Pokemon scarlet and violet are the biggest games in the franchise, full of new and old Pokémon, with one of the best stories in the series. But the two Nintendo Switch games struggle to keep up with this massive world, and performance suffers at this size and scope.
before Pokemon scarlet and violetAt launch on November 18, three Polygon authors were given early access to the games, and each of us experienced a variety of performance issues for 20-40 hours – mostly visual issues like world slicing and invisible Pokemon in battles. But there are also issues that affect performance, such as: B. Rough, almost stop-motion-like frame rates and rare crashes at key moments.
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A screenshot of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet showing the camera cutting through the world.
Image: Game Freak/The Pokémon Company, Nintendo via Polygon
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Image: Game Freak/The Pokémon Company, Nintendo via Polygon
The good news is that these performance issues didn’t really affect the overall experience for me. Aside from those crashes mentioned above, most of the issues were visual in nature.
The frame rate issues, which extend to Pokémon and human characters, are happening throughout the game’s open world, signaling that the Nintendo Switch may not be able to match the size of the Paldea region. You can see some of these in action in the videos below, which also show people and Pokémon bursting in as the player gets close. In the wild, this means colliding with Pokemon you haven’t seen while riding your Miraidon or Koraidon. It’s less of an issue as far as gameplay is concerned in towns and cities.
There’s also a slowdown in wallpaper rates throughout gameplay, again giving the game a bit of a stop-motion look in the distance. This is especially noticeable when people are running or spinning windmills, and in certain cases where multiple Pokemon are following your character. In short, this frame-rate slowdown feels situational – at times everything looked and worked just fine, and I’ve gotten through some periods without major issues.
Elsewhere in cities and towns, clothing inventory is delayed when previewing what you want to buy. In my game there are some clothes that don’t load at all, which means I can’t preview many clothes before buying them.
You can also expect Pokémon and other characters to roam the world in both regular battles and Tera Raid battles. Sometimes I’ve found Pokemon to be completely absent, like I’m fighting something invisible.
The Pokémon Company has released an update 1.01and it’s unclear if there will be another one before then Pokemon scarlet and violet‘s launch on November 18 – or if these issues will impact multiplayer. As I said, these performance issues were mostly visual in nature and didn’t affect the gaming experience for me; I am constantly in awe of the world and the stories that are told. Despite the visual impact of the game’s size, I find the game compelling enough that the technical issues are easily overlooked. Anyhow, we hope there is another patch that fixes some of these issues.
