Pokémon Scarlet & Violet released today, which has players all around the world foaming at the mouth to check out the series’ newest generation, however, if you happen to be someone who’s on the fence about purchasing one of these games, you’re probably going to want to keep reading. Pokémon fans who jumped in day-one have been swarming social media with numerous videos, which are revealing the game to be in a pretty poor state performance-wise.
The following video has been one of the most egregious. It shows off just how bad the game’s framerate can get during certain sequences. It would seem throwing a Poké Ball to catch a wild Pokémon is particularly demanding, as not only do several structures and objects appear to pop in and out haphazardly, textures become unreasonably muddy, and the game gets so choppy it almost looks frozen at one point. What may be most concerning is the user’s supposed claim that “the whole game is like this.”
But the above is only one of many. This video shows a player that, while playing online, attempts to get on their Miraidon, and in doing so, becomes a sort of weirdly proportioned giant. This video has a player clip through the bottom of the stage and fall into the abyss, with the caption reading, “This is normal.” This video has the player’s Fuecoco slowly and tragically slide into a small lake while asleep, and though far from game-breaking, the following set of images may be the funniest, as they show the player’s avatar getting stuck with a frown after taking a selfie, and thus look “permanently depressed.”
Unfortunately, there are many more videos, and some fans are openly expressing how disappointed they are with the Pokémon Company as a whole. Certain game previews did warn of severe performance issues, but many fans hoped that these would get taken care of before launch. Discussions have brewed up on social media about whether the Nintendo Switch, which is now well over five years old, is to blame for the game’s subpar performance, with some desperately asking for a hardware upgrade.
Others have aptly retorted that the Switch has had other open-world or open-area games, none of which have run as poorly as this. These detractors shift the blame onto the Pokémon Company, claiming that it does not give Game Freak, the franchise’s longtime developers, enough time to properly develop its titles. Pokémon Legends: Arceus, a fairly large-scale spinoff also developed by Game Freak, released this very year, back in January. Hopefully, the answer is the latter, as that would mean that these performance issues could be patched out sometime in the future.