Nearly One Year Later, Pokemon Scarlet And Violet Still Don’t Have Shiny Sparkles

There are few Pokémon games that reach the level of controversy and contention that Pokémon Scarlet and Violet did. For all the great things that it had, there were just as many things that held it back, such as the technical performance and poorly executed mechanics, like Tera Raids and Let’s Go. While this has caused a lot of discourse over the games’ quality, there is one criticism that everyone can agree on, and that’s the unfortunate absence of shiny sparkles.

What Are Shiny Sparkles?

In Pokémon games beyond the second generation, you have the chance of finding a Pokémon of a different color than what is normal for that species. These Pokémon are simply called “shiny.” When you encounter a shiny Pokémon, they’ll emit a flash of light followed by sparkles, letting you know that they are, indeed, ‘shiny.’

When it comes to wild Pokémon, this shiny sparkle used to be exclusive to encountering them in a battle. That was just how finding Pokémon in the older games worked, after all. However, Pokémon Legends: Arceus would do away with random encounters entirely, having Pokémon visible and roaming around its semi open-world maps. When there was a shiny Pokémon, you could see a glimmer of light and stars before and after encountering it. Even if the shiny itself wasn’t in your line of sight, you’d hear a jingle to let you know that it was nearby.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet follow in Arceus’ footsteps by also doing away with random encounters. However, it took things a step further (or a step back) by also removing the shiny sparkles that could be seen or heard when a shiny Pokémon is nearby. Now, even though you can still see whether a Pokémon is shiny or not, you’ll have to encounter them in battle once again for the confirmation.

Why Do Shiny Sparkles Matter?

Going back to Arceus, the shiny sparkle and jingle felt like a valuable addition due to the game’s different approach to encounters. There was even a side mission that gave players a free shiny Ponyta, feeling like a proper introduction to how the feature worked. The accessibility of shinies was one of the high points of the game.

But Pokémon Scarlet and Violet would benefit even more from Shinies. There’s a large amount of Pokémon that can be on the screen at the same time. They also spawn in and out pretty quickly as you move around the region. These Pokémon are also scaled to their proper sizes, meaning some can be much smaller and harder to notice (I can’t count how many creatures my Miraidon should’ve turned into roadkill because I couldn’t see them while driving around). It’s because of this that you’re pretty much guaranteed to miss some Shinies – without the visual or audio cues, you won’t notice that they’re present unless you’re actively searching for them.

The argument can be made that these things make Shinies more rewarding to notice due to how difficult it is. But there are other design choices that conflict with this, such as the previously mentioned Let’s Go feature not allowing your Pokémon to kill Shinies, or Shiny Pokémon behaving differently from others that are usually grouped together (neither of which really matter if you can barely notice the Pokémon to begin with). Besides, a way they could’ve made Shinies more rewarding while keeping the visual and audio cues from Arceus is by simply increasing their odds. What was done comes off less as an intentional design choice and more as something GameFreak didn’t think all the way through, leaving shiny hunting to be more anxious and tedious than it should be.

In addition to the size problem, there’s also the fact that not all Shinies are created equal. There are some that really do change the colors significantly, but there are also many that are simply a shade darker or a different color that is impossible to notice without a magnifying glass taped to your Switch. Scarlet and Violet in particular have come out with a staggering number of Shinies that fall under this description, like Tandemaus, Charcadet and Gholdengo (the latter of which you can’t actually find in the wild, but the point still stands). So even if you’re seeking out a specific Shiny in the wild, you could still miss it if the color difference isn’t very noticeable.

While the odds of Shinies make them much easier to catch if you take the right steps, the act of actually finding them is difficult due to all of these factors in play. Even for the more obvious shiny Pokémon, it can be a pain to find them when dealing with these issues. That’s not even including how hard it could be for people that are visually impaired or colorblind in some way.

This is worse considering GameFreak continues to hold outbreak events for the games, giving players the opportunity to find and catch specific Pokémon (like the various Ghost-type Pokémon with special marks that appeared around Halloween). Outbreaks are often used for shiny hunting with the picnic reset method, since whittling down the numbers increases the chances of a shiny spawning from them. But it’s harder to enjoy these events to the fullest when their main utility can be a chore to take part in.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have more pressing issues that need to be addressed, but bringing back the shiny Sparkles would be a very solid start to fixing them. Bringing it back can solve the games’ problems when it comes to shinies, making Shiny hunting as fun and accessible as it was in the game that came before it. There’s still hope for the addition to come along with the release of The Indigo Disk DLC.