Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were released in November 2022…at first, it did suffer from many glitches but those have slowly been fleshed out. The game is carrying on with the same 3D feel while making it completely open-world. This game brings us a whole new, while also very familiar Pokemon experience that die-hard fans are going to love. Wild encounters are now a much bigger part of the game and my personal favorite. However, there is a change in how rare the Pokemon actually is, and that has a big impact on players and their feelings about the title. While some new players might pick this game up and want to try some of the older Pokemon games, they will be in for a surprise when they see that it isn’t as easy as you might think to get rare shiny pokemon.
In some of the older and earlier games, wild grass would be around and that’s where you could find more rare Pokemon. They would then be revealed as shiny in battle…that is if it actually was shiny, to begin with. It was definitely more of a hunt. Now players are able to spot Pokemon from a distance while traveling to different areas on the map. The main thing is, shiny Pokemon are less rare than they used to be in the newly released game…which is upsetting some fans and taking away the drive and excitement they had with past Pokemon games. Being able to bring the rarity might not be an easy thing to do in the game either, especially with a new setup of finding and battling wild Pokemon, but many do believe it will help fans and players, in the long run, enjoy the games as they were again.
The newfound increase in finding shiny Pokemon will make it easier for a casual player to stumble upon them without realizing or even trying to hunt for them. This will, however, make it easier for hardcore Pokemon players and collectors to max out their shiny Pokemon collecting faster…although some players definitely enjoyed the long hunt better. The thing for hardcore players, is they take a lot more time to research going on wikis and other sites to find out about their Pokemon, hunt down shinies, and level them up, and are just solely hardcore players for the franchise and the collecting style game-play.
Casual players don’t go the extra couple of miles to research the shinies and hunt for them like hardcore gamers. So now, casual and hardcore gamers are going to be on the same level almost with the rarity of the Pokemon having gone down…this is something that might hurt the franchise but none of us can be sure of that yet. Players and fans don’t want the value of shiny Pokemon to go down and the specialness to be lost. Finding a shiny Pokemon now doesn’t feel like a truly exciting thing like it once was and that’s something that saddens the hearts of many true fans of the long-running franchise.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are available on the Nintendo Switch.
