Were Scarlet and Violet as Bad as we Thought? 

The thing that bothers me the most in S/V are the cities. C’mon they’re dead. I hate that I can’t get into buildings and when i do it’s only a menu to buy something. Buildings in pokemon always been so open and welcoming, they should definetly bring it back.

What kinda shocked me is how poorly the whole school aspect is pulled off. There is no running around cool school grounds, there is no exploring the various areas, there is no decorating your room. Instead you teleport from room to room and can't interact with anything outside of scripted events

I think what i hate the most is the absence of real npc or inside houses. It s so much not immersive.

Gen 9 did something for me that I had never thought would be possible: I liked the legendary mascot. After playing through Violet on the back of Toothless I actually *put him onto my team for the post game*. Not because he's powerful, because he's my boy and I love him.

The thing that holds this game back for me is how it looks and runs. Gen 9 has my favorite story/characters since gen 5 and I really like the Pokemon but everytime I play this game I get reminded by how bad it is on a technical standpoint.

I think part of the reason why so many people were so upset with Scarlet and Violet's game performance was at least partially because Pokémon is the highest grossing media franchise on the planet. So a lot of people saw it as them not properly investing their massive resources into creating the games that make them so much money in the first place.

My biggest gripe is that I made it up the right side of the map to the Glaseado Gym, realized I was now underleveled, went back to do the left side of the map, and was disgustingly overleveled, making exploration of the left side of the map feel like something I'm just rushing through to get back to a semi-competitive level balance.

Imma be honest watching this made me constantly think 'Wolfey is exactly the type of player Nintendo wants/knows they have' lol aka yes the games were fun and had good things but the fact they know they can get away with this kind of thing while also technically being a 'AAA' game company is just....... yeah.

Wolf's ad reads are the perfect blend of enthusiasm and a hostage reading cue cards.

Pawmi learning necromancy will always be funny these Pikachu clones are getting bolder

What did anyone see in the open world? Genuinely, there’s nothing to find.

One of the best things about generation 9 is that DLC two gave us a bunch of double battles with some AI teams that actually had viable strategies and items and movesets to be able to teach casual players about competitive Pokemon

my biggest issue with this franchise is the fact that we haven't gotten voice acting yet

From my experience, Scarlet and Violet had some of the best groundwork out of any Pokémon game. Its open world aesthetic and good map and Pokémon design helps a lot. The issue is that the game barely got any polish, even outside of desperately needed bug fixes.

I played these games in a basement and the way the games run, the way the games look, the half-baked story and the half-baked open world concept (that isn’t truly open world because of poor level design) all hold this game back tremendously. I don’t touch this game anymore unless there is a special event. Just because you liked the game doesn’t mean it was a well made game.

I feel like everyone are forgetting that there really isn't anything to explore. The cities are all basically the same, with the same non-interior shops and cafés, and no real landmarks. Whenever you reach a new city, you just run to the gym and then go on because there is really nothing to discover (unlike the old pokemon-games)

The quote that sticks with me is when i saw someone call scarlet and violet "the betas for the best pokemon games ever made" I love everything about scarlet and violet- except for the frame drops and glitches, if the games were just optimized a little more theyd easily be my favorite games in the franchise. The open world part of the game is fun, and its the first time in forever I -enjoyed- a pokemon story.

Ya fuckin’ nailed it with the chasm between what we could get and what we actually get as the biggest problem. It sucks they are not more incentivized to try harder to actually produce something that feels modern and professional. Our expectations stay a little low, and that saves them a lot. They creep forward, but rarely make leaps forward.

My issue is I just don’t understand why we STILL don’t have voice acting by this point. Like I could forgive everything else but why can’t we get VA at this point 😩

I know this game has its issues but I love gen 9s story. Arvens story, as someone with a history of childhood neglect myself, made me tear up. Seeing Namona push you to improve because she views YOU as her treasure and Penny finally exonerating her friends after years of being misunderstood. I loved all of it. I completed the dex, ive shiny hunted. Ive dedicated more time to this gen than ANY other. And, for perspective, Im 30 and have been playing since gen 2. It has its performance issues but I love Scarlet and Violet. Genuinely my favorite pokemon games.

Personally I think the main reason why they were received so badly by the internet is because of PLA. Although not completely openworld and pokemon spawns werent random, PLA was insanely well made. Then when SV came out it just felt like a downgrade in terms of overall performance. Especially in the graphics and framerate department. So much so that it kind of outshined the good things.

I played Violet straight after Xenoblade 3...so the visuals and performance issues were very noticeable. I still had a lot of fun with it, and the things that gen 9 does well are done REALLY well, but the areas the games struggle in are REALLY bad at the same time. Which is inexcusable for the most profitable multimedia franchise. When Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man's Sky got shredded by the public for being unfinished and unpolished, the devs apologised and worked hard to keep patching them until the games were much better. GameFreak and the Pokemon Company never acknowledged or apologised for the piss-poor execution of SV, and even a full year later, the games still look flat and hideous, and the performance isnt much better than at launch. There was even a gamebreaking bug if you preordered the dlc that could compromise your save file, which sucks because they dont let you back up your saves to the cloud to "stop hackers"...and thats bullshit because people still cheat in the game but now the average user is inconvenienced

Damn, I actually experienced only the following bugs on my personal playthrough of Scarlet: -Pokémon clipping into the landscape -Getting stuck on a rock once -Crashing a handful of times -Laggy framerate in certain spots The fact that some people got hilarious exorcist-style model malfunction almost makes me wish I'd experienced something like that. I had almost zero issues playing through the game.

Game Freak is a multi-billionaire company, we can't possibly accept this level of quality. It's clear Game Freak can't handle this anymore, I don't know anything about the legal side of things but if possible Nintendo should just give the Pokemon IP to some other company because this isn't working anymore

I would love to see difficult riddles and puzzles come back to Pokémon games (I.e. things like the original Regis quests etc and maybe some of the quest stuff from PLA)

I was fine with the glitches. What really got under my skin was the graphics. Every mountain has the exact same early 2000s ass texture. EVERY SINGLE GRASS PATCH looked the same.

I HATED the games on release. I played like 30 min when I bought it and didn’t touch the games until over a year later. I gave them another shot and I’ve been playing it non stop the last few months and I love the games 😂 they make getting into competitive battle so much easier and are genuinely a fun experience.

The main issue is that most legit criticisms are drowned out by seas of nitpicking and nothing points.

Area Zero is what made the game special for me, I haven't really felt like this in a pokemon game basically since the distorion world in Platinum, which they sadly didnt add in the remakes. Area Zero is alien and the athmosphere is so different from anything else I've seen in pokemon, it truly stands out. Much of this is thanks to the great music made by Toby Fox, and I am excited to see if they will expand on this area in the DLC.

Playing through Violet currently. The game isn’t terrible, but the fact of the frame rate chugs so much legitimately gives me a headache whenever I play.

Maybe its just my nostalgia getting the best of me, but how on earth is this story better than Gold/Silver/Crystal? I really dislike the fact that everyone in the recent pokemon games is full on LETS BE FRIENDS/CHEERLEADING all the time. A good mix is nice.

Most money making media franchise in the world and they're struggling with making the games even perform well, the backlash is totally justified, people should expect better like come on, breath of the wild looks better, runs better and was launched in 2017, yeah s/v might have some good aspects but the sales numbers are just showing that nintendo and gamefreak can get away with making a half baked game, never fixing it and putting it at 60 dollars and then releasing dlc that costs even more plus not even fixing anything. Imagine in the future when people will be paying for an 80 dollar pokemon game with 5 dlcs that runs like a powerpoint presentation, this shouldn't be normalised

Sometimes I can honestly overlook the slow down and bugs, but I’m still mad about the customization for the clothing

Personally, I’m a huge fan of Pneumonia as a rival as well. Had multiple really breathtaking moments in the game!

They were WORSE than we thought. Fuck these games, really.

Was a Pokemon fan for almost 20 years. Couldn't even finish this joke of a game

What I would love for Gen 10 would be a similar open-world but with level scaling on leaders. They could easily code different teams for different milestones hit by the player, i.e. whatever you choose first and last would make it seem like it was meant to be played that way. New and better pokemon, moves, team compositions could help improve said teams. Would make the whole journey better imo, and would make the replayability funnier.

Honestly the performance and visuals are the two biggest problems I had with the game, otherwise I had loads of fun with it, haven't felt the desire to explore this much in a Pokemon game in a while, felt even more open than PLA! I guess I want more complex puzzles and mazes, but still a fun game! Also the music in SV bangs hard, one of my all time favorite Pokemon OST :D

The default excuse you use for the technical problems is "It's a Pokemon game, what do you expect. Game Freak is a small, unprepared team". Then, you proceed to tout it as the most successful media franchise. Therein lies the problem. Sure, the gameplay is fun and the mechanics are great. Why can't you hold the other issues to a higher standard that are more broadly TPC's fault? We've seen countless games that look great on the Switch's aging hardware, but it's been years for them to ramp up for this one.

I tried to play violet in a vacuum without online influence and I think I agree with almost all of your points. Open world, new pokemon, exploration, quality of life changes were all incredible. The slow intros and poor graphics are generally expected from the company.

Scarlet and Violet's smartest move was definitely separating the storylines into three distinct routes, since it let each one shine in its own unique way and not interrupt the other routes in the process. Nemona, Arven and Penny each became likeable to me because I felt I was getting to know them one on one. And then, the big finale was an adventure into the unknown with all three of them that made it feel like an actual group of friends due to knowing each of them as individuals. This made the impact of the ending and the credits work better on me than any Pokémon game I think I have played before, except possibly a mystery dungeon game. Like, Celestial actually had me smiling because it fit so well to me. I know I rambled a bit there, but my point is... Scarlet and Violet may of had a lot of bugs... but I can't say I have enjoyed a Pokémon game in such a way since I was a kid playing mystery dungeon, and that is because I finally got to go through my journey with characters who I felt I had a genuine connection to rather than an artificial one made to move the plot along, and that was special enough to me that I genuinely didn't care about the hardware problems because I was invested into the plot.

The games aren’t bad per se. They just needed more time in the oven.

This is the worst pokemon game. Because they have always done the bare minimum in terms of innovation. Plus the rest of the list below. 1. Beautiful Pokemon models roaming shitty environments. 2. Unstable frame rates and low frame rates (windmills don’t move like that). 3. Short draw distance. 4. Lacking customization, even post-game casual clothes, cannot decorate your dorm, etc. 5. Horrible net code, time outs, latency, inability to search. 6. Lifeless towns and cities. NPCs that cannot talk to you and no entry to virtually any building. 7. Clipping, as pokemon still clip through environments and there are still numerous visual glitches. 8. Despite greater quality of life changes, not all things can be completed in game, i.e. required to have older copies of games to gain access to available pokemon not found natively in the game AND single use TMs. 9. Interesting lore that still does not go far enough. 3 branching stories is unique, but doesn’t provide enough to keep us interested until DLC is out. And even with revelations in the leaked epilogue or the Crystal pool, they just fall flat. 10. No difficulty setting at the start of the game. Indigo Disk is cool with double battles and competitive play, but give us the option from the start. 11. Still zero voice acting.

Tbh, it's really hard to not think what the games could be. Because, c'mon, it is the biggest franchise in the world, we deserve better. Gamefreak can afford a bigger team of devs for example, it just don't do it because it don't need it to make a lot of money.

Biggest issue i had was disconnections at NAIC. I fidnt know pokemon had a sudden death, and i still wouldnt if the game performed well.

On Level Scaling: I think having a set minimum level for each gym would work, based on the wild mons around it, but let it scale up to the player's party like they do in the DLCs.

I was so conditioned from sw/sh to feel bad once I beat Nemona (right after the battle, I thought she was gonna cry or something) but no!! She's genuinely happy for you and how far you've gotten, and I think that's amazing. I didn't enjoy curbstoming Hop for the umpteenth time

I really like playing SV but I do agree with some of the comments. The framerate is pretty bad and it should be criticized, but everyone saying that they suffer from tons of bugs probably have something wrong with their switch instead of the game. I loved how the models of the pokemon look, the story was entertaining, and the dlc was super fun imo. I think everyone saying that the story was bad are the same people who skip all the dialogue. Comparing pokemon games, which are worked on by a very small team on a time crunch, to games like botw is completely unreasonable. If Gamefreak can get more people on their team to balance out their due dates I think we could get some banger games in the future.

Biggest issue for me was the pacing of battling. No way to skip some battle animations and terratializing took so long I didn’t even want to use it. Second biggest issue was the pop in of everything, not as fun exploring when you can’t see something in the distance you want to explore, and riding around is basically just dodging Pokémon as they pop in

When a game releases to serious technical issues, performance dips, and other bugs that create issues for commonplace players; not even dedicated bug hunters looking for 1-in-a-million glitches; that's unacceptable. It cannot be overstated how valuable the consumer's money is. You won't find a bigger advocate anywhere else. When I pay for a thing that is being sold on a store shelf, there is an implicit contract between producer and consumer that said product is in proper, working order, and will function as intended. Defects and imperfections are expected, no process is perfect, but there is a reasonable expectation of functionality there. When you have to wait months or even years for a game to "patch" its way into proper functionality, that should not be considered an acceptable, ethical practice, no matter how good the "idea" was, or how good the game ends up being. The ends do not justify the means. Demand more from your media, save your money.

A lot of people online noted that performance issues were extremely player specific. I got to observe this first hand, because my wife had practically no performance issues, whereas my game barely functioned. The difference was rather dramatic and we could see it side by side in the same room. Some people theorized it was an issue with different models of the Switch, which might well be, as I had an OLED model and my wife did not. I don't know if this was the cause, or if it had to do with the way we interacted with the game being different, such that I experienced a memory leak or something when she did not. Both of us had physical cartridges, so it's not an SD ve internal storage issue... Unless the extra data the game saves on the console is interacting with it badly. But the dramatic difference in performance between different players is very important to recognize to realize that people saying the issues are devastating are not being overdramatic, and the people saying they don't notice the issues aren't being shills. They are legitimately having different experiences.

This is the first generation I had to force myself to finish, because i bought a copy for my self and siblings so we could play together. The game ran so bad on my launch switch that it was basically unplayable for me. Forget coop, I barely finished the main story. The best part about pokemon for me is exploring the wilderness and towns. The wilderness lagged so much it wasn't fun. The towns and cities are the worst in the franchise. Can't enter most of the buildings, just menus and some of the worst performances in the game. All this sucked especially because the games actually had a decent story and I loved the team star boss fights. But the games were broken and ultimately my least enjoyed pokemon experience by far. Edit: They also said they would fix the games with updates. Straight up lie. Any other franchise the fans would destroy the games critically. We Pokemon fans are the part of the reason pokemon performance js so bad, the next game could be this bad and not be fixed and it will sell just as well.

Honestly that first dive into Area Zero still plays in my head often. Five friends (Koraidon / Miraidon included) leaping into the unknown, into danger, and into a fantastical place to help each other and the region. Seeing how beautiful Area Zero is and hearing the music for the first time. It was so cool

Editor here! I had a blast putting this one together and I’d love to hear any and all feedback. Looking forward to the next one!

I used to be an avid Pokemon disliker so I didn’t even know about this games existence, that was UNTIL I watched RTGame play through Pokemon Scarlet and I was immediately hooked. I could see the lag and frame rate drops in his videos but he didn’t care and neither did I. The game looked fun, the characters were interesting, the story was good and well paced, there was a lot to explore. Those are the things I first noticed when I watched the play through, THATS what got me to play the game, not how well it performed, how FUN it looked. And you know what? I don’t regret getting it. Pokemon Scarlet is my most played game and I enjoyed every second of the story and exploring the world. Sure the lag was annoying sometimes but the game itself is great. Hate to see people shitting on the game when the game itself is good, the company behind the game should be ashamed for releasing it with bugs, but the game is what got me into Pokemon. I love it.

The only games ever in the history of Nintendo where they had to issue an apology because of the state the game launched in, to the point they even had to start refunding the games ffs. Yes Wolfie, they are as bad as we thought. Even worse

My biggest issue is the world design. I wish the world was more interactive with puzzles and quests. There are no houses with npcs in the middle of nowhere and you can’t go into houses in the towns. There is also no incentive to talking to every npc in town. There also aren’t much in the way of dungeons. Area Zero is the only true dungeon in the game beside a few large cave systems.

I get the point that “it’s a Pokémon game i don’t play for the graphics” but that’s missing the point. Gamefreak isn’t just selling us a regular old Pokémon game. They’re selling us a $60 open world game and it should be held to the same standards as other switch games like botw and xenoblade. I honestly enjoyed nearly completing the Pokédex before even doing the first gym, but the lack of polish seriously ruined a lot of potentially joyful moments. Regardless of development issues, the final product should be criticized for what it’s worth and the expectations it set. I want to enjoy it more than I do, and I’m sure if Gamefreak was given another year or two to optimize the game, no one would have anything but stellar things to say about it.

The problem is that Pokémon is the highest-grossing media franchise of all time. There's no excuse for the rampant performance problems. The Pokémon Company has the means to make the games better, they just choose not to.

To quote TheActMan “Don’t defend it, you deserve better” and I personally couldn’t agree more. With the past few games I feel like the Pokémon fanbases pride has plummeted. Gamefreak and TPC noticed and they abuse it. For the highs this game has, and there isn’t many (the OST is solid), there’s many, many lows that outweigh it. To start, I’ll beat the dead horse and say the graphics are atrocious, (like release Minecraft was prettier), the glitches, bugs, and frame rates drops completely kill the flow and the immersion The cities are full of lifeless NPCs who say almost nothing, do nothing, and account for nothing, the gyms and gym trials are a fucking joke. Pushing around a giant olive? Wtf. Sliding down a mountain? Bruh. The areas are boring except for Area Zero. You can’t go in almost any buildings even in the big cities. The only buildings are sandwich shops with 0 variety. Other than that you get pop-up menus. There’s almost zero customization, I get you’re in a school but OUTSIDE OF IT should have more leeway. And being inside the school is more menu simulator with load screens in-between each room while the older generations did this easily. For the people sayings it’s the switch…. Go play the new XENOBLADE GAME ON THE SWITCH. I could keep going about the world and how the game runs, but I wanna move on to the main reason we play these games, the pokemon. And once again I’ll start with beating a dead horse, the lack of a national Dex, almost half a dozen games into the switches lifespan and they can’t put in the effort to at least add HALF the roster, is PATHETIC. Let’s talk about Koraidon, and Miraidon. Are they cool? Yes. Is it fun to drive around? (without frame drops and glitches), yes. But these are the box arts for this series. Going from literal time and space gods, gods who control the ocean and the earth, the sun, the moon, gods representing ideals or the truth, to motorcycles you get at the start of the game who like sandwiches. With one of them not even really being a motorcycle. These guys are supposed to wow you, get you to want to play the game more. The motorcycles do nothing for me. Again, they’re cool but not cool enough to be boxarts. As for the other legendaries of SV…. I’m not even gonna talk about them. Last but not least, the new Pokémon. To get this out of the way, I’m no Gen1-er. Gen 1 is barely within my top 5 gens. But boy-howdy will I take the gen 1 Dex over S and Vs. Lazy, ugly, boring, and unappealing. A flamingo that’s pink, with the N taken out…. Wow. I see the responses now, in gen 1 there’s a seal named Seel. THAT WAS MADE OVER 25 YEARS AGO. THE CONCEPT WAS NEW AND THEY DIDN’T NEED TO BE INSANE WITH every. Single. Mon. Nowadays there’s a bar to meet. And unfortunately modern Pokémon fans don’t even hold Gamefreak to the lowest bar out there. This is all subjective and feel free to rebuttal and comment, but I’m sick of people defending this, we deserve better yall.

I love wolfey's insistence to call Nemona Pneumonia. They really dropped the ball hard with her English name 😂.

Pokémon Scarlet is my favorite pokémon game ever; but it does NOT take away from the fact that Game Freak desperately needs to be more ambitious and hire a bigger team. The PKMN Company is so damn rich, they can definitely afford it

The pokemon games carry themselves through its name. If this wasn't pokemon and it was any other game, people wouldn't even buy it. I love pokemon, but the quality for the game is unacceptable.

"What did you expect, it's a Pokémon game" is the perfect summary. If you compare it to anything else, it's a bad game.

The main problem I have is that I cannot with pure intentions recommend SV to those new to the franchise. Sure in a vacuum this is one has more highs, but the lows are where the line is drawn. Is it worth making someone sit through that early game, get punished for pressing on ahead, or experiencing all that lag for hours? I’m having a blast with online doubles but the path to get there for noobs is long and far.

I'm not surprised Alpharad's issues from the Soullink made it into this video about the actual issues the game had.

lol so it would be great if the gfx dident suck and the lag wasant so bad that it makes u physically ill. When did gamers start accepting games making them physically ill an ok thing. No other games have frame rates so bad u get sick that is completely unacceptable and game breaking. How can a game be fun when playing it makes u wanna throw up.

Yes, they are. Extremely low quality for what it should be a AAA game.

Violet was my first pokémon game and i loved it. I wasn't aware of the internet's reaction and i didn't experience any bugs. So going in blind Gen 9 made me a fan of the entire pokémon series

I just want this billion-dollar company to do some god damn voice acting. There's no excuse when indie companies on a budget of $50k do it.

Also the fact that they made ice types actually usable with some huge buffs like snow now providing a defense boost for ice types when active.

"as a reviewer, i hoped that the developers would fix what didn't work, so it didn't matter and i didn't mention it. i was having too much fun to give an unbiased review for a video that influenced thousands of purchasing decisions" ?

The games had their issues from a technical standpoint. The character design, Pokémon design and story are all the best in the series. The mechanic is also really fun competitively even if it’s a bit uninspired. Tera doesn’t feel as gamebreaking as mega or dynamax and that’s refreshing [even though I’d kill to have megas back].

It's not the bugs or the graphics that were ever an issue to me. It's how utterly lazy gamefreak is, the world fealt empty and boring, the towns were all generic and blended together there were no interesting dungeons or routes to explore. The game was laughably easy and didn't even try to challenge me once in all three routes, also the fact there was no scaling for gym leaders, the evil team, or the giants made it even worse because if you defeated a stronger one first all the others would be way to easy since you were over leveled. Also I know others liked the characters but I did not. I thought the rival was super annoying and didn't even have the skills to backup her champion status not even in the final fight of the game, the principal had a better team than her. Also the so called top champion or what ever was a complete joke. Also I almost forgot area zero even existed it was so empty and bland the pardox pokemon were cool but that's about it, I think in general there were some cool pokemon designs, but God the game design was so ass, also I still think pokemon never should have went 3d. I think is by far the worst pokemon game, I'd rather play Gen 1 and I'm not even nostalgic for those games I grew up on Gen 4.

I really missed fishing, the bike, and surfing on your preferred Pokémon. I also missed being able to change my clothes, instead of just a few school uniforms.

Game companies nowadays need to be held accountable for releasing unfinished products. As a consumer this is unacceptable.

For me personally this Generation got me back into the Series and i really really enjoyed it.

a battle tower and or rebattling elite 4 with increasing difficulting would go a long way man :(

For me by far the biggest issue was the FPS issue. the FPS drops physically hurt my head, mainly because of it's combination with the graphics which aren't clean and then the FPS drops being a cherry on the cake. And I'm used to choppy games, I played Skyrim on my school laptop with drops to 15 FPS and played plenty of unoptimized games. Yet none got to me the way Pokemon did. It was like I'm trying to work in the most sloppy and unorganized room you've ever seen. I felt my head going in and out of focus so many times I just couldn't go on. Still finished it, but over the course of months in sessions of 1 hour max. It made me appreciate Sword and Shield more as at least those games didn't have drops and had clean graphics outside of the open-worlds. After PLA and Violet/Scarlet, the graphics of SwSh open-worlds didnt feel that bad anymore, as a place where you only come to pick up some pokemon and not spend much time more.

As a living dex player who moonlights as a shiny hunter the no overworld shiny indicator will always be a sticking point for me. The performance issues, lack of unique npc interactions and completely underdeveloped locations with only one house (your house) having an explorable interior makes the game feel just dead to me. going back to any previous game mainline game i’ve never seen one so devoid of environmental personality. It’s all the same repeated cliff texture everywhere. I’ve had to play through the games several times because my switch was stolen and I’m a living dex player so I’ve had 2 full playthroughs of each ver and the amount of dialogue for the star team quests in mindnumbing. You have to talk to three different people (penny, the director, and a third npc that varies) at the beginning and end of each part of that quest. It’s absolutely exhausting button mashing your way through it. The story is great and the main rivals and leaders are great and the battle gimmick is great, much better than average. I just dont imagine i’m going to think about it much once its lifespan is over. Arceus is also my favorite pokemon game of all time so take that as you will.

I think you were right, the games gave a lot of people a lot of fun, the worst part is that gamefreak knew they could get away with this and that’s why they didn’t care

I think that even though the game is bad on its own merits for a massive list of reasons, from graphics to design to failed mechanics and so much more, what’s insulting above all is the price tag. The game is hardly worth 15 bucks at launch and that’s being extremely generous. I’d really only feel comfortable buying it at half that. But not only is it 60 but it has a 30 dollar dlc. A 90 dollar experience is not this. The worst part of it all though. Is that they’re failing upward.

What annoyed me the most about SV wasn't even the bugs and the p*ss-poor performance (both of which I had to deal with in my own playthrough and did not enjoy, especially the framerate of everything that's more than 2cm away from the camera) - my biggest gripe was the world itself. It's DEAD. Such a big world (for a Pokemon game anyway) and they don't even manage to make the few cities they have feel alive. Heck, not even the MAIN city. No houses to enter, no shops to actually explore, most NPCs you can't even speak to... They even put several of the same store in the same town, in almost every town. That is just absolutely lazy world design and even lazier programming for a full-price title. I paid 20 bucks less for Legends Arceus and had WAY more fun playing it and the world was a lot more interesting to explore.

Just because the internet hate was huge doesn't mean that ANY part of this game is excusable from the biggest video game company in the world working with the most profitable brand of all time. Forget performance issues. The actual DESIGN of the world, the interaction in and between cities, points of interest, and people, would not be acceptable as the beta of a free-roaming game from 2000. No one should be apologizing for this. It's okay to have standards (pats Nintendo fan on their arched, crying back)

Despite having borderline unplayable performance at times, Scarlet and Violet was the most fun I've had playing a new pokemon game since B2/W2. Gen 6, 7, and 8 did not grip me in the same way gens 1-5 gripped me leading me to drop the games entirely around halfway through the main story. S/V genuinely had me excited to play and want to continue exploring the region. Since beating the game and catching the entire pokedex back in January, I haven't touched the game (or even my switch for that matter) since and perhaps my opinion on the games would change if I went back to replay it. Regardless of that, it was nice to finally have a pokemon game I thoroughly enjoyed the same way I did when I first played Platinum/HGSS when they first released. S/V is the best generation since gen 5.

The worst part about the high-level raids is that if you don't have a pokemon that's a good match for it, you probably can't train on up by the time the raid expires.

I think the school theme is probably the biggest thing that stops me enjoying these games as much as I should, it strips the customisation options that have been so prevalent in recent titles and I get that the games are aimed at kids but I can’t understand why they think kids want to be a school kid in uniform when playing a video game??

2022 - I miss Sw/Sh, new gen suck 2023 - meh, maybe they ain't that bad 2024 - man, these games are underrated 2025 - I miss S/V, new gen suck Rinse and repeat

My thoughts on the game: Negatives: 1. So many bugs 2. No level scaling (this is a huge deal) 3. Still no bottle cap to 0 4. Removal of fun catching mechanics in PLA 5. A few questionable balance choices 6. Embarrassingly bad DLC Positives: 1. Excellent new mon designs 2. Tera is super fun 3. Love the idea of titans 4. Good story (for pokemon) 5. Competitive scene was super fun until the DLC 6. Excellent world 7. Paradox are dope

Gen 9 feels like a game that takes every criticism of the previous games to heart, but knows that they're unfortunately still not in control of the release schedule. At least it has the best ending in the series, which is saying a lot considering how good black and white's was.

3/10. Lack of puzzles, empty cities, long stretches of dialogue, a flat map, avoidable challengers.

The problem is absolutely expectations. Pokémon is the highest grossing franchise ever. But due to mismanagement and a dev team TPC should be embarrassed it’s so small there’s no way that GameFreak can give the game the care and attention Pokemon needs. Seriously. GameFreak needs to be expanded drastically to actually make the game they want to make.

These games feel like a partner that you love with all your heart, who doesn’t love you back.

I love Pokemon to my core, but for the most profitable franchise of all time the state of these games is pathetic. They should never have launched in the manner they did. And ffs they need to hire better environmental artists. The environment in this game looks horrendous.

Telling us it's 10/10 then you painstakingly give one issue after the other. Buying the game and experience lagging in certain areas is really, really bad when you say yourself it's almost like unplayable! Stop sugar coating the game! It sucks!

I had so much fun with Violet but STILL haven’t finished it. Watching this , I now realize I’m getting motion sick as well! Can only play in 15 minute bursts without feeling gross!

They are underdeveloped dumspterfires and its embarassing that these games were ever released in this state.

I'm surprised you say one of the best parts is the world is so fun to explore. That was my main issue (next to performance/graphics) in the game. The world is so bland to explore, there's no incentive to go somewhere, stray off the paths, no secrets to be found, items are scattered randomy, the overworld pokemon spawn in in the same groups, you can't even go in houses which was a key point in the earlier games. I really felt no reason to look around the world, and when I did and found nothing it was so disrewarding.

Gen 7 were always my favorite games, I loved the wormholes and man the postgame was really good. ITS BEEN 8 YEARS and we’ve moved 2 gens. I don’t know why but before gen 8 and the switch, new gen’s felt like every year, because of DLC nowadays I feel postgame lacks a lot. I miss the omega ruby alpha sapphire days of A BIG ASS postgame without having to wait a year

I still haven't finished Violet. Every time I go to play it, it's just so choppy and glitchy it's just distracting. Also, the cities felt so lifeless. The game feels lifeless. I'm hoping to find something appealing in it. I also don't like all the mechanical Pokemon like the big Donphan. I've tried it on multiple switches and nothing changed. I still far prefer Sword and Arceus, despite Arceus having some graphic issues too. Best Pokemon game on the switch is Sword/Shield by far.