal as an albatross around the game's neck in the act of playing it. "What happened here" is the question asked that all anyone can do is conjecture in response to, so my inclination was to instead redirect into "what can one do with what's here."
Pokémon as a series always leaves me unfulfilled for that stated disinterest in how it chooses to communicate and shape its own mechanics, so if that was all that was there I would have no desire to come back to it periodically in the way that I do. It has always been a set of visual design in the form of the creatures themselves and particularly the human cast that has maintained my interest and the pang of missing out on those of them that I have not witnessed in context for myself. It's why generations V and VII are among my "favourites" despite never having played either, and how that kind of interaction informs how I see the series now; if I assess them boring RPGs, an artbook or encyclopedia entry may suffice just as well. For those priorities, Scarlet is my favourite game in the series for the cast that it conjures up and presents in sheer visual design alone--not a single person across the school faculty, gym leader scene, Pokémon League and Elite Four bunch, Team Star members, and the assorted rivals, friends and significant persons is a "miss" in the conceptual basis of their appearances or how they're presented by the game through mannerisms and theatrics. Did I enjoy seeking out Pokémon old and new throughout? Yes, with as many excellent new designs as there are--but the thrill of meeting a new character was the carrot that motivated those travels in the first place, as it always has for me, and never as much as here. In aesthetics, the music also did much of the lifting for the total impression left, and unusually so for a series I don't associate with soundtracks that personally captivate; in here nearly every new composition had me stop to take notice, sometimes literally so. Toby Fox's characteristic compositions especially stand out, though by no means on their own.
What makes the game my favourite in the series that I've played is that focus it has on character and narrative to contextualize the rest of it. Pokémon stories are frequently dismissed as immaterial and barely justified framing for the play mechanics in a way that creates a barrier of ever being able to see them as anything more or even allowing them to break that mold. The guideline that exists for myself is fairly simple: if a piece of media is written, it should make the writing mean something. Scarlet manages to pull off that deceptively small request through a solid structure that guides the overall gameflow, in presenting three parallel storylines with their own central casts (which nonetheless don't exist in their simple localized bubbles) that can be followed to their conclusion in player-directed order (given the limitations of Pokémon levels required to complete each step). The long-term development and storytelling engaged with through these narratives are far beyond the means of any previous series game I've witnessed, in that characters actually feel like individuals instead of the simple functions of their archetypes, and the writing around them is capable of eliciting genuine emotional responses, frequently landing as funny or even as affecting in ways that could easily provoke tears for the subjects explored and conveyed. Paldea as a region is sold as meaningful through the interpersonal connections on display, in who knows who and where they turn up in the context of your own travels, in a way that the theme park-like artifice of the environmental design could not carry on its own. It's not such a stretch for someone of my particular hang-ups with the series, but I still have to underline that Scarlet was a game that I quickly was playing "for the story" which is a statement to be taken completely sincerely instead of a backhanded compliment. It was simply the best and most compelling aspect of a game I otherwise generally and largely enjoyed.
I might go back someday to try out the games that in outside observation seem the most intriguing in the stretches of the series I've overlooked, but in the meantime I'm satisfied that I came "back" to Pokémon after so long and such intermittent fits and starts, and was able to commit to the wonderful and volatile reality of what Scarlet is and make the most of it.
