Brief warning: this post is going to be unbearably salty, and I am not very going to be nice about Scarlet and Violet's boss design. So before I go into that, a brief list of the boss fights in this game that I do genuinely and sincerely like:
- Nemona's final Champion battle - a strong, well-balanced team that speaks very well to her personality. What's not to love?
- Arven's final team - One of the best teams in the series in terms of playing to Arven's personality, with all of them tying into his story or his love of cooking in one way or another. They also take his 'mons used during the Titan fights, which I think is a very cute touch!
- The final battle of The Way Home - I won't go into specifics because of spoilers, but they're handled well by the story, and in particular are the best usage of Legendaries in the final battle of the plot in the series.
Alright, we've gotten that out of the way. So, to be blunt about it - outside of the cases I just listed, I think Scarlet and Violet's boss design is genuinely the worst in the series, and it's not even close. By some miracle, they've managed to surpass X and Y's and SWSH's poor boss design and have landed into truly uncharted territory of being straight up boring. You've got three kinds of major battles, to go with the three storylines - Victory Road, Starfall Street and Path of Legends - and they're all bland and low points of the game. To elaborate on them more, let's go through what I consider "best" to worst:
1. Starfall Street - Yes, this is somehow the best of all of them. While I think the Let's Go autobattles are a complete wash - meaningless, bloated filler that exists for no purpose but to eat up your time - the actual Team Star fights are actually pretty fun! The unique Starmobile Revavrooms make for fun bosses that ties Team Star together while also being interesting in every encounter, and the teams themselves are pretty well designed, for the most part. I'd like to mention Eri in particular, who actually caught me off guard with her bulky Annihilape and Revaroom. I can nitpick some things - it's embarrassing that many of these 'mons don't have 4 moves, or that they use very few Paldea 'mons - but overall, they're the best fights this game has to offer. Penny and her Baby-Doll Eyes spam after all this is a bit disappointing, but she's got a 10/10 battle theme so I can't be too bad.
I'm sorry to say that this is probably the last time I will even remotely approach positivity in this post lmao
2. Path of Legends - The Titans are, frankly, a joke. What makes the concept of the 6v1 battles - namely Totem Pokemon in SM/USUM or Nobles in PLA - interesting is that they take advantage of the inherent juxtaposition inherent to fighting a team of 1 Pokemon and add unique things to compensate for it. The Totems gain a statboost of some kind and call upon some kind of helper to aid them (and turn the fight into a 2v1), while the Nobles are less oriented around the battle itself and more around using overworld mechanics - and in doing so feel like unique experiences and rewarding fights. I'd like to mention USUM's Totem Araquanid and SM's Totem Lurantis in particular as highlights.
Path of Legends throws this out of the window in favor of bland shlock that exists as nothing but filler to justify Miraidon's HMs. Splitting the fight into phases is actually pretty interesting, as it introduces an overworld element to the battle and breaks from the restriction of one HP bar - but the game does nothing interesting with this concept, so who cares? The first phase is just against a single Pokemon that's bigger than average, and the second phase is a 2v1 where the Titan gains a statboost you have Arven helping you out. This is a fine concept, until you realize that it screws up the Titan's AI and gives them an obvious target, trivializing the fight even further. The 2v1 in Totem fights is stacked against the player to offset the disadvantage of a Totem being just one Pokemon against up to 6, but the 2v1 in SV just stacks things even more in the player's favor. It's just... profoundly disappointing. I think the best showcase of this is Titan Dondozo/Tatsugiri. Given how Dondozo and Tatsugiri play in Doubles, this could be an exciting to take advantage of that and make a really cool and creative boss, but instead the battle is just divided into two segments - one fight versus a Dondozo, and the other versus Tatsugiri. It's so uninteresting, and completely wastes the most obvious gimmick for a Titan battle! Dondozo is the one Pokemon ever that actually
wants the fight to be a 2v1, and yet that's simply gone to waste.
1. Victory Road - Every battle except for Nemona is a complete and utter joke. People in this thread and elsewhere have gone on about how bad Geeta is, and I certainly agree with that, but she's just one example of many. No Gym Leader ever uses more than 4 Pokemon, most of them don't have 4 moves, and Terastalization is used in the most uninteresting way possible. Not once is it ever used in a clever or creative way - it just takes a random, non-gen 9 Pokemon and turns them into that gym's type. This makes them all utterly predictable, and furthermore places the emphasis on their team away from the Paldean Pokemon they use and instead make their ace into some random Pokemon from an older generation. X and Y Gym Leaders were bad, but at least they consistently used 'mons from their own region! Terastalizing is by far the mechanic with the most potential for mix-ups and creative strategies, so why is it put to such waste here? It's not as if you have to be too cruel about it - even just occasionally turning into a type that has good defensive synergy with their team (such as Ghost for Larry, or Ground for Grusha) would be enough to justify the Gym Leaders using the mechanic.
I think the worst example of this in the game is Larry, which is a shame since I love him as a character. His team of Komala and Dudunsparce is easy to steamroll with a Fighting type, and his Staraptor only has
TWO MOVES! Not only that, but his Staraptor switching out of the Flying type makes his team even more susceptible to being swept by a Fighting type. Even just having Quick Attack would be a nice little trick coming off of Tera's STAB boost, but they couldn't even do that - it just has Facade. What a joke.
As a tangent, the lack of level scaling is, frankly, pathetic. If romhacks of Gen 1 and 2 games can implement it, Game Freak has no excuse to not implement such a basic mechanic for an open world game. What's the point in roaming the whole wide landscape when I'm pigeonholed into doing boss encounters in a set order?
To be blunt about it, Scarlet and Violet are the only Pokemon games in which I am actively not interested in battling, and that is something I should never feel in a Pokemon game. It's as if battling is a mere distraction that takes away from the experience of exploring the overworld. It's a shame, too, because I think Scarlet and Violet have a lot of potential and I really hope the series draws more from it going forward, but I don't think I'll ever replay it when the boss fights give me almost nothing to look forward to. No game in the series, not even the easier or more dull ones like the aforementioned X and Y or SWSH, actively bore me during boss fights, and that's a real shame how once again, GF proves its inability to take a step forward without taking 3 more back.