Pokémon Scarlet and Violet

• 1. Introduction

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  Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are role-playing games from the studio Game Freak, built for the Nintendo Switch and released on the 18th of November 2022. The story starts at a school. Players enroll at Naranja Academy in Scarlet or Uva Academy in Violet. Both schools run an annual Treasure Hunt, which pushes students to roam the region of Paldea in search of something they treasure. Early in the journey, the player meets a legendary Pokémon, either Koraidon or Miraidon. It has lost its ability to battle, yet it joins the trip anyway. Paldea has no borders between its cities and its wilderness, which was new for the series. These are the first games of the ninth generation of Pokémon. They arrived with big ambitions and a complicated reception. How do three separate stories fit inside one open region? What did the developers rebuild from the ground up? And what did critics and players make of the result?

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• 2. Routes and Raids

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  Victory Road is the first of three story routes, and it asks the player to beat Paldea's eight Gyms in whatever order they like. Earlier games in the series fixed that order. Once the player holds eight badges, the Elite Four and their Top Champion, Geeta, wait for a challenge.

  Path of Legends sends the player after five Titan Pokémon: Klawf, Bombirdier, Orthworm, Dondozo, and either Great Tusk in Scarlet or Iron Treads in Violet. Each victory yields Herba Mystica, an item that gives the player's mount new skills, such as jumping higher and climbing walls. That mount is Koraidon or Miraidon, with the types fighting-dragon and electric-dragon. Riding it is how players cross Paldea's terrain.

  Starfall Street pits the player against Team Star, a villainous organization made up of rebellious students. The player must defeat a set number of its members before a time limit runs out, and then face the leader of that base. Five of these Star Bases stand between the player and the route's final boss. Finishing all three routes unlocks a fourth and final one, which resolves the main story.

  Sprigatito, Fuecoco, and Quaxly are the three starter Pokémon, the first creatures a player obtains in the game. An Auto Battle feature lets the player send a Pokémon out into the overworld to defeat wild Pokémon without entering a turn-based fight. Objectives within each route can be completed in any order.

  The Terastal phenomenon wraps a Pokémon in a crystalline shell and changes its type to match its own Tera Type. A type is the elemental attribute that decides a Pokémon's strengths and weaknesses. A move called Tera Blast takes on the same type as the user's Tera Type. Players can also change a Pokémon's Tera Type.

  Wild Terastallized Pokémon can be fought in Tera Raids, where up to four players take on one under a time limit. Each player may use only one Pokémon. If that Pokémon is knocked out, the remaining time shrinks. Beat the raid boss and the player can catch it. Online features let players team up for these raids.

  Picnics let players spend time with their party and make sandwiches that grant a variety of boons. Pokémon can also breed during a picnic, which produces eggs. Up to four players can picnic and cook together online. Union Circles let up to four players explore the overworld at the same time, and players can trade and battle over the internet.

  Making a Pokémon look like living crystal was a problem for the model team to solve, and their methods are a story of their own.

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• 3. Paldea's Story

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  A vast hollow called the Great Crater of Paldea sits at the center of the region, which appears to be loosely based on the Iberian Peninsula. Inside it lies Area Zero. Elsewhere, Paldea offers lakes, wastelands, and mountain ranges.

  Nemona is a Champion-ranked Trainer who rivals the player on Victory Road and battles them again and again. When the player reaches Champion rank, she asks for a final battle. The player wins.

  Arven recruits the player on Path of Legends to find the five legendary Herba Mystica, and his reason is personal. His pet Mabosstiff was badly hurt by a Pokémon in Area Zero, where his parent works. That parent is Professor Sada in Scarlet or Professor Turo in Violet. After the five Titans fall, the herbs heal Mabosstiff and restore the lost powers of Koraidon or Miraidon.

  Penny is a shy schoolgirl who seems to stand against Team Star, a group blamed for bullying at the academy. In truth, she is Cassiopeia, Team Star's founder, and she enlists the player in Operation Starfall to force the group to disband. Academy director Clavell helps in secret, disguised as a student named Clive.

  The truth is that Team Star was founded to counter bullying rather than cause it. Eighteen months earlier, its confrontation with the bullies led them to drop out and several staff members to resign. After the player beats all five squad bosses, Penny reveals herself in the schoolyard and loses a battle. Clavell then drops his disguise and offers peace. Team Star's members must still perform community service for several violations.

  The final route, The Way Home, begins when Arven and the player choose Nemona and Penny as allies and head for the Zero Lab, the professor's laboratory in Area Zero. There they meet Paradox Pokémon, biological relatives of existing species from the ancient past in Scarlet or the far future in Violet. Koraidon and Miraidon turn out to be Paradox Pokémon, relatives of Cyclizar. They were driven out of Area Zero after losing a territory struggle with a second, more aggressive one.

  The professor greets them as an AI substitute. The real professor was killed in a laboratory incident at some point before the games begin. The original built a time machine to retrieve Paradox Pokémon, and the AI is bound to keep it running at all costs. It urges the player to shut the machine down to protect Paldea's ecology, yet its programming forces it to fight.

  After the AI's first defeat, the machine's security protocols disable every Poké Ball not registered under Sada's or Turo's ID. Only the player's Koraidon or Miraidon is left to battle. Its victory makes the time machine fail. The AI then travels to an alternate time so the machine can be destroyed, and it apologizes to Arven for the original professor neglecting him as a child.

  Back at the academy, Nemona, Clavell, and Geeta organize a tournament that pits faculty against students, and the player wins it.

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• 4. Real and Deformed

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  Late 2019, around the time Pokémon Sword and Shield came out, is when development of Scarlet and Violet began. Game Freak wanted what it called a "real and deformed" look, pairing realistic textures with stylized character designs. Keiichi Maezawa of Game Freak explained at a conference that the goal was to ground the games in a more realistic environment, closer to the real world.

  Natural sound was a second path to realism. The team built a program called PokeSynth, which creates a wide variety of sounds from a Pokémon species' in-game cry. They wanted a large library of sounds that later games in the series could reuse. Staff went into a forest and played Pokémon sounds through speakers to judge how believable they felt. They also visited zoos to study how animals change their vocalizations under different conditions, and they sorted Pokémon into groups to decide what each species would sound like.

  Every Pokémon received a new model. Game Freak first drew blueprints and sent setting material and motion instructions to a model team, who built the model from those materials. Meetings followed to decide other aspects, and other staff handled facial expressions and emotions in the animations. Shading and appearance were adjusted to convey each species' personality, with many unique textures. For the Terastallized state, those textures gave way to a crystalline effect.

  Previous games had painted faces onto textures, but here every species received modeled and rigged facial features. The team also tried to reuse animations from earlier games wherever possible, which complicated the work. They had to find the most cost-effective way to fit old animations onto new models and rigs. Animations were finished in an in-house program.

  Pokémon based on real objects and animals borrowed elements from those motifs in their movements, and the animation team researched which source suited each species. Species that resemble inanimate objects were designed so that they would read as living creatures. Many Pokémon were altered so their idle animations stayed clear and interesting in the traditional battle view, where the camera sits behind the player's Pokémon.

  How well these detailed models would run on the Switch was about to be tested in public.

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• 5. Leaks and Launch

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  A partially live-action trailer shown in a Pokémon Presents on the 27th of February 2022 introduced the games and revealed the three starter Pokémon. On the 1st of June 2022, a second trailer officially revealed Koraidon and Miraidon, along with Smoliv, Lechonk, Pawmi, and the characters Nemona, Sada, and Turo.

  A third trailer on the 3rd of August 2022 gave the region's name and showed Terastallization. During the closing ceremony of the 2022 Pokémon World Championships on the 21st of August 2022, a new trailer introduced Cyclizar, plus new items and abilities for competitive play. A fourth trailer on the 7th of September 2022 detailed the three routes and revealed Mela, Brassius, and Geeta. On the 6th of October 2022, a 14-minute trailer followed four players each taking a different path, and it showed Farigiraf, the evolution of Girafarig.

  The Pokémon Company also published in-universe videos. A camera trap revealed Grafaiai, a web seminar revealed Wiglett, a livestream revealed Bellibolt, and a short found-footage clip revealed Greavard.

  On the 4th of November 2022, a special edition Nintendo Switch OLED model with themed artwork went on sale. A week before launch, on the 11th of November 2022, Splatoon 3 held a Splatfest themed around the three starter types.

  Leaks arrived as early as July, when low-quality images of unrevealed characters and Pokémon appeared online. Gimmighoul slipped out in early November through a datamine of the spin-off game Pokémon Go, after it had accidentally appeared in a pre-release trailer. A few days before release, 72 Pokémon from the game leaked and spread quickly on Instagram and TikTok.

  ROMs of the games were posted on the forum 4chan, and players livestreamed the games before release day. Nintendo tried to take the leaks down, but other accounts reposted the material.

  The games shipped with numerous graphical and technical errors, including bugs and glitches that hurt performance. On the 1st of December 2022, Nintendo apologized and announced update 1.1.0, which fixed some bugs. Update 1.2.0, in February 2023, fixed more, but it also introduced a rare bug that corrupted save files.

  Update 1.3.0 arrived on the 19th of April 2023, yet critics had already made up their minds.

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• 6. The Hidden Treasure

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  On the 27th of February 2023, the Pokémon Day presentation unveiled a trailer for The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero, a downloadable expansion pass. It held two parts, The Teal Mask and The Indigo Disk.

  The Teal Mask arrived on the 13th of September 2023 and centered on the Legendary Pokémon Ogerpon. It draws on the legend of Momotarō. The academy organizes a school trip to the land of Kitakami, which coincides with a festival in the village. While there, the player uncovers the truth behind a local legend.

  The Indigo Disk followed on the 14th of December 2023 and focused on the Legendary Pokémon Terapagos. The player becomes an exchange student at Blueberry Academy, the sister school of their own. The trip eventually leads back to Area Zero to conclude the plot.

  The expansion pass brought over 230 returning Pokémon that had been absent from the base game. It also added new ones, such as Poltchageist, and gave new evolutions to Applin and Duraludon.

  The Mochi Mayhem epilogue came on the 11th of January 2024. It is considered the epilogue to both the expansion and the games themselves. The player returns to Kitakami to catch a new Mythical Pokémon, Pecharunt.

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• 7. Songs and Crossovers

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  Teruo Taniguchi, who previously worked on Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, composed the music tied to Team Star. Longtime series composer Go Ichinose handled the music for Path of Legends and a track for battling the Ruinous Quartet. Junichi Masuda composed the Victory Road music, with further tracks by Minako Adachi and Hitomi Sato. Toby Fox, known for Undertale, produced additional music.

  The soundtrack was officially released in February 2024. It was also part of the launch lineup of the Nintendo Music software in October 2024.

  English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran contributed the song "Celestial". He has loved the series since childhood and had already worked with Pokémon Go on an event in 2021. "Celestial" is the first track in the series with lyrics. Its music video came out on the 29th of September 2022 and was directed by Yuichi Kodama.

  In the video, Sheeran meets sketch-style Pokémon. A Snorlax saves him from a car accident, and a Lapras carries him across a river. Art director Yu Nagaba drew the Pokémon, and according to an NME article, he imitated how Sheeran drew Pokémon as a child.

  The song plays over the end credits of the base game. Toby Fox later remixed it for the end credits of the expansions. Unlike the other songs, it is left off the official soundtrack release.

  On the 16th of November 2023, the pop duo Yoasobi and The Pokémon Company announced a first-anniversary song, "Biri-Biri". Japanese and English versions came out together on the 18th of November 2023, along with a music video. The video follows Nemona and a transfer student named Anna as they search for their "treasure". The song was inspired by a short story written by the novelist Ayano Takeda, and Yoasobi later performed it live at various locations.

  After release, the games became compatible with Pokémon Home, a cloud-based storage system that lets players keep Pokémon there and send Pokémon from past games into Scarlet and Violet. In 2023 they also linked up with Pokémon Go. Postcards sent from Go let Go players meet a special form of Gimmighoul, while Scarlet and Violet players can meet special forms of Vivillon. Promotional videos with characters from both games discussing Gimmighoul's lore ran before the link was officially revealed.

  The anime series Pokémon Horizons: The Series features several tie-ins, with locations, characters, and species from the games appearing in it. In August 2023, a Pokémon Presents announced a four-episode web series, Pokémon: Paldean Winds. It premiered on YouTube on the 6th of September 2023 and ended on the 13th of December 2023. Wit Studio produced it, and each episode follows a different academy student overcoming a problem.

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• 8. Critics and Sales

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  Metacritic labeled the reviews "mixed or average", which made Scarlet and Violet the lowest-rated mainline Pokémon games. OpenCritic found that 48% of critics recommended them.

  GameSpot writer Jake Dekker called the non-linear structure a "strength". Nintendo Life said the games captured the "real magic" of the first Pokémon games, Red and Blue, and described the story as "wholesome" with "genuinely tender moments". Rebekah Valentine of IGN enjoyed the open world, Tera Raids, and online mechanics, though she found the polish and depth lacking in places. Kenneth Shepard of Polygon praised Terastallization and the writing, but felt the games stepped back from Pokémon Legends: Arceus and left players unsure of the order of major story beats.

  Joel Franey of GamesRadar+ criticized the open world's "aimlessness" and "notable lack of stakes", while praising the music and interface improvements. Jason Faulkner of GameRevolution called the progression "awkward and semi-linear despite the open-world design". Lea Irion of 4Players felt the franchise was growing less ambitious each year. Willem Hilhorst of Nintendo World Report could forgive glitches given the series' history with MissingNo., but said the removal of long-standing features and the lack of polish would "jam the gears" for players.

  Technical problems drew the sharpest words. Oliver Mackenzie of Eurogamer called the games "comprehensive technical failures" next to other Switch titles. Reviewers made unfavorable comparisons with Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and Jhaan Ekler of The Washington Post described fans and critics as unhappy with the graphics. Some players asked for refunds soon after launch, and Nintendo granted them in most cases. The Pokémon Company's COO, Takato Utsunomiya, said the company would hold internal discussions about the series' release schedule.

  Sales told a different story. According to The Pokémon Company, these are the most pre-ordered titles in the series' history. Within three days, the games sold over 10 million copies worldwide, including 4.05 million in Japan alone. That was the highest three-day total of any software on any Nintendo platform and the best launch of any console-exclusive game. They were also the best-selling video games of 2022 in Japan.

  By June 2025, the games had sold 27.15 million copies, making them the second most sold Pokémon title and the sixth-best selling title on the Switch. They passed 28 million copies by December 2025. As of 2026, they have sold 8.66 million copies in Japan, second among Pokémon titles there behind Red and Green.

  On the 2nd of June 2025, the Nintendo Today! app showed footage of the Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade, with improved image quality and a frame rate of 60 frames per second. The free update was released on the 5th of June 2025.

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