Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet are undoubtedly very successful games. The creature-collecting RPGs have amassed over 10 million sales within the first week of the games’ release date in November. Shortly after, they became some of the best-selling Nintendo Switch games of all time, reaching over 20 million sales by the end of the following month. The Pokémon Company and GameFreak don’t plan on slowing down the game’s momentum anytime soon, with the announcement of downloadable content for the games in the works.
On Pokémon Day, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet players received news that the games would receive DLC called The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero including two separate expansions. The first is The Teal Mask, which is set to come out sometime in the Fall, accompanied by The Indigo Disk released the following Winter. Along with new characters, locations, and challenges, the expansions will bring about new and returning Pokémon for players to catch.
For some, this was amazing news. The possibility of uncovering this generation’s existing lore is exciting. It’s also nice to see fresh faces and have old Pokémon return, giving players a chance to bring over their favorites that didn’t make it in the base games through Pokémon Home. That being said, a decent portion of the community was skeptical of the news, wondering if expansions are something the games need at the moment, if ever.
This mostly comes down to the games’ technical issues. Despite the record-breaking sales, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet suffered from a variety of bugs, glitches, and other problems. While a patch was released to fix some of the issues and bugs with the games, it seemingly only scratched the surface, as many problems continue to plague the games to this day.
The main issue has to do with performance. The games are set to run at 30 frames per second, 30 fps for short. While this is a standard that’s already lower than the usual 60 FPS of high-profile Switch titles, it struggles to maintain even this low frame rate. The cause is unclear, but efforts were desperate enough that the developers have patched the game to reduce the amount of people and Pokémon in areas. This has had no effect on the games’ ability to maintain their target frame rate. Unfortunate, isn’t it?
The games also suffer from visual bugs, including jarring lighting effects, abnormally bent or stretched out character models, and Pokémon spawning and phasing through unreachable areas. Even outside of bugs, the game suffers more problems, the most notable of them being the issues with Tera Raid battles. That being said, even the recent updates to the games brought about more issues, as if things weren’t rough enough.
The first has to do with a save file bug. Ever since the recent patch to the games, version 1.2.0, there has been an issue with save files becoming corrupted and hundreds of hours of gameplay potentially being lost. It’s unclear what the core of the problem could be; some reports say it has to do with connecting the games to Pokémon GO and receiving the postcards, while others came about the issue by purchasing the DLC through the games’ menu.
This seems to be a rare issue, with reported incidents of it only reaching double-digit numbers. However, a possibility of this occurring at all is a serious concern. With the inconsistencies revolving around the reports as well, it also seems like this save file corruption is an issue with the update itself rather than any specific courses of action being taken. While players should be especially cautious of using Pokémon GO or buying the DLC, one can’t be certain that this will exclude their save file from being at risk.
There was also a problem with the Walking Wake and Iron Leaves Tera Raid event. Before the DLC was announced, it was revealed that two new Paradox Pokémon would be added into the games for a limited time. You could encounter and battle these Pokémon many times, but only one could be caught per save file. However, an oversight with this event was that players could take part in it before the games updated, despite the fact that the Pokémon shouldn’t exist prior.
This caused the encounter to show up as an illegal Pokémon resembling an egg (called a Bad Egg). This cannot be removed from the game by normal means such as releasing it into the wild, nor can it be hatched. Players that caught the Bad Egg would also have that catch count as their one-time opportunity to catch the Paradox Pokémon until the issue is fixed. That being said, the update won’t come around until the end of April, making it an issue players have dealt with for nearly two whole months.
Of course, all of these problems can potentially be fixed in the future. The issues regarding the 1.2.0 update already have the attention of GameFreak, after all. In spite of that, the fact remains that the game continues to be riddled with technical problems that should’ve ideally been solved by this point. The fact that these updates aren’t anything major in the grand scheme of things, makes it even harder to justify the expansions.
To reiterate, these expansions will bring about new locations, characters, and storylines, as well as new and returning Pokémon. With the rumor floating around regarding special Tera forms, it’s likely that even more will be in store that we currently don’t know about. This all sounds exciting, but it’s not easy to get hyped given the current state of the game and how slowly it’s being addressed.
Considering what’s already arisen from just base game issues, imagine what it’ll be like if these new expansions bring about even more game-breaking problems that further hinder your experience. The fact that this DLC is in the works in the first place begs the question of where the developers’ priorities are.
They’re also priced rather high, even by the standards of Nintendo: $34.99. While that’s the price of both expansions together, that’s the only way you’re able to purchase them at the moment. Considering all the previously mentioned issues with the game, some players are finding the price comes off as both greedy and insulting, as players are expected to pay a hefty price for extra content to a game that doesn’t appear to be finished in the first place. It’s all to evocative of the fate of Batman: Arkham Origins, which to this day has glaring bugs that Warner Bros. ignored in favor of forcing their developers to pump out DLC expansions.
To put this into perspective, Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield had similar DLC months after those games released. They were also two expansions, the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra, that could not be purchased separately. The DLC for those games were priced at $29.99. While Sword and Shield were controversial entries into the mainline series of Pokémon games, they ran pretty well, so charging for the extra content seemed fair. Whereas now, it’s like players are expected to buy more expensive extra content for a worse game, performance-wise.
It’s disheartening because Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have lots of fun to be found, despite their prominent issues. The open-world exploration, and the storylines and objectives you can tackle at your own pace, makes it feel like a step in the right direction for mainline Pokémon games.
That’s not to mention the cast of new characters and Pokémon having great designs and personalities as well. Despite all it has going in its favor, the performance and technical problems with the games hold them back just as much, to the point that DLC is viewed to be as troublesome as it is appealing.
Only time will tell when they will become deserving of selling extra content but, as it stands, it’s difficult to say. Frankly, it’d be better to actually finish the original product than start demanding more from frustrated players.
