Highlights
- Pokemon Scarlet and Violet offer an open-world design, allowing players to explore the Paldea region in a non-linear fashion with three different story routes.
- The games' lack of level scaling creates a difficulty imbalance, with players potentially encountering NPCs that are much stronger or weaker than their own team.
- The freedom to explore Paldea can lead to over-leveling or being under-leveled for certain challenges, affecting the overall difficulty of the game.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet set forth a new approach through their open-world design, letting the Paldea region be explored in a non-linear fashion. Offering up three different routes for story progression, each intertwined with Scarlet and Violet's supporting characters, the ways in which players could gain experience were largely left to their own devices. Though the need for Miraidon and Koraidon to travel across certain terrain types was made available through Arven's Herba Mystica storyline, the games showed less constraint than past titles in regard to whom the player could challenge at any point in their journey.
The newer generations of Pokemon have been considered by many to be easier experiences than past titles. This has been compounded through accessibility features like showing type effectiveness in battle or having EXP shared for the player's entire team, which have been left with mixed reception from fans. While these features have held both pros and cons, their use in tandem with Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's open-world freedom has amplified a few issues with the titles' difficulty levels. Because of their lack of level scaling, this has resulted in instances of both challenge and ease.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Open-World Freedom Can Create Both Challenge and Ease in Difficulty
Allowing the player to freely explore Paldea meant that they could come across NPCs that far outweighed the levels of their own team. This was the primary reason why Scarlet and Violet got rid of line-of-sight for Pokemon battling, creating the opportunity to either bypass or seek out a more difficult experience if desired. With this said, it was sometimes difficult to gauge just how tough a challenger would be, a feat that translated to the titles' use of Gyms. Without a clearly defined path, players could find themselves more under-leveled than anticipated.
This was partially remedied through the need to progress Arven's storyline in order to gain access to certain locations, though the general freedom in player agency meant that the opposite problem of over-leveling could occur as well. Paldea's exploration had players spending much more time battling against wild Pokemon, and given that Scarlet and Violet's main plot points could be put off for as long as desired, players could find themselves far too strong when returning to storyline progression. This was apparent if a player missed what was considered an early area's Gym or Team Star base, for example.
Similarly, if players chose to tackle Nemona's storyline as their final route, then there was a good chance that they would be quite over-leveled against Champion Geeta. With this being one of the pinnacle moments of the game before the player's descent into Area Zero, the lack of challenge could be seen as disappointing compared to past titles, lacking the formidable nature of a Champion like Sword and Shield's Leon. These instances have Scarlet and Violet leaning towards being too easy in moments of high importance.
As a result, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's levels of difficulty can oscillate, allowing for instances where the player can overcome challenges with either little or tremendous effort. This begs the question of how The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero will seek to present its own challenges; with players likely having access to their teams from the base game, it would seem that the two-part DLC will need to up the ante on what kinds of obstacles they present. It could be that they will rely on the use of level caps, at least for The Indigo Disk, helping to create a more even playing field.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are available now for the Nintendo Switch.
