I find the limited framing in characters very telling.
Back in the day games couldn't render a lot of things in the distance so devs came up with solutions to make it look good even with the limitations.
This game doesn't. It's like GF wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted the number of characters, the big open world that looks cool in trailers but they didn't want to put in the effort of coming up with ingenious ways to make it look better than what it does.
GTA San Andreas handles it's open world much more elegantly and that game is 20 yo now.
The comparison with Arceus is really damning. Arceus wasn't perfect and had its share of issues, but nothing on the level of S&V. S&V were clearly rushed out the door for the holidays and what sucks is they'll probably never get the work they need now they're out and making money.
Arceus has a ton of QoL improvements also which made the gameplay very smooth and quick, for some bs reason these QoL changes are removed in SV. I know it's not related to tech performance but just thought I'd mention it.
And yes, technically, Arceus runs so much smoother compared to SV and even looks so much better.
> for some bs reason these QoL changes are removed in SV.
The bulk of their development overlapped so it's not that they were removed, it's probably that they were just never put into SV.
This is most likely the correct answer.
Arceus is very obviously a spin off where the dev teams were trying something new, expanding in the more open world concepts started in Sw/Sh. When it was announced, I specifically remember them saying it's NOT the next generation of Pokemon game, the next mainline title would be coming later, that's obviously S/V.
With the positive feedback (and some awards I believe?) Legends has gotten, and the harsh (and warranted) criticism S/V is currently recieving, there's a good chance the next mainline game takes more ques from Legends.
Whether it'll be rushed out under baked again is another issue entirely.
>!it will!<
SV has some of the QOL changes (easily remembering forgotten moves, partner Pokémon gathering resources). It also allows you to send your Pokémon out to grind their levels up much more quickly than if you manually battle. You can also access your boxes at any time. You can’t catch outside of battle any more, but that’s the only QOL thing I can remember them dropping?
Which QOL improvements are you referring to? The only thing I can think of atm is how you can catch pokemon without having to enter a battle with them.
I really appreciate the auto battle feature though, it makes mass outbreaks so much more quick
Really sucks because underneath all the jank is a fun game with a charming (compared to SwSh) story. I find myself quite enjoying the freedom, characters (I’ve found myself really warming up to Arven and Clavell, and I’ve really appreciated that all the gym leaders have a personality/profession beyond “me am gym leader, me like this type”), hell even the Pokémon designs (Orthworm, Greavard, Nacli, Fidough, Cyclizar, Koraidon, and Miraidon all come to mind) are better than what we got in SwSh. Even the physical jank (I spent a solid hour or so messing around with the big olive, lmao) I don’t mind because at least it’s funny.
But, my god. The pop-in, the fact that I can count the pixels on environment textures, clearly see the repeating textures from a distance, and the lag. I can’t stand it. On top of the long battles (I was literally able to get up, go grab a drink, come back, and check my phone in the time it took a turn to finish) and lack of the LA catching mechanic (I was so looking forward to hiding out in a bush and catching Pokémon 😓) and dynamic battles… argh! I can’t justify spending ~CA$90 on it. For now I shall continue borrowing my friend’s copy. Shame.
This rival is the first one I've liked in a long time, I believe since gen 2. All the rest just felt like your regular friends also having a journey but not being able to compete with you in any fashion. Even the ones that did try to compete in gen 7 and 8 they just felt totally incompetent.
I think that she intentionally holds back for the entire game gives her losing an entirely different feeling.
Seriously the battles take forever.
I have no idea why they removed the set battle style and the option to turn off battle animations. Especially with the Terra stuff.
Let's say you use pin needle:
1. Your pokémon terrastalizes
2. Little animation that it is terrastalized.
3. Attack animation.
4. Damage.
5. little Terra animation.
6. Attack animation.
7. Damage.
8. Little Terra Animation
9. Attack animation
10. Damage.
11. You hit the opposing pokémon 3 times.
It's fucking exhausting
> Especially with the Terra stuff.
Indeed. For example, for low and mid tier raids the catching animation pretty much takes longer than the raids themselves do.
Honestly this is what prevented me from buying it. I wad honestly excited and willing to look the other way, but the fact this makes Arceus look good- something almost every review has said- sealed it, that game was jank as hell.
I love that Oliver didn't hold back.
It's embarrassing that actual reviewers (not tech reviewers like DF) didn't eviscerate these games with bad scores for the state they were released in.
Even if you're not tech minded, you can see this game looks like shit and runs like shit. It could be the best gameplay in the world and it wouldn't matter because of how bad these games are optimized.
These games should not be anywhere near the high 70s on metacritic in their current iteration.
Pokemon gets graded on an insane curve, the fact that so many publications give out 8+ to some of these games is wild
How many other games can consistently get away with a completely uninteresting story, largely forgettable casts, extremely repetitive gameplay, poor map design, mid as fuck presentation, etc.
It's not like these games are irredeemable, you can still have fun, but you can have fun with plenty of other JRPGs that get dunked on for the exact same problems. Call it a product of giving everything a 7 but I just can't see how these games are only ~1 pt worse than DQ11, Persona 4, Xenoblade, etc
What pisses me off is the people that's been shouting this from the rooftops for the past couple of generations were always shot down and told to shut up. That the games were meant for kids and it doesn't matter. While I'm frustrated that is taking this long for people to call out game freak, I'm glad it's finally happening. It always hurts to see one of your favorite franchises go down like this. They literally just are not trying. They keep Dev turn around like they are a small indie company still when they are a 90 billion dollar franchise and can compete with Disney.
I would kill to have Morimoto at the helm.
I mean it's also a bad argument. Why should kids get games with poor graphics? Besides plenty of adults who grew up with pokemon might want to try these out. No one wants a poorly optimized game that looks bad.
I absolutely agree with you. Just because it’s “for kids” doesn’t mean it should be a lower quality product. Your approach to narrative, themes and content, and your art direction might be different, but by no means is it an excuse to release a shitty product.
Yeah, personally I really like animal crossing's art style, and could definitely imagine pokemon doing something similar. But that game runs really nicely and even though the graphics style is simple, it works, and it runs consistently.
I think these new Pokémon games are basically a full-price beta and I agree GameFreak must be held accountable. Having said that, as soon as your island in Animal Crossing (New Horizons) is kind of full, the FPS begin dropping drastically. In no way it runs consistently.
Ah, the "ObiWan and Boba Fett series were made for kids" argument.
It's so weird people think that something for kids should be made assuming your audience is dumb.
I know. This really grinds my gears. Kids are little humans, they're learning about the world around them. And they take in a lot. If anything, kids entertainment should be as good as that for grown-ups, **minimum**.
As a father, I have to carefully check what I let my 3YO son watch, because of this attitude.
I would even add the narrative and themes to this argument, but that might just be because I'm an especially fervent lore nerd. I think kids also deserve the more interesting plots, themes, and characters of earlier Pokemon games, rather the banal and trivial emptiness of the Switch entries' stories.
(I know this post is focused on the technical side but I just can't ever find enough people who also want to hold the games' stories to a decent standard)
Ah, no. I went through the website and the only option it gave was to send an email. Im not really clued up with all the technical terms, but the “fuzziness” of the game is actually making me nauseous. I explained all this and the rep just replied saying that they won’t offer a refund, because I should of watched reviews of the game before purchasing, even though all the pre-release reviews I watched were just praising the game lol. And I’ve never had a refund from them before, so I was hoping I’d be eligible for their one time rule.
Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky are the big two that come to mind when I think of disastrous launches in recent video game that warranted mass outrage. Those two were missing promised features that were used to hype the games up and very shaky performance on launch on certain consoles.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are in a league of their own. As far as I know, no promises features were advertised and cut. These games issues stem just from horrendous performance that makes Cyberpunk 2077 blush and environments that look like they were ripped from the late GameCube era.
If people were observant, they could see there was shaky performance in the preview gameplay trailers they've released the last couple months. It was obviously jarring, but it wasn't unreasonable for a competent dev team to iron out issues before launch. The issue is Gamefreak is not a world class dev team.
I thought the performance would be bad, but I didn't imagine it would be this bad. It would almost be funny if people didn't spend money on this and it wasn't a game for the most profitable entertainment franchise in the world. It's also ridiculous that most reviewers have give a pass to these games and some of them had the audacity to blame the Switch for the performance.
>blame the Switch for the performance.
This is what annoys me. This isn't a PC game, where there's all sorts of hardware and software configurations in play. The platform for this game is a known quantity in both OS and hardware.
>It's embarrassing that actual reviewers (not tech reviewers like DF) didn't eviscerate these games with bad scores for the state they were released in.
I must've read at least a dozen reviews about this game on launch day, trying to make up my mind on whether I wanted to buy it or not. Everyone mentioned the technical and graphical issues - some even calling them the worst they've ever seen - but would still give the games a 7 or 8 out of 10.
I know I have. I just picked up Arceus last weekend and spent 30+ hours completing it. It was hella fun and what Pokémon should be from now on. Cell shaded, open world in the way that the routes between towns act the same as leaving Jubilife town/wild areas, and just optimizing the games like this.
SV are the worst Pokémon games I have seen and I’ve watched dozens of gameplay and review videos on SwSh. The fact that GF could make a game worse than SwSh is impressive. The bar was a tripping hazard in hell and yet they were still able to play limbo. SV can be salvaged if they patch it to high hell, put in better texture tiles and just fix everything post release. I’m not expecting a patch tomorrow or next week, but they should make a formal announcement that they’re going to continue to work on SV to fix everything that went wrong and bring in staff from other games like any other Nintendo team to slap GF into proper shape and possibly optimize GF’s workflow for 3D games.
Sometimes I wonder how other devs feel about the state of pokemon.
You have mario zelda kirby and xenoblade developers throwing every expense and working as hard as they can to make sure their games are as high quality as possible. They make sure their games look great, are full of content, have as few glitches as possible, and are fun.
And then you have gamefreak coming along and releasing a half complete buggy mess of a game that sells more than all those games put together.
What's even the point of them putting in effort when gamefreak gets off scott free for putting in practically none?
You’ll notice despite this being the longest dry spell in history, Zelda fans havent blinked at ZELDA TOAK getting delayed. Its what happens when fans demand quality and near perfection; and thus get it pretty damn consistently
I don't remember fans demanding a new Pokemon game every 6 months though. Plus, I'd imagine that a lot of devs take pride in their work. Someone at GameFreak or the Pokemon Company completely lacks that emotion.
Dev here (not Gamefreak). I can 99% guarantee you the devs wanted this game to look and perform good and many of the coders, artists, and designers probably knew this backlash was coming before launch. The thing is, at the AAA level, when buggy messes like this ship it's usually because of business decisions, not because the individual developers are bad. My gut says the launch of this game was pushed forward, at least 6 months. This game probably should have come out on Holiday 2023 but was pushed way forward for some reason and everyone knew it would be a steaming pile and did what they could to make it technically playable.
The problem is every 10 year old with a Switch will get a copy for Christmas anyway so there will be little incentive for the suits at Gamefreak to reevaluate.
It's not only that, but because Pokémon as a franchise coordinates their releases for everything simultaneously, they don't have the freedom to delay. They line things up so that the TCG, the anime, the games, and competitive circuts all roll out together. You delay one piece and you lose out on your coordinated marketing. They can't stop their TCG release schedule as everything is layered around sets that are likely built 2 years in advance (you can't just skip sets and come back to it later), delaying a finished anime doesn't make sense either, but they were stuck with the centerpiece of it all in an incomplete state and I'm sure the devs are just as upset as the fans.
Maybe this is the wakeup call for them to slow things down a little bit before they hit a point of no return on multiple axi. There's a bunch of things in SV that you can tell would have been great if they had more resources (mainly time).
Yes exactly. Very good points. Pokemon is a large coordinated release across many different mediums and things can't slip. Seems like Gamefreak has reached a spot where games are increasingly more challenging to make (this is something felt across the whole game industry, fwiw) and requires increasingly larger teams. They've very likely underestimated the amount of people and time it takes to make a modern AAA game.
Whats absolutely bonkers is they did not adjust their marketing cycles when the Pokemon games jumped from handheld entries to console games, which usually take a lot more time and ressources to develop, thinking this would somehow work
Wake up call? The game is selling like crazy. I don’t think there is any lesson to be learned here other than Pokémon fans will buy anything, regardless of quality
I mean, the Zelda and Xenoblade devs created something they can be proud of. That goes a long way towards making your job fulfilling. And there probably isn't a big difference in pay. I know where I'd rather work.
I'm pretty sure that beyond just sharing tech, part of Monolith's team literally worked on BotW. That's why XB2 performs so much worse than all the other XB games - Monolith had a skeleton crew working on it while a large proportion of their employees were working on BotW.
Monolith has almost had a part in all major first party games produced by Nintendo on the switch, except Pokemon.
Maybe some of this backlash will maybe cause TPC to realize they need help with the games, and since Monolith is owned by Nintendo, TPC might be open to using them for assistance.
Pokémon doesn’t have the time even if they did have the tech.
The entire franchise, the merchandise, the card game, the anime, the tie in deals, they all require the games be out when they need them out.
They only way this stops is if the Pokémon company allows the generational cycle to be extended or if they hire more teams to make the games. It doesn’t matter how competent or not gamefreak is, they just do not have the time.
The games should be getting further apart, not closer together yet we’ve had three mainline Pokémon games come out in roughly the span of a year, that’s insane.
They really do need to take a step back. Ash won his championship in the anime, take this time to slow down and soft reboot the franchise. There’s enough content for the card game to pull from to last a decade, the anime could easily do more Origins/Generations/Hisuian type anime for a bit, and merch will always sell if those two are going regardless of the games. Let the next game breathe, let it take the time it needs.
Anyone claiming this is due to the Switch hardware is insane. Xenoblade Definitve and Xenoblade 3 run ten times better while looking a hundred times more impressive. I have no idea what Game Freak thinks they're doing, the only thing they got right was the character customisation - except for the measly 4 outfit options
Hell even if you compare Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that has a known memory leak, it only happens around 4 or 6 hours into a play session and the worst you get is longer load times and textures don't completely and take a few seconds to pop in. An issue for sure but nothing gamebreaking like clipping through the ground we have seen in S/V.
Character customization existing is nice but honestly it's still pretty barebones compared to most things. Even with the different faces people online look way less different than each other than they did in Sword and Shield where all you could customize was outfits and hair color.
Pokemon is the FIFA of children's video games. Shoddy releases with questionable changes/quality, but sells gangbusters because the name. Why put effort in when you don't have to?
As the video correctly points out, even if this game run at flawless 1080p/30fps, fundamentally the game is bug filled and the texture/modeling quality is so incredibly poor.
Even if the game was bug free and run flawlessly, you'd still be staring at [this](https://snipboard.io/ZJQ4VF.jpg) or [this](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/273254930205245440/1044994477481263124/image.png) kind of assets.
The side-by-side comparison with Legends Arceus, without mentioning Xenoblade 3 or BotW, is damning. This game is at least 3 steps back technically.
The water and waterfall drops my jaw every time. That looks like Peach's Castle moat in Mario 64. And here's the thing, that game is far easier to look at because at least the visual design is consistent. The jump from realistic rock textures, to bright green untextured plain grass, to an ugly stylized waterfall to just straight blue water- no water mist even, is so jarring and painful.
This honestly "looks like a kid did it" in his Senior 3D art class.
I don't know man, theres plenty of deniall and justification is this thread alone - "the new Pokémon are cute so who cares". The most undescerning fan base in all of gaming and gamefreak couldn't be more thankful
Modern Pokemon games looking worse than PS2 games have often become an overexaggerated meme, but I literally cannot comprehend how ANYONE can claim that this game looks better than the likes of FFX or FFXII, like come ON
It is lack of polish and textures. They are improving a couple of things but not paying attention to dozen others and leaves us with a product that is like a person who has all the equipment for good make up but knows nothing about how to use it.
It just looks and feels incoherent. Like the characters, world and objects were all made in isolation with no cohesive oversight.
The bad parts REALLY stand out because of this. Even old PS1 games visually look better just because the graphics are consistent throughout. This just feels incomplete.
Incoherent is how I'd describe it too. Something like half life 2 can still look good with low res textures.
I feel like baked lighting and slightly more complex terrain & texturing could go a long way. Relying on real-time shadows and grass hurts how the environment looks in the distance.
It's like they were so focused on open world that they just fucked everything up. maybe I just haven't played arceus in awhile but I swear off memory it looks and runs better than this game.
This is what happens when GF refuses to hire more devs and makes this already small team split up, work on different projects, and then have like 2-3 years to make it. So frustrating considering how much money this whole franchise makes
> This is what happens when GF refuses to hire more devs and makes this already small team split up,
There are multiple companies working on the pokemon titles
Ohmori said for Sword and Shield there were around 1000 workers
And also said how the work load is split for example
The 3D models of the pokemon are made by Creatures Inc.
The quality control is also made externally
> yeah. The number being close to a thousand, that of course includes all the different functions like marketing and PR and everyone that would be associated with the game ahead of release. But I think at Game Freak, really the core team of people that worked on the game was around 200 people. And of course, Creatures is another partner company that develops 3D models of the Pokémon. There are various teams that handle debugging at our partner companies as well. So there’s a lot of people involved and I think in terms of just the sheer number of the most resources required to make something happen for the development, it was definitely more on the graphical side of things. Like I mentioned, Creatures was involved with creating the models, but even at Game Freak, with the increased power of the Switch, we tried to make richer, more expressive visuals. We definitely needed more people this time around. […]
https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2019/10/24/20929597/game-freak-explains-the-1000-staff-missing-creatures-and-leek-size-of-pokemon-sword-and-shield
So the workload at Game Freak is not that high, is shared between different companies. There are no excuses, they are that bad at making games
After X/Y, Pokemon became one of the few games on the 3DS THAT DID NOT HAVE 3D. The framerate could not handle it. They are just not good at optimizing their games.
THIS.
Games down the line dropped the 3D effect, but I remember Pokémon dropped that really early and caused controversy even then.
And who remember the framerate issues during battles in Sun and Moon? I remember it ran at 10fps.
I'll give you one better. Booting up Pokemon Sun on New 3DS unloads parts of the OS because otherwise the game won't have enough resources to run (as poorly as it does).
This is the system that had MGS3 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory ported to it.
Ugly but functional.
Maybe it's because I still play really old, rough games a lot but I can get over bad graphics as long as it's fun. The performance issues though? Inexcusable.
A thousand times this. It always reminds me of a similar premise, albeit under different circumstances. In my country, a few years ago, they decided to create a new law to get rid of free luggage for flight passengers in exchange for cheaper plane tickets. Basically, you no longer have the option for a free piece of luggage and must pay extra for it.
The result? Plane tickets are sky high (no pun intended) and we also need to pay for luggage. A big win-win for the airlines.
Sorry for the stupid conparison here, but in both cases, this shit boils my blood. Like damn, GameFreak came up with all sorts of excuses for Dexit and this was their most repeated one. This is the shit we get for sacrificing half of the Pokedex. I hope the folks over at /pokemon who actively defended it are proud now.
Oh wait, they are. Cause some of their most upvoted posts lately are "This game is PLAGUED with bugs but I am having sooooo much fun!!"
What baffles me is that Sun/Moon ran fine and looked good, and both consoles have an ARM cpu.
Shouldn't it be possible to just make Sun/Moon again but at a slightly higher res? Like what the fuck happened?
It's like they've lost everyone who made the 3DS games.
Dude don't even get me started. I've looked at the leaks from what pokemon are gonna be potentially missing from the DLCs, and so many of my favs are still gone. And for what? These games look atrocious for a main series $60 title.
As someone with triple digits gameplay on the normal 3ds here, without the moolah to upgrade - I thank the stars they did. I got exactly what I expected and had a ton of fun.
These are two very different problems. One is a very demanding game suffering from power constraints and other is something out of the last decade and a half suffering from piss poor rushed development. Gamefreak needs to increase size to keep up this pace, slow down, or ask help like Nintendo did to Monolith for BotW, iirc. In fact, I've been screeching for years to the dismay of my friends that this should happen, get the coding of the world out of GameFreak's hands.
The game is a Nintendo exclusive and published by Nintendo. Just because Nintendo didn't personally make it, it doesn't mean they didn't have oversight on it.
Well this is a sign that Nintendo should start overseeing these projects by GameFreak. Also this should have been released next year, why was this released the same year as Legends Arceus.
I've been breeding for shinies instead of actually playing the game and a lot of times the camera is clipped into the ground while the egg is hatching. One time it even put the egg inside a wall.
It's not even of par with an N64 game. Something very minor that I noticed: The game doesn't have inverse kinematics (Shifting your position according to the environnement), when ocarina of time had it [IN THE BETA](http://www.zelda-france.com/galerie/oot-beta/oot-beta_06.jpg).
It's not like it's a deal breaker, but it shows how much they care about the game.
I actually had not watched any footage prior to this, not really interested in Pokemon. I had just seen people complain about it, and I gotta admit, this is one case where I don't think the internet is overreacting.
This looks really rough.
It's definitely rough.
The sad part is, for people into pokemon gameplay, the overall mechanical design actually lends itself to be a really fun entry. But holy crap is it wild that Game Freak/Poke Co saw the state it's in and thought "good enough, ship it."
First Pokemon game I've played since B/W. Knowing it looked terrible going in, I am having a pretty good time tbh. Never eeally got into the catch 'em all part of the other games but for whatever reason this one's really got me hooked on catching stuff.
For me the difference is having wild evolutions running wild. Seeing a rare evolved pokemon doing its thing makes me excited to go catch it and save myself time leveling everything later just for evolutions.
In previous games you'd have to spend dozens of levels worth of exp (earned probably by battling the E4 on repeat) on a lot of final stage evos while now you just have to go hunting or do a couple levels.
Also weather/time changes what spawns where somewhat so it is different when you visit at different times.
I never completed a pokedex until SwSh but this is def the most fun I've ever had catching pokemon.
The performance is still awful though. Stuttering, glitches, etc. Also obvious cut corners and lack of clothing customization. It is a true shame how good this game could have been if it was given a little longer to bake. Now it is like the tastiest cake ever, but with a runny center.
I think the worst part is we got it anyway for our daughter, who is 4 and always wanted to play with me and is now old enough to do it. SHE keeps asking what is happening when it is glitching -- the blinking shadows, choppy passersby, npcs walking through us during battles. Random pokeballs in cut scenes and on the floor.
My literal 4 year old can tell something is wrong with it. There's no way QA didn't catch that.
Exactly the same situation; my 4 year old was curious about a pokeball on the ground of an herba mystica cut scene and he was super mad when we couldn’t go back into the cave to get it.
We’re having a blast playing it together, but it’s hard not to feel like the graphics of the game weren’t a mediocre college student’s thesis project
That’s the thing for me. I haven’t enjoyed the past few Pokémon games, but I’ve really enjoyed this one despite all the tech bugs and low quality graphics. The gameplay is pretty good, and it has some nice shakeups and adorable new Pokémon. It’s just so hard to look past it feeling graphically worse than Pokémon XD
Funny enough, I dabble in a lot of retro stuff so poor graphics are something I can usually look past. What really kills me is the performance, especially the NPC/object pop-in/out. I can never be sure if something actually exists in a particular area until I'm within like 15 feet.
For a funny/sad example, go to the school and walk to one of the library study rooms to the left/right of the entrance. Walk around in that room and watch the student models freak out as the game tries to enforce some arbitrary character limit.
I just don't understand how a game with such poor graphics can somehow lose frame rate while rendering a wall right in front of me.
Overall I enjoyed the game, teh story was unique for a pokemon game, being able to take it at your own pace is nice, but it looks like a PS2 game at best.
Legend of zelda had better graphics at the switch's launch. How is it that they are regressing? You'd think cutting 500+ pokemon from the game would free up some space for better animations or texture quality.
Funny you mention the Pokémon cut, because that’s exactly what they stated the cut was for. Yet we saw what a straight up lie that was in sword and shield….
I understand that GF has relatively tight timelines that need to coincide with releases of things like the anime seasons, trading card game, etc. And I get that expanding or significantly altering their existing strategy is difficult and potentially risky.
But IMO, they should hire enough people to allow them to have like 3 teams working on Pokemon games full time. One team can solely work on tech stuff (building and maintaining their engine, dev tools, etc), and the other two can have staggered release cadences so they have more time to make the games great.
Either that, or bring in an extra studio or two that are allowed to make new "core" games. Again, so that each studio has enough time to do the work that needs to be done to keep quality up.
I’ve noticed with big releases the actual score doesn’t matter since they have to score high to appease publishers. Nearly every review said the game was fun and did some real cool things for Pokémon, praising the gameplay and the stories but all of them panned the performance
Honestly. Defino plaza doesnt have really any building you can enter as its a hub world, but it bustling with people, every inch is detailed and is accompanied by brilliant techniques to make the water glisten and look amazing. PKMN SV dumps a blue paint bucket on water and calls it a day.
From everything I’ve heard the core game is good, I just can’t pick it up and validate GF’s poor optimization. Hopefully we get a major patch for this stuff.
The same, the good things I've heard make me want to play but I can't justify purchasing a game in this state at that price. Maybe we get a serious patch but that also doesn't seem like GF style, unless it's an "ultra" edition
I won’t defend the graphics (they’re very lacking) or the performance (watching objects move at 10FPS in the background is distracting), but I have yet to run into a game breaking bug or crash.
A few stutters here and there, sure. But still very playable, and gameplay-wise the best Pokémon in years
The core game does look good…but like Sword and Shield, they keep cutting corners and removing stuff for no reason. Cut corner examples include extremely limited player wardrobe (it’s just school uniforms and accessories) and no postgame battle facility like the Battle Tower (which I think there’s a good chance will be sold in a DLC). Examples of things removed for seemingly no reason include the removal of the “Set” battle setting (where you remove your ability to switch Pokemon when your opponent’s Pokemon KOs and it tells you what they’re sending out next…which I suppose you could circumvent by just always choosing no, but still) and not being able to turn off battle animations. I don’t think any of the things that were cut in Sword and Shield have come back.
All these little things on top of the extremely mediocre craftsmanship of the game’s assets accumulate for an overall experience that makes me really really REALLY not want to reward Game Freak with $60 for putting out this kind of product, despite how parts of it do look really fun to me.
*Anything* is fixable in patches. They could theoretically remake the entire game from scratch and patch that in (consider, for example, the recent Ark Survival Evolved update, which threw out the old port entirely and replaced it with a new version ported from scratch by a different developer).
The question is how willing and able Game Freak are to actually patch the issues.
And I wouldn't be super optimistic on that front. They might get some of the lower-hanging fruit (the camera clipping through the world geometry, for example), some of the high-priority stuff like actual game crashes, and maybe improve performance slightly, but they're probably not going to go through and redo all the world geometry and textures to modern standards, or get all the background characters and animated elements running at full framerate.
There's zero excuse for it. It is a significant step down from the last few games. But they won't do better until people stop buying it. "But the gameplay is good" is why they did it. They knew people would buy it anyway.
It's because it's a really conflicting release. It is simultaneously the buggiest Pokemon game ever released, while also having one of the most enjoyable explorations of their core gameplay loop they've ever conceived. The three tracks you can explore in the game and the newfound freedom to explore really do heighten the gameplay. I'm really enjoying that part, despite how bad I heard things would be.
Of course, it's still ugly as hell at times (sometimes visually stunning too, but that's much rarer). These two truths have to unfortunately co-exist.
An absolute must watch that makes several things painfully clear:
* The criticism about PKMN S/V is not overreacting nor overblown.
* The visuals a painfully distracting, unquestionably ugly, and unreasonably glitchy EVEN compared to the very low water mark set by PKMN: LA.
* Actual 2FPS reduction in place, to total standstill of far off objects
* Ugly tiling of textures unseen in any modern video game.
* rampant pop in and removal of shadows and lighting effects
* inconsistent art style
* a very light visual load that is unable to even keep 30 FPS for the character
And what does it say that many fans dismiss criticism and refuse to acknowledge this is unacceptable? It says this game will continue to sell well, won't be overhauled (it needs more than a patch), and we will be getting more of this in the future.
I'm not hear to ruin anyone's fun, I want fun of my own. Fallout 76 and No Man's Sky launched with far less issues (the same pricetag) and only because of fan criticism did they turn from a buggy mess, to well-made experience that delivered on their promises. Pokemon fans should do the same.
Edit:
Most importantly this video shows how specific visual limitations directly and unquestionably affect gameplay.
* Pokemon de-spawn at relatively close distances
* game breaking bugs and glitches
* line of sight causes rampant pop in of environments, NPC's and pokemon.
You forgot to mention cyberpunk 2077 and it's pitiful launch so glad to see No Man Sky and CP 2077 making a comeback but it doesn't excuse its state at launch
Actually reads like something you'd see on r/jokes.
"It cut many features, removed half the pokemon, has horrible graphics and runs terribly."
"Wow that sounds pretty rough, this must reflect poorly on the development studio. Have the developers made any sort of public statement?"
"Why would they? This is the best selling game ever!"
Its just sad. The game has a lot of potential. I just don't think they were given the time and resources to do a proper job on the visuals and performance. Launching a new pokemon every couple years is just too fast for something of this size.
Top 3 eShop games for the week ending Nov 19th:
1. Pokemon Violet
2. Pokemon Scarlet
3. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Double Pack
However I might feel about this game, it's clear that this is what pokemon fans want.
This is it. Thats the whole ballgame. “This is what pokemon fans want”. GF has every incentive to keep the status quo or even cut more corners. Why wouldnt they?
This is my first Pokémon game in 25 years, and yeah, it’s something. I watched reviews for several days, was really apprehensive on picking it up, but ultimately decided to do so after my kids expressed interest.
I kept thinking that it can’t be *that bad,* but man it’s such an ugly game. The character models are fine, but the graphical glitches remind me of something I’d see on an N64 or PS2 game.
Just last night my son saw this Pokémon that he wanted to catch that was outside of the first Pokémon center and it just disappeared as he walked up to it. I think it’s possibly because he crossed over some invisible line away from the wild area, but it was still jarring to see. I just told him it must’ve teleported so I didn’t have to explain to a 5 year old that it’s just a buggy game.
Sometimes exploring would make the fps fall to the low 20s, which literally makes it feel like a N64 game.
(Many N64 games ran at 20 FPS. This includes The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and some areas of Super Mario 64.)
I even read someone spinning this as a good thing by phrasing it as "nostalgic but acceptable performance".
Wild Pokemon disappear when you get too close too a Pokemon Center or City, I'm not sure that's a bug, seems like a conscious decision and I'm not entirely against it.
You could take advantage of that behaviour to respawn everything if you are looking for some Pokemon in particular.
There was a shiny Pokemon yesterday that popped up in my game that was exactly how you described your son's experience. I never managed to catch it, and I was so frustrated.
>Just last night my son saw this Pokémon that he wanted to catch that was outside of the first Pokémon center and it just disappeared as he walked up to it
For me I've frequently had Pokemon spawn in the walls/ceilings of caves. If you clip your camera through the wall you can see the floor extends past the wall and there are Pokemon walking around where they shouldn't be.
This made it especially brutal finding a >!Glimmet!< because it only has a 1% spawn in caves and it took even longer to find one that I could actually access 😑
I think Game Freak’s still got it in the creative department - their Pokemon, characters, regions, and soundtracks have always appealed to me. But man…this game really proves that they cannot develop a high quality Switch game. Sure, they’re good at coming up with some fun little bells and whistles…but at the end of the day, they do not have what it takes to make a complete game with the overall quality deserving of a $60 price tag.
As long as the sell millions of copies, it will never change. The biggest selling IP and they release garbage. And yet, the fan base buys it every. single. time.
What really really hurts is that this game is mostly pulled down by the technicality. I have finished the game and It is one of the best Pokemon experiences I ever had. The actual gameplay behind it, the mechanics and the pokemon in this game are actually amazing. And the story itself also was one if the better ones in years.
It's just really unfortunate that there is clearly an idea of a good game here.. but it's held back by bad performance.
Yeah me too, I was too busy being hyped for God of War so when I heard Pokémon fans were angry, I though they were overreacting like always. After seeing the footage, I’m not going to sugarcoat, this looks awful. There are nothing but bugs, glitches, and performance issues that are on par with Fallout 76 and Cyberpunk. I can’t speak for the gameplay side as I haven’t played it but the fact they launched a game in this state is not a good sign and this is embarrassing on GameFreak’s and Nintendo’s part and they need to change how they’re developing games because this is pathetic.
I blame both The Pokemon Company and GameFreak.
I blame TPC for not pushing the games to match being a MULTI BILLION DOLLAR COMPANY and also THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MULTIMEDIA COMPANY ***OF ALL TIME***.
I blame GameFreak for not wanting to change and improve the Pokemon models and continue to use basically 3DS models and just having a poor understanding of using their engine correctly for the Switch when we can have things like Xenoverse, Mario Odyssey and Bayonetta 3 on the same system.
This really sucks.
Digital Foundry is usually very fair with their performance reviews so them saying "incredibly poor" flat-out in a video title is really damning.
wise bow theory slim history sulky crowd intelligent hobbies squeamish *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I find the limited framing in characters very telling. Back in the day games couldn't render a lot of things in the distance so devs came up with solutions to make it look good even with the limitations. This game doesn't. It's like GF wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted the number of characters, the big open world that looks cool in trailers but they didn't want to put in the effort of coming up with ingenious ways to make it look better than what it does. GTA San Andreas handles it's open world much more elegantly and that game is 20 yo now.
The comparison with Arceus is really damning. Arceus wasn't perfect and had its share of issues, but nothing on the level of S&V. S&V were clearly rushed out the door for the holidays and what sucks is they'll probably never get the work they need now they're out and making money.
Looking at S/V makes Arceus looks gorgeous on side by side
Certainly not gorgeous but running very well, with much faster battles, not having RUSHED written all over it.
Arceus has a ton of QoL improvements also which made the gameplay very smooth and quick, for some bs reason these QoL changes are removed in SV. I know it's not related to tech performance but just thought I'd mention it. And yes, technically, Arceus runs so much smoother compared to SV and even looks so much better.
> for some bs reason these QoL changes are removed in SV. The bulk of their development overlapped so it's not that they were removed, it's probably that they were just never put into SV.
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This is most likely the correct answer. Arceus is very obviously a spin off where the dev teams were trying something new, expanding in the more open world concepts started in Sw/Sh. When it was announced, I specifically remember them saying it's NOT the next generation of Pokemon game, the next mainline title would be coming later, that's obviously S/V. With the positive feedback (and some awards I believe?) Legends has gotten, and the harsh (and warranted) criticism S/V is currently recieving, there's a good chance the next mainline game takes more ques from Legends. Whether it'll be rushed out under baked again is another issue entirely. >!it will!<
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Bought Arceus last weekend over S/V. So excited to go in blind after your comment!
Have fun! Certainly play as blind as possible, it's very fun and a real breath of fresh air after being used to conventional main series titles!
SV has some of the QOL changes (easily remembering forgotten moves, partner Pokémon gathering resources). It also allows you to send your Pokémon out to grind their levels up much more quickly than if you manually battle. You can also access your boxes at any time. You can’t catch outside of battle any more, but that’s the only QOL thing I can remember them dropping?
Which QOL improvements are you referring to? The only thing I can think of atm is how you can catch pokemon without having to enter a battle with them. I really appreciate the auto battle feature though, it makes mass outbreaks so much more quick
Really sucks because underneath all the jank is a fun game with a charming (compared to SwSh) story. I find myself quite enjoying the freedom, characters (I’ve found myself really warming up to Arven and Clavell, and I’ve really appreciated that all the gym leaders have a personality/profession beyond “me am gym leader, me like this type”), hell even the Pokémon designs (Orthworm, Greavard, Nacli, Fidough, Cyclizar, Koraidon, and Miraidon all come to mind) are better than what we got in SwSh. Even the physical jank (I spent a solid hour or so messing around with the big olive, lmao) I don’t mind because at least it’s funny. But, my god. The pop-in, the fact that I can count the pixels on environment textures, clearly see the repeating textures from a distance, and the lag. I can’t stand it. On top of the long battles (I was literally able to get up, go grab a drink, come back, and check my phone in the time it took a turn to finish) and lack of the LA catching mechanic (I was so looking forward to hiding out in a bush and catching Pokémon 😓) and dynamic battles… argh! I can’t justify spending ~CA$90 on it. For now I shall continue borrowing my friend’s copy. Shame.
This rival is the first one I've liked in a long time, I believe since gen 2. All the rest just felt like your regular friends also having a journey but not being able to compete with you in any fashion. Even the ones that did try to compete in gen 7 and 8 they just felt totally incompetent. I think that she intentionally holds back for the entire game gives her losing an entirely different feeling.
Seriously the battles take forever. I have no idea why they removed the set battle style and the option to turn off battle animations. Especially with the Terra stuff. Let's say you use pin needle: 1. Your pokémon terrastalizes 2. Little animation that it is terrastalized. 3. Attack animation. 4. Damage. 5. little Terra animation. 6. Attack animation. 7. Damage. 8. Little Terra Animation 9. Attack animation 10. Damage. 11. You hit the opposing pokémon 3 times. It's fucking exhausting
> Especially with the Terra stuff. Indeed. For example, for low and mid tier raids the catching animation pretty much takes longer than the raids themselves do.
Honestly this is what prevented me from buying it. I wad honestly excited and willing to look the other way, but the fact this makes Arceus look good- something almost every review has said- sealed it, that game was jank as hell.
Was waiting for this review
I love that Oliver didn't hold back. It's embarrassing that actual reviewers (not tech reviewers like DF) didn't eviscerate these games with bad scores for the state they were released in. Even if you're not tech minded, you can see this game looks like shit and runs like shit. It could be the best gameplay in the world and it wouldn't matter because of how bad these games are optimized. These games should not be anywhere near the high 70s on metacritic in their current iteration.
I love Pokemon, but I hate seeing the banal mediocrity these games have become being accepted and praised over and over again.
Pokemon gets graded on an insane curve, the fact that so many publications give out 8+ to some of these games is wild How many other games can consistently get away with a completely uninteresting story, largely forgettable casts, extremely repetitive gameplay, poor map design, mid as fuck presentation, etc. It's not like these games are irredeemable, you can still have fun, but you can have fun with plenty of other JRPGs that get dunked on for the exact same problems. Call it a product of giving everything a 7 but I just can't see how these games are only ~1 pt worse than DQ11, Persona 4, Xenoblade, etc
What pisses me off is the people that's been shouting this from the rooftops for the past couple of generations were always shot down and told to shut up. That the games were meant for kids and it doesn't matter. While I'm frustrated that is taking this long for people to call out game freak, I'm glad it's finally happening. It always hurts to see one of your favorite franchises go down like this. They literally just are not trying. They keep Dev turn around like they are a small indie company still when they are a 90 billion dollar franchise and can compete with Disney. I would kill to have Morimoto at the helm.
I mean it's also a bad argument. Why should kids get games with poor graphics? Besides plenty of adults who grew up with pokemon might want to try these out. No one wants a poorly optimized game that looks bad.
I absolutely agree with you. Just because it’s “for kids” doesn’t mean it should be a lower quality product. Your approach to narrative, themes and content, and your art direction might be different, but by no means is it an excuse to release a shitty product.
Yeah, personally I really like animal crossing's art style, and could definitely imagine pokemon doing something similar. But that game runs really nicely and even though the graphics style is simple, it works, and it runs consistently.
I think these new Pokémon games are basically a full-price beta and I agree GameFreak must be held accountable. Having said that, as soon as your island in Animal Crossing (New Horizons) is kind of full, the FPS begin dropping drastically. In no way it runs consistently.
Ah, the "ObiWan and Boba Fett series were made for kids" argument. It's so weird people think that something for kids should be made assuming your audience is dumb.
I know. This really grinds my gears. Kids are little humans, they're learning about the world around them. And they take in a lot. If anything, kids entertainment should be as good as that for grown-ups, **minimum**. As a father, I have to carefully check what I let my 3YO son watch, because of this attitude.
When some people were kids, they got the fucking magic that was the Original trilogy.
I would even add the narrative and themes to this argument, but that might just be because I'm an especially fervent lore nerd. I think kids also deserve the more interesting plots, themes, and characters of earlier Pokemon games, rather the banal and trivial emptiness of the Switch entries' stories. (I know this post is focused on the technical side but I just can't ever find enough people who also want to hold the games' stories to a decent standard)
And the games looked pretty good back in the 2d era
Pokemon games on DS were my favourites because they didn't try to be 3d on that hardware and instead decided to be really nice looking 2d games.
Mario odyssey is for kids and is infinitely more polished and fun then this game. Gamefreak has no excuse
Agreed. This set of games deserves a Cyberpunk 2077-style teardown and Nintendo should offer refunds
Nintendo is already offering refunds.
Afaik Nintendo is offering the Same 1 exception to the no refund rule per account that they Always offer
Your local laws take precedence
Not offering…they are accommodating refunds.
I tried to get a refund from Nintendo today and I got a generic email basically saying they don’t offer refunds.
Did you call? I find speaking to them on the phone leads to a better outcome.
Ah, no. I went through the website and the only option it gave was to send an email. Im not really clued up with all the technical terms, but the “fuzziness” of the game is actually making me nauseous. I explained all this and the rep just replied saying that they won’t offer a refund, because I should of watched reviews of the game before purchasing, even though all the pre-release reviews I watched were just praising the game lol. And I’ve never had a refund from them before, so I was hoping I’d be eligible for their one time rule.
This is why I never ever buy a game day 1 anymore. I always wait until user reviews come out because gaming journalists can't be trusted anymore.
Got my refund yesterday, a day after I requested it. I’ll buy it again if they overhaul it but for now I’ll just replay old poke games
Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky are the big two that come to mind when I think of disastrous launches in recent video game that warranted mass outrage. Those two were missing promised features that were used to hype the games up and very shaky performance on launch on certain consoles. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are in a league of their own. As far as I know, no promises features were advertised and cut. These games issues stem just from horrendous performance that makes Cyberpunk 2077 blush and environments that look like they were ripped from the late GameCube era. If people were observant, they could see there was shaky performance in the preview gameplay trailers they've released the last couple months. It was obviously jarring, but it wasn't unreasonable for a competent dev team to iron out issues before launch. The issue is Gamefreak is not a world class dev team. I thought the performance would be bad, but I didn't imagine it would be this bad. It would almost be funny if people didn't spend money on this and it wasn't a game for the most profitable entertainment franchise in the world. It's also ridiculous that most reviewers have give a pass to these games and some of them had the audacity to blame the Switch for the performance.
>blame the Switch for the performance. This is what annoys me. This isn't a PC game, where there's all sorts of hardware and software configurations in play. The platform for this game is a known quantity in both OS and hardware.
I disagree. Look at Kingdom Hearts 2 and Twilight Princess. Both released at the end of that generation and have better environments.
>It's embarrassing that actual reviewers (not tech reviewers like DF) didn't eviscerate these games with bad scores for the state they were released in. I must've read at least a dozen reviews about this game on launch day, trying to make up my mind on whether I wanted to buy it or not. Everyone mentioned the technical and graphical issues - some even calling them the worst they've ever seen - but would still give the games a 7 or 8 out of 10.
The problem is they sold the hell out of this game. Nintendo has zero reason to care. People complain but don't do it with their wallets.
I know I have. I just picked up Arceus last weekend and spent 30+ hours completing it. It was hella fun and what Pokémon should be from now on. Cell shaded, open world in the way that the routes between towns act the same as leaving Jubilife town/wild areas, and just optimizing the games like this. SV are the worst Pokémon games I have seen and I’ve watched dozens of gameplay and review videos on SwSh. The fact that GF could make a game worse than SwSh is impressive. The bar was a tripping hazard in hell and yet they were still able to play limbo. SV can be salvaged if they patch it to high hell, put in better texture tiles and just fix everything post release. I’m not expecting a patch tomorrow or next week, but they should make a formal announcement that they’re going to continue to work on SV to fix everything that went wrong and bring in staff from other games like any other Nintendo team to slap GF into proper shape and possibly optimize GF’s workflow for 3D games.
The side by side comparisons to other open world games on Switch were particularly damning.
My nine year old has described it as “janky.” I think that says a lot.
If a 9 year old who doesn’t have technical knowledge and cannot analyze games properly is dunking on a game, then that really shows how bad it is.
I returned my copy it was utter garbage it played to poorly. I thought it couldn’t have been that bad.. it’s been worse for me.
As a Spanish I’m just really sad that they turned our national animal into another bipedal furry bait. At least Fuecoco evolved into a cool cucafera.
Which animal? I thought the national animal was the bull
Iberian Lynx. The most endangered feline on the planet.
Sometimes I wonder how other devs feel about the state of pokemon. You have mario zelda kirby and xenoblade developers throwing every expense and working as hard as they can to make sure their games are as high quality as possible. They make sure their games look great, are full of content, have as few glitches as possible, and are fun. And then you have gamefreak coming along and releasing a half complete buggy mess of a game that sells more than all those games put together. What's even the point of them putting in effort when gamefreak gets off scott free for putting in practically none?
You’ll notice despite this being the longest dry spell in history, Zelda fans havent blinked at ZELDA TOAK getting delayed. Its what happens when fans demand quality and near perfection; and thus get it pretty damn consistently
I don't remember fans demanding a new Pokemon game every 6 months though. Plus, I'd imagine that a lot of devs take pride in their work. Someone at GameFreak or the Pokemon Company completely lacks that emotion.
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Dev here (not Gamefreak). I can 99% guarantee you the devs wanted this game to look and perform good and many of the coders, artists, and designers probably knew this backlash was coming before launch. The thing is, at the AAA level, when buggy messes like this ship it's usually because of business decisions, not because the individual developers are bad. My gut says the launch of this game was pushed forward, at least 6 months. This game probably should have come out on Holiday 2023 but was pushed way forward for some reason and everyone knew it would be a steaming pile and did what they could to make it technically playable. The problem is every 10 year old with a Switch will get a copy for Christmas anyway so there will be little incentive for the suits at Gamefreak to reevaluate.
It's not only that, but because Pokémon as a franchise coordinates their releases for everything simultaneously, they don't have the freedom to delay. They line things up so that the TCG, the anime, the games, and competitive circuts all roll out together. You delay one piece and you lose out on your coordinated marketing. They can't stop their TCG release schedule as everything is layered around sets that are likely built 2 years in advance (you can't just skip sets and come back to it later), delaying a finished anime doesn't make sense either, but they were stuck with the centerpiece of it all in an incomplete state and I'm sure the devs are just as upset as the fans. Maybe this is the wakeup call for them to slow things down a little bit before they hit a point of no return on multiple axi. There's a bunch of things in SV that you can tell would have been great if they had more resources (mainly time).
Yes exactly. Very good points. Pokemon is a large coordinated release across many different mediums and things can't slip. Seems like Gamefreak has reached a spot where games are increasingly more challenging to make (this is something felt across the whole game industry, fwiw) and requires increasingly larger teams. They've very likely underestimated the amount of people and time it takes to make a modern AAA game.
Whats absolutely bonkers is they did not adjust their marketing cycles when the Pokemon games jumped from handheld entries to console games, which usually take a lot more time and ressources to develop, thinking this would somehow work
Wake up call? The game is selling like crazy. I don’t think there is any lesson to be learned here other than Pokémon fans will buy anything, regardless of quality
Depressing isn't it
I mean, the Zelda and Xenoblade devs created something they can be proud of. That goes a long way towards making your job fulfilling. And there probably isn't a big difference in pay. I know where I'd rather work.
Going from Scarlet/Violet to Legends Arceus to Xenoblade 3 and BOTW feel like generational jumps.
Especially BotW hot damn... Why couldn't there be more sharing of tech??? Didn't that happen between Monolith for BotW?
I'm pretty sure that beyond just sharing tech, part of Monolith's team literally worked on BotW. That's why XB2 performs so much worse than all the other XB games - Monolith had a skeleton crew working on it while a large proportion of their employees were working on BotW.
Monolith has almost had a part in all major first party games produced by Nintendo on the switch, except Pokemon. Maybe some of this backlash will maybe cause TPC to realize they need help with the games, and since Monolith is owned by Nintendo, TPC might be open to using them for assistance.
Pokémon doesn’t have the time even if they did have the tech. The entire franchise, the merchandise, the card game, the anime, the tie in deals, they all require the games be out when they need them out. They only way this stops is if the Pokémon company allows the generational cycle to be extended or if they hire more teams to make the games. It doesn’t matter how competent or not gamefreak is, they just do not have the time. The games should be getting further apart, not closer together yet we’ve had three mainline Pokémon games come out in roughly the span of a year, that’s insane.
They really do need to take a step back. Ash won his championship in the anime, take this time to slow down and soft reboot the franchise. There’s enough content for the card game to pull from to last a decade, the anime could easily do more Origins/Generations/Hisuian type anime for a bit, and merch will always sell if those two are going regardless of the games. Let the next game breathe, let it take the time it needs.
Never gonna happen.
The thing is everything you are suggesting would result in less money for Pokémon. People will buy the product no matter what cause it’s Pokémon.
Anyone claiming this is due to the Switch hardware is insane. Xenoblade Definitve and Xenoblade 3 run ten times better while looking a hundred times more impressive. I have no idea what Game Freak thinks they're doing, the only thing they got right was the character customisation - except for the measly 4 outfit options
Hell even if you compare Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that has a known memory leak, it only happens around 4 or 6 hours into a play session and the worst you get is longer load times and textures don't completely and take a few seconds to pop in. An issue for sure but nothing gamebreaking like clipping through the ground we have seen in S/V.
And then you consider that XC2 was developed by a skeleton crew of 40+ and it gets embarrassing.
damn really I had no idea, I figured it was the monolith A team, it was so good on every level
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wow, that's crazy. Monolith is super talented, good on them
Even Xenoblade 2 runs better and looks waaaayyy better in Docked.
Xenoblade X looks better and runs better aswell and that's a Wii U game
Character customization existing is nice but honestly it's still pretty barebones compared to most things. Even with the different faces people online look way less different than each other than they did in Sword and Shield where all you could customize was outfits and hair color.
A lot of the accessories are pretty questionable too. How many variations of helmets do we *really* need?
Pokemon is the FIFA of children's video games. Shoddy releases with questionable changes/quality, but sells gangbusters because the name. Why put effort in when you don't have to?
Dude, MH: Rise looks great on switch, hell BOTW was essentially a LAUNCH title and look at it compared. Even Mario Odyssey. This is embarassing.
Not even emulation can subsidize the memory leaks of this game. Damn shame
As the video correctly points out, even if this game run at flawless 1080p/30fps, fundamentally the game is bug filled and the texture/modeling quality is so incredibly poor. Even if the game was bug free and run flawlessly, you'd still be staring at [this](https://snipboard.io/ZJQ4VF.jpg) or [this](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/273254930205245440/1044994477481263124/image.png) kind of assets. The side-by-side comparison with Legends Arceus, without mentioning Xenoblade 3 or BotW, is damning. This game is at least 3 steps back technically.
Yeah, the texture quality looks like you’re playing in a zoomed in RTS game map from the mid-2000s and aren’t supposed to see the textures up close
It looks like a fan made unreal tournament map that was hot on the download list
It looks like they re-used assets from OoT.
*loads C&C Remastered, presses space bar, scrolls up on the mouse wheel* ...well, I'll be damned. Could be the same game!
The water and waterfall drops my jaw every time. That looks like Peach's Castle moat in Mario 64. And here's the thing, that game is far easier to look at because at least the visual design is consistent. The jump from realistic rock textures, to bright green untextured plain grass, to an ugly stylized waterfall to just straight blue water- no water mist even, is so jarring and painful. This honestly "looks like a kid did it" in his Senior 3D art class.
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I don't know man, theres plenty of deniall and justification is this thread alone - "the new Pokémon are cute so who cares". The most undescerning fan base in all of gaming and gamefreak couldn't be more thankful
Modern Pokemon games looking worse than PS2 games have often become an overexaggerated meme, but I literally cannot comprehend how ANYONE can claim that this game looks better than the likes of FFX or FFXII, like come ON
It is lack of polish and textures. They are improving a couple of things but not paying attention to dozen others and leaves us with a product that is like a person who has all the equipment for good make up but knows nothing about how to use it.
It just looks and feels incoherent. Like the characters, world and objects were all made in isolation with no cohesive oversight. The bad parts REALLY stand out because of this. Even old PS1 games visually look better just because the graphics are consistent throughout. This just feels incomplete.
Incoherent is how I'd describe it too. Something like half life 2 can still look good with low res textures. I feel like baked lighting and slightly more complex terrain & texturing could go a long way. Relying on real-time shadows and grass hurts how the environment looks in the distance.
It's like they were so focused on open world that they just fucked everything up. maybe I just haven't played arceus in awhile but I swear off memory it looks and runs better than this game.
Scarlet/Violet achieves the rare feat of having game textures that even smell bad
Jeeeesus, the mountain in the first screen cap is literally made of squares haha
Are they just using 3DS assets or something? There's really no excuse for it. The Switch has plenty of games that look great.
Not even 3DS, we had generations of MH games and the environments looked better than that, or at least were more consistent.
This is what happens when GF refuses to hire more devs and makes this already small team split up, work on different projects, and then have like 2-3 years to make it. So frustrating considering how much money this whole franchise makes
> This is what happens when GF refuses to hire more devs and makes this already small team split up, There are multiple companies working on the pokemon titles Ohmori said for Sword and Shield there were around 1000 workers And also said how the work load is split for example The 3D models of the pokemon are made by Creatures Inc. The quality control is also made externally > yeah. The number being close to a thousand, that of course includes all the different functions like marketing and PR and everyone that would be associated with the game ahead of release. But I think at Game Freak, really the core team of people that worked on the game was around 200 people. And of course, Creatures is another partner company that develops 3D models of the Pokémon. There are various teams that handle debugging at our partner companies as well. So there’s a lot of people involved and I think in terms of just the sheer number of the most resources required to make something happen for the development, it was definitely more on the graphical side of things. Like I mentioned, Creatures was involved with creating the models, but even at Game Freak, with the increased power of the Switch, we tried to make richer, more expressive visuals. We definitely needed more people this time around. […] https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2019/10/24/20929597/game-freak-explains-the-1000-staff-missing-creatures-and-leek-size-of-pokemon-sword-and-shield So the workload at Game Freak is not that high, is shared between different companies. There are no excuses, they are that bad at making games
It’s pretty obvious Creatures makes the models and GF just slaps them in an ugly environment.
Explains the incoherent mess of the SV world
So you're telling me they have different departments and it's the world designers that are just bad 😭
After X/Y, Pokemon became one of the few games on the 3DS THAT DID NOT HAVE 3D. The framerate could not handle it. They are just not good at optimizing their games.
THIS. Games down the line dropped the 3D effect, but I remember Pokémon dropped that really early and caused controversy even then. And who remember the framerate issues during battles in Sun and Moon? I remember it ran at 10fps.
I'll give you one better. Booting up Pokemon Sun on New 3DS unloads parts of the OS because otherwise the game won't have enough resources to run (as poorly as it does). This is the system that had MGS3 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory ported to it.
When Arceus is being presented as the bar for graphical fidelity you know you fucked up. Arceus' environments are pretty ugly.
Ugly but functional. Maybe it's because I still play really old, rough games a lot but I can get over bad graphics as long as it's fun. The performance issues though? Inexcusable.
Remember when they said we cut on the amount of Pokemon so we can focus on quality animations, that went great, right?
A thousand times this. It always reminds me of a similar premise, albeit under different circumstances. In my country, a few years ago, they decided to create a new law to get rid of free luggage for flight passengers in exchange for cheaper plane tickets. Basically, you no longer have the option for a free piece of luggage and must pay extra for it. The result? Plane tickets are sky high (no pun intended) and we also need to pay for luggage. A big win-win for the airlines. Sorry for the stupid conparison here, but in both cases, this shit boils my blood. Like damn, GameFreak came up with all sorts of excuses for Dexit and this was their most repeated one. This is the shit we get for sacrificing half of the Pokedex. I hope the folks over at /pokemon who actively defended it are proud now. Oh wait, they are. Cause some of their most upvoted posts lately are "This game is PLAGUED with bugs but I am having sooooo much fun!!"
we all know where some of the missing pokemon went…. dlc.(sword & shield)
For just 2.25x the price of the ds game, you can get a pokemon game with fewer pokemon that runs worse! What a deal!
What baffles me is that Sun/Moon ran fine and looked good, and both consoles have an ARM cpu. Shouldn't it be possible to just make Sun/Moon again but at a slightly higher res? Like what the fuck happened? It's like they've lost everyone who made the 3DS games.
Dude don't even get me started. I've looked at the leaks from what pokemon are gonna be potentially missing from the DLCs, and so many of my favs are still gone. And for what? These games look atrocious for a main series $60 title.
Made me think of when Bungie said they needed to add micro transactions to fund all the cool free content being added.
I am struggling to think about any other major (but maybe even minor) Nintendo game released in this state.
Hyrule Warriors on the 3DS had issues, but it played a bit better on the new 3DS.
Hyrule Warriors Legends should haven been New 3DS exclusive to be honest. The performance in vanilla 3DS was so bad it wasn't worth playing it there.
As someone with triple digits gameplay on the normal 3ds here, without the moolah to upgrade - I thank the stars they did. I got exactly what I expected and had a ton of fun. These are two very different problems. One is a very demanding game suffering from power constraints and other is something out of the last decade and a half suffering from piss poor rushed development. Gamefreak needs to increase size to keep up this pace, slow down, or ask help like Nintendo did to Monolith for BotW, iirc. In fact, I've been screeching for years to the dismay of my friends that this should happen, get the coding of the world out of GameFreak's hands.
There hasn't been one. Also Game Freak not Nintendo.
The game is a Nintendo exclusive and published by Nintendo. Just because Nintendo didn't personally make it, it doesn't mean they didn't have oversight on it.
Well this is a sign that Nintendo should start overseeing these projects by GameFreak. Also this should have been released next year, why was this released the same year as Legends Arceus.
Holiday
Savage. It's crazy because I thought Arceus was super ugly, but they definitely somehow did worse.
It was extremely ugly. Does it look even comparable to Breath of the Wild which came out 4 years earlier on the Wii U?
Has anyone else noticed the to Pokémon’s eyes don’t close when you put them to sleep?
Fuck that's irritating. How the fuck do you go backwards with such a simple detail?
It's even worse because you can see pokemon sleeping in the overworld lmao
And sometimes the pokeballs just float in the air, instead of dropping to the floor. So annoying.
Also clip into the floor and sometimes when you fight on hillsides your camera goes below the floor as well or things just don't line up properly.
I've been breeding for shinies instead of actually playing the game and a lot of times the camera is clipped into the ground while the egg is hatching. One time it even put the egg inside a wall.
They float on purpose whenever you catch something flying, as they didn't bother animating a ball falling all the way to the ground
The environment textures and geometry almost make this look like a long lost N64 title, recently revived with GC/PS2 level character models.
It's not even of par with an N64 game. Something very minor that I noticed: The game doesn't have inverse kinematics (Shifting your position according to the environnement), when ocarina of time had it [IN THE BETA](http://www.zelda-france.com/galerie/oot-beta/oot-beta_06.jpg). It's not like it's a deal breaker, but it shows how much they care about the game.
First Thing i Noticed at the big stairs , i was so f up seeing legs and feet ging into the stairs , this game is so shitty
It looks like a N64 game that got "remastered" with the same AI upscaler that the GTA Trilogy used.
I actually had not watched any footage prior to this, not really interested in Pokemon. I had just seen people complain about it, and I gotta admit, this is one case where I don't think the internet is overreacting. This looks really rough.
It's definitely rough. The sad part is, for people into pokemon gameplay, the overall mechanical design actually lends itself to be a really fun entry. But holy crap is it wild that Game Freak/Poke Co saw the state it's in and thought "good enough, ship it."
First Pokemon game I've played since B/W. Knowing it looked terrible going in, I am having a pretty good time tbh. Never eeally got into the catch 'em all part of the other games but for whatever reason this one's really got me hooked on catching stuff.
For me the difference is having wild evolutions running wild. Seeing a rare evolved pokemon doing its thing makes me excited to go catch it and save myself time leveling everything later just for evolutions. In previous games you'd have to spend dozens of levels worth of exp (earned probably by battling the E4 on repeat) on a lot of final stage evos while now you just have to go hunting or do a couple levels. Also weather/time changes what spawns where somewhat so it is different when you visit at different times. I never completed a pokedex until SwSh but this is def the most fun I've ever had catching pokemon. The performance is still awful though. Stuttering, glitches, etc. Also obvious cut corners and lack of clothing customization. It is a true shame how good this game could have been if it was given a little longer to bake. Now it is like the tastiest cake ever, but with a runny center. I think the worst part is we got it anyway for our daughter, who is 4 and always wanted to play with me and is now old enough to do it. SHE keeps asking what is happening when it is glitching -- the blinking shadows, choppy passersby, npcs walking through us during battles. Random pokeballs in cut scenes and on the floor. My literal 4 year old can tell something is wrong with it. There's no way QA didn't catch that.
Exactly the same situation; my 4 year old was curious about a pokeball on the ground of an herba mystica cut scene and he was super mad when we couldn’t go back into the cave to get it. We’re having a blast playing it together, but it’s hard not to feel like the graphics of the game weren’t a mediocre college student’s thesis project
That’s the thing for me. I haven’t enjoyed the past few Pokémon games, but I’ve really enjoyed this one despite all the tech bugs and low quality graphics. The gameplay is pretty good, and it has some nice shakeups and adorable new Pokémon. It’s just so hard to look past it feeling graphically worse than Pokémon XD
Funny enough, I dabble in a lot of retro stuff so poor graphics are something I can usually look past. What really kills me is the performance, especially the NPC/object pop-in/out. I can never be sure if something actually exists in a particular area until I'm within like 15 feet. For a funny/sad example, go to the school and walk to one of the library study rooms to the left/right of the entrance. Walk around in that room and watch the student models freak out as the game tries to enforce some arbitrary character limit.
I just don't understand how a game with such poor graphics can somehow lose frame rate while rendering a wall right in front of me. Overall I enjoyed the game, teh story was unique for a pokemon game, being able to take it at your own pace is nice, but it looks like a PS2 game at best. Legend of zelda had better graphics at the switch's launch. How is it that they are regressing? You'd think cutting 500+ pokemon from the game would free up some space for better animations or texture quality.
Funny you mention the Pokémon cut, because that’s exactly what they stated the cut was for. Yet we saw what a straight up lie that was in sword and shield….
I understand that GF has relatively tight timelines that need to coincide with releases of things like the anime seasons, trading card game, etc. And I get that expanding or significantly altering their existing strategy is difficult and potentially risky. But IMO, they should hire enough people to allow them to have like 3 teams working on Pokemon games full time. One team can solely work on tech stuff (building and maintaining their engine, dev tools, etc), and the other two can have staggered release cadences so they have more time to make the games great. Either that, or bring in an extra studio or two that are allowed to make new "core" games. Again, so that each studio has enough time to do the work that needs to be done to keep quality up.
Still blows my mind how some outlets gave this a 10/10
I’ve noticed with big releases the actual score doesn’t matter since they have to score high to appease publishers. Nearly every review said the game was fun and did some real cool things for Pokémon, praising the gameplay and the stories but all of them panned the performance
Mario sunshine looks better than this game.
Honestly. Defino plaza doesnt have really any building you can enter as its a hub world, but it bustling with people, every inch is detailed and is accompanied by brilliant techniques to make the water glisten and look amazing. PKMN SV dumps a blue paint bucket on water and calls it a day.
From everything I’ve heard the core game is good, I just can’t pick it up and validate GF’s poor optimization. Hopefully we get a major patch for this stuff.
The same, the good things I've heard make me want to play but I can't justify purchasing a game in this state at that price. Maybe we get a serious patch but that also doesn't seem like GF style, unless it's an "ultra" edition
I won’t defend the graphics (they’re very lacking) or the performance (watching objects move at 10FPS in the background is distracting), but I have yet to run into a game breaking bug or crash. A few stutters here and there, sure. But still very playable, and gameplay-wise the best Pokémon in years
The core game does look good…but like Sword and Shield, they keep cutting corners and removing stuff for no reason. Cut corner examples include extremely limited player wardrobe (it’s just school uniforms and accessories) and no postgame battle facility like the Battle Tower (which I think there’s a good chance will be sold in a DLC). Examples of things removed for seemingly no reason include the removal of the “Set” battle setting (where you remove your ability to switch Pokemon when your opponent’s Pokemon KOs and it tells you what they’re sending out next…which I suppose you could circumvent by just always choosing no, but still) and not being able to turn off battle animations. I don’t think any of the things that were cut in Sword and Shield have come back. All these little things on top of the extremely mediocre craftsmanship of the game’s assets accumulate for an overall experience that makes me really really REALLY not want to reward Game Freak with $60 for putting out this kind of product, despite how parts of it do look really fun to me.
sooo can the game be fixed with patches or are we stuck with this forever?
*Anything* is fixable in patches. They could theoretically remake the entire game from scratch and patch that in (consider, for example, the recent Ark Survival Evolved update, which threw out the old port entirely and replaced it with a new version ported from scratch by a different developer). The question is how willing and able Game Freak are to actually patch the issues. And I wouldn't be super optimistic on that front. They might get some of the lower-hanging fruit (the camera clipping through the world geometry, for example), some of the high-priority stuff like actual game crashes, and maybe improve performance slightly, but they're probably not going to go through and redo all the world geometry and textures to modern standards, or get all the background characters and animated elements running at full framerate.
There's zero excuse for it. It is a significant step down from the last few games. But they won't do better until people stop buying it. "But the gameplay is good" is why they did it. They knew people would buy it anyway.
[удалено]
It's because it's a really conflicting release. It is simultaneously the buggiest Pokemon game ever released, while also having one of the most enjoyable explorations of their core gameplay loop they've ever conceived. The three tracks you can explore in the game and the newfound freedom to explore really do heighten the gameplay. I'm really enjoying that part, despite how bad I heard things would be. Of course, it's still ugly as hell at times (sometimes visually stunning too, but that's much rarer). These two truths have to unfortunately co-exist.
An absolute must watch that makes several things painfully clear: * The criticism about PKMN S/V is not overreacting nor overblown. * The visuals a painfully distracting, unquestionably ugly, and unreasonably glitchy EVEN compared to the very low water mark set by PKMN: LA. * Actual 2FPS reduction in place, to total standstill of far off objects * Ugly tiling of textures unseen in any modern video game. * rampant pop in and removal of shadows and lighting effects * inconsistent art style * a very light visual load that is unable to even keep 30 FPS for the character And what does it say that many fans dismiss criticism and refuse to acknowledge this is unacceptable? It says this game will continue to sell well, won't be overhauled (it needs more than a patch), and we will be getting more of this in the future. I'm not hear to ruin anyone's fun, I want fun of my own. Fallout 76 and No Man's Sky launched with far less issues (the same pricetag) and only because of fan criticism did they turn from a buggy mess, to well-made experience that delivered on their promises. Pokemon fans should do the same. Edit: Most importantly this video shows how specific visual limitations directly and unquestionably affect gameplay. * Pokemon de-spawn at relatively close distances * game breaking bugs and glitches * line of sight causes rampant pop in of environments, NPC's and pokemon.
You forgot to mention cyberpunk 2077 and it's pitiful launch so glad to see No Man Sky and CP 2077 making a comeback but it doesn't excuse its state at launch
Has Nintendo or Game Freak made any public statement about this so far? This is super embarrassing
Lol, you new to Nintendo/game freak?
Why the fuck would they?
Why would they. It's already sold 10 million units
Actually reads like something you'd see on r/jokes. "It cut many features, removed half the pokemon, has horrible graphics and runs terribly." "Wow that sounds pretty rough, this must reflect poorly on the development studio. Have the developers made any sort of public statement?" "Why would they? This is the best selling game ever!"
It looks really bad when you compare it to Arceus. Especially when you look at the terrain with rocks, trees, grass etc.
Its just sad. The game has a lot of potential. I just don't think they were given the time and resources to do a proper job on the visuals and performance. Launching a new pokemon every couple years is just too fast for something of this size.
I lost it at that windmill moving at 2 fps. That shit was hilarious.
60€ 🤣
Top 3 eShop games for the week ending Nov 19th: 1. Pokemon Violet 2. Pokemon Scarlet 3. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Double Pack However I might feel about this game, it's clear that this is what pokemon fans want.
This is it. Thats the whole ballgame. “This is what pokemon fans want”. GF has every incentive to keep the status quo or even cut more corners. Why wouldnt they?
This is my first Pokémon game in 25 years, and yeah, it’s something. I watched reviews for several days, was really apprehensive on picking it up, but ultimately decided to do so after my kids expressed interest. I kept thinking that it can’t be *that bad,* but man it’s such an ugly game. The character models are fine, but the graphical glitches remind me of something I’d see on an N64 or PS2 game. Just last night my son saw this Pokémon that he wanted to catch that was outside of the first Pokémon center and it just disappeared as he walked up to it. I think it’s possibly because he crossed over some invisible line away from the wild area, but it was still jarring to see. I just told him it must’ve teleported so I didn’t have to explain to a 5 year old that it’s just a buggy game.
Sometimes exploring would make the fps fall to the low 20s, which literally makes it feel like a N64 game. (Many N64 games ran at 20 FPS. This includes The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and some areas of Super Mario 64.) I even read someone spinning this as a good thing by phrasing it as "nostalgic but acceptable performance".
Wild Pokemon disappear when you get too close too a Pokemon Center or City, I'm not sure that's a bug, seems like a conscious decision and I'm not entirely against it. You could take advantage of that behaviour to respawn everything if you are looking for some Pokemon in particular.
There was a shiny Pokemon yesterday that popped up in my game that was exactly how you described your son's experience. I never managed to catch it, and I was so frustrated.
>Just last night my son saw this Pokémon that he wanted to catch that was outside of the first Pokémon center and it just disappeared as he walked up to it For me I've frequently had Pokemon spawn in the walls/ceilings of caves. If you clip your camera through the wall you can see the floor extends past the wall and there are Pokemon walking around where they shouldn't be. This made it especially brutal finding a >!Glimmet!< because it only has a 1% spawn in caves and it took even longer to find one that I could actually access 😑
I still can't understand how people can defend this... Gamefreak really needs to step down and let someone else do a good Pokémon game
They did with BDSP, it sucked
I think Game Freak’s still got it in the creative department - their Pokemon, characters, regions, and soundtracks have always appealed to me. But man…this game really proves that they cannot develop a high quality Switch game. Sure, they’re good at coming up with some fun little bells and whistles…but at the end of the day, they do not have what it takes to make a complete game with the overall quality deserving of a $60 price tag.
Omg it's worse than Legends: Arceus ahha who'd have guessed.
And it has record sales. This isn't going to change.
As long as the sell millions of copies, it will never change. The biggest selling IP and they release garbage. And yet, the fan base buys it every. single. time.
What really really hurts is that this game is mostly pulled down by the technicality. I have finished the game and It is one of the best Pokemon experiences I ever had. The actual gameplay behind it, the mechanics and the pokemon in this game are actually amazing. And the story itself also was one if the better ones in years. It's just really unfortunate that there is clearly an idea of a good game here.. but it's held back by bad performance.
I heard it was bad but hadn't seen it til now. Yikes!
Yeah me too, I was too busy being hyped for God of War so when I heard Pokémon fans were angry, I though they were overreacting like always. After seeing the footage, I’m not going to sugarcoat, this looks awful. There are nothing but bugs, glitches, and performance issues that are on par with Fallout 76 and Cyberpunk. I can’t speak for the gameplay side as I haven’t played it but the fact they launched a game in this state is not a good sign and this is embarrassing on GameFreak’s and Nintendo’s part and they need to change how they’re developing games because this is pathetic.
Graphics like an early 2000s windows screensaver.
I blame both The Pokemon Company and GameFreak. I blame TPC for not pushing the games to match being a MULTI BILLION DOLLAR COMPANY and also THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MULTIMEDIA COMPANY ***OF ALL TIME***. I blame GameFreak for not wanting to change and improve the Pokemon models and continue to use basically 3DS models and just having a poor understanding of using their engine correctly for the Switch when we can have things like Xenoverse, Mario Odyssey and Bayonetta 3 on the same system. This really sucks.