I don't really know anyone who has come back to Pokemon.
I only know people who were either never into it, or have always been into it. This review is not for those people. This review is for people like myself, who, after around 15 years of Pokemon ignorance, felt like regaining a little piece of their childhood, and Pokemon was the perfect place to get it.
I was never a Mario or Zelda guy. Nintendo, in general, was always just a Pokemon machine for me, and this was one of the main reasons that I stopped playing back when I did - I could never justify buying a whole new console just for the one and only game that I wanted to play. And so I surprised myself, last week, when I purchased a Switch, and felt a wave of giddiness as I added Pokemon Violet to my shopping cart.
I'm only a few hours in, and while it was fun to be back in the world, it has changed so much from the black and white (or Green and less-green) top down pixellated days, that the nostalgia didnt flood in the way that I had hoped. The most interesting (and pointless) change was the attempt at storyline setup. The first few hours of gameplay are just following Helpful Lady around the map as she tells you about the school that you're about to join. It's basically dialogue after dialogue from classmates, Prof. Oak clone, more Prof. Oak clone, more classmates, until you are finally led to your bedroom and forced to sleep. I understand the expectation to tell a bit of a story, and up till this point I had held my breath, hoping that it would all be over soon and I could get around to the fun part - finding, catching and fighting Pokemon.
Violet/Scarlet doesn't quite let you off that easily, though.
Helpful Lady bursts into your room without knocking, wakes you wake up, it's suddenly your last day of school. You do a bit more walking around and talking, and wondering what the point of the whole 'school chapter' was, if you just skip straight to the end anyway. Finally, though, a few gameplay hours later, there is a pretty explicit "Thanks for putting up with this crappy intro, you are now free to play the game."
I'm not going to say *spoiler alert*, as there is literally nothing about the story that you can spoil, and that was my biggest grievance with the entire ordeal. After forcing me to talk to all these characters and go to school and be shown around the cafeteria and classrooms etc. the 'story' amounts to this: Helpful Lady thinks that you should fight gyms. Emo Gary thinks you should fetch some carrots. You see, he's pretty upset. All he wants to do is make sandwhiches. He's all about that picnic life, at the end of the day, but no one takes him seriously. If you dont feel like fighting gyms, you can opt to instead travel the world, fight titan Pokemon and collect the special ingredients that they protect. If you somehow survive this hallowing, probably 500 hour, ridiculous request of a ten year old, then you will be rewarded with... one of Emo Gary's sandwhiches.
This isn't a side quest like other RPGs where you detour for a few minutes and collect items for a farmer who inexplicably refuses to collect them himself. This is the drive behind the main story. It makes you wonder, why did they even bother? At least the first games didn't pretend. The introduction consisted of nothing more than typing your name, recieving a deadly creature and being sent off by your mother to conquer the world. It knew what we wanted, and it delivered.
It's not all bad, though. Once you are released from school - and given a motorbike - you are free to maim, kill and capture as you see fit. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of Pokemon that I recognized. One of my concerns when buying the newest generation was that I wouldn't know any of the Pokemon and so would not be able to feel invested in their progression and survival. However, from my time mostly on Yellow and Silver, and a little of Ruby, I would say that I'm familiar with about 50% of those that I encounter, and it is a joy to see them once again.
The battles are cool, too. I remember the days of playing Pokemon Stadium on my cousins N64, and absolutely loving the fact that the battles were more than pixellated blobs shaking a bit, and making 6-bit noises. Well, that's every battle, now. I suppose it has been like that for a while, but every encounter in Violet, as you would expect, is basically a mini Pokemon stadium brawl. It's fun.
If you're like me and just feel like bringing a bit of your childhood back, the new Pokemon has got to be the way to go. I've tried ROMs of the older stuff but I've played them absolutely to death already, and the idea of booting them up always brings more enjoyment than actually doing it. Violet (or Scarlet) is a fun way to have a similar experience whilst also not feeling like you're exactly doing the same thing all over again. If you've played a little bit and were disappointed by the slow dragging of the intro, know that the sense of adventure and freedom you were expecting is just over the hill, if you just spam A and push through.
As a final note, I recommend catching one of those little blue bouncing guys early on - Azurill. 
They have a move called Slam, and by-golly, is it satisfying to use.
Happy gaming.
- Aluca Sol 