Early Impressions of Pokémon Scarlet and... Oh no. 

I was watching SmallAnt play this game, and some one in chat mentioned that the slow frame rate actually affects the in game timer, so SmallAnt decided to compare how many hours he had streamed the game versus the in game timer. He found out that he had streamed about 16 hours, and the in game timer was a 14.5 hours, meaning he lost a whole 1.5 hours to the terrible frame rate

The positivity of the Arceus video that has been brewing for almost a year only to be dashed immediately by the Scarlet and Violet reviews mere hours later. Such is the life of a Pokémon fan.

This game has been the best slideshow I've ever played

Minor improvements I notice from the video: -Picking up items is no longer (animation of character kneeling down) "X found a Y!" (wait for jingle to finish) "X put the Y in the Z bag." and going through the item/bag menu to find the description; instead it's just collected with a little pop-up on the side of the screen, and a description for new items that doesn't interrupt the game. -Pokemon attack animations can start while the "X used Y!" text is still on-screen, instead of waiting for it to disappear first. Sometimes? -Battle/Pokemon/Bag/Run battle commands have little icons now. -Trainer battles being optional, and repeatable after some time. -Quick starts and ends to wild encounters: no long combat-transition animation, no "You encountered a wild X!" or "Y defeated the wild X, Y gained Z Exp. Points" messages. -It looks like wild Pokemon drop (crafting?) items on defeat? Whether it's actually useful for something or just a small source of money, it seems a bit more rewarding than just the usual Exp. -No random encounters, Pokemon are always visible. The bad: -Oh my gosh WHY are they still doing individual animations and text boxes for "X's Attack rose!" "X's Speed rose!" "X's Defense fell!" etc!?!?!? How have they still not consolidated it to "X's Attack, Sp. Attack, and Speed rose! X's Defense and Sp. Defense fell!"? Especially Klawf's ability that cause 5 stat changes in a row, did not a single person look at it and think "wow, this is horribly slow and annoying for no reason at all"??? -Confusion/Paralysis/etc animations still have to fully play out and have separate text boxes that don't overlap the animation, before the actions can continue. How and why did they (slightly) fix this with moves but not with status effects? -Combat, battle camera, and battle animations are still ridiculously static, bare-bones, and underwhelming. (granted, this footage is from early-game, so early moves are going to be more basic, but still) -Long pauses before starting a battle. Does it need to separately load the battle programming every single time? -Obviously, everything else Arlo already mentioned, especially visuals and performance. The clips of bugs and performance drops popping up are actually hysterical. Honestly, I'm not surprised in the slightest. It's hard to tell if it's sheer genuine incompetence, or literally having no time to polish anything before shoving it out the door. "My expectations were LOW, and this is SO FAR below those low expectations" sums it up pretty well. A reminder: Xenoblade Chronicles 1 was on the Wii, and games like Final Fantasy 10/12 were on the PS2. And Breath of the Wild was more-or-less a Switch launch title. There's absolutely no excuse for such a low quality product as this.

When developing Pokémon Gold and Silver, Game Freak had such difficulty that they asked Satoru Iwata to fix up the code. He did such a good job that they were able to then include the Kanto Region with all the free space. Clearly, they've never got any better at programing since the 90s and won't ask Nintendo help again.

"We are all playing it, we are all having- ... playing it... it's getting played" -Arlo EASILY my favorite quote of his.

I feel like you hit the nail right in the head with your early impressions. I would like to just add that for the first time ever they nailed it with the online. It works really good. We got a party playing last night and it was amazing. No one got dropped for a long, long while... until the host's (me) game crashed. And I can tell you I wasn't doing anything. Just coming out of a town. The game needs an optimization patch pronto or else people will start freaking out.

My favorite thing about Arlo's videos is when he's been talking for so long that he forgets he's speaking as a muppet and his voice has become too humanlike, but then he remembers and gets muppity again

When I walked into my first open world town, folded inside out, and then clipped through the map at a 1000mph, I knew this game would be special.

As a person who usually doesn’t care about graphics and performance of a game, this genuinely had me concerned as well upon firing it up. If you go into the storage room in your moms house before you leave, your switch goes completely black. I thought it crashed or fried my system lol. But you can get out of it. The game is aware that it does that. It’s just super weird because it goes black without warning

*I feel like Arlo needs a hug after this video. Sorry the game’s running so badly man, take a virtual hug*

This game is a true diamond in the rough. I finished it one week after release and... I hate the people that made this wonderful, wonderful game release in this state. It's honestly the best Pokemon game I have played in a very long time. The ending even ranks up there among moments like my first two encounters with Red in Silver all those years ago. Two because I did not know about him and was not prepared. But I can't defend the issues it has. This Gen needed more time in the oven. I want to see the conversations we'd be having in a timeline where that happened. The only upside about the current situation is that spoilers are not too too common unless you look for them.

Scarlet and Violet are a great example of why you shouldn't rush to release before the holidays. They should have been delayed at least a few months.

There are a couple of things you can do to improve performance: 1- Move to Internal Storage If you had SD card as the default location, the game installed the Day 1 Patch into it, your SD card might not be fast enough and slow the game down. If you have a digital copy it's probably best to move the whole game to Internal Storage. 2- Set the resolution to 720p You can change this under "TV Output", this way, the game won't try to upscale to 1080p. 3- Restart the game after 2 hours Developers are saying this game probably has a memory leak, this means big chunks of data especially from towns are piling up, the longer you play, so after two hours, you should restart the game. Actually, it's dumb, but the best would be to avoid going into towns if you don't have to. Devs are also saying you can go in an out of Mesagoza, since it's the only town that is in a separate scene, it cleans up the memory. I was having a horrible experience at the beginning, the game was basically running at 20 FPS 90% of the time. I did this, and now it at least runs at 30 like 60% of the time, so it is better. We NEED to pressure Game Freak and TPC and make clear that this is a lack of respect towards us fans, they HAVE to patch it!

The one saving grace for me in this game is the co-op mode. I played all weekend with my sibling and it was great just running around together. I wanted to catch a particular pokemon and when he found one he stayed by it so I could run to the location and catch it. I found a cool area and led him to it. We did Tera raids together, we shouted at each other whenever we found a good item, tackled the gyms simultaneously, and took selfies. It was actually a fun experience overall! I have things that I wish it had, like sidequests and more stuff to do, but I'm having fun at least. That lag though.... Edit: it's been a couple weeks now and have to say I also appreciate that the characters feel like they have more depth to them than the last couple games. I still personally would prefer a more linear and coherent story, but I really did care about these characters by the end.

For swsh and arceus it was pretty easy for me to brush off and ignore the rough edges and I still really enjoyed the games but oh my goodness the horrible framerate makes very movement feel like you are moving through sludge it feels so bad to play!!! I love the characters (especially Arven and Director Clavell) and the titan battle story is particularly endearing. I love how much personality the legendaries have in this!

It’s hasn’t been too janky for me and perhaps I’m so annoyed because I love fashion (literally have a degree in design), but it drives me crazy how we’re forced to wear a uniform the whole time. Yes there are different versions and accessories for styling, but imo like 80% of the accessories clash with the uniform and getting to style my character and make different looks was one of my favorite parts of the past few games. Sw/Sh for all its bullshit had some of the best character customization and that’s matters to me goddammit 😭 I hope there’s a robust postgame where we graduate and get to wear whatever the fuck we want 🥺

I’ve played every Pokémon game ever released state-side and this is the first game that’s ever crashed on me. And it’s crashed three times in two days. Twice were in a sandstorm, one was directly after I beat a gym. Really took the wind out of my sails.

I feel like the legends games are gonna be it's own separate series and i really hope so, which is maybe why the legends battling style isn't carried over to scarlet and violet. I prefer the typical battle system but oh boy.. this game tech issues are really hindering my fun.

I got so happy when the crab thing was brought up, I was just explaining to my boyfriend how much it slows down the pace of the battle then I heard it mentioned in the video. There’s no reason each stat has to be announced one at a time anymore

The worst part is the battle animations. Legends was interactive and the Pokémon would approach eachother to attack; now they stand still and a bite animation appears 🥲

Much to be desired. I really did like the story of this one. So heartwarming. No spoilers worth it for me

Never get used to bad game design or bad quality control.

The BOTW team got to delay the game twice to work out issues and deal with the physics engine. If the year comes that gamefreak is allowed to actually do that to polish a game, it will be AMAZING.

That quiet little "so tired" at 7:55 is so real and heartbreaking to hear from Arlo. Really sums up the general feelings I've been hearing towards this game.

I am really excited to hear the full review on Scarlet/Violet!

I had to pass on getting this game 'cause I'm balls-deep in Harvestella right now and I don't think I have time for both of them. It's been interesting seeing all the reactions for sure!

The jigglypuffs being yeeted into the great beyond has been one of the more interesting moments in Pokemon glitch history

As I said on Mutahar's video, it's 2022 and you still can't change a Pokémon game's language without deleting your save data, let alone on the fly like many PC games. It's a relic of when you needed many PAL versions due to small filesize limits, and even then, Rhythym Paradise and the Altron Spongebob games are the only DS-era examples I get.

My spouse and I got Violet and Scarlet (respectively) and it's impressive how many glitches and visual issues that we have come across. I've luckily not had the game crash on me, but my spouse has. The thing is, precisely like Arlo said, there's a really good game in here. Where the visual issues aren't in your face, the game is fun, it's nice to just run around, explore, battle Pokemon, do stuff. There's some cool landscapes here and it's a nice variety, and the world is indeed pretty darn big. And doing Union Circle (i.e. joining up with friends) is easy, straightforward, and goes off without a hitch. When I think of the Switch and online, I think about the stuttering and overall slowness that was Mario Maker 2's online (at launch) and this isn't like that at all. Playing online with friends, either in the same room or across the internet, doesn't make a difference; that's pretty great. So yeah, if they ironed out the performance issues and glitches, this would be a solidly great game.

I’m only experiencing minor visual bugs. By far the silliest one I have involves trainers. When in a trainer battle, the opposing trainer will spin around really quickly when they send out or return a Pokémon. Idk what’s causing it but it’s hilariously bad. In terms of good things I am really enjoying the improved textures and animations on the Pokémon themselves. The fur, scales, and hard surfaces on the Pokémon look amazing. Pineco has cracks in its body. And seeing some Pokémon walk and swim around is just so charming My other complaint is the leveling. There’s no level scaling so I ended up being excessively over leveled for the second gym. I took a peak at the next few area’s levels and I decided to train up a new team bc I’m way over leveled. If you’re gonna allow people to go to the gyms in whatever order they want in a HUGE world then there needs to be a better level curve. The bug and grass gym ace Pokémon are just one level apart from each other which is not exactly a realistic thing to consider when they’re on completely opposite sides of the map and not a very logical progression of movement.

I wasn't bothered much with the graphics issues. What drove me up the wall was how clunky and stilted and slow the battles, cut scenes, and dialogue were. After playing 800 hours in Arceus I got used to the flow and movement and loved it. To go from that to Scarlet made it feel more like a slog and a chore rather than fun. Now I'm just going to have to work through it for my living dex.

The worst thing is when you ride on Karaidon/Maraidon and some random group of Pokemon spawn right in front of you, forcing you into a battle

My big bone to pick with SV is that they keep saying "oh it's an open world! Do whatever in whatever order!!!" but if you enter the wrong gym at the wrong time, you're screwed. I wish the gyms/Team star/titan pokemon scaled with you as you grew, so it truly didn't matter what order you did them in.

Game is so fun, story is really good. The performance lets it down in a major way. The gyms and objectives should scale also

The performance issues are bizarre and at first I thought it was tied to older Switch models, but people with the same models can have different performances in the same areas. It's really weird.

I have seen the end credits and can positively say that I lost multiple hours JUST to lag and glitches. Never crashed, but the lag was just so unbelievably bad. Sometimes I just have to sit and marvel over how something could be released in such a state. The beginning scene where they show the N64 Spyro jagged assets they call terrain and say something like “how beautiful”had me genuinely burst out laughing

It helps if every couple hours you save and quit the entire time and reload; that helps a bit with the lag. It's absolutely ridiculous and I doubt they will even patch the game, it's so disappointing. Especially because I'm having a lot of fun with the game, I would love it if it just Functioned.

If I felt I was moving through sludge, that would absolutely impact my experience with a game like this because being able to move seamlessly and freely is a large part of what makes it so enjoyable imo I'm not sure why, but I've been one of the lucky people who hasn't had to deal with lag problems like that- even playing in console mode (which I did for a majority of my playthrough so far) The battles are also pretty quick, even though there are a few extra, what feels like, uncessary dialogue boxes that keep me spam clicking a, I could imagine an already slow experience being absolutely painful having to go from battle to battle just to fill out your pokedex. I really really enjoy this game at it's root, but my biggest desire is for them to patch the performance issues. Especially in the boxes for your pokemon...

Papa Arlo's saying everything I'm thinking. My biggest gripe is slow battles. Second is visuals and performance.

Im about 18 hours in and the amount of glitches I have encountered is insane. Its like I can't do anything without glitches or massive frame drops. The thing is, I think if the game ran well it would be up there as one of the best Pokemon games. It has so much charm to it and it felt like they cared, they just couldn't optimize it for crap. At the very start of the game my characters mom's eye drooped into the world and she looked like a monster. On the gameplay side they 100% need to implement catching outside of battles. In Arceus I could catch like 5/6 Pokemon while in Violet I can catch maybe one in that time. It slows the game down dramatically and I decided I wasnt going to 100% the dex.

I’m just so sick of saying “yes I mean this aspect and that aspect suck, but it’s a Pokémon game” or “Yeah it’s good, for a Pokémon game.” I’m sick of holding Pokémon to this standard where I put up with shit I just wouldn’t from any other franchise. This game finally broke me. I can’t keep doing it.

Handheld mode seems to make a big difference. It performs far better than docked

I’ve seen videos of the glitches. Watching the trainer suddenly turn into crazy frog was interesting

One thing I didn't like is how touching in a pokemon starts a battle, I thought they were going to do like legends Arceus where you have pokemon attacking the trainer instead of starting a battle if you get near them, and I think that was way better

there's a mouse with an attack that hits 1-10 times, imagine having to sit through that

I think you nailed it. I've been calling this game a beautiful disaster, but basically it's the same idea. There's a really good game here. The concept, the characters, the introduced & tweaked mechanics are all great. (Though some could still be better like throwing Pokeballs in Arceus was still the best experience). It's just nothing is finished. I feel like they stapled an outline to a rough draft and decided to stop there. I'm enjoying myself so far playing, but I'd love to see the intended finished vision.

The open world design really encourages you to search and catch more pokemon. More than any other pokemon game. But catching pokemon is SO MUCH SLOWER than in Legends Arceus. That's been the biggest issue for me.

I've only had NPC's dropping/skipping frames, never a PokeBall or my character. My biggest issue and annoyance is that I've had several Pokemon spawn inside of the ground, including an outbreak of a certain tadpole. Literally every single one was in the ground, I had to scan the ground while targeting and throw a pokemon out to fight once I locked into one which would then pull it out of the ground.

It’s so clearly a quality quantity issue. We got let’s go then less than a year later sword and shield. Then we got bd and sp in 2021, a few months later arceus and in the same year scarlet and violet. They should be releasing a game every 2 to 3 years until they can handle increasing productivity. These games should look and run a lot better.

2:39 I found both a trainer that was too high level, and a team star base that was too high level, and that wasted like 10-20 minutes

My main nitpick honestly is the fact they removed the ability to press B and it automatically goes down to the run button in Pokémon encounters. Other games like Sword and Shield, DP remakes, and Arceus I’m pretty sure all had them but I can’t understand why the feature was removed in this game

Basically everyone is like, "Best main line Pokemon game, runs terribly, glitches, why'd they remove the opportunity to choose what you wear"

I love it when I'm heading for a pokemon and it disappears into the void

This bugs me that this game gets so much copium praise while cyberpunk 2077 was just ripped to shreds.

When it comes to performance I always point to Monster Hunter Rise which looks good and runs good. Which means performance on the Switch is based on developer competence and It feels like most just can't figure out optimization.

The performance issues 100% hold Scarlet/Violet back. The stutter and rendering issues and weird pauses between things like multi hit moves and omniboosts are so strange. It doesn't flow anywhere near as well as Legends and it's a shame because there is so much to love about Scarlet/Violet. There's a lot to love!! I really REALLY wish the game didn't have performance issues!!!! It would be so lovely if they would fix it because the games are so incredibly charming and wonderful

I'm personally still playing it and enjoying it but the performance problems (stagger/ lag) is making it hard to do. I heard that its due to some kind of memory leak that can be fixed by simply restarting the game though. If I am to take a wild guess, I wonder if gamefreak has multiple models of the same character loaded in the map and just hidden outside of the view like they did with the previous games for all the cutscenes. If that is the case, then that may be a cause of the performance issues but that is all speculative on my part.

My guess is that the difference in how well the game runs for different players stems from where the game is stored: cartridge, internal storage, or SD card. It should be fastest on cartridge and internal storage. If it's on SD card, it's going to take longer to stream data; and how much depends on the quality of the SD card. I'm speculating here, but I think it's something that should be investigated. If the game relies on a lot of constant data streaming from the ISO, then the throughput of the storage medium is going to make a noticeable difference.

I always had feelings that they needed to break the tradition of having a new game every 3 years so that we can make sure the game is as polished as possible, but in modern gaming, that’s impossible now

For me my biggest complaint is the lack of dynamic leveling for the gyms and other main story progression. I really was just so disappointed when I got high level on one side of the map then went over to the other side to find I was completely over leveled.

This game looks SO SMOOTH... when watching at 2x speed

Definitely seen a couple performance issues on my end, but I am still having wayyy too much fun! Love the designs, the environments, and the various storylines. But I absolutely agree that if it had a few more months, maybe even a year to really fix the performance issues, it could easily the very best in the Pokemon series.

That “Oh no” in the title. I felt that in my soul. That’s exactly what I was thinking 30 minutes into my playthrough. Returned my copy to Best Buy. We deserve better.

I think the strangest part of Scarlet and Violet is how different the game performs from person to person. While I've obviously had bugs, I've experienced nothing unplayable or frustrating. I think it's going to be interesting once dataminers figure out what exactly is going on.

Certainly not hardware fault. Okay, it is limited, but breath of the wild runs super smoothly with much more elements in the field of view.

I've just started laughing whenever I glitch/clip around walls, or see a pokeball bouncing up and down on its own because the trainer tossing it and catching it disappeared into the nether...or see a bunch of sweatdrops come out of out of nowhere as an invisible pokemon gets scared of my presence and flees. And, of course, I hit "save" whenever the framerate just goes to complete crap out of fear that the game is gonna crash. To be honest, I have a bigger problem with the new pokemon. I've been (attempting to) run a Region Blindlocke; a nuzlocke run without looking anything up, only using the new Gen 9 pokemon (and regional variants) and...I feel like my team is made of paper. The vast majority of the new pokemon seem to have absolute garbage defensive stats (almost all of them seem to be glass canons), and I don't know how I've survived some of the battles I've done. The typings of the pokemon are also often questionable...and I never really liked them adding the "normal" type to a pokemon since that gives them an additional weakness; which is especially bad here because I feel like a bulk of the pokemon seem to be fighting types. And don't get me started on the awful type pairings of two of the starters. That's just...yikes. I still went with the grass kitty because CUTE, but when I learned of its final typing, I literally shouted "WHYYY!?". I've gotten to a point where I'm debating nixing the "regional" part of the nuzlocke because it's...honestly, a lot of the new pokemon are just not really that fun to use when they go down in one or two hits. This generation is a nuzlocker's worst nightmare. XD

Klawf's buff stacking had me rolling my eyes too.

It's not a surprise anymore, but it's still sad to see. Because you can tell there's still passion and serious ideas that these developers want to fully flesh out. But they can't give these mainline games their full potential because of the time restraints the entire franchise is held under. I feel like Scarlet and Violet is a huge step forward for pokemon in terms of leaving its formulaic game design. I want things to change, but i know it's probably going to be like this until the franchise is ran into the ground.

Nintendo is now reporting that nobody has reported issues with performance in the game and do not have a patch planned

Just finished all the different story lines and caught over 200 Pokémon. Best Pokémon game i have ever played but the Frame rate and the render distance really did it for me. I had a hard time feeling involved in the game when I am riding around and watching Pokémon, shadows, objects, and the map itself render 2ft in front of me. The game was constantly reminding me that I’m playing a video game. Really disappointing

I think game freak should have made one game I could only image how fun scarlet and violet would be with the speed, catching system of legends and the stability of let’s go pikachu and eevee

I gotta say, performance issues have never bothered me until this game

@Arlo heads up, there’s a glitch where evolving certain Pokémon in Scarlet and Violet corrupts your entire microSD card you use with the Switch…so be forewarned!!!!!!

One thing I love about this game is how you can be in the same area as yesterday and there's different species of pokemon in the wild, as if its a weather thing. Today its rainy and there's more water type. Today its a breezy day and more grass pokemon are out and about. There's a lot of stuff in Arcues like the lock-on aiming mechanism that's missing. The game says you can lock on a pokemon in a tree in the wild and it doesn't work over half the time due to the awkward angle or your low height, especially on a slope/hill.

I've seen through the floor like 5 times because some animation needed the camera in a certain place. For example, I didn't realize at first that the tape on sprigatito didn't hold because I was too busy looking at how far the walls of the main city go beneath the ground while it evolved

I’m amazed how they could get so many things right and also so many things wrong all at once

my main issue with the game is the lack of options, they removed set battle style, I always use it and its been in the games forever but its gone now, I wish I could just turn off the small things that bother me so much, I don't want to see if moves are super effective before I use them, just let me turn that off please, there's a lot of things that would make me enjoy the game a lot more if I just had the option.

The first few hours of this game are such a drag. Even though you can skip cutscenes (even though this doesn't seem to help much), it took me like 2 hours before the actual game started 😅

I think its bonkers that Sonic Frontiers can get like 2/10's from outlets while this gets 7's or 8's when its actively functionally worse than that and hurts the immersion far more than in Frontiers. Ive had people bring up softlocks, freezes, etc not just usual issues. Mentioning sonic, this game reminds me of sonic 06 with the lack of polish. I dont wanna say worse than 06 but is getting there.

I think your thoughts about sum up everything I've heard from other folk. There's an amazing game in here! It's just... under a thick layer of... 2 FPS glitchy nonsense. I went into this game expecting terrible performance, but I was surprised when that super laggy ball-throwing capture animation happened to ME too (and I had only been playing for an hour, switch docked!). I dunno, it's such a shame that I have to feel so conflicted, when PLA was pretty straight forward an amazing time for me. I'm still overall liking these games, the core element of Pokemon is strong enough to carry things and the open world aspect is a really nice breath of fresh air, but man... MAN... I'm praying for a big patch very soon...

This game really grew on me. The story and characters are great, they really made the world feel alive. Level scaling is annoying but even within the appropriate areas there were so many Pokémon to catch and things to find I felt satisfied in exploring, and you never have to go to a stupid lab or hideout and go through a gauntlet of shitty trainers you can set the pace of the game yourself it’s wonderful, and Miraidon is so fun to control imo. Slow battling was super lame especially in the beginning, but it gets better as you go on when you have more options. It might be my favorite game in the series? Idk if I’m ready to say that maybe its just recency bias…hmmmmm

Pokémon games exist outside of the jurisdiction of Nintendo's quality standards, it seems

This could’ve been the best pokemon game ever made… Two years from now.

One small detail that really bothered me was the fact that the camera angle automatically adjusted to where we’re facing. Like, sometimes I just wanna be able to see what’s going on in one spot even when I’m running the other way!!!

I'm someone who is primarily an MMO player now, and so the frame rates don't bother me too, too much. What bothers me, though, is how during a battle, the battle wouldn't even load and I got to just stare at a blue screen with floating health bars. I could still fight, but after the battle, it literally took 10 seconds for the assets to load again. I shouldn't have to reboot the game to fix this. This shouldn't even be in the game. I've seen 1 person projects with less glitches than this. Like... Game Freak, what are you doing?

Whats most fascinating is that Nintendo already seemed to solved the issue of open world games with Breath of the Wild. It didn’t have a perfect frame rate sure, but this game’s performance issues are just embarrassing.

A friend of mine described it as "Getting served breakfast in bed by your 6 year old child." There's orange juice in the cereal, the toast is burnt black...but the toast has a smiley face on it in the jam aww that's so creative! Made with love, but made with incompetence.

Fortunately for me at least, the only jank I’ve experienced is some shadows flickering when you rotate your camera sometimes, minor frame drops, and one camera clip in a battle. I guess it’s like fnaf security breach where your enjoyment of the game is based on a coin flip and how well you can tolerate said glitches if you encounter them.

Wholeheartedly agree with your take on it: I LOVE the concept, the world is great and the Pokémon look great. I also love that Pokémon are actually doing stuff in the overworld. However, The game runs so SO poorly, which is a real shame because if it could just fix its choppiness it would be amazing. Too many times Pokémon are moving at 1FPS until I get next to them, even have had the game crash on me which no other title ever has (I didn’t buy BDSP Lol) I also wouldn’t have taken out: set mode, exp share toggle, the crosshairs from arceus so we know where we throw our Pokémon, visual and auditory notification of shiny Pokémon (even just a brief shimmer?). If these issues, the frame rate, and some other smaller ones like the map always rotating when it doesn’t need to or learning and not learning new moves seemingly at random this is hands down the best Pokémon game ever made, but here we are.

I rarely notice the performance isssues in games. It is definitely there in this game. Many massive performance issues but many amazing aspects everywhere else in the game makes it easy to ignore performances issues. Performances issues never get in the way for me

The only problems I’ve been having are visuals. I experience the lighting issues where shadows appear and disappear every two seconds and its extremely fuzzy in handheld mode. But I’ve yet to see any unplayable bugs or “body horror” nor does it feel like I’m fighting against the game. There’s a lot of clipping, animations that are still unfinished, as well as character models vanishing in and out of existence if they’re right on the edge of rendering distance. Maybe I was one of the lucky ones :/ but it still shouldn’t have been released at the state I’m experiencing

Ive pretty much only done multiplayer so far, and its been an actual blast. Always been my dream to play pokemon with friends on the same map

I've honestly had a very good experience in terms of performance so far. It's been very consistent, with only like one or two bits of lag I actually noticed EVER. And I'm not even early in the game, I'm like halfway done I don't know why it's so inconsistent between people

the joycon drift at 11:11 is hilarious

I watched your hour long review on Legends last night, so I bought the game the following morning. For a minute, I was scared that I got the "prototype" and should have just bought Scarlet and Violet. But watching this makes me feel easier, I don't think I would have been as satisfied with them as I am with Legends.

I personally feel like the open world aspect is somewhat ruined by the lack of level scaling I want to explore and do things in an unusual order but to do that I keep getting into battles which are way out of my level. And my team get one shot. Which kinda takes the fun out of exploring.

Nothing quite like Koraidon just drawing all the attention from your battle from Arven by being incredibly goofy in the background.

*botw exists* Pokémon: we won’t be doing _any_ of that but - gotta catch em all right?

In Sword and Shield, it felt like they had cool ideas, but didn't develop them fully because they knew they wouldn't have time to make it all work. This game feels like they DID develop all of those ideas, it feels to me like pretty much everything concept they wanted to put into this game did make it in there and did get pretty well developed... but that forced them to leave so much of the game rugged and unpolished that it legitimately does not feel finished. I am still enjoying this game quite a lot because of how fundamentally good this game's concepts and execution of those concepts are, but the presentation is so bad in so many areas that I can't blame anyone for being unable to overlook it.