Pokemon Violet First Thoughts vol. 4

so I'm 45 hours into the game and have 220 in my Pokedex. I'm at 10/18 badges. I'm sure other people have already blitzed to the end by now, and probably even 100%'d the whole thing because they don't have any other obligations. But I'm still taking my time to thoroughly explore every area, capturing everything I can along the way. Forget B teams, I've got C and D teams because I keep wanting to avoid over-leveling my party.

As for the going in blind thing... yeah, I don't think I'll bother doing this again in the future. It was slightly fun to be surprised by my starter's final form, and I'm lucky it's pretty cool. But then I was shocked when Capsakid evolved into Scovillain, one of the pug-ugliest Pokemon I've ever seen. Made me almost wish I never bothered, except Grass/Fire is still a hype combo...

Also, I realized I appreciate knowing what level guys will evolve at! That gives me mini-goals to work towards, instead of leveling with a vague hope that they'll pop soon. Or the frustration leading me to look up exactly how somebody evolves, only to find out it was a stone the whole time. Or, disappointment in missing out entirely - turns out there's an evolution after Primeape that I would have never seen, and certainly wouldn't have figured out his evolution method on my own.

I never woulda figured that stuff out on my own, and only gotten frustrated! So while it was cool that twice my guys evolved right after a gym battle (without my preparation), as if the battle truly let them unlock their full potential, I kinda wish I'd known the threshold so I could have just bumped them up beforehand. And don't get me started on moveset planning, and wanting to avoid wasting TMs (even though they're practically infinite, I still don't want to waste 'em!).

I've still got a ton of game to go, but at this point I think my little experiment has proven that, for me, playing blind isn't the way to go.