Pokemon Scarlet and Violet players are reporting that the newest Pokemon games are experiencing some problems with performance. Before Pokemon Scarlet and Violet officially released, reviewers with early access are saying that they are experiencing some fairly significant problems while playing the new games.
The two newest games in the popular Pokemon franchise have been much anticipated, which is nothing out of the ordinary for the series. And while Scarlet and Violet are not the first Pokemon games to release on the Switch, they are the first traditional Pokemon games on the Switch to feature open-world gameplay and different paths that the player can choose. Earlier games in the franchise were more linear in nature. While there have been Pokemon Scarlet and Violet leakers, these early access reviewers are some of the first people to actually play the games.
Multiple reviewers received early access to Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and reported that they experienced several gameplay bugs and performance issues. Some were relatively minor, like visual clipping and invisible Pokemon, while others were much more serious, like heavy frame rate drops or the games crashing. According to the writers, the major issues were infrequent and problems were mostly restricted to non-game-breaking graphical errors. It seems that a lot of this is due to the Switch's inability to properly keep up with the performance requirements for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. These performance issues are likely a big contributor to the low reviews for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
While Pokemon games are practically guaranteed to sell well, there is always some apprehension when a developer decides to make changes to a tried and true formula. This was demonstrable with the first open-world game in the Pokemon franchise, which was Pokemon Legends: Arceus. Arceus was generally well received, which boded well for Scarlet and Violet. These performance problems could put a serious wrench in the works, though, especially when combined with the surprisingly low reviews that the two newest additions to the franchise are receiving. The Pokemon Company has announced a 1.01 launch day update, but unfortunately, this patch did not fix the performance issues that players are experiencing.
Having such glaring problems come out so early in the games' history is definitely not a great thing, and might hamper sales or cause some people to return their copies. There is a strong and well-established fanbase for the Pokemon franchise, though, and while these sorts of gameplay and graphical issues might put off some players. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet fans have been waiting for a long time, so it's unlikely that something like this will scare them off.
Pokemon Scarlet andViolet are available now for Nintendo Switch.
Source: Polygon
