Pokémon Scarlet/Violet review – poor performance holds an exciting game back - Guardian

Technical problems and an evident lack of development time take the shine off this ambitious new outing for the world-conquering critters

[Bobertt]

It's Game Freak what do you expect they have held Pokemon back for over a decade because their development ideology has always been least effort for most money.

[SoulWarrior]

True, also doesn't help that the switch hardware is severely outdated at this point as well, but that's not to excuse Gamefreak being inept.

[ifinitygamer]

Agree that the Switch is underpowered comparatively, but given what BotW was able to do as a launch title, Pokémon has no excuse given the size of the world and having an additional five years to figure out how to better make use of the console's hardware.

[-Foxtrot]

I find it funny how it’s the launch and we’ve hardly seen as many reviews for such a big game/franchise

Especially the ones slating it for the performance issues

The same happened with Sword and Shield, you hardly saw anything, even on this site.

[Rutaprkl]

Give the Pokemon games to another developer already.

[execution17]

I think they should go the Activision route if they want to do yearly releases and have multiple developers work on separate games so they can actually have 2-3 years worth of development time for each game. Instead of GF pumping them out as fast as they can

[GoodGuy09]

Glitches and performance are pretty bad. We really need that new mire powerful switch nintendo...
I imagine it's gunna get docked points because of this. Games gunna sell like crazy anyways so who cares I guess lol.

[badz149]

Sheep will always be sheep. When it comes to pokemon games, it's like taking candy from a baby for GF and Nintendo. They don't care about performance. All they care about is the games don't cost too much to make for maximum profit from 2 versions of the same game with carefully selected exclusives for both versions. They know their fanbase well. They will still gobble it up like...yeah, SHEEP!

[Kosic]

I disliked Sword and Shield for one simple reason, is this Digimon power up thing they have, the mega evolve, it's such a cheap way of adding a limit break to a game that doesn't need it. I ended up quitting early on with Sword.

Legends was an interest concept for Pokemon but the story was so strange I grew bored of the same old sneak, throw pokemon, in a world that felt bland after a few hours.

I'm curious about Violet, but I do not have high hopes. I think they churn out to many pokemon titles now that it's nothing really new.

[OMNlPOTENT]

Sword and Shield did not have mega-evolution, and Legends was a fantastic step in the right direction. Not a perfect game, but they are listening to their audience.

[Kosic]

Dynamax thing, I had to Google the name off it. It felt super cheesy and not needed at all.

[generic-user-name]

At first I saw the metacritic and thought: wow, that's low for a Nintendo IP, where is the Nintendo free pass gone?
After that, I saw the videos of the performance issues, then I thought: wow, this should be way lower on metacritic and the Nintendo free pass went nowhere.

[-Foxtrot]

Yeah if this was any other developer it would have been at 55-60

Sword and Shield got the same defence aswell

[mkis007]

Now you care about performance.