Pokémon Scarlet and Violet glaring technical issues leave fans heartbroken

Today’s the day - the ninth generation of Pokémon is officially here with the release of Scarlet and Violet. I for one am currently staring at my unopened copy of Violet, realising at this moment that this is going to be a very long afternoon.

Fans all over the world have been anxiously anticipating this day for months now, itching to explore the Paldea region and discover all the new species of Pokémon lurking within. However, when the reviews for the games dropped yesterday, it quickly became apparent that they have a major problem - their performance.

Take a look at our video review of Pokémon Scarlet below.

GAMINGbible’s Tom Ryan-Smith gave Pokémon Scarlet a 7/10 in his review, criticising its “terrible frame rate and visual issues”. He wrote: “These visual issues can really take a player out of the game, especially when an extremely small Pokémon pops into existence mere feet away from the player, barely noticeable, activating a battle.”

He’s far from the only one who noticed these flaws - as reported by GGRecon, many critics have pointed out the game’s technical problems. Tom Regan, who reviewed the game for The Guardian, said on Twitter that it was “one of the worst looking and performing games I've ever played”. He added: “It's a shame, as Game Freak draws up an exciting new open-world blueprint for the franchise, but appears to have lacked the time and skill to deliver it to spec.”

I reviewed the new Pokémon - one of the worst looking and performing games I've ever played.

It's a shame, as Game Freak draws up an exciting new open-world blueprint for the franchise, but appears to have lacked the time and skill to deliver it to spec.https://t.co/64wRYREzUd

— Tom Regan (@grapedosmil) November 17, 2022

Meanwhile at Polygon, three of the website’s writers got to play the games, and all of them “experienced a range of performance issues across 20-40 hours”, including “infrequent crashing”, “stop motion-like frame rates” and “invisible Pokémon in battles”.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that reviewers got access to Scarlet and Violet’s day one patch, which is available to all players now. We can only hope that these issues might be ironed out in the future, but at the time of writing, there’s been no promise of that. We really need a more powerful Nintendo Switch at this point, huh?