Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s technical nightmare spawns series-worst new-gen rating

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is set to release on Nov. 18. As generations and generations of Pokémon players slowly prepare themselves for the big grind, outlets like the Guardian, GamesRadar+, and Video Games Chronicle are far from happy with how the game panned out. Besides that, the game has already been doing poorly on Meta Critic, with a score of 78.

The biggest reason why all three reviewers deemed Pokémon Scarlet and Violet as a bad game lies in its performance issues. “Pokémon Scarlet and Violet get so much completely right from a gameplay and story perspective. However, the technical aspects of the game need that same love, especially as the series presumably moves to the next hardware by the time of the next new generation,” Video Game Chronicle said in a review today. The game is mainly suffering from sudden FPS drops, meaning your battle will sometimes look like a clunky slideshow.

But that’s not all, the game is also struggling with other technical issues like removing frames of animation from items in the distance. In the words of VG247 today: “The most common thing is frame culling (this is my term; our buds at Digital Foundry say it can also be described as ‘time slicing’, and say it’s done to reduce CPU overhead). What it is, though, is when frames of animation are removed from items in the distance, resulting in stilted movement.”

When compared to the previous generations, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet fails to meet the standard Nintendo has set for itself. To elaborate on how the game’s technical issues are tanking its rating, we’ll take a look at Metacritic scores from all generations. 

As you can see, the Pokémon franchise has a pristine record of consistently keeping up with player base expectations and the standards they have set. Unfortunately, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet still has to solve pressing technical issues Nintendo plans on the game properly continuing the legacy of Pokémon.