Player characters - what do you think of them now?

[Sheep]

SV has been out for around 8 months now so many of us have had time to play and adjust to the game. What do you think of the protagonists now that some time has passed? Do you like them? Still don't like them? If you had to rate their designs on a scale of 1-10, what would you give them?

 

[Devalue]

5/10 on the above design. Sees nothing bad, but nothing interesting either. Still looks quite young too.

2/10 on the protagonist in-game. Offers tons of trainer customization from the outset. Traps you in orange afterwards (as a Scarlet player). Looks very mismatched by trying to use any colors besides those. ...Looks mismatched on some of the uniforms alone, honestly. Cannot think of any worse looking (default) trainer.

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

3/10

I don't really like the default look of these characters much at all. (in the first game trailer I saw, the player character designs stuck out the most as my biggest reason I didn't want to buy the games) I have been able to make a couple of really nice looking custom characters, (uniforms aside) but I still like the character looks of SW/SH more.

 

[PageEmp]

Awful just awful. The female protagonist especially is just hideous, the reason I don't find her to be the flat out worst female protagonist in the series is because she doesn't remind me of an old dude crossdressing (I refuse to go into further detail). Altogether, not a fan of well, anything about these designs. Especially not those creepy eyes.

 

[_confused_piplup_]

I have never liked them, they really look so generic to me and so it does their clothing. I also don't like the lack of customization that they brought. On a scale of 1-10, it's pretty much a 2/10 for me, but I wouldn't imagine how a 1/10 would look like lol.

 

[Lysander]

4/10 overall, would be higher if the customisation didn't force you to wear a uniform throughout the whole game, makes sense to wear one at the academy but not outside of it and really just drags the rest of the customisation down

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

Honestly might be my least favorite
kinda just a bland design, and they try bringing back customization but nothing in the game really goes with the default outfit which you CANT change...

Also do we have official names of these two yet?

 

[Nah]

Ever since trainer customization became a thing I never really felt the need to judge the default design of the player characters, since you'll change their appearance and so it doesn't really matter what the initial is when you're not going to be spending much if any time with it. The rather limited customization options of certain games are a separate issue.

Though I suppose if I was to ignore all that, these certainly wouldn't be among my favorites, but I'm not sure how I'd order them really.

Also do we have official names of these two yet?

I had to look it up since for whatever reason I can't readily remember the default/official/canon names of the player characters from Gen 7 onward, but it's Florian and Juliana.

 

[Sweet Serenity]

I believe the player characters of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have downgraded compared to that of Pokémon Sword and Shield. While I do enjoy the enhanced character customization features for the character's faces in the beginning of the game, I am not a fan of being forced to wear the school uniforms throughout the entire adventure, especially when you're not attending school. The game has way too many different clothing stores to have such limited options as to what your character can wear. The clothes/uniforms also look way too masculine in this game, which is horrible to me. I miss the large clothing selections in Pokémon Sword and Shield and the ability to wear pretty dresses and heels. I would never leave the house wearing a suit or shirt with a tie, so neither should my player character. They could have at least made the female character resemble the Lass Trainer Class to go for a schoolgirl look, but nope. Pokémon's attempt at what appears to be gender inclusiveness simply ruined things for people that enjoy feminine fashion.

One thing I like is how emotionally expressive the player character is in this game though. This is a big upgrade compared to Pokémon (Ultra) Sun and (Ultra) Moon where he or she just has a permanent smile in every single situation. However, the game has also downgraded in terms of skin color too. I can't stress it enough. Starting with Pokémon (Ultra) Sun and (Ultra) Moon, players had the choice of giving their character dark skin. Yet, for some reason in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, dark skin has been removed. For instance, my avatar is my character that I designed in Pokémon Sword. She has the darkest skin color option, which is closer to my own skin tone. Yet, when you compare it to my character in Pokémon Violet, who has that game's darkest skin color option, it is much lighter. I will provide an image below an example for comparisons. For players that enjoy making their created character resemble them, this is highly disappointing. If they actually kept the dark skin tone, I would have rated it a little higher because of the other facial customization features. Still, I wish the game had better hairstyles too. Overall, while I am not sure what number to give it as a rating, but I will say that I am overall disappointed.

Spoiler:

 

[stringzzz]

At first I thought the initial face customization at the beginning was okay, but as far as clothing customization, it is totally lacking. Prime example here, after doing hundreds of online battles, I've seen hundreds of people's characters. I can't really recall ever thinking "Oh wow, that person did something really cool with their character, how unique!", because instead I recall that pretty much every character looks the same, or at least way too similar. I think they should have not only a ton more clothing options especially non school uniforms. They should also have custom color options down to choosing the colors for individuals parts of the clothing. It's like... Part of the story with Team Star showed that while they almost dropped out of school, it showed that they were really brilliant and creative, hence their wild costumes they typically wore. Imagine giving the player that level of customization, so when playing against random people online, you really can say "Oh wow, that person did something really cool with their character, how unique!". I don't think it's too much to ask for, but that's just my opinion.

 

[𒈟Lavemu𒐫]

5/10 I like the face and hair customizations this time but I really wish I could not wear school uniform, As i would like to have a purple themed outfit (my favorite color)
Overall i think they could have done better.

 

[Megan]

Meh, but at least it's not (multiplayer) ORAS levels of bad. I've stopped caring too much about the protagonist and just use them as the "vehicle" of the actual characters (the Pokemon team) a long time ago.

2/10 or maybe 3/10 i'd say.

 

[ReKoil]

4/10 - too young and generic. Being stuck with the school uniforms didn't help them either.

 

[Sandslash Fan]

I wouldn't mind them if we could change our outfits in any meaningful way. I hate covering up my character's face with a helmet, but those are the only decent outfit parts right now since they won't give us the Eevee backpack.