Following the launch of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, one player discovers a simple trick for helping to improve the game performance. Unfortunately for excited players, Game Freak's latest mainline Pokemon game has largely been defined by major performance related problems. Reports have indicated everything from minor visual issues like characters clipping through objects, to much more serious problems from frame rate drops and even the game outright crashing.
Fan disappointment has continued to rise as many would argue that the gameplay is the best that the series has seen in quite some time. The performance related problems of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet has gotten so bad that some have even demanded refunds. While Nintendo nor Game Freak have yet to comment on the outstanding issues, fans are hoping that many of these problems can still be fixed through post-launch updates. For now, some fans have attempted to find their own workarounds.
Speadrunner and Steamer Linkus7 recently shared one simple trick that players can do to bypass a few of the outstanding performance related problems. While not ideal, Linkus7 recommends that players stop and restart Pokemon Scarlet and Violet frequently, especially for those who plan on playing the game for multiple hours in one sitting. Restarting the game has proven to fix a memory leak that can happen during play sessions for both the launch version as well as the post release update 1.0.1.
The memory leak issue was originally discovered by a content creator named Flokade1 who go an early review copy. While their playtime was a bit extreme, keeping the game on for 5 days straight without restarting it, they noticed that the game started to fall apart. Half of the textures found in the new land of Paldea failed to load and the frame rate plummeted. In an effort to figure out why these things were happening, restarting the game proved to be the fix, as the issues completely went away.
In addition to the performance related issues, many fans have also been underwhelmed with the game's visual graphics. While there's been no shortage of cries for a new Switch console from Nintendo, one with stronger hardware to match the demands of modern games, many fans lay the current blame at the feet of Game Freak. In fact, one fan put together a comparison of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a game that launched 5 years ago to what many would argue with better visuals and performance.
Pokemon Scarlet andViolet are available now for Nintendo Switch.
