Pokemon Scarlet/Violet - Review Thread

[Wulava]

This is a dedicated thread for your opinions regarding the game. What do you think of the game's performance, graphics, Pokemon, music, etc? Please keep discussions civil and reasonable. Respect everyone's opinion.

If this thread is just gonna end up a GF hate thread, the thread will be immediately locked, your posts will be considered as spam, deleted, and infracted.

All forum rules apply.

 

[Morty05]

I don't know if it belongs here so if not can mods move this to appropriate thread?
Anyway: Is this game so buggy and so low resolution that I can't play it? Dose frame rate drop that much?

 

[Wulava]

I don't know if it belongs here so if not can mods move this to appropriate thread?
Anyway: Is this game so buggy and so low resolution that I can't play it? Dose frame rate drop that much?

Do you have the latest version 1.0.1? If not, please update your game. Although even after the update, the game still has performance issues but IT IS playable. The framerate drops below 25fps at times. But it depends on all the assets present on the screen.

If the game is unplayable, then I suspect you are playing an emulated version.

 

[falconlord]

Sigh, no.

Contrary to what certain people have claimed, the game runs fine 99% of the time.

There are hundreds of YouTube livestreams out and about now, and they do not show any significant issues.

 

[Morty05]

Do you have the latest version 1.0.1? If not, please update your game. Although even after the update, the game still has performance issues but IT IS playable. The framerate drops below 25fps at times. But it depends on all the assets present on the screen.

If the game is unplayable, then I suspect you are playing an emulated version.

I haven't even brought the game yet... but on Reddit and in Korean Pokemon forums there are various cases of game reported as being unplayable due to glitch... there is even one case of game crashing... that is what I am more worried about.

 

[Wulava]

I haven't even brought the game yet... but on Reddit and in Korean Pokemon forums there are various cases of game reported as being unplayable due to glitch...

Hmmm. If there's a glitch that's preventing them from playing the game, I don't know anything about it. Whether it's on the software side or hardware side of things, we can't tell.

But the general consensus is that the game is playable despite technical flaws (and nothing game breaking). Many others even finished the game even with their hacked/jailbroken Switch consoles. The only issues I've heard of where the game is unplayable is through emulators on PC.

 

[Morty05]

Hmmm. If there's a glitch that's preventing them from playing the game, I don't know anything about it. Whether it's on the software side or hardware side of things, we can't tell.

But the general consensus is that the game is playable despite technical flaws (and nothing game breaking). Many others even finished the game even with their hacked/jailbroken Switch consoles. The only issues I've heard of where the game is unplayable is through emulators on PC.

final question: dose performance vary between types of swtich? Dose it work worse in lite than in say OLED?

 

[Wulava]

final question: dose performance vary between types of swtich? Dose it work worse in lite than in say OLED?

Unfortunately, I couldn't tell since I don't have the game yet to test for myself. But I've seen someone post a video of the game handheld and docked on an OLED Switch, and the performance are practically the same. Not sure about the Lite.

 

[Noy]

This is reminding me of SM on the 3DS. The game would lag a little during double battles. (it might have been USUM or both; i can't recall which.)

 

[Morty05]

On reddit people are on fire criticizing GF for how unpolished S/V is. Some even demanding public apology from GF... is it Really THAT bad?

 

[falconlord]

No. The Pokémon subreddit is the nastiest, most hypercritical sewage dump of the Pokémon fandom.

 

[Sαpphire]

On reddit people are on fire criticizing GF for how unpolished S/V is. Some even demanding public apology from GF... is it Really THAT bad?

To give you an actual answer that hopefully helps you enjoy the game, the experience with technical issues appears to vary significantly from person to person. There are apparently those who would have you believe that there are no problems at all, but there are players experiencing issues significant enough to prevent them from fully enjoying the game; others are apparently having a perfectly fine time. It’s worth noting that we don’t know for certain why some users have more issues than others, nor where the issues are coming from. Right now, theories are that there are memory leaks when entering and leaving towns/cities; that having newer hardware can be beneficial; and that having a digital copy may be a contributing factor to having more issues. I haven’t seen any indication of issues that are completely game-breaking or that corrupt save files, so that’s good - almost all the issues reported are poor frame rates, bad camera angles, and the occasional clipping issue (I’ve seen a video of a player character falling through the map). One thing that has been suggested if you happen to encounter serious performance issues is to save and restart the game (by fully closing it, then opening it again from the Home Screen) regularly upon exiting any town or city. This would, in theory, dump the RAM that’s not getting properly cleared due to the potential memory leaks, hopefully temporarily fixing the issue for you. A memory leak bug, if that’s the problem, is likely serious enough to warrant action from Game Freak in a patch sooner rather than later, so hopefully you wouldn’t need to rely on this for long.

 

[Autobot N]

On reddit people are on fire criticizing GF for how unpolished S/V is. Some even demanding public apology from GF... is it Really THAT bad?

From what I've heard there are legitimate framerate issues, but also Reddit sucks and is a cesspool of people hating everything

 

[falconlord]

From what I've heard there are legitimate framerate issues, but also Reddit sucks and is a cesspool of people hating everything

To be fair, not all of Reddit is that bad and indeed, not every Pokémon community on Reddit is that bad, either. The Pokémon subreddit is just... kind of the dumping ground of the other Pokémon communities on Reddit.

To keep this on topic, yes there does seem to be some lag. But like I said before, on all the livestreams I've seen, the game runs just fine 99% of the time.

 

[Kaddy2009]

So far I haven't ran into any lags yet, but only time will tell!

 

[Flowing Ice]

It seems likely to be memory leak related, so what performance issues there are can be fixed. That said, despite what issues there are, I have been really enjoying the game thus far. Really vibing with how game feels, plus I like the characters.

 

[Cyclone]

After being used to the fluid, dynamic controls of Legends Arceus, this is definitely a big step downward for me.

The mechanics feel babyish and failsafe as well as clunky, with long pauses between sequences that should flow quickly such as entering a Trainer battle, switching Pokemon, and hitting wild Pokemon with a Pokeball. I actually do like the Auto-Battle feature, although I feel that it wouldn't need to exist if normal wild battles were truly seamless like they were going for, which they're not. They're still too sequential, and should allow animations, text, and menu selections to overlap in rapid succession for easy button mashing. It's amazing that it's Gen 9 and we still have to wait for the "hurt by poison" or "[stat] fell" sequences to finish before selecting the next attack, for example. I do however give the game big props for allowing us to skip cut scenes in the menu selection. Thank Arceus Christ finally !

Graphics are.... okay. There were moments playing this on my HD TV that I felt like I was looking at an N64 game. Lots of pixilation and the same lack of quality animation we saw in SW/SH. Speaking of, I'm surprised they didn't make the trees look that detailed or interesting after there was so much brouhaha about them last time. Small nitpick but did anyone else notice that most of the blades of grass are sharp at the bottom? Huh??

Audience -- The game is designed for very young children and it shows. We can now use Fly in the first route? Pokeball items have beams of light coming from them, so that they're idiot proof? No longer needing to aim your Pokeball at a Pokemon, it just does it for you. Meh. I'm definitely the wrong audience for this game.

Ultimate reaction -- As someone who's played every single generation as they were released, if I have to slog through another gen with these basic mechanics, I might as well do it on a nostalgic older generation. I'm not very inspired to continue. PLA spoiled me, and now I can't unsee...

 

[Morty05]

do you think GF will fix these graphical glitches within next few weeks?

 

[Sponge]

I have an old switch and a digital copy of the game and so far I haven't noticed anything game breaking at least.

Worst thing I've encountered is an awkward camera angle that made me see under the map briefly. Also the laggy background animations are pretty immersion breaking.

Other than that the game has been fun so far, and as I said nothing has happened yet that has really annoyed me.

I'd still agree that we should expect more from Gamefreak, the overall performance feels pretty sloppy, even it's not (personally) negatively affecting the experience too much.

 

[Xanhawk]

So, in a stroke of great luck I got my copy last night and punished myself with sleep deprivation before a 10 hour shift at work \o/

Anyway, I have only gotten up to the point where I can actually explore and other than draw distance oddities (NPCs losing/gaining textures depending on if they are coming close or going far) and a few cutscenes, I've experiences 0 frame rate drops or loss of generalized assets.

When engaging Pokemon or trainers, the camera shifts enough for me to not clip through anything unless I force it to by moving the camera, tho I have found a few fights (against NPCs) where I have no camera control and it acts like old camera where if flops through views until I give an attack command.

I've played both docked and handheld mode and there wasn't any considerably noticeable change, even in the city with the school.

Tera Raids are interesting. I haven't quite adjusted to them yet, but I like that it treats you as if you were in a single player battle even with others attacking. You aren't really waiting for others to make a move and it doesn't seem like there is any particular order in which you and others attack.

I still need to test out online and co-op to see if I gain any issues, but so far the game runs smooth and it performing better than I expected.