Pokemon Scarlet & Violet missed the chance to nail player housing

While they look cute, the dorm rooms in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet feel like a wasted opportunity for player expression and customization in the game.

If there’s one thing that Pokemon players tend to go nuts for, it’s the opportunity to express themselves in their game of choice. Every game has a slightly different spin on it, with some offering lots of outfit choices and customization options, and others providing a mildly underwhelming selection.

The options for customizing your character in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet aren’t ground-breaking, but they do the job. One complaint that fans had when the game came out was that you were stuck wearing a school uniform throughout the whole game and couldn’t create new outfits.

While it does make sense to an extent for the player character to always be in uniform, one thing that doesn’t make sense is the static dorm rooms in the Academy.

You’re shown the dorm rooms fairly early on in the game – and they look lovely. The space is a little bare but it’s well designed and cozy, giving your character a nice place to rest while they’re at school. Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot you can do with this space.

If you’ve played other Pokemon titles that gave you access to Secret Bases, you may have been expecting some level of customization when entering your room for the first time. Previous games allowed player housing-style locations with decorations, so why wasn’t this included in Scarlet & Violet?

Players could have shopped for small trinkets or new blankets at the shops in Mesagoza, or even displayed their in-game photos on the wall. The kitchen could’ve even been utilized for sandwich-making, perhaps with a special “homemade” bonus being applied to food made in the dorm.

This sentiment was echoed by Pokemon fans online in a recent discussion about the game. Players pointed out how the dorm rooms felt like “a missed opportunity” and how having a Secret Base-style area could’ve added so much more life to the game.

There are many areas of the Scarlet & Violet games that were good but could’ve been great – and this is one of them. Hopefully, the next entries in the Pokemon series will give players more space to decorate and display in-game achievements or trinkets.

As Pokemon Legends Z-A is going to take place in Lumiose City, could the players have their own apartment perhaps? Or an underground Secret Base? There’s not been anything said officially about this idea, of course, but it would be exciting to see this in the next Pokemon title.