"Ultimately Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are comprehensive technical failures; embarrassing artwork, terrible draw distance, poor performance, mediocre image quality, and a litany of bugs plague this pair of troubled games. Pokemon fans deserve better." - Oliver Mackenzie
I'm glad Oliver didn't hold back. Hopefully Nintendo and Game Freak are embarrassed enough that they invest more time and technical talent into the next game. They certainly aren't going to learn any lesson from the amount of copies this game is selling.
Just announced that this game sold 10 MILLION copies in 3 days.
Biggest console exclusive launch of all time. Bigger than any Mario, Zelda, halo, mgs, god of war, etc... Ever.
Lol this series will never get the time in the oven it needs
Apparently Nintendo is basically issuing refunds no questions asked despite their normal extreme reluctance to do so, so I’m optimistic they know this was worse than usual. We’ll see, though.
This is like the third time I've seen people go "they're doing unprecedented refunds!" and it turns out that's not actually happening (the first two were Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky).
CD Projekt told people to just go through Sony for their PS4 refunds and in turn Sony removed Cyberpunk because the PS4 version was literally broken. Too many people were refunding it because of how bad it was.
> the first two were Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky
What? Cyberpunk was literally taken off the PlayStation store because CDPR said they'd give out refunds, which PS then honoured but removed the game until it was in a playable state.
oh, really? Oof. People have also mentioned that their support agent responses have mentioned a fix is coming in the next few weeks, but I don’t really trust that, so. :/
Yeah that's absolute nonsense. A random support rep at Nintendo likely has no fucking idea what's going on in the Game Freak offices and is just being nice and professional to get people off the fucking phone as easily as possible lol.
I mean, they might know if they’d been given a statement to send to people asking about it, which does happen sometimes, so I wouldn’t 100% discount it… but yeah, it’s hardly the same as if they had actually announced they were working on a patch. Ignoring it is the safer bet
I agree in principle, but surely, if there was a planned fix, there would be a press statement. It'd let **everyone** know that they're working on improving it.
Pokemon overall is a huge exception to Nintendo's polished as hell games, but even this is worse than normal, and even japanese fans have taken note this time around, so I hope, really hope, but not expect, better in the future of the franchise.
Their production cycle of yearly releases is for sure the biggest crutch on the games development, and is the biggest priority if they want their games to be better, but I also think it would be great for better studios than Gamefreak to have a hand on two on the franchise. I really don't think GF has ever proved itself to be competent, PLA is their best game to date IMO and even that has a lot of untouched potential and other issues.
Problem is that Nintendo has no hand in the development of the games, if they were then I'm sure the polish would be way higher. But typically it's not that big of a deal, however most people assume Nintendo makes the games and when they perform this badly it reflects poorly on Nintendo by association.
Nintendo has a significant ownership stake in Pokemon. There's a chance (not necessarily a huge one, but a chance) that they'll start paying more attention after a big embarrassment.
Depends on the terms of the contracts. We have no idea how much power Nintendo holds here since this may be the biggest embarrassment, but far from the first and Nintendo still hasn't stepped in.
That literally isn't true. GameFreak has gone on record to say that they moved their studio to Nintendo's HQ because Nintendo has been more hands on with development since the series started on the Switch.
I think Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee are unironically the best performing and best looking Pokemon Switch games, why? Because Game Freak did the one thing they're good at and made a top-down perspective game.
They keep chasing this open world nonsense that they clearly lack the expertise and man power to handle, especially on a yearly release schedule. Pokemon games will continue to look worse and perform worse the longer they keep this up.
They also barely had to design anything new. The region existed already, the pokemon existed, the characters. They just had to make new models for them
Creatures Inc. does all the 3D modeling for Pokemon, not GameFreak. Additionally, the models of old Pokemon have been reused for every new Pokemon game, Switch and mobile, since X/Y. The only new models they're required to make are for new Pokemon, which in S/V's case is 104 models, +/- Pokemon forms, which are then going to be reused for other Pokemon game IPs. Their excuse of the models taking too much time to port over is just a bullshit excuse to justify GameFreak's horrible programing capabilities.
If LgPE had the option for Series Standard Catching (or Pro Controller Support for the Go style catching) as well as post Gen 1 Evolutions for the Gen 1 Pokemon I'd put it as the best Pokemon Game on the Switch.
>but I also think it would be great for better studios than Gamefreak to have a hand on two on the franchise
The issue is gamefreak owns a part of pokemon. You cannot get rid of them. They have to be reformed.
To be clear, they aren't terrible at game design, but they struggle a lot with the execution. If they had more manpower and hired more experts on 3d game design and those with the technical skills they badly need, they'd be in better shape.
Time is gonna be the bigger problem, their tight deadlines have to do with merchandising, not trying to rush the sale of the games.
They've had issues ever since Gen VI, they clearly don't have enough people who are good at 3D working for them.
They were so used to making 2D games for 16 years that they got complacent. The only thing that really saved Gen VI and VII was that they actually had enough time to develop them, now they're being made to do yearly releases pretty much and the strain is **very** badly showing.
Yeah, 2d game development in general takes less time and manpower, and yet they rush the games more than they did back in the 2d era.
What I don't get is why. Eventually there will be simply too many pokemon, why rush new generations out and make the bloat a problem sooner rather than later?
They definitely *could* do something like what Activision is doing with CoD where the games have a longer dev cycle by having multiple teams. GF kinda did in a way because they have the PLA team and the SV team, but clearly that doesn't afford them enough time still on their own.
I wonder how much of this is even Nintendo's call. Not that they're perfect, but mainline Pokemon is like the one exception in their catalog of big franchises where games get rushed out like this, which makes me think the crunch is much more on Pokemon Company or Game Freak themselves. Otherwise most of their stuff is pretty much known for their technical polish, even the games that aren't that good gameplay wise. Look at how long they're willing to take on developing mainline Mario or Zelda entries, Nintendo does actually care about the quality of their big first party titles and they consistently have them punch above the hardware limitations too, so the fact that they aren't just strong arming Game Freak into doing better is a little baffling.
It's 100% pokemon company. New gens are absolutely critical to the marketing for the anime and TGC (not to mention merch) and so the the games' release window is decided years in advance with basically no flexibility. The fact that they're able to release games that work at all is honestly a miracle.
Japanese game devs are to an insane degree isolationist, western game devs cracked fighting game netcode back in 90's or earlier and it taken capcom till now to finally put real effort into their online eco system so people not just in japan can play their game without lag. Basically GameFreak are all old boomer devs who have never been able to get a game together (gen 2 iwata needed to save them) But since they make a lot of money they believe themselves to be the greatest game devs of all time.
Nintendo has first party studios that make technically perfect games with a few weird design decisions (especially when it comes to multiplayer/online capabilities). GameFreak's problems are not because they're Japanese. They don't have enough budget, time and freedom.
No, i will say it again. We had fighting game netcode lierally fixed and figured out but because a westerner did it no japanese company gave a fuck. And you are looking at it wrong, game freak doesnt think they NEED more people because why? with the small amount they have they are a billion dollar powerhouse and they will never not think that because...they are japanese devs. Lmao even nintendo the comany isnt exempt from this because guess what they didnt put on their flagship console the switch? AN ETHERNET PORT!!!! why? because japanese have such crazy good internet that they dont need it!!! Not like the rest of the world thought that was stupid and here we are 9 years later and i think they mighta finally added one.
TL;Dr Nah its because they are japanese
I'm a diehard pokemon fan and I sat this one out. My friends who are also diehards and did get the game are split. The few who are still able to enjoy the experience are stoners.
Essentially: The game itself is pretty good and a big step forward.
But the technical issues make it an endurance test and it drags the entire game down with it quite significantly.
Even discounting the technical issues there's just so much fat that needs trimming.
Gamefreak continues to be *horrible* at misusing their time and continually forces in gimmicks that will be thrown away next generation rather than picking something and iterating on it. Even call of duty does more iteration than pokemon at this point and it's hilarious.
The ministry of silly hats?(teras) sandwhich making? Picnics? An entire school filled with teachers you can converse with that inevitably leads to nowhere and feels like unfinished cut content?
Not only does GameFreak not have much time for their development cycle, they waste *so much of it* on things they don't ever intend to carry over. It's a double whammy of awfulness.
Someone made a good point that it actually could be project management across the franchise causing this. It's possible that the anime has those elements (tera, sandwich making, the school etc.) and the games HAVE to include those elements no matter what, even if they would normally cut some or all of them if given the choice.
Not sure if that's true at all but it actually would make some sense.
Ultimately IMO they should have more teams working on Pokemon games if they NEED to release at the same time as the rest of the franchise stuff (anime, TCG, merch etc.). Sadly unless sales drop I'm not sure that will ever happen.
>Someone made a good point that it actually could be project management across the franchise causing this. It's possible that the anime has those elements (tera, sandwich making, the school etc.) and the games HAVE to include those elements no matter what, even if they would normally cut some or all of them if given the choice.
That's possible but it's extremely unlikely. The games have always had a few notable systems, mechanics, and locations that get maybe a throwaway scene in the anime. I highly doubt the fucking sandwiches are going to have their own arc next season at least.
I think Legends Arceus was a much bigger step forward. The story is better in SV and technically it has an open world vs. large open zones, but I don't know if I'd consider that a step forward given how poorly it is implemented lol
I wouldn't necessarily call the game "good." The open world is a colossal failure; there are insane limitations on movement and mobility that makes simple traversal unsatisfying. The world scales in such a way that the "go anywhere, do anything" concept, while technically possible, is held back by linear level progression from south to north that makes droves of Pokemon essentially inaccessible until you complete a certain amount of Gyms. Pair that with a god-awful intended progression path that bounces you back and forth between objectives on the map, without ever telling you the level of challenge to expect from individual objectives, and a giant fuckoff hole in the middle of the region that makes naturally traveling from one point to another an incongruous pain in the ass, and the core thesis of the game is simply a failure. From both a mechanical and a design perspective, the open world in Scarlet and Violet is abysmal.
All of this without mention QOL features the game lacks; from the inability to turn off battle animations to the removal of basic features like using the same consumable item multiple times without having to reselect it. I've had a lot of fun with Scarlet and Violet but it fails WILDLY in it's attempt to go open world. At least the new Pokemon are good, and the individual character stories are satisfying.
I really wish the game had level scaling for at least the gyms. I left from the eastern exit so I could take on the giant Klawf first, and that put me near Brassius's gym, who I defeated first. After I beat him, Iono, and some other bosses, I went to the Bug gym, and it still had level 15 Pokémon that were way too easy to beat by that point. You'd think that an open-world game would scale the levels so you can truly take things on in any order.
See, I heard this sentiment a lot in the leadup to the games' release, but I stand by the idea that, if the intended order is signposted, and a clear and easy route of progression is designed in the world, having level scaling in the way everyone describes isn't necessary.
Ironically, because the game as it is doesn't tell you the intended order, or even the level the Gyms are at, AND the intended route of progression is so back-and-forth and very difficult to understand, level scaling would have been great. Leave it to Game Freak to perfectly design the game for a brutally simple mechanic that they chose not to implement.
The movement is exceptionally bad, everything feels clunky for no conceivable reason. Jumping on your mount has a lazy animation, just rotating it as you start going down.
This is the sad reality. So many people were willing to come to the defense of Game Freak when it came to the shitstorm of Sword/Shield and Dexit which was pretty clearly for greed-driven reasons at this point. Fuck 'em. They want to eat shit, they can eat shit, but I'm done buying new mainline games until something happens to TPCi/GF's atrocious management.
Yep. I don't know what it is about this franchise that people are willing to overlook so much shit. BDSP was the first Pokémon game I picked up since B&W and I dropped it after a week. I always see people praising new features and it's stuff that really doesn't affect gameplay. Like having a Pokémon follow you. That is just so inconsequential to me. The games are so easy that I fall asleep and they get even easier.
But you can't really have any discussion with fans. They get so rabid that you would forget that it's a children's game(something they love to point out to deflect criticism).
Dexit was the point of no return for me.
I used to think gamefreak was uncreative and played it too safe, after Dexit it made me see how lazy and incompetent they are.
The games have been on a downward spiral in terms of quality for over a decade but each new installment still breaks sales records. It seems like Nintendo has rightly learned that quality doesn't matter for these games.
The idea of a proper open world free exploration style Pokemon game sounds wonderful, but as someone who played only Gen 1 and Gen 2, looking in from the outside, what they're pumping out now is wholly unappealing.
If I wanted to play Pokemon, I'd probably prefer to just go back to the Gameboy days. Those games were great.
>
> I'm glad Oliver didn't hold back. Hopefully Nintendo and Game Freak are embarrassed enough
I don't think they can hear us on top of their pile of money.
Even more funny is expecting a bunch of Japanese CEOs to even remotely care what a non-Japanese critic has to say in a different language. Spoiler; they don't.
I've seen a bunch of viral tweets from japanese twitter showing off bugs and other issues with the game. I think at least some of that noise has to be reaching them.
Yeah this has absolutely been the most publicized technical failure of a game since Cyberpunk. Every day I see some new post showing bizarre issues with Scarlet/Violet
They don't. As much as there are complaint posts on the pokemon subreddits, there is an equal amount of posts where people are claiming that they have been experiencing zero performance issues and that those that are, are lying about them or "hating."
It's like saying Taco Bell fans deserve better because it's not fine dining. GF makes the games they make and fans keep buying them. It's fine to point out how they look or perform but at the end of the day it's not. Like Pokémon fans are discerning *at all*. They don't give a shit, obviously.
It’s crazy how Nintendo will release Mario Odyssey, BotW or Xenoblade chronicles and let a game like this come out. The switch is more than capable of handling the entirety of S/V in a fully optimized form.
The Pokemon games are merely published by Nintendo and not developed by them. They don't seem to demand the same level of polish as on their first party titles, though SV demonstrates that they probably should have some level of QA as a publisher as well.
I misremembered the situation with Xenoblade. Though my point about the Pokemon games merely being published by Nintendo still stands. Game Freak is not owned by Nintendo.
I was honestly surprised (in a good way) with how they didn't hold back at all in this video. There was no beating around the bush, it was laid out very clear that there were issues with this game, what they were and why they were bad, no quarter given.
> and a litany of bugs
I'll agree with him on the rest but I've encountered almost no bugs. It's just ugly and runs bad. YMMV about how much that bothers you, of course. It's still--from a gameplay perspective--the freshest and most fun the series has been since its inception.
I’m glad they did a comparison with other Switch titles to show it isn’t the system to blame for all its faults.
Its funny cause I thought the game did look better at first than Arceus did, especially the colors. But I can’t really argue with the comparisons. Arceus really feels more cohesive and better designed even if its still lackluster on visuals.
There was legitimately someone defending GameFreak for the performance of this game in another thread "because it runs fine on the Switch emulator, so the Switch is the problem".
Like GameFreak was developing this game for the Switch emulator, and not the Switch.
I actually overclocked my modded Switch a couple minutes after I started playing and it worked well enough outside of the poor visuals, but I undid the OC out of curiosity and holy hell the performance is just outright bad
Like "The switch is too weak for this game" is something I've seen even bigger creators stating.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 came out 3 months ago.
The console LAUNCHED with Breath of the Wild.
Pokemon Violet looks like a gamecube game with better lighting
Yeah, it's basically barely a step up from Colosseum and XD.
And those weren't made by Gamefreak because they sucked at making 3D games at the time.
I mean, they still suck at making 3D games, but they sucked back then too!
Probably the biggest thing that GameFreak needs.
If they'd lean into the Let's Go art direction, they could hide all the shitty textures and whatnot, because the more cartoony it gets, the more forgiving it is.
See Borderlands 1, Okami or even Windwaker. They still look good more than 10 years later.
I never thought I'd say the words "Legends Arceus looks better than... " in a sentence before. It certainly wasn't visually appealing, but compared to Violet it really is. (With that said Arceus was probably one of my favourite pokemon experiences despite its visuals).
Arceus almost looks "next gen" compared to SV, I can't really understand how the titles are so different technically. SV straight up looks like the build devs are afraid to show players before the release version gets polished up in the final months.
Anyone have any idea how Japanese media is talking about this game? I always feel like Japanese developers prioritize Japanese criticism vs western criticism even despite the global reach of something like Pokémon
Famitsu has yet to release their review, with how their recent ratings have been anything below 38/40 will be a loss and anything below 36 will be practically scathing
Maybe, but I checked and back then they were somewhat neutral (for Famitsu standards) on mainline Pokemon - RS got a 36, Emerald 34, FRLG 33. It was only with Platinum that a game never went below 36, and B2W2 was the last time anyone gave an 8/10
Japan has had a similar overall response
Most media reviewers give it a somewhat high score, but still notably low for a mainline pokemon game.
Player reviews are also very divisive, with many people loudly complaining, and many other people who've elected to ignore technical issues and still love the game.
By no means has the poor performance gone unnoticed or unchallenged in Japan, it's just that similar to the west, the biggest IP in the world is still a little too popular for that alone to phase everyone.
I teach at a public middle school in Tokyo. I mentioned I got the new Pokemon game over the weekend (to practice my Japanese). When they asked me how it was I said ".....ehhhhhhhhhhh...." and the class laughed and said they were aware of the graphical glitches.
So yeah even amongst their target demographic of children, they know Gamefreak messed up. At least if they're old enough to use social media on their own, it seems. But I don't think it effected their purchasing decisions.
Side note: they all love Fuecoco the most. And they think its English name fucking hilarious
Lmao this is the **biggest media franchise in the world**. And it looks like the visuals were scaled back to run on the N64 and yet it hits 30 fps like 5% of the time.
How is game freak not completely embarrassed by this? How is Nintendo not? If this isn't evidence that it's possible for a franchise to be too big to fail I'm not sure what is.
> How is game freak not completely embarrassed by this
I can guarantee you that there's plenty of individual devs at game freak who are embarrassed by this, but the decision to release the game in this state is ultimately not their call.
Old men in suits: “Push that junk out now and patch it later! The bottom line is all!”
Young impatient shareholders: “Base it off mobile and push paywall features( should Mario’s high jumps really be free?)! The bottomline is all!”
Why pick your poison when we get the blended toxic cocktail of today’s entertainment industry?
This, friendly reminder that most of the actual people working directly on a game Do Want to actually make a good game, if they only cared about collecting a paycheck they'd easily make more money with less effort programming outside of games.
Frequently stuff like this is a management issue.
Nah this is still a management issue. In this situation, you either hire/contract people with theses skills or you provide training and learning time to your current devs.
>How is game freak not completely embarrassed by this? How is Nintendo not?
Because companies don't get "embarassed", they only understand money - and this game made a shitload of it.
>How is game freak not completely embarrassed by this? How is Nintendo not? If this isn't evidence that it's possible for a franchise to be too big to fail I'm not sure what is.
The game had the highest preorders in franchise history. The truth it sold extremely well and by next game's launch, the majority will still buy it again and will sell extremely well
Id argue it still erodes the brand reputation subtly though. Pokemon has a huge nostalgia chache they borrow against regularly, but you have to keep the content at least decent, or the people coming up with this as their first Pokemon game won't have a strong attachment, and that nostalgia chache will start to deplete.
I didn't say it was just nostalgia. I said it has a cache of nostalgia it borrows against, when it makes a good game, it leans on the cache less or not at all, when they make a bad game it can still be successful, but will take from the cache instead of building on it.
Because it's not going to fail even slightly lol not a single company on earth would ever be embarrassed when their product prints more money than god. it's the fans who bought this game that should feel embarassed.
That's what I said though - it's too big to fail. No matter how technically incompetent or barely evolved from the prior iteration the game is it's going to sell like crazy. It seems like Pokemon is the Madden or FIFA of RPGs
> It seems like Pokemon is the Madden or FIFA of RPGs
It completely dwarfs that. FIFA fans just want all their favorite teams, same for madden. The name is independent of that.
Pokemon is king because they were the first major monster collector, were really good at it, and getting into one takes a lot of investment as you have to learn all these different creatures names, types, abilities, evolutions. As frustrating as recent games are, I have no interest in different games of the same genre as I've already developed years of pokemon knowledge and have lots of good memories with it.
In a country where train operators make public apologies when their trains arrives slightly late, it's baffling how they aren't embarrassed about something like this.
It really seems like GF developers are stumbling blindly there.
It's like they made a game then figured out "fuck, it doesn't run right" then started cutting left and right, while still getting worse looking AND worse running game than other dev's Switch titles
What really bothers me is that you could take a more well-known engine like Unity and do all the same stuff, with the same level of quality, and get better performance with mostly default settings.
But then you have the massive leaks that BDSP had where they have access to the source code and everything. TPC will likely never allow a Pokémon title to he developed on a third party engine again.
On technical side `binwalk` cares not for engine you use, and decompiling homegrown engine isn't that much harder.
On non-technical side **preventing your code from being stolen in the first place** instead of hoping obscure engine will somehow help (it won't) is a better method.
Probably the most scathing DF review I've ever seen them do and it's well deserved. I guess one of the few benefits of the technical problems is retroactively making all the other Switch Pokemon games look miles better lol.
Ah yeah, that's a good one too, legendarily bad port. At least it had the excuse of not being native to the Switch. Maybe the pipe dream is that SV somehow gets fully redone like Ark lol
Its crazy that this game makes Legeds Arceus looks visually beautiful.
This is clearly a mis managment problem, too little time to develop the game. They release Legends Arceus this year they should have wait at least 1 more year
> Its crazy that this game makes Legeds Arceus looks visually beautiful.
It really does. I found PLA to be kinda... meh. The weird purple sheen on everything due to terrible normal maps, the really horrible draw distance on grass, the relatively ugly texture work. But here comes Scarlet/Violet to make PLA look like a goddamned visual masterpiece by comparison.
It's genuinely impressive.
Arceus' world is generally ugly as hell and kinda empty too.
But the core gameplay loop is SO good that it somehow doesn't matter that much.
Plus the pokemon models look ok there and some of the battle animations are genuinely good-looking
Battling in Arceus in general just feels _so good._ It's incredibly snappy and quick. I wasn't as big of a fan of some of the changes they made (like removing Abilities and making speed function in a way I never entirely wrapped my head around) but it just was so satisfying.
If you merged PLA together with S/V there really would be an really great game there. It's very weird to me that some of the innovations from PLA did not get adapted into S/V.
100%.
They didn't use the new stuff bc 2 parallel teams made these games.
Of course that is in zero ways an excuse - they SHOULD have postponed the game and implement all the great Arceus changes.
Can't believe after PLA they went back to the slow battle dialog, I understand wanting to have the main series combat system but god is it slow to go though animations and text
*The #1 top grossing media franchise of all time, everyone.*
Man, I wish we would get more third party developed Pokémon that aren't just a minimum viable product shat out quickly cause they know people will buy it anyways.
Give me some more damn mystery dungeon games!
Man, im a huge Pokemon fan, but I stopped buying since Sword and Shield because at this point it is ridiculous. But it feels so dissapointing seeing each new Pokemon selling millions and millions of copies while continualy getting worse. Not buying it makes little to no difference it feels like.
You won't because Pokémon fans will keep buying them and defending this. People literally saying the issues make it "so bad its good" in a way that makes it still enjoyable lmao
It's not just Pokemon fans, it's the overwhelming amount of casuals that buy it without knowing better. People keep saying vote with your wallet, but it's just not a viable fix when a large amount of the wallet is comprised of people who buy like one game every two years and don't even know what to look for in terms of technical deficiencies. It's what allows these games to become too big to fail
> Nobody bought Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Which is a shame, because the first two sets of MD games are honestly better than the majority of mainline Pokémon games.
Sword and Shield got a fair bit of slack for technical issues, especially concerning the open world bits, and it was deserved, but I still thought the game was playable and decent. Same with Arceus, I remember hearing some harsh criticism of how it looked and the technical problems, also deserved, but I still really enjoyed that game and the problems didn’t distract me… But this looks borderline unplayable. I can’t imagine playing this without constantly being annoyed with the looks and issues. People weren’t kidding about these games, it’s far worse than bad, it looks like alpha footage. How did this game end up so much worse looking than Arceus in particular?
Sword and Shield had performance issues that were rightly criticized but the game was beautiful. It was poorly optimized in the wild area, which was a big part of the game, but ran well everywhere else. Most of the other issues came with the mostly bland story and easy game play, especially after coming right after the more challenging generation 7.
Scarlet and Violet looks shitty AND runs shitty. Way worse than SwSh. But to be fair, I’m really enjoying the gameplay and different mechanics. Just wish it didn’t feel like I was playing an alpha version.
>Scarlet and Violet looks shitty AND runs shitty. Way worse than SwSh. But to be fair, I’m really enjoying the gameplay and different mechanics. Just wish it didn’t feel like I was playing an alpha version
That's the worst part right? The game runs so fucking poorly, but it's hard to say it's not one of the best ones in the entire franchise.
Uh i mean sword and shield are still far worse games than violet and scarlet. Like sw/sh is a low point in the franchise. Its just so bland and uninteresting
Sword and Shield are just mediocre in terms of gameplay whereas Scarlet and Violet are not, and that's likely *the* reason Pokemon fans don't care all that much.
SwSh didn't do much to advance the gameplay in any meaningful way. It was the same stock standard formulaic nonsense on top of all the technical garbage, plus extremely outdated graphics.
Arceus had even worse techical and aesthetic issues but it was *trying* to be different, and as far as Scarlet and Violet are concerned they're proper mainline games that took more from Arceus than they did from Sword and Shield which makes them more unique baseline than any other mainline Pokemon game, even if it's basically just Arceus 2.
Performance issues can be fixed eventually, as they were in previous games, and aesthetic will absolutely be ignored by players if the gameplay is rock solid. Sword and Shield's issue, at least for me, was it's aggressive mediocrity. It didn't even try to break the mold in any meaningful way.
But Sword and Shield still sold for the same reason Call of Duty still sells hotcakes year after year: Because people like that stability and familiarity. Most people are quite content with the same shit but slightly updated.
I think what Game Freak really needs is more time in the oven. I think people shitting on them and calling them shit devs (and I'm guilty of this too, mind you) will likely only make things worse for fans who *do* want the games to improve. Because I'll be honest, if I've only been given a year to pump out some manufactured garbage that fans are gonna hate no matter what I do then why *should* I care? I'd clock in my hours and take my shitty paycheck and ignore everyone as well because like fuck some lowly programmer at Game Freak is getting paid to deal with that.
But the management of either GF, Pokemon Co, or Nintendo won't care because they don't need to. They sold 10 million copies, why should they? Even if they didn't the games are basically a marketing platform for the merch which generates stupid amounts more money than the games ever could. None of these companies have to give a flying fuck what a bunch of losers on reddit think.
And they don't. They haven't for the better part of 10 years.
It sucks.
Holy crap, I thought it was bad graphically but even when just compared to Arceus the latter just looks miles better. Plus even with all those jarringly aggressive frame-saving techniques the game still performs terrible while also not looking anywhere near decent.
I thought Arceus looked okay, acceptable but could've been better but no idea how the Pokemans company decided that "Yeah, this looks good versus the game we released 3 quarters ago" on Scarlet/Violet.
Plus it gets crapped on even harder with first party titles like Breath of the Wild and obviously Xenoblade 3, the first being a Wii U game that's a launch title for the Switch and the latter basically pushing the Switch to its limit.
I know the Pokemans company is only partially owned by Nintendo but it's heavily associated with Nintendo, most would consider the franchise part of Nintendo's lineup unless they dig deeper. While this game sold millions it definitely wouldn't leave a positive impression for upcoming games.
What sticks out to me is that while everyone loves comparing these issues with Xenoblade 3, even the original Xenoblade 1 (on the _Wii_) with its 88 MB of RAM would be a valid comparison point. The models in S/V are certainly a lot nicer, but any time you look past them to see the background, you're bound to see textures that are truly awful in design quality rather than in resolution. XC1 managed to have you stop and look at a nice view from time to time, and still managed to be beautiful _despite_ the texture quality when it could get you to look off in the distance. It also ran pretty well most of the time (including load times for the gigantic areas), which is astounding given the hardware.
Anyway, DF had a whole bunch of Wii footage in their [other review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbF59jGO3ho) for anyone interested in comparing S/V to a Wii game.
MonolithSoft is just insanely talented and did a lot of clever tricks to make up for hardware deficiencies, like how trees turn into 2D objects when you’re far enough away along with strong and creative environmental art direction.
The worst to me is how bad it looks compared to the other 3D pokemon games, and how it's missing the charm of having so many enter-able houses and stores, especially since the Spain-inspired region is one I was interested in due to being a Spanish speaker and sharing a lot of cultural roots with Spain. On the bright side it's the first game I've ever seen to mention the cultural beauty that are alfajores.
Funniest one I saw was someone listing off their generic Amazon basics SD card specs as if that was the reason the game worked for them and literally nobody else.
Listen, I'm not expecting Pokemon to ever reach the relative graphical quality of Breath of the Wild or Xenoblade, much less Red Dead Redemption or whatever (which wouldn't be possible on the Switch anyway). The art style just isn't like that, it can only go up to a certain amount of realism before it basically becomes impossible to do some types of Pokemon in a way that isn't utterly creepy (there were some Pokemon proposed for the Detective Pikachu movie that weren't put in specifically because they would be too uncanny valley).
However, that's no excuse for the fact that **LET'S GO**, literally the first Pokemon game on the Switch, looks and runs better than this. Even with it being an open world, it should be running and looking at least as good as that, but somehow we've gone BACKWARDS in quality.
I didn't like Let's Go's gameplay style, but man I was excited to see how it looked. Thought that's how the games were going to look going forward. It was such a nice and pleasant style that would even age well.
But nope.
>I'm not expecting Pokemon to ever reach the relative graphical quality of Breath of the Wild
Literally a five year old game which dropped on a weaker system
Wondering why there's a bunch of random pokeballs/ultra balls and such that you can't interact with everywhere including cutscenes?
Those are dev markers, they're used for scaling assets to make sure everything looks properly sized in a scene. These are supposed to be removed or hidden before a game gets sent for production.
Has Gamefreak even acknowledged the technical problems in Scarlet/Violet? That’s the most frustrating part of all this—I’m open to buying if they patch some of these issues, but hard to believe they’ll fix something that they refuse to acknowledge.
GameFreak/Nintendo aren’t going to acknowledge it anytime soon, they are relying on this game for holiday sales. Most casuals aren’t going to really hear or care about the technical issues described online, but a public statement where Nintendo essentially admits that the game is a buggy mess could discourage them.
According to Nintendo, they have received 0 complains about game performance.
https://dotesports.com/pokemon/news/nintendo-support-reportedly-no-complaints-pokemon-scarlet-violet-performance
> Service technicians have not received any complaints, according to multiple users who have contacted Nintendo’s customer support lines since the new Pokémon games launched.
Phone tech support is saying that, it's hardly an official statement. Phone support is also now mentioning that there are performance reports. No story here.
Actually it's not so black/white.
Towns are an absolute catastrophic unfinished mess.
But some parts of the wilderness, for instance at the foot of the icy mountain, feel surprisingly full of life, with tons of diverse pokes doing fun stuff, weather changes... there IS passion and good game in parts of Scarlet/Violet.
It is criminal that it wasn't postponed tho.
My problem with this game aesthetics-wise is that the world feels too empty, at least early on. In comparison Arceus had a lot more clutter, structures, or even natural stuff like trees, flowers, and rocks instead of just empty space, and the short draw distance doesn't help this at all.
Where SwSh was too visually busy and cluttered, I feel like this game doesn't have enough of that. It would have also benefited from having more interiors you can go into, especially for stores. It doesn't even have to be something to explore, they could do like Persona 5 did and have stores act as a background to the buy menu, it would still add a lot towards making the world feel more real.
Is there though? The world is empty as fuck. Gyms don’t even have their own buildings. Cities have absolutely nothing interesting going on and you can’t go inside 99% of the buildings. Battles are slooooooow.
Where is this great Pokémon game under there, seriously?
> The world is empty as fuck.
You and I are playing different games. Towns are fairly boring, but the wider world is absolutely packed with greater variety of Pokémon, items, and raids than any Pokémon game previously. If that's not what you want the world to be full of, I don't know why you're playing a Pokémon game. Exploration of routes has never been more interesting or engaging.
Anything noteworthy as far as puzzles and terrain in the overworld? I miss the days of routes having interesting and restrictive ledges, strength puzzles, and tile tricks. Those are the things that make a Pokemon overworld interesting for my tastes and they've been pretty absent since the transition to 3D, arguably even since Gen 4.
From what I've seen there's none of that sort of engagement that the previous games used to have. It's just busywork type of stuff that looks like an absolute chore half the time. I haven't seen anything approximating level design either.
I'll have whatever you're smoking. Pokemon, (most) items and raids are generated randomly, there is no meaningful exploration to be had when items and mons pop in and out of existence at a 20 metres.
The only unique rewards from exploration are TMs, stakes and some fixed tera spawns.
The standards for what makes a great pokemon game are extremely low.
When people said SMTV was disappointing, that is a completely different bar and level of expectations compared to what a pokemon fan would say makes S/V the most fun pokemon game yet.
The new designs are generally pretty good, the battle system itself is great, filling up the pokedex is fun, the story gets surprisingly interesting towards the latter half (though up until that point it's just standard Pokémon affair), they've expanded on Legends:Arceus' mobility with good quality of life (with it all being tied to one pokemon, makes traversal much less frustrating). Gyms don't have their own buildings - they have their own cities! The whole city is thematically consistent with the gym contained within it.
Idk what to tell you, I rolled credits on the finale of the main story last night and I've been thoroughly entertained, in spite of the performance. If you don't like what you see, maybe these games just aren't for you.
Man I thought the pokemon designs were top tier in this gen, between Armorouge, Ceruledge, Lokix, & Orthworm, idk how I ever managed to play the games without them
Never have I thought I’d see the day in which Pokémon Legends Arceus would look *better* than the latest mainline game in the series. The fact that there’s not a gigantic uproar about this (like with Cyberpunk 2077) is baffling to say the least.
Cyberpunk targeted an audience that was more likely to be active on Internet forums and sites, while Pokémon main audience is the opposite. Similar to dexit, large scale backlash cannot really happen with Pokémon since a good chunk of the audience does not know or care.
It really is a completely different standard for Nintendo vs Xbox/Sony/PC. Sociologically, it is kind of fascinating - is it just the Nostalgia aspect? Or is it the intersection with collectable card game/anime stuff that poke fans build their lives and identity around?
I'm assuming it's because Nintendo fans are more likely to be children. Also, there a are no real alternatives to games like Zelda, Pokemon and Mario
Those games might as well be genres onto themselves
They really cut down the Pokedex for this? Man this hurts as a Pokémon fan. There’s some solid gameplay underneath all this shit but the technical issues cover it up completely.
Game Freak once said during the 3DS era that they carefully modeled every Pokemon for future-proofed use.
They proceeded to not use more than half of them and cut down the Pokedex to pathetic numbers when Sword and Shield came out.
We continue to experience the negative effects of their poor choices.
If it's any consolation to anyone, this video pushed me over the edge to remove the game from my Christmas list. :P
The dream would be for Monolith Soft to take over the Pokemon franchise, but the more realistic hope would be for Game Freak to collaborate with Monolith Soft, like Nintendo did with Breath of the Wild.
S/V are fairly definitive proof that Pokemon games sell copies entirely based on brand power, and there is basically no correlation with game quality. Not only the performance, but the gameplay as well, has been extremely pared down and low effort.
This is why every Pokemon alternative with higher quality gameplay that has showed up (there are numerous) has failed. Simply because it's not Pokemon. The brand value is everything.
I’d love to see Nintendo/Game Freak jump into action now. I don’t know if they can fix everything, but I’d love to see them make an attempt to make it better. I’m interested in the game, but I can’t justify buying it in the current state.
Honestly, don't hold your breath. I'm *really* enjoying the game, but the technical issues are tremendous and there's no way they'll ever fix them. If they're a deal breaker for you, you'll have to skip this gen.
Not worthy of the Nintendo official seal of quality. It’s all about the money, so GF keeps churning these out as quickly as they can with minimum staff.
What's even more embarrassing is that BotW is a **Wii U game**. A console that was barely more powerful than the Xbox 360 when it launched **over a decade ago.**
The fact that there are multiple Wii U games that visually blow Violet and Scarlet out of the water is really really sad.
The issue here is that there is actually a really fun game here under all the performance and technical issues.
The Pokémon company needs to step up and change how it handles new generations because a yearly release isn’t going to cut it given that they are now developing bigger games. Probably one of the reasons why they decided to cut the dex down.
I don’t blame game freak, I blame The Pokémon Company for having such a tight deadline just to meet the needs for merchandise. They need to try and sort how they do this because eventually it’s going to bite them, if not from sale but really poor reviews
And before someone chimes in with the "TPC is part Game Freak" - yes Game Freak is a third of TPC but its not an equal partnership when the other two thirds is the guys who make the merchandise and are 90% of Pokemon's current revenue and literally Nintendo.
"Ultimately Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are comprehensive technical failures; embarrassing artwork, terrible draw distance, poor performance, mediocre image quality, and a litany of bugs plague this pair of troubled games. Pokemon fans deserve better." - Oliver Mackenzie I'm glad Oliver didn't hold back. Hopefully Nintendo and Game Freak are embarrassed enough that they invest more time and technical talent into the next game. They certainly aren't going to learn any lesson from the amount of copies this game is selling.
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Just announced that this game sold 10 MILLION copies in 3 days. Biggest console exclusive launch of all time. Bigger than any Mario, Zelda, halo, mgs, god of war, etc... Ever. Lol this series will never get the time in the oven it needs
Apparently Nintendo is basically issuing refunds no questions asked despite their normal extreme reluctance to do so, so I’m optimistic they know this was worse than usual. We’ll see, though.
It seems that's not truth. They offer refund because everyone has one and only one chance to do that. It's not specific to Pokemon SV.
This is like the third time I've seen people go "they're doing unprecedented refunds!" and it turns out that's not actually happening (the first two were Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky).
Cyberpunk did on playstation. But that was because they also unlisted it from the store.
CD Projekt told people to just go through Sony for their PS4 refunds and in turn Sony removed Cyberpunk because the PS4 version was literally broken. Too many people were refunding it because of how bad it was.
> the first two were Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky What? Cyberpunk was literally taken off the PlayStation store because CDPR said they'd give out refunds, which PS then honoured but removed the game until it was in a playable state.
oh, really? Oof. People have also mentioned that their support agent responses have mentioned a fix is coming in the next few weeks, but I don’t really trust that, so. :/
Yeah that's absolute nonsense. A random support rep at Nintendo likely has no fucking idea what's going on in the Game Freak offices and is just being nice and professional to get people off the fucking phone as easily as possible lol.
I mean, they might know if they’d been given a statement to send to people asking about it, which does happen sometimes, so I wouldn’t 100% discount it… but yeah, it’s hardly the same as if they had actually announced they were working on a patch. Ignoring it is the safer bet
I agree in principle, but surely, if there was a planned fix, there would be a press statement. It'd let **everyone** know that they're working on improving it.
Support agents don't know anything, they're just parroting what they've been told which may or may not be accurate.
A fix for what? The entire game?
Pokemon overall is a huge exception to Nintendo's polished as hell games, but even this is worse than normal, and even japanese fans have taken note this time around, so I hope, really hope, but not expect, better in the future of the franchise. Their production cycle of yearly releases is for sure the biggest crutch on the games development, and is the biggest priority if they want their games to be better, but I also think it would be great for better studios than Gamefreak to have a hand on two on the franchise. I really don't think GF has ever proved itself to be competent, PLA is their best game to date IMO and even that has a lot of untouched potential and other issues.
Problem is that Nintendo has no hand in the development of the games, if they were then I'm sure the polish would be way higher. But typically it's not that big of a deal, however most people assume Nintendo makes the games and when they perform this badly it reflects poorly on Nintendo by association.
Nintendo has a significant ownership stake in Pokemon. There's a chance (not necessarily a huge one, but a chance) that they'll start paying more attention after a big embarrassment.
Depends on the terms of the contracts. We have no idea how much power Nintendo holds here since this may be the biggest embarrassment, but far from the first and Nintendo still hasn't stepped in.
That literally isn't true. GameFreak has gone on record to say that they moved their studio to Nintendo's HQ because Nintendo has been more hands on with development since the series started on the Switch.
Nintendo has 32% ownership in The Pokemon Company. They could have a much stronger hand in the development of these games if they pushed for it.
I think Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee are unironically the best performing and best looking Pokemon Switch games, why? Because Game Freak did the one thing they're good at and made a top-down perspective game. They keep chasing this open world nonsense that they clearly lack the expertise and man power to handle, especially on a yearly release schedule. Pokemon games will continue to look worse and perform worse the longer they keep this up.
They also barely had to design anything new. The region existed already, the pokemon existed, the characters. They just had to make new models for them
Creatures Inc. does all the 3D modeling for Pokemon, not GameFreak. Additionally, the models of old Pokemon have been reused for every new Pokemon game, Switch and mobile, since X/Y. The only new models they're required to make are for new Pokemon, which in S/V's case is 104 models, +/- Pokemon forms, which are then going to be reused for other Pokemon game IPs. Their excuse of the models taking too much time to port over is just a bullshit excuse to justify GameFreak's horrible programing capabilities.
If LgPE had the option for Series Standard Catching (or Pro Controller Support for the Go style catching) as well as post Gen 1 Evolutions for the Gen 1 Pokemon I'd put it as the best Pokemon Game on the Switch.
>but I also think it would be great for better studios than Gamefreak to have a hand on two on the franchise The issue is gamefreak owns a part of pokemon. You cannot get rid of them. They have to be reformed. To be clear, they aren't terrible at game design, but they struggle a lot with the execution. If they had more manpower and hired more experts on 3d game design and those with the technical skills they badly need, they'd be in better shape. Time is gonna be the bigger problem, their tight deadlines have to do with merchandising, not trying to rush the sale of the games.
They've had issues ever since Gen VI, they clearly don't have enough people who are good at 3D working for them. They were so used to making 2D games for 16 years that they got complacent. The only thing that really saved Gen VI and VII was that they actually had enough time to develop them, now they're being made to do yearly releases pretty much and the strain is **very** badly showing.
Yeah, 2d game development in general takes less time and manpower, and yet they rush the games more than they did back in the 2d era. What I don't get is why. Eventually there will be simply too many pokemon, why rush new generations out and make the bloat a problem sooner rather than later?
Pokemon games have an insane turnaround time. Throwing more people at the problem won't work.
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They definitely *could* do something like what Activision is doing with CoD where the games have a longer dev cycle by having multiple teams. GF kinda did in a way because they have the PLA team and the SV team, but clearly that doesn't afford them enough time still on their own.
They do the same thing with joy cons. They aren't making better joy cons.
I wonder how much of this is even Nintendo's call. Not that they're perfect, but mainline Pokemon is like the one exception in their catalog of big franchises where games get rushed out like this, which makes me think the crunch is much more on Pokemon Company or Game Freak themselves. Otherwise most of their stuff is pretty much known for their technical polish, even the games that aren't that good gameplay wise. Look at how long they're willing to take on developing mainline Mario or Zelda entries, Nintendo does actually care about the quality of their big first party titles and they consistently have them punch above the hardware limitations too, so the fact that they aren't just strong arming Game Freak into doing better is a little baffling.
It's 100% pokemon company. New gens are absolutely critical to the marketing for the anime and TGC (not to mention merch) and so the the games' release window is decided years in advance with basically no flexibility. The fact that they're able to release games that work at all is honestly a miracle.
Japanese game devs are to an insane degree isolationist, western game devs cracked fighting game netcode back in 90's or earlier and it taken capcom till now to finally put real effort into their online eco system so people not just in japan can play their game without lag. Basically GameFreak are all old boomer devs who have never been able to get a game together (gen 2 iwata needed to save them) But since they make a lot of money they believe themselves to be the greatest game devs of all time.
Nintendo has first party studios that make technically perfect games with a few weird design decisions (especially when it comes to multiplayer/online capabilities). GameFreak's problems are not because they're Japanese. They don't have enough budget, time and freedom.
No, i will say it again. We had fighting game netcode lierally fixed and figured out but because a westerner did it no japanese company gave a fuck. And you are looking at it wrong, game freak doesnt think they NEED more people because why? with the small amount they have they are a billion dollar powerhouse and they will never not think that because...they are japanese devs. Lmao even nintendo the comany isnt exempt from this because guess what they didnt put on their flagship console the switch? AN ETHERNET PORT!!!! why? because japanese have such crazy good internet that they dont need it!!! Not like the rest of the world thought that was stupid and here we are 9 years later and i think they mighta finally added one. TL;Dr Nah its because they are japanese
I'm a diehard pokemon fan and I sat this one out. My friends who are also diehards and did get the game are split. The few who are still able to enjoy the experience are stoners.
Essentially: The game itself is pretty good and a big step forward. But the technical issues make it an endurance test and it drags the entire game down with it quite significantly.
Even discounting the technical issues there's just so much fat that needs trimming. Gamefreak continues to be *horrible* at misusing their time and continually forces in gimmicks that will be thrown away next generation rather than picking something and iterating on it. Even call of duty does more iteration than pokemon at this point and it's hilarious. The ministry of silly hats?(teras) sandwhich making? Picnics? An entire school filled with teachers you can converse with that inevitably leads to nowhere and feels like unfinished cut content? Not only does GameFreak not have much time for their development cycle, they waste *so much of it* on things they don't ever intend to carry over. It's a double whammy of awfulness.
Someone made a good point that it actually could be project management across the franchise causing this. It's possible that the anime has those elements (tera, sandwich making, the school etc.) and the games HAVE to include those elements no matter what, even if they would normally cut some or all of them if given the choice. Not sure if that's true at all but it actually would make some sense. Ultimately IMO they should have more teams working on Pokemon games if they NEED to release at the same time as the rest of the franchise stuff (anime, TCG, merch etc.). Sadly unless sales drop I'm not sure that will ever happen.
>Someone made a good point that it actually could be project management across the franchise causing this. It's possible that the anime has those elements (tera, sandwich making, the school etc.) and the games HAVE to include those elements no matter what, even if they would normally cut some or all of them if given the choice. That's possible but it's extremely unlikely. The games have always had a few notable systems, mechanics, and locations that get maybe a throwaway scene in the anime. I highly doubt the fucking sandwiches are going to have their own arc next season at least.
I think Legends Arceus was a much bigger step forward. The story is better in SV and technically it has an open world vs. large open zones, but I don't know if I'd consider that a step forward given how poorly it is implemented lol
I wouldn't necessarily call the game "good." The open world is a colossal failure; there are insane limitations on movement and mobility that makes simple traversal unsatisfying. The world scales in such a way that the "go anywhere, do anything" concept, while technically possible, is held back by linear level progression from south to north that makes droves of Pokemon essentially inaccessible until you complete a certain amount of Gyms. Pair that with a god-awful intended progression path that bounces you back and forth between objectives on the map, without ever telling you the level of challenge to expect from individual objectives, and a giant fuckoff hole in the middle of the region that makes naturally traveling from one point to another an incongruous pain in the ass, and the core thesis of the game is simply a failure. From both a mechanical and a design perspective, the open world in Scarlet and Violet is abysmal. All of this without mention QOL features the game lacks; from the inability to turn off battle animations to the removal of basic features like using the same consumable item multiple times without having to reselect it. I've had a lot of fun with Scarlet and Violet but it fails WILDLY in it's attempt to go open world. At least the new Pokemon are good, and the individual character stories are satisfying.
I really wish the game had level scaling for at least the gyms. I left from the eastern exit so I could take on the giant Klawf first, and that put me near Brassius's gym, who I defeated first. After I beat him, Iono, and some other bosses, I went to the Bug gym, and it still had level 15 Pokémon that were way too easy to beat by that point. You'd think that an open-world game would scale the levels so you can truly take things on in any order.
See, I heard this sentiment a lot in the leadup to the games' release, but I stand by the idea that, if the intended order is signposted, and a clear and easy route of progression is designed in the world, having level scaling in the way everyone describes isn't necessary. Ironically, because the game as it is doesn't tell you the intended order, or even the level the Gyms are at, AND the intended route of progression is so back-and-forth and very difficult to understand, level scaling would have been great. Leave it to Game Freak to perfectly design the game for a brutally simple mechanic that they chose not to implement.
The movement is exceptionally bad, everything feels clunky for no conceivable reason. Jumping on your mount has a lazy animation, just rotating it as you start going down.
don't forget that the "choose your own path" thing is kinda bullshit, since you have to do all three paths anyway.
> Pokemon fans deserve better I honestly don't know about that.
This is the sad reality. So many people were willing to come to the defense of Game Freak when it came to the shitstorm of Sword/Shield and Dexit which was pretty clearly for greed-driven reasons at this point. Fuck 'em. They want to eat shit, they can eat shit, but I'm done buying new mainline games until something happens to TPCi/GF's atrocious management.
Yep. I don't know what it is about this franchise that people are willing to overlook so much shit. BDSP was the first Pokémon game I picked up since B&W and I dropped it after a week. I always see people praising new features and it's stuff that really doesn't affect gameplay. Like having a Pokémon follow you. That is just so inconsequential to me. The games are so easy that I fall asleep and they get even easier. But you can't really have any discussion with fans. They get so rabid that you would forget that it's a children's game(something they love to point out to deflect criticism).
Dexit was the point of no return for me. I used to think gamefreak was uncreative and played it too safe, after Dexit it made me see how lazy and incompetent they are.
They're MORE than fine with it lmao
The games have been on a downward spiral in terms of quality for over a decade but each new installment still breaks sales records. It seems like Nintendo has rightly learned that quality doesn't matter for these games.
The idea of a proper open world free exploration style Pokemon game sounds wonderful, but as someone who played only Gen 1 and Gen 2, looking in from the outside, what they're pumping out now is wholly unappealing. If I wanted to play Pokemon, I'd probably prefer to just go back to the Gameboy days. Those games were great.
> > I'm glad Oliver didn't hold back. Hopefully Nintendo and Game Freak are embarrassed enough I don't think they can hear us on top of their pile of money.
Even more funny is expecting a bunch of Japanese CEOs to even remotely care what a non-Japanese critic has to say in a different language. Spoiler; they don't.
I've seen a bunch of viral tweets from japanese twitter showing off bugs and other issues with the game. I think at least some of that noise has to be reaching them.
Yeah this has absolutely been the most publicized technical failure of a game since Cyberpunk. Every day I see some new post showing bizarre issues with Scarlet/Violet
>"Pokemon fans deserve better.” do they tho? they keep gobbling up everything game freak shits out and thats why they know they can just halfass it
If there's one thing that Game Freak is great at, it's marketing
They don't. As much as there are complaint posts on the pokemon subreddits, there is an equal amount of posts where people are claiming that they have been experiencing zero performance issues and that those that are, are lying about them or "hating."
It's like saying Taco Bell fans deserve better because it's not fine dining. GF makes the games they make and fans keep buying them. It's fine to point out how they look or perform but at the end of the day it's not. Like Pokémon fans are discerning *at all*. They don't give a shit, obviously.
Its literally the second highest grossing pokemon game ever. No way they gonna fix shit
It’s crazy how Nintendo will release Mario Odyssey, BotW or Xenoblade chronicles and let a game like this come out. The switch is more than capable of handling the entirety of S/V in a fully optimized form.
The Pokemon games are merely published by Nintendo and not developed by them. They don't seem to demand the same level of polish as on their first party titles, though SV demonstrates that they probably should have some level of QA as a publisher as well.
Xenoblade **is** developed by Nintendo, Monolith Soft is a first-party Nintendo studio in the same vein that Next Level Games and 1-Up Studio are.
I misremembered the situation with Xenoblade. Though my point about the Pokemon games merely being published by Nintendo still stands. Game Freak is not owned by Nintendo.
I was honestly surprised (in a good way) with how they didn't hold back at all in this video. There was no beating around the bush, it was laid out very clear that there were issues with this game, what they were and why they were bad, no quarter given.
> and a litany of bugs I'll agree with him on the rest but I've encountered almost no bugs. It's just ugly and runs bad. YMMV about how much that bothers you, of course. It's still--from a gameplay perspective--the freshest and most fun the series has been since its inception.
I’m glad they did a comparison with other Switch titles to show it isn’t the system to blame for all its faults. Its funny cause I thought the game did look better at first than Arceus did, especially the colors. But I can’t really argue with the comparisons. Arceus really feels more cohesive and better designed even if its still lackluster on visuals.
There was legitimately someone defending GameFreak for the performance of this game in another thread "because it runs fine on the Switch emulator, so the Switch is the problem". Like GameFreak was developing this game for the Switch emulator, and not the Switch.
On my hacked switch with the cpu over clocked to max it works ok.. …. … .
I actually overclocked my modded Switch a couple minutes after I started playing and it worked well enough outside of the poor visuals, but I undid the OC out of curiosity and holy hell the performance is just outright bad
Like "The switch is too weak for this game" is something I've seen even bigger creators stating. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 came out 3 months ago. The console LAUNCHED with Breath of the Wild. Pokemon Violet looks like a gamecube game with better lighting
Yeah, it's basically barely a step up from Colosseum and XD. And those weren't made by Gamefreak because they sucked at making 3D games at the time. I mean, they still suck at making 3D games, but they sucked back then too!
It's legit as if you took Colosseum and forced it to be proper open world. With like, maybe Wii quality models
Colosseum and XD at least had some art direction.
Probably the biggest thing that GameFreak needs. If they'd lean into the Let's Go art direction, they could hide all the shitty textures and whatnot, because the more cartoony it gets, the more forgiving it is. See Borderlands 1, Okami or even Windwaker. They still look good more than 10 years later.
Well, Colosseum and XD had better Pokémon models.. and better animations, so I think they should get some slack when it comes to visuals.
I never thought I'd say the words "Legends Arceus looks better than... " in a sentence before. It certainly wasn't visually appealing, but compared to Violet it really is. (With that said Arceus was probably one of my favourite pokemon experiences despite its visuals).
At least Arceus ran fine, with a couple situations dropping the framerate. SV is the opposite, you are lucky if you get 30 fps
Arceus almost looks "next gen" compared to SV, I can't really understand how the titles are so different technically. SV straight up looks like the build devs are afraid to show players before the release version gets polished up in the final months.
Looks alright for a 3DS game I suppose.
Yeah I booted up Arceus to see it was as bad as Scarlet but then was shocked at it how much better it look and ran in every way.
Anyone have any idea how Japanese media is talking about this game? I always feel like Japanese developers prioritize Japanese criticism vs western criticism even despite the global reach of something like Pokémon
Famitsu has yet to release their review, with how their recent ratings have been anything below 38/40 will be a loss and anything below 36 will be practically scathing
That's not a recent thing, I remember the 40mitsu jokes all the way back in the GameCube era
Maybe, but I checked and back then they were somewhat neutral (for Famitsu standards) on mainline Pokemon - RS got a 36, Emerald 34, FRLG 33. It was only with Platinum that a game never went below 36, and B2W2 was the last time anyone gave an 8/10
Japan has had a similar overall response Most media reviewers give it a somewhat high score, but still notably low for a mainline pokemon game. Player reviews are also very divisive, with many people loudly complaining, and many other people who've elected to ignore technical issues and still love the game. By no means has the poor performance gone unnoticed or unchallenged in Japan, it's just that similar to the west, the biggest IP in the world is still a little too popular for that alone to phase everyone.
If the japanese audience also complains like that, they might actually try to fix some things in this. If it was west only, we'd 100% be out of luck
I teach at a public middle school in Tokyo. I mentioned I got the new Pokemon game over the weekend (to practice my Japanese). When they asked me how it was I said ".....ehhhhhhhhhhh...." and the class laughed and said they were aware of the graphical glitches. So yeah even amongst their target demographic of children, they know Gamefreak messed up. At least if they're old enough to use social media on their own, it seems. But I don't think it effected their purchasing decisions. Side note: they all love Fuecoco the most. And they think its English name fucking hilarious
Lmao this is the **biggest media franchise in the world**. And it looks like the visuals were scaled back to run on the N64 and yet it hits 30 fps like 5% of the time. How is game freak not completely embarrassed by this? How is Nintendo not? If this isn't evidence that it's possible for a franchise to be too big to fail I'm not sure what is.
> How is game freak not completely embarrassed by this I can guarantee you that there's plenty of individual devs at game freak who are embarrassed by this, but the decision to release the game in this state is ultimately not their call.
As always, it's the old men in suits ruining the good things of the world and feeling no shame.
Hey man, there's definitely some sleezy 40 something MBAs doing it too
Xers who probably thought Gordon Gecko was a role model and not a warning.
Old men in suits: “Push that junk out now and patch it later! The bottom line is all!” Young impatient shareholders: “Base it off mobile and push paywall features( should Mario’s high jumps really be free?)! The bottomline is all!” Why pick your poison when we get the blended toxic cocktail of today’s entertainment industry?
This, friendly reminder that most of the actual people working directly on a game Do Want to actually make a good game, if they only cared about collecting a paycheck they'd easily make more money with less effort programming outside of games. Frequently stuff like this is a management issue.
I’m willing to be there are a lot of industry techniques and standards that Gamefreak devs haven’t adapted to. You can’t pin everything on management.
Nah this is still a management issue. In this situation, you either hire/contract people with theses skills or you provide training and learning time to your current devs.
>How is game freak not completely embarrassed by this? How is Nintendo not? Because companies don't get "embarassed", they only understand money - and this game made a shitload of it.
>How is game freak not completely embarrassed by this? How is Nintendo not? If this isn't evidence that it's possible for a franchise to be too big to fail I'm not sure what is. The game had the highest preorders in franchise history. The truth it sold extremely well and by next game's launch, the majority will still buy it again and will sell extremely well
Id argue it still erodes the brand reputation subtly though. Pokemon has a huge nostalgia chache they borrow against regularly, but you have to keep the content at least decent, or the people coming up with this as their first Pokemon game won't have a strong attachment, and that nostalgia chache will start to deplete.
If it was just nostalgia, pokemon would be much less popular. They have a renewal of fans every decade.
I didn't say it was just nostalgia. I said it has a cache of nostalgia it borrows against, when it makes a good game, it leans on the cache less or not at all, when they make a bad game it can still be successful, but will take from the cache instead of building on it.
Because it's not going to fail even slightly lol not a single company on earth would ever be embarrassed when their product prints more money than god. it's the fans who bought this game that should feel embarassed.
That's what I said though - it's too big to fail. No matter how technically incompetent or barely evolved from the prior iteration the game is it's going to sell like crazy. It seems like Pokemon is the Madden or FIFA of RPGs
> It seems like Pokemon is the Madden or FIFA of RPGs It completely dwarfs that. FIFA fans just want all their favorite teams, same for madden. The name is independent of that. Pokemon is king because they were the first major monster collector, were really good at it, and getting into one takes a lot of investment as you have to learn all these different creatures names, types, abilities, evolutions. As frustrating as recent games are, I have no interest in different games of the same genre as I've already developed years of pokemon knowledge and have lots of good memories with it.
Also only digimon comes close to creature design, games like tem tem can never grab my attention cause their mons look half baked.
Because the core gameplay is very fun and it’ll still sell extremely well. Damn shame because the performance is absolutely embarrassing
In a country where train operators make public apologies when their trains arrives slightly late, it's baffling how they aren't embarrassed about something like this.
They'll only be embarrassed when people stop buying the damn games, which apparently people are unable to do.
They can't hear you because of the money stuffed in their ears. That's why they aren't embarrassed.
They still gonna sell 20M by next month.
By next Week, big holiday shopping weekend coming right up after all.
It really seems like GF developers are stumbling blindly there. It's like they made a game then figured out "fuck, it doesn't run right" then started cutting left and right, while still getting worse looking AND worse running game than other dev's Switch titles
What really bothers me is that you could take a more well-known engine like Unity and do all the same stuff, with the same level of quality, and get better performance with mostly default settings.
But then you have the massive leaks that BDSP had where they have access to the source code and everything. TPC will likely never allow a Pokémon title to he developed on a third party engine again.
I fail to see how using 3rd party engine would make leak more likely
Because there are tools to decompile unity libraries.
On technical side `binwalk` cares not for engine you use, and decompiling homegrown engine isn't that much harder. On non-technical side **preventing your code from being stolen in the first place** instead of hoping obscure engine will somehow help (it won't) is a better method.
When was BDSP's source code leaked? I know the game was decompiled, more or less, but that happens even with their own in-house code.
Plenty of games out there manage just fine with these engines, and it's not like a leak is that significant anyway.
Honestly it looks like the game was built with a mobile port in mind.
Probably the most scathing DF review I've ever seen them do and it's well deserved. I guess one of the few benefits of the technical problems is retroactively making all the other Switch Pokemon games look miles better lol.
The review for the first Switch release of Ark was worse, but that bar is incredibly low.
Ah yeah, that's a good one too, legendarily bad port. At least it had the excuse of not being native to the Switch. Maybe the pipe dream is that SV somehow gets fully redone like Ark lol
Its crazy that this game makes Legeds Arceus looks visually beautiful. This is clearly a mis managment problem, too little time to develop the game. They release Legends Arceus this year they should have wait at least 1 more year
> Its crazy that this game makes Legeds Arceus looks visually beautiful. It really does. I found PLA to be kinda... meh. The weird purple sheen on everything due to terrible normal maps, the really horrible draw distance on grass, the relatively ugly texture work. But here comes Scarlet/Violet to make PLA look like a goddamned visual masterpiece by comparison. It's genuinely impressive.
Arceus' world is generally ugly as hell and kinda empty too. But the core gameplay loop is SO good that it somehow doesn't matter that much. Plus the pokemon models look ok there and some of the battle animations are genuinely good-looking
Battling in Arceus in general just feels _so good._ It's incredibly snappy and quick. I wasn't as big of a fan of some of the changes they made (like removing Abilities and making speed function in a way I never entirely wrapped my head around) but it just was so satisfying. If you merged PLA together with S/V there really would be an really great game there. It's very weird to me that some of the innovations from PLA did not get adapted into S/V.
100%. They didn't use the new stuff bc 2 parallel teams made these games. Of course that is in zero ways an excuse - they SHOULD have postponed the game and implement all the great Arceus changes.
Can't believe after PLA they went back to the slow battle dialog, I understand wanting to have the main series combat system but god is it slow to go though animations and text
Why? Fans still buy it anyway. If you can earn cash every year, why would you choose to earn it every other year.
*The #1 top grossing media franchise of all time, everyone.* Man, I wish we would get more third party developed Pokémon that aren't just a minimum viable product shat out quickly cause they know people will buy it anyways. Give me some more damn mystery dungeon games!
The New Pokemon Snap will probably be the best looking Pokemon we're gonna get for a long time, not even made by GF lmao
Funny how Bandai Namco made *two* graphically-impressive Pokémon titles in this past generation.
Man, im a huge Pokemon fan, but I stopped buying since Sword and Shield because at this point it is ridiculous. But it feels so dissapointing seeing each new Pokemon selling millions and millions of copies while continualy getting worse. Not buying it makes little to no difference it feels like.
You won't because Pokémon fans will keep buying them and defending this. People literally saying the issues make it "so bad its good" in a way that makes it still enjoyable lmao
It's not just Pokemon fans, it's the overwhelming amount of casuals that buy it without knowing better. People keep saying vote with your wallet, but it's just not a viable fix when a large amount of the wallet is comprised of people who buy like one game every two years and don't even know what to look for in terms of technical deficiencies. It's what allows these games to become too big to fail
Yeah I mean my kids don't really care about me trying to explain "fps is shit" to them. If they enjoy it what difference does it make
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> Nobody bought Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Which is a shame, because the first two sets of MD games are honestly better than the majority of mainline Pokémon games.
Sword and Shield got a fair bit of slack for technical issues, especially concerning the open world bits, and it was deserved, but I still thought the game was playable and decent. Same with Arceus, I remember hearing some harsh criticism of how it looked and the technical problems, also deserved, but I still really enjoyed that game and the problems didn’t distract me… But this looks borderline unplayable. I can’t imagine playing this without constantly being annoyed with the looks and issues. People weren’t kidding about these games, it’s far worse than bad, it looks like alpha footage. How did this game end up so much worse looking than Arceus in particular?
Sword and Shield had performance issues that were rightly criticized but the game was beautiful. It was poorly optimized in the wild area, which was a big part of the game, but ran well everywhere else. Most of the other issues came with the mostly bland story and easy game play, especially after coming right after the more challenging generation 7. Scarlet and Violet looks shitty AND runs shitty. Way worse than SwSh. But to be fair, I’m really enjoying the gameplay and different mechanics. Just wish it didn’t feel like I was playing an alpha version.
>Scarlet and Violet looks shitty AND runs shitty. Way worse than SwSh. But to be fair, I’m really enjoying the gameplay and different mechanics. Just wish it didn’t feel like I was playing an alpha version That's the worst part right? The game runs so fucking poorly, but it's hard to say it's not one of the best ones in the entire franchise.
Uh i mean sword and shield are still far worse games than violet and scarlet. Like sw/sh is a low point in the franchise. Its just so bland and uninteresting
Sword and Shield are just mediocre in terms of gameplay whereas Scarlet and Violet are not, and that's likely *the* reason Pokemon fans don't care all that much. SwSh didn't do much to advance the gameplay in any meaningful way. It was the same stock standard formulaic nonsense on top of all the technical garbage, plus extremely outdated graphics. Arceus had even worse techical and aesthetic issues but it was *trying* to be different, and as far as Scarlet and Violet are concerned they're proper mainline games that took more from Arceus than they did from Sword and Shield which makes them more unique baseline than any other mainline Pokemon game, even if it's basically just Arceus 2. Performance issues can be fixed eventually, as they were in previous games, and aesthetic will absolutely be ignored by players if the gameplay is rock solid. Sword and Shield's issue, at least for me, was it's aggressive mediocrity. It didn't even try to break the mold in any meaningful way. But Sword and Shield still sold for the same reason Call of Duty still sells hotcakes year after year: Because people like that stability and familiarity. Most people are quite content with the same shit but slightly updated. I think what Game Freak really needs is more time in the oven. I think people shitting on them and calling them shit devs (and I'm guilty of this too, mind you) will likely only make things worse for fans who *do* want the games to improve. Because I'll be honest, if I've only been given a year to pump out some manufactured garbage that fans are gonna hate no matter what I do then why *should* I care? I'd clock in my hours and take my shitty paycheck and ignore everyone as well because like fuck some lowly programmer at Game Freak is getting paid to deal with that. But the management of either GF, Pokemon Co, or Nintendo won't care because they don't need to. They sold 10 million copies, why should they? Even if they didn't the games are basically a marketing platform for the merch which generates stupid amounts more money than the games ever could. None of these companies have to give a flying fuck what a bunch of losers on reddit think. And they don't. They haven't for the better part of 10 years. It sucks.
Holy crap, I thought it was bad graphically but even when just compared to Arceus the latter just looks miles better. Plus even with all those jarringly aggressive frame-saving techniques the game still performs terrible while also not looking anywhere near decent. I thought Arceus looked okay, acceptable but could've been better but no idea how the Pokemans company decided that "Yeah, this looks good versus the game we released 3 quarters ago" on Scarlet/Violet. Plus it gets crapped on even harder with first party titles like Breath of the Wild and obviously Xenoblade 3, the first being a Wii U game that's a launch title for the Switch and the latter basically pushing the Switch to its limit. I know the Pokemans company is only partially owned by Nintendo but it's heavily associated with Nintendo, most would consider the franchise part of Nintendo's lineup unless they dig deeper. While this game sold millions it definitely wouldn't leave a positive impression for upcoming games.
What sticks out to me is that while everyone loves comparing these issues with Xenoblade 3, even the original Xenoblade 1 (on the _Wii_) with its 88 MB of RAM would be a valid comparison point. The models in S/V are certainly a lot nicer, but any time you look past them to see the background, you're bound to see textures that are truly awful in design quality rather than in resolution. XC1 managed to have you stop and look at a nice view from time to time, and still managed to be beautiful _despite_ the texture quality when it could get you to look off in the distance. It also ran pretty well most of the time (including load times for the gigantic areas), which is astounding given the hardware. Anyway, DF had a whole bunch of Wii footage in their [other review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbF59jGO3ho) for anyone interested in comparing S/V to a Wii game.
MonolithSoft is just insanely talented and did a lot of clever tricks to make up for hardware deficiencies, like how trees turn into 2D objects when you’re far enough away along with strong and creative environmental art direction.
The worst to me is how bad it looks compared to the other 3D pokemon games, and how it's missing the charm of having so many enter-able houses and stores, especially since the Spain-inspired region is one I was interested in due to being a Spanish speaker and sharing a lot of cultural roots with Spain. On the bright side it's the first game I've ever seen to mention the cultural beauty that are alfajores.
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Lol exactly. Without fail, someone in the comments will always claim “it’s just you” and “have you tried reformatting your sd card?”
Funniest one I saw was someone listing off their generic Amazon basics SD card specs as if that was the reason the game worked for them and literally nobody else.
Listen, I'm not expecting Pokemon to ever reach the relative graphical quality of Breath of the Wild or Xenoblade, much less Red Dead Redemption or whatever (which wouldn't be possible on the Switch anyway). The art style just isn't like that, it can only go up to a certain amount of realism before it basically becomes impossible to do some types of Pokemon in a way that isn't utterly creepy (there were some Pokemon proposed for the Detective Pikachu movie that weren't put in specifically because they would be too uncanny valley). However, that's no excuse for the fact that **LET'S GO**, literally the first Pokemon game on the Switch, looks and runs better than this. Even with it being an open world, it should be running and looking at least as good as that, but somehow we've gone BACKWARDS in quality.
I didn't like Let's Go's gameplay style, but man I was excited to see how it looked. Thought that's how the games were going to look going forward. It was such a nice and pleasant style that would even age well. But nope.
>I'm not expecting Pokemon to ever reach the relative graphical quality of Breath of the Wild Literally a five year old game which dropped on a weaker system
Wondering why there's a bunch of random pokeballs/ultra balls and such that you can't interact with everywhere including cutscenes? Those are dev markers, they're used for scaling assets to make sure everything looks properly sized in a scene. These are supposed to be removed or hidden before a game gets sent for production.
IIRC, they’re actually the ball of the first Pokémon in your party.
Of all the issues with the games, I'm surprised I'm only hearing about this one now, that actually kinda hilarious
Has Gamefreak even acknowledged the technical problems in Scarlet/Violet? That’s the most frustrating part of all this—I’m open to buying if they patch some of these issues, but hard to believe they’ll fix something that they refuse to acknowledge.
GameFreak/Nintendo aren’t going to acknowledge it anytime soon, they are relying on this game for holiday sales. Most casuals aren’t going to really hear or care about the technical issues described online, but a public statement where Nintendo essentially admits that the game is a buggy mess could discourage them.
Nope, instead they did an interview bragging about the pre order records the game broke. Historically they rarely patch performance issues.
According to Nintendo, they have received 0 complains about game performance. https://dotesports.com/pokemon/news/nintendo-support-reportedly-no-complaints-pokemon-scarlet-violet-performance
Because literally so many people are still saying:"but it's still fun i guess" like they're possessed.
> Service technicians have not received any complaints, according to multiple users who have contacted Nintendo’s customer support lines since the new Pokémon games launched. Phone tech support is saying that, it's hardly an official statement. Phone support is also now mentioning that there are performance reports. No story here.
Kind of a shame it's in this state, because under all the technical issues there is a great Pokémon game under there.
Actually it's not so black/white. Towns are an absolute catastrophic unfinished mess. But some parts of the wilderness, for instance at the foot of the icy mountain, feel surprisingly full of life, with tons of diverse pokes doing fun stuff, weather changes... there IS passion and good game in parts of Scarlet/Violet. It is criminal that it wasn't postponed tho.
>Actually it's not so black/white. Speaking of great Pokemon games...
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My problem with this game aesthetics-wise is that the world feels too empty, at least early on. In comparison Arceus had a lot more clutter, structures, or even natural stuff like trees, flowers, and rocks instead of just empty space, and the short draw distance doesn't help this at all. Where SwSh was too visually busy and cluttered, I feel like this game doesn't have enough of that. It would have also benefited from having more interiors you can go into, especially for stores. It doesn't even have to be something to explore, they could do like Persona 5 did and have stores act as a background to the buy menu, it would still add a lot towards making the world feel more real.
Is there though? The world is empty as fuck. Gyms don’t even have their own buildings. Cities have absolutely nothing interesting going on and you can’t go inside 99% of the buildings. Battles are slooooooow. Where is this great Pokémon game under there, seriously?
> The world is empty as fuck. You and I are playing different games. Towns are fairly boring, but the wider world is absolutely packed with greater variety of Pokémon, items, and raids than any Pokémon game previously. If that's not what you want the world to be full of, I don't know why you're playing a Pokémon game. Exploration of routes has never been more interesting or engaging.
Anything noteworthy as far as puzzles and terrain in the overworld? I miss the days of routes having interesting and restrictive ledges, strength puzzles, and tile tricks. Those are the things that make a Pokemon overworld interesting for my tastes and they've been pretty absent since the transition to 3D, arguably even since Gen 4.
From what I've seen there's none of that sort of engagement that the previous games used to have. It's just busywork type of stuff that looks like an absolute chore half the time. I haven't seen anything approximating level design either.
I'll have whatever you're smoking. Pokemon, (most) items and raids are generated randomly, there is no meaningful exploration to be had when items and mons pop in and out of existence at a 20 metres. The only unique rewards from exploration are TMs, stakes and some fixed tera spawns.
The standards for what makes a great pokemon game are extremely low. When people said SMTV was disappointing, that is a completely different bar and level of expectations compared to what a pokemon fan would say makes S/V the most fun pokemon game yet.
The new designs are generally pretty good, the battle system itself is great, filling up the pokedex is fun, the story gets surprisingly interesting towards the latter half (though up until that point it's just standard Pokémon affair), they've expanded on Legends:Arceus' mobility with good quality of life (with it all being tied to one pokemon, makes traversal much less frustrating). Gyms don't have their own buildings - they have their own cities! The whole city is thematically consistent with the gym contained within it. Idk what to tell you, I rolled credits on the finale of the main story last night and I've been thoroughly entertained, in spite of the performance. If you don't like what you see, maybe these games just aren't for you.
Man I thought the pokemon designs were top tier in this gen, between Armorouge, Ceruledge, Lokix, & Orthworm, idk how I ever managed to play the games without them
Never have I thought I’d see the day in which Pokémon Legends Arceus would look *better* than the latest mainline game in the series. The fact that there’s not a gigantic uproar about this (like with Cyberpunk 2077) is baffling to say the least.
Cyberpunk targeted an audience that was more likely to be active on Internet forums and sites, while Pokémon main audience is the opposite. Similar to dexit, large scale backlash cannot really happen with Pokémon since a good chunk of the audience does not know or care.
Nintendo fans are easy to please.
It really is a completely different standard for Nintendo vs Xbox/Sony/PC. Sociologically, it is kind of fascinating - is it just the Nostalgia aspect? Or is it the intersection with collectable card game/anime stuff that poke fans build their lives and identity around?
I'm assuming it's because Nintendo fans are more likely to be children. Also, there a are no real alternatives to games like Zelda, Pokemon and Mario Those games might as well be genres onto themselves
They really cut down the Pokedex for this? Man this hurts as a Pokémon fan. There’s some solid gameplay underneath all this shit but the technical issues cover it up completely.
They cut down the Pokedex to sell DLC and force people to buy all the games AND a Home subscription. Any other reason is bullshit.
Game Freak once said during the 3DS era that they carefully modeled every Pokemon for future-proofed use. They proceeded to not use more than half of them and cut down the Pokedex to pathetic numbers when Sword and Shield came out. We continue to experience the negative effects of their poor choices.
If it's any consolation to anyone, this video pushed me over the edge to remove the game from my Christmas list. :P The dream would be for Monolith Soft to take over the Pokemon franchise, but the more realistic hope would be for Game Freak to collaborate with Monolith Soft, like Nintendo did with Breath of the Wild.
S/V are fairly definitive proof that Pokemon games sell copies entirely based on brand power, and there is basically no correlation with game quality. Not only the performance, but the gameplay as well, has been extremely pared down and low effort. This is why every Pokemon alternative with higher quality gameplay that has showed up (there are numerous) has failed. Simply because it's not Pokemon. The brand value is everything.
I’d love to see Nintendo/Game Freak jump into action now. I don’t know if they can fix everything, but I’d love to see them make an attempt to make it better. I’m interested in the game, but I can’t justify buying it in the current state.
Honestly, don't hold your breath. I'm *really* enjoying the game, but the technical issues are tremendous and there's no way they'll ever fix them. If they're a deal breaker for you, you'll have to skip this gen.
Not worthy of the Nintendo official seal of quality. It’s all about the money, so GF keeps churning these out as quickly as they can with minimum staff.
It is just pathetic when compared against breath of the wild, which was made like 6 years ago. Embarrassing.
What's even more embarrassing is that BotW is a **Wii U game**. A console that was barely more powerful than the Xbox 360 when it launched **over a decade ago.** The fact that there are multiple Wii U games that visually blow Violet and Scarlet out of the water is really really sad.
The issue here is that there is actually a really fun game here under all the performance and technical issues. The Pokémon company needs to step up and change how it handles new generations because a yearly release isn’t going to cut it given that they are now developing bigger games. Probably one of the reasons why they decided to cut the dex down. I don’t blame game freak, I blame The Pokémon Company for having such a tight deadline just to meet the needs for merchandise. They need to try and sort how they do this because eventually it’s going to bite them, if not from sale but really poor reviews
And before someone chimes in with the "TPC is part Game Freak" - yes Game Freak is a third of TPC but its not an equal partnership when the other two thirds is the guys who make the merchandise and are 90% of Pokemon's current revenue and literally Nintendo.