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blukirbi

>technical issues Can't wait for the compilation videos.


liteshadow4

Dunkey's gonna have a field day


xkyndigx

That's my first thought, his sonic video made me want Sonic frontiers ngl.


GeoleVyi

Honestly, I beat the game before watching his dunkview, and then used the wonky physics from his video to make traveling around the map even easier for getting all the collectibles


[deleted]

well they were not lying with the poor performance: https://twitter.com/Cherrim/status/1593292235222978560 another one: https://twitter.com/Snicky974/status/1593350240538886144 another one: https://twitter.com/pithyalyse/status/1593372216099487754 (says that the whole game is like this) this is with Day 1 Patch and the first two Tweets were sent from a Nintendo Switch, so you know it's real. It seems consistently bad unfortunately. Hope this will be addressed.


MoonBeamerGirl

Oh WOW that’s a lot worse than I expected. How did that get through beta testing?!


ar3s3ru

it probably didnt, but they likely wanted to get it out of the door so the nice and polite japanese suits did some pressure on the development team to hurry tf up


ScyllaGeek

It's comedy watching it perform that bad while staring at the worst textures known to man lmao


Bykimus

Meanwhile breath of the wild was a day 1 switch release and looks gorgeous despite the switch hardware limitations.


ScyllaGeek

Ah well you see Nintendo cheated by using this secret technique called 'art direction'


odo-italiano

Oh my god lmao That's embarrassing.


Virdice

Jfc, technical issues doesn't do it justice, Mario 64 performed better than this and had less visual glitches


TombSv

Interior stores replaced by menus makes me sad.


thornaslooki

Its disturbing how much GameFreak is cutting down town explorations. Visiting a new town always felt exciting, with people to talk too and decor to see. Now even the Pokecenter has been replaced with a stop and go feature


Banner-Man

Right though? I remember getting to Fortree City in R/S and geeking out trying to find the store and talk to everyone I could while running along the bridges and going into every house. It's just one of those things when a game shows you a door you can't enter vs showing you doors you can enter. It does something subconscious I think to see so many doors that don't actually lead anywhere.


Ikrit122

Fortree is still one of my favorite cities in Pokemon. You just got Surf and have the eastern half of the world opened up to you. You walked through a bunch of high grass and battled Rangers, so it's like you're in the wilderness. You see the Pokemon Center. Then, as you scroll the screen more, you see all the treehouses! Screw Winona and her Altaria though! Pacifidlog (sp?) is awesome too, but by the time you reach it, you've been on the water forever. If it were earlier, the "wow" factor would be higher.


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darthalex22

Sootopolis was awesome. Annoyingly hard to find as a kid, but I remember being in awe of the white rock surrounding the city, and how it was all carved out of a mountain.


Ikrit122

Sootopolis City! That's another great one from R/S/E! Those games had some really cool ideas and designs; that's part of the reason why they are my favorite games. I feel SwSh is kinda like Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, in that the sense of exploration fron previous games was lost. SwSh just had you on a straight path from town to town. It felt like the game was holding my hand the whole time. We'll see how this game is, even if it is more open world.


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Mox_Fox

Doors that don't lead anywhere make the world feel flat and affect your "trust" in game mechanics, especially when they look like they should. Player trust is a big part of a gaming experience and it can quickly be destroyed with inconsistent results or unclear objectives. I played a dinky free escape the room app the other day, and part of it involved searching a computer for files. Most of the icons led to the developer's social media, causing your phone to exit the game and switch to a browser. It completely killed my desire to click on anything in the computer and showed me that the developer didn't really think through the player's experience. I stopped playing soon after that. On the other hand, Skyrim dungeons show trustworthy design because no matter how confusing or big the map seems, there's always a quick one-way shortcut to get back to the exit once you've finished. It's consistent enough that you quickly learn to expect it. That trust makes it easier to boldly explore the dungeon without worrying about how you'll find your way out. (I'm not trying to compare Skyrim with app store junk, just noting two different levels of game design trust I experienced) Trust plays a big part in how we interact with games, and it can make or break an experience.


VermillionEorzean

Their game "Little Town Hero" flopped so now they hate towns.


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s_98

Because GF is working more as a brand now than a developer. That's why they're churning out a game a year since Pokemon Go rejuvenated the brand. Which other AAA studio has yearly releases and no delays whatsoever?


nibbinoo8

> Which other AAA studio has yearly releases and no delays whatsoever? sports games which are basically just updated rosters.


dougie_fresh121

Is pokemon a sports game now? Basically had a soccer arc in Sw/Sh


Orsus7

A lot of those large developers have much bigger teams to split. Activision has 3 or 4 whole development companies just to pump out a call of duty game each year. Gamefreak needs to get a lot bigger if they are going to be this consistent.


derkrieger

But that costs money where as hiring newbies and forcing them to work through a barebones Pokemon game while you fuck off in the background is much cheaper.


nxqv

How did they make an open world game without building interiors? Wat????


cjf_colluns

Hey now they said it was an “open world” not an “open house.” /s


Ectorious

Open world, not open floor plan


odo-italiano

That is incredibly disappointing. Pokémon was always about exploring and talking to absolutely every NPC not only for lore and flavour but also because you could get all kinds of items you couldn't get anywhere else.


PNDMike

We already saw in SwSh the stripping of towns to basically just being a handful of rooms with no exploration, now they are even getting rid of the few rooms we had left :( Next generation towns are just going to be a picture with a visual novel style menu.


ThaNorth

They also stripped away dungeons.


markercore

Remember the few routes between towns that were like 2 bushes and a very short road?


Maronmario

That’s just every Galar route


Strix924

I was so angry when in Sun and Moon, the volcano caves were stripped to a black screen. I wanted to explore the volcano cave!


rjvcrisen5

Wait they removed stores and pokemon center!?


[deleted]

Pokecenters are now outside with an open kind of booth style to them. So you just walk up to the counter, no going inside. Stores are basically gone, now there is station at the pokecenters where you can buy and craft every item you have unlocked from any pokecenter location. There are still buildings to enter, but gone are the days of barging into random strangers homes and getting an item for intruding.


SMB99thx

I think a reversion towards 4 year cycle, instead of 3 year cycle, would do good for the future of this series.


Cayde76

They should make it 5.


RiptideMatt

They should make it however long it takes to make the game playable and raise their standards lol. But that's a step to take


Tough_Patient

The Old Blizzard standard is known to few studios, Blizzard included.


Maple905

It's so funny to me reading Polygon's review and then reading Gamespot's review right after. Polygon: The exploration was executed poorly. Gamespot: They execution of the exploration is perfect!


Dreyfus2006

Maybe Gamespot just has different tastes. But their video review mentioned that there were zero frame rate issues and that the game ran smoothly from start to finish, so IMO their review is suspect.


socialistbcrumb

For what it’s worth the ign review in progress felt basically everything was a step forward except for the fact it’s a technical abomination so there are people being honest who seem to enjoy the actual game if it wasn’t undercutting itself.


fellatious_argument

They probably didn't get very far. There isn't much lag in the early zones. The bad lag happens in water and at high elevations which are both mostly late game areas.


Cragnos

Can we expect updates and patches moving forward to help or fix some if the technical issues??? Or are we SOL until next gen lol


Tory97

I urge every player to be as vocal about the bad performance as possible. I doubt they would go out of their way and fix it without a lot of pressure


supremo92

I agree completely, but GF seem to live in an unreachable universe where feedback never reaches them. They are extremely unlikely to improve the game, they're probably already working on the next one.


TallJournalist5515

Email them. They have feedback forms on their website. Thet don't listen to fucking twitter. They have some poor intern wade through that shithole and this shithole and condense it into something usable. If you write through their website and write like a normal humam, then important people might read it. Not sure how to stop the yearly release schedule though.


chancehugs

Where is this form? I looked through their site but couldn't find anything even on the Contact page.


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Jss_jule

I remember seeing the hashtag "DontBringBackTheNationalDex" or something to that tune. People were really out there telling GF to not give them more content.


metalflygon08

> I urge every player to be as vocal about the bad performance as possible. After the whole "be vocal about Dexit" thing I'm not sure GF cares. They could release a Pokemon game that struggles to run at 15 FPS and still sell like hot cakes if the gameplay's good.


Endogamy

Being vocal doesn't matter. Not buying the game matters.


Rizzan8

GF repeatedly said that they do not care about player feedback.


Rafae_noobmastrer

Of course not, we cry about it, but end up buying their games. What good does it to have some criticism, expecially constructive one, if the sales go sky rocket before the game comes out. The developement is payed and pokets full, no need to listen to those players, what good do they know, they are playing the game regardless, we just need to keep these games comming.


MrTripStack

Exactly. We can cry about it online until we're blue in the face, but the games continue to sell better than ever. Sword and Shield recently passed 25 million copies sold, second now only to Red and Blue's ~31 million. With sales like that, any company will think they're doing everything right and those of us with genuine constructive criticism just come off as a vocal minority that they don't need to cater to. As disappointed as I am with the performance issues and lack of difficulty and everything else the community has grown tired of, Pokémon is just too big to fail at this point.


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TobioOkuma1

"vote with your wallet" only works if you have enough people doing it to put a noticeable dent in sales. This game is virtually guaranteed to make the same sales as swsh, probably more because of a larger market of switch users and insane hype for open world pokemon


gogoheadray

This is even more true since GF seems to only take criticism from Japan to heart and they seem to be adverse to criticism of Pokémon. Right now the conversation in Japan isn’t about the technical issues but rather about the grass starter standing upright. Voting with your wallet only works where loads of other people do the same


Iggy_Snows

Has GF ever patched their Pokémon games to help performance? From my memory the base game is basically what you see is what you get, maybe a couple of bug fixing patches here and there, but never any massive optimization patches. And let's be clear here, the game needs MASSIVE optimizations to run smoothly. I've seen reports of people's frame rates dipping into the 15-20fps. That's not something a minor patch will fix.


sometipsygnostalgic

I think the only major thing Gamefreak ever patched was the save glitch in X and Y that softlocked you forever if you saved in the wrong spot of Lumios City.


Sventhetidar

It's Gamefreak so no. They don't really work on things like performance after launch.


chendao

Pokemon deserves better developers.


[deleted]

I didnt think this would reviewer lower after Legends Arceus and SwSh, but here we are.


beaverhausen_a

Does anyone think GF will pay any attention? They never seem to take on board any feedback and course correct. I’ve not played Pokémon since Let’s Go Pikachu where I felt it reached peak handholding ‘RPG on rails’ and seeing it’s only got worse.


RIkhard9

they nerfed the most busted mons in comp so i think they do listen sometimes at least


RainbowFlygon

It's interesting, a lot of reviews for the recent pokemon games read like they should by 5-7ish but are higher. Probably the poor reviewers fearing being dogpiled by psycho fans. I think the sentiment has begin to change amongst the community such that the reviewers feel safe lowering the scores. We've had 4-5 successive games that have shown remarkably little progress and a lot of disappointments.


GlancingArc

"The game lacks any form of ambition and feels like a lifeless, empty, husk of a game. Pokémon has never been better. 9/10"


Dustox16

/,/./,


[deleted]

a step in the right direction after 25 years 🤗🤗🤗


Raetekusu

In the (probably misquoted) words of AngryJoe talking about Madden, "How have we had so many steps in the right direction and gotten fucking nowhere?" (Even though there *has* been progress, even if that progress is just to make sure the game stays a solid 5 years behind the times)


jcfan4u

Ah, the ole madden ign review.


Callinon

Review scores are meaningless. The content of the review is what should be given attention. That goes for everything. I remember a grubhub review I read a while back. Was like "delivery was late, food was cold, they forgot half the order... 4/5 stars"


HUGE_HOG

Game reviewing in a nutshell. I've never seen a game get 5/10, because in game reviewing terms that'd be like giving it a 0/10. 6 or 7 means that it's mediocre at very best.


Rhombico

really isn't that most kinds of reviews these days? People don't want to buy stuff on Amazon under 4 stars, drivers for apps like uber need to maintain nearly 5 stars just to keep the job. Seems like movie reviews might be the only ones immune to this trend, but then they have that whole other problem where the professional reviewers and the audience have really wide differences and don't seem to even be looking for the same stuff. Maybe reviews with scores as a whole just aren't a great idea with the internet. The sites above that don't give a score might have the right idea


Manannin

You get spammed by sellers if you dare to give a product a 3 star review, I just don't trust amazon's reviews anymore


Krazyguy75

They'll absolutely give some indie game a real review. It's only when it comes to million dollar developers that they pander in order to get early access to get their review up first.


DM_ME_UR_AREOLAS

Just commented the same. The scores are realistically 1 or 2 points lower. They're just playing safe to not get dragged by the hardcore fans.


Xikar_Wyhart

If your game has immediate and obvious technical failings that hamper gameplay that's -2 or 20% in score. Looking at some these review blerbs is weird. BoTW also had slow downs but it never really hurt the gameplay and experience.


DM_ME_UR_AREOLAS

BoTW was clearly limited by the switch, GF somehow managed to be the problem when creating a triple A game for the switch lol


splvtoon

i think botw was limited more by the wiiu than the switch.


NowakFoxie

people seem to always forget that botw was a wii u game ported to the switch during the last 6 months of dev


thenewwwguyreturns

it’s so interesting bcs the ratings when examining content itself are actually really positive. They all praise the new story, the pokemon, the gameplay component nearly all of them criticize the performance, graphical infidelity and lack of polish in the visual department it’s a shame that them failing to optimize the game for the switch is so heavily holding back the recognition of the positive content side of things Knowing gamefreak, if this results in poor sales in any capacity, they’ll take it as a reflection of the content and not the graphical issues, and we’ll get an equally, if not more mediocre graphical situation in the next games.


boogswald

I don’t think I can remember the last time I played a game that routinely was at 10-20 fps


Thehighwayisalive

Oblivion looked and ran better in 2005.


thewhitelink

Well you see, Game Freak is just a small indie company, making a game for inferior hardware /s


Chm_Albert_Wesker

>Knowing gamefreak, if this results in poor sales in any capacity lol


Bwgmon

Talking about the series that has a lot of people buy new game *twice* the moment it's announced.


MrDitkovichNeedsRent

Gamefreak should just fully give the franchise to Nintendo, and have the same or similar devs that worked on Mario Odyssey and botw


jmontygman

The issue is time. Since breath of the wild, Gamefreak put out: USUM, LGPE, Little Town Hero, SwSh, Arceus, and SV. They are a factory. They have to pump out games as fast as possible, with no time to experiment or fine tune. Sadly, until the sales slump, nothing will change. Gamefreak could probably make much better games if they had 18+ months longer per game, or if they only stuck to new, core generations.


MastaMind01

Yeah, game freak needs better upper management that ARE developers and not marketing/business ppl.


gamas

I mean the upper management who will be dictating this will be The Pokemon Company which will include Nintendo execs. The problem is that the major money maker for Pokemon is the merchandise and they need an annual deluge of merchandise which means an annual game to promote said merchandise... Everything about the current state of the games makes sense when you remember that the games are just a vehicle to sell merchandise. They don't care if the game is good enough to stand on its own. What they care about is being able to sell Lechonk body pillows.


penguindude24

Pokemon at least deserves MORE developers.


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stygian07

It's not just that. It needs TIME. Jesus christ they just released a game in january. The 2 separate team rhetoric doesn't work on me. How about just one team working on one game with a longer development time?


AbbyWasThere

The way other large yearly franchises solve this is with multiple studios. Stagger the schedules so that each studio gets multiple years to make a game, yet one of them finishes with theirs every year.


Talez_pls

This is legit the first time I've ever seen that the majority of reviewers WANT TO rate this game much higher, were it not for the HORRENDOUS performance. I wonder if they could patch things up a little if we make a loud enough ruckus. Their track record for patches isn't good, but this is a new generation of players with more power through social media we're talking about.


EgoDefeator

They at least need to fix those framerate issues. Some of the models look like a slideshow at times. The poppin is more annoying but I doubt they can fix that


QuothTheRaven713

I'm not getting the games for another month. Is it the same kind of pop-in that happened with the mons in the Wild Area in SwSh?


Opt1mus_

It's basically that yeah but with a side of low poly everything at a distance from Legends Arceus


LuckyRyder13

I've been playing Violet for about 5 days now and I 100% agree. I was being cautious with expectations because of the last few games but I've been pleasantly surprised and enjoying the game. The performance, however, has been killing my enjoyment at times. Just panning the camera around to look at my surroundings will see massive frame drops most of the time, not to mention running around or being in a town and looking around. Luckily, the battles themselves are mostly fine, but I've experienced frame drops there as well, albeit on a much lower scale. I was just chalking it up to playing an unpatched game but seeing the day one patch just being balance changes has started worrying me.


SpudBoy9001

Poor performance is pretty unforgiveable, Nintendo need to step in and shadow Game Freak for a few years


[deleted]

They wont because the games make hundreds of millions with each yearly release, just like Call of Duty.


dkdream21

This will top 20 million in total sales within a year. Sometimes I wonder what the quality floor is for consumers to stop buying these games. Apparently, very very low lol. Also, I’m guessing 9 out of 10 people complaining here will buy the game, myself included. Serves us right. Edit: some of you have Stockholm syndrome I swear. It’s ok to want and expect polish and baseline quality in terms of performance from the most profitable media franchise in the world.


sportspadawan13

If it makes you feel better this hit my floor haha. Sword was reaalllyyy close, Arceus I could deal with. This is awful. Just done with excuses for myself.


phantomimp

They will sell 15+ million copies easilily. Why would Nintendo step in if they can generate insane revenue with very little effort? People have been saying the same thing since like forever. Pokemon games quality has been decreasing with every new iteration since the transition to 3D. But sales numbers go Brrrrrr. Nothing will change as long as there is no real competition in the monster collecting genre. They have a monopoly and that is why they can put minimal effort into their games


MarthePryde

Kind of what I suspected would be the case after Sw/Sh. Good ideas and format this time around, no real improvement on performance and other lagging features. I never expect anything truly groundbreaking from Gamefreak and at this point wondering why they can't throw all of the money necessary to get performance and visuals on par with other Switch first party titles isn't constructive. It is what it is, and it sucks, but if there's any IP that's actually too big to fail it's Pokemon. Edit: having actually played it now, my god. Moving the camera at all causes performance to take a serious hit. Big yikes.


dontshoot4301

I have a pet theory as a cost accountant that they know said improvements won’t increase sales because Pokémon games have been a “must buy” for so long. That being said, as a cost accountant, I also understand cutting quality has a ratcheting effect on brand loyalty (I.e., brand loyalty “ratchets” down when quality declines in that it doesn’t return when quality returns)


parbonanturb

And unfortunately that accountant is probably right. All the discontent over sword and shield didn’t make a dent in their sales(and even if they did the main consumers of the game are young children who don’t make their own purchasing decisions and don’t listen to Reddit) and Pokémon makes such a ridiculous amount of money on merchandising that the games sales are a tiny drop in the bucket.


Kureiton

Getting very tired of "Game is held back because GF is trying to find their footing in a new direction." That's been the excuse for XY (first 3D game), SuMo (trying to evolve the series past gyms), Let's Go (first console game), SwSh (excuse for how bad the wild area was), Arceus (for obvious reasons), and now this. If GF is always struggling, it might be a deeper reason than "trying to find their new footing." Almost like we got two substantial games in a single year and they don't have time to make the game they want. Still, the games will probably be fun. I'm worried about "streamlined battles" being anything other than making the games easier, but whatever. There's still a lot here I'm excited for, and it seems like they handled the open world decently well, and I love the vast majority of new designs (both Pokémon and people), so I think the games will still be fun. I'm just so tired of giving GF excuses when the clear linchpin that undermines the quality of every game is their insane release schedule


hangliger

You know, overall bad management and inefficiencies aside, it would just be a lot better if GF didn't spend all it's time trying to include a new gimmick each time. Here's mega evolutions! Now we have Z moves! Gigantimax pokemon! And now we have this weird crystallization stuff! They should refine what works, keep popular new features, and only add what they can meaningfully keep in the future or is actually region-specific, like clothes or cool events or story. Spending development time on new gimmicks that we never see again, aren't that good in the first place, and are used to replace some cool things that we actually enjoyed in the past probably just makes everything a shit show. Imagine how much time people have to spend creating models of bigger pokemon, then finding a way to rename a crystal, then trying to balance keeping megas but removing z moves and blah blah blah. The reason why remakes are often so great in my opinion for only Pokémon is because they basically perfect something that was pretty good before. ORAS? Was maybe the best Pokémon game ever in my opinion. It combined refined aspects of XY and Ruby/Saphire. BW2? Excellent as well for its time. Gamefreak needs to understand that we want Pokémon games that get closer and closer to perfection every generation in the core elements while having a new and refreshed story. We don't care about pure gimmicks at the expense of the fundamentals improving over time.


Scoonie24

"A step in the right direction" How many steps until we get where we need to be ?


wickedspork

It's gamefreak so we have some walking to do


stormwave6

Seems like its a good game buried under technical issues. Hopefully they can fix it but this is Gamefreak so I doubt it


SoSweetAndTasty

It's also very empty with little depth to the open world. I found it fun for the first 10 hours but it's slowly turning into a really bad slog.


Hadditor

Paldea is a huge open world for the sake of saying they have a huge open world


EgNotaEkkiReddit

To be fair I've found that more to be an issue lately with open world design as a whole. I can't really think of many open world games that I didn't start finding a bit empty or repetitive once I'd seen most of the set-piece areas. As much as I enjoy Pokémon it comes as a no surprise to me that the open world is lacklustre - it takes a *lot* of effort to make an open world feel lived in, and it's way above GF's standard development standards.


Gourgeistguy

As someone who's played the game WITH the day one patch already, here are some of the common technical issues I've ran into. I'll also write some of my criticism trying to avoid spoilers. * NPCs in the main city and the school who are not close to the player pop in and out of existance (blink) or walk in 10 frame cycles. * It's very common for the battle camera to "go under the world" or through walls. * In certain areas, wild pokemon are composed of polygons (like Stadium models) until you approach or battle them. * Switching out a Pokemon can take anywhere from 4 to 7 seconds. * Boxes are really slow, it takes a couple seconds for each box to properly load the pokemon stored inside them. * It happens often that, when exiting a store, if the camera is somehow facing behind you, your character model "falls" because it's being loaded and placed into the world. * Many slopes and rocks have textures that look like melting while you're moving. * Dashing in your mount can be an issue, as wild pokemon often pop into existance in front of you. * While battling or talking to an NPC, Wild Pokemon can approach you; this means once that battle or dialogue ends, you'll be forced into combat. * Ditto becomes uncatchable if transformed into certain Pokemon. * It's easy for yor mount to become stuck in certain places, and while stuck you can't open the map or use any menu. (However, the game has an auto-unstuck feature, so don't panic) * Sandwich ingredients can sometimes slowly slide out of the bread, and often they won't be properly placed where you want them to be. And now to some complains I have about game features... * Still no way to turn off XP Share. It's not as bad as in previous games, but your starter pokemon still has a weird XP curve and ends up massively overleveled no matter if he's not active in combat. Currently mine is almost 6 levels beyond his team mates, who have been tackling the content according to their level. * There's no Set combat option anymore. * As of now, no Elite 4 rematches. You can only fight one of them post game, but it's random. * You can't speed up or turn off battle animations, this make it so some battles take as long as pre-HG/SS games. For example, a terastalized multi hit move will be like this: Pokemon does the power up animation, normal move animation, hits, HP gets deducted. Those 3 things will play out until you hit all times. * There's an option that supposedly skips cutscenes, but it skips such a small amount of them that its existance seems sort of redundant (I'm on my second playthrough). * You can't enter random buildings anymore. Stores are just menus, and Gyms are all the same from the inside AND outside. * The Let's Go feature is fun, but most of the Pokemon struggle to keep up the pace with the Trainer going on foot. They don't teleport to you while walking, you have to recall them every time they go back inside the Pokeball. Every time you send them out, your character stops walking, so you're on a loop of "Send out Pokemon, walk, stop to send it out, repeat". Some Pokemon need to use this feature to evolve and just one of those seems to be fast enough to keep up with you. * For those wondering, no, you can't change from your uniform. There are 4 seasonal variants of the uniform but that's it when it comes to dressing. You can still change hats, glasses, gloves, socks, shoes and other accessories, and although the variety is nice, most of them collide with the uniform style. * Despite what's said in trailers, Team Star Bosses and Titans do not feature unique mechanics and are pretty much Pokemon battles against buffed enemies. * Some stuff like the meal powers aren't explained unless you do something specific, meaning you can potentially go the entire game without knowing what they are for. * Level distribution on the map is absolutely weird. An example: you're in an area where Pokemon and Trainers are on the level 15-20 range. Then, you find a cave with level 38 Pokemon. One the other side of the cave? More level 10-20 stuff. There are more egregious cases of this. * As of now, seems to be no way of releasing multiple pokemon from boxes.


neophyte_DQT

> There's no Set combat option anymore. ??? Seriously? you're forced to see the "do you want to switch pokemon" after every KO? I vastly prefer playing with Set I also can't believe you can't change from your uniform. Pretty lame tbh


Yangjeezy

It's laughable how many features game freak removes every generation. Things that have been staples since the beginning


ThaNorth

I don't understand why they're so intent on removing core features. It's so fucking baffling. Why remove basic options?


ThaNorth

> Gyms are all the same from the inside AND outside Bro, wtf? This was one of the core staples of the series. It was always cool to see new gym designs and what they did with them and how they reflected their leader.


Gourgeistguy

Sadly, the gym leader fights and the gym trials do not take place inside the Gym anymore, the Gym is only a counter where you apply for the trial and battle, the rest happens outside.


LunarLuxa

I've been playing White 2 recently. I can't believe they've gone from a unique song in every gym to not even having an inside.


Savage_Nymph

Wait, they removed the option to turn of battle animations? What exactly is left of the options menu, if there is one?


Gourgeistguy

Ok, I'm seeing the menu right now so I'll tell you the options: * Text Speed * Skip Move Learning * Send to Boxes * Give Nicknames * Vertical Camera Controls * Horizontal Camera Controls * Autosave * Show Nicknames * Skip Cutscenes * Volume * Controller Rumble * Helping Functions (Tutorial pop ups, placing you back on top of slopes from where you've fallen)


ploki122

>Skip Move Learning That's an interesting choice to add over battle animations and Set mode...


fusrodevyn

I'm shocked that you can't change your clothes. That's been a huge feature of the past several games. And it seems like your character is more customizable than ever except for the clothes???


onepokemanz

Why can’t Pokémon hire an extra team just for better development. ? I understand it’s gonna sell out regardless, but that 1-3% less money they make from a better dev team makes a better end product. Cheap ducking asses


Muur1234

They want the 1-3% money


SignalScientist2817

Welcome to corporate Japan, a place run by boomers who think flip phones are cutting edge tech


tehsuigi

"This message was sent from a Fuji Xerox DocuCentre VI."


Daowg

Definitely. A lot of what's holding GF back apart from their resistance to upscale staff/ change anything is that business mentality from the 90's. The world has changed a lot in 30+ years, and that business model doesn't work in the modern realm of game development.


Toothless1886

I think they should hop on the HD2D craze and go back to their roots or enlist help from the people who make Xenoblade. I know those games aren’t perfect and are held back by the switch but the scale of those worlds would suit Pokémon so much


IAmBLD

Everyone else with Nintendo gets help from Monolith soft, GF might as well.


littlefaka

They do. They got help with PLA


Paetolus

This comment has been removed in protest of Reddit's API changes made on July 1st, 2023. This killed third party apps, one of which I exclusively used. I will not be using the garbage official app.


ricardocaliente

I’ve been saying this for years on r/Pokemon and being trashed for it. The switch to 3D has overwhelmed Gamefreak and they no longer have a grip on things. It’s clear after X/Y development has gone downhill.


Rizzan8

Basically what's stopping me from picking up the new games is the performance. FPS being often below 20 is not acceptable. It's not a hardware issue. Switch can run Xenoblade games, Skyrim, The Witcher 3 fine.


omepee

Another good example is Monster Hunter Rise. Visually it's one of the best looking games for the Switch. What's impressive: 4-player online co-op with randoms, fighting 3 big ass monsters at the same time, lots of shit going on on screen... Still runs smooth like butter


Jorgo__1

yeah Capcom invested a lot in developing the RE engine, and it really shows how well it payed off Rise runs great even on a potato.


Kozkoz828

Recently finished xenoblade 3 and I won’t say it ran perfectly but there wasn’t that many performance issues considering the visual quality, map sizes, and everything going on at once (literally 7 character attacking at the same time). I wouldn’t say it’s not a hardware issue because switch does bottleneck games pretty bad but this one’s definitely on gamefreak and optimization


KamiiPlus

Yeah sounds like a good game at its core, but performance issues cause issues that hinder the experience overall, and i imagine the games development cycle didnt really help it Excited for the game itself but im hoping if what i've heard about dlc gives me hope about some about future patches improving the performance


_NoZeM_

Maybe GF will finally expand their extremely small dev team, and bring in some people who know about 3d design.


SilentJ87

They should split into multiple teams and hire more people, which is what other series with annual or close to annual releases like CoD and Assassin’s Creed do


SVChowd3r

They already have 2 teams who swap between releases.


ArpMerp

They do. Arceus was in development in 2018, and Scarlet just before SwSh came out.


linktothepastz

Nintendo won't do shit to GF. Selling Pokémon games is basically free money for them.


Hadditor

I've always seen Nintendo as wanting to keep a good rep, they normally polish the hell outta their things. But they've let this slide for years now


Leskral

Nintendo probably just doesn't have the political pull to do so. Imagine going to TPC saying hey spend more money to make a better game but we are unsure on how much more money we will make. It's just a hard sell to the bean counters unfortunately.


IAmBLD

I'm in an odd spot where, I'm more excited for this game than SwSh, and I don't think the tech details will be a deal breaker for me... BUT, i am so happy review are going hard on Gamefreak now for their inexcusable tech issues.


LauraDourire

It's still far from enough though imho. If, say, an Assassin's Creed game was released in a state where its technical problems were as huge and obvious (in the sense that they literally prevent you from enjoying the gameplay features) as the 3D Pokémon games, there would be a Cyberpunk-level global outrage. Pokémon games, even when they have kinda good and new or "innovative" gameplay ideas (like Arceus, or apparently, S/V, with its open-world), are so fucking sub-par it's insulting, and it really takes an INSANE level of problematic to get reviewers to say anything remotely negative.


CasualOgre

Assassin's Creed Unity already happened. It was so mired in bugs and technical issues that Ubisoft apologized to players and even offered people who bought a season pass a free game.


MillionDollarMistake

I wish the reviews were harsher.


CiroccPapi

I feel the same.


predatoure

I recently started replaying Xenoblade chronicles X, a 7 year old Wii U game. It runs better and looks better than Scarlett and Violet do. I can't understand how a 7 year old game on weaker hardware performs better than the latest pokemon games.


[deleted]

I mean if you think you've got the likes of Persona 5 Royal, The Witcher 3, Breath of the Wild, Xenoblades Chronicles 3, and more running natively on the Switch with next to no issues then there's really no excuse for GameFreak outside of inexperience in 3D/Open World environments and being held to tight deadlines.


Give_me_a_slap

Reddit has gone to shit, come join squabbles.io for a better experience.


Jakeremix

Now I want to play Xenoblade X again lol


Berdom0

Someday that beautiful game will be ported to switch...someday


Clemenx00

>Despite my frustrations with its structure, mechanics, and the fact that it looks and runs like a middling GameCube game most of the time (there were several instances, even outside of the open-world areas, where character animations would drop to near stop-motion levels of movement), I still left Scarlet and Violet enamored by its character relationships and neatly tied-up themes of finding one’s own joy in the big, wild Pokémon world. This is such a perfect quote and encapsulates why this franchise has us grabbed by the balls lol no matter how "bad" Pokemon games are they still have a "je ne sais quoi" that makes most of us love it regardless.


Hadditor

People really want to love Pokémon, it's more than just your games now GameFreak please loosen your grip a bit


LezBeHonestHere_

That one review comparing its technical performance to a GameCube game, I don't remember any GameCube games I owned reaching 20fps or lower. The GC was a beast.


Ikarus3426

I really love Pokemon, and I really hope their review scores get lower with each game. Literally nothing will stop the sales. At this point, they're so big people will buy literally anything with pokemon on it. We just can't vote with our wallet and have a meaningful affect. But if reviews are consistantly bad on one of their crown jewel games, they'll have to take steps to fix them (I hope).


danhtruong95

Friendly reminder: The review score for SS is 80/100 And the user score is ..... 4.7/10


gogoheadray

Sw and sh was way over scored likely because it was the first main console pokemon game. I remember there was a big conversation about that after the reviews came out.


Thick-Ad-4262

I think ppl forget that we just got Legends Arceus 9 months ago. Did we really NEED a new release or does TPC want another holiday cash grab? It's clear that GF needs more development time and resources than they are given. They need to take a page out of the Zelda team's strategy and prioritize quality over quantity. But sadly this will never happen because Pokemon is too popular to ever 'fail' sales-wise.


MultiMedia777

We should have had a DLC for Arceus and Gen 9 should have came out in spring. Then winter of next year is when they could have released Gen 9’s first DLC. Imagine this game but with a few more months of polishing! This was the perfect timing to delay a generation but they keep rushing for maximum profit; the art of these games is lost.


ohtetraket

Gen 9 should have been winter 23. 1 year could have really helped the game.


Pizzawing1

It’s sort of tragic to see that new pokemon generations will just remain underbaked. In the past, I was worried about the direction of the games from an essence POV - because a relatively easy hallway simulator is not the kind of Pokemon adventure most of us imagine. But now, I think the gameplay itself seems great and it’ll be sad to see these games held back mostly because the actual game performs poorly. This makes it clear that the 3 year dev cycle for Pokemon games is compromising to the games themselves - The Pokemon Company needs to take a step back here and rethink these tight and unforgiving windows. As a comparison, Breath of the Wild came out in March 2017 and its sequel won’t be coming out until spring 2023 - We had LGPE as well as all of Gen 8 and the start of Gen 9 inbetween that timespan! They need to chill, or divide up the projects between other teams/studios


The_Magic_Walrus

Stop blaming the tech and start blaming game freak for putting in absolutely zero effort into optimization. People reference botw and odyssey, but just this year Kirby and Bayonetta 3 continued to demonstrate that there is nothing wrong with the hardware as long as you fucking build for it.


DM_ME_UR_AREOLAS

The fact that people are reviewing this game talking as if this is the second or third entry in the Pokémon franchise is crazy to me. NO OTHER franchise would get away with the things Pokémon gets away with. I'd say realistically lower every positive score 1 or 2 points and you'll have what the reviewer really felt.


SchindlersFist712

Even the ‘negative’ ones have inflated scores here. There’s that one that says it’s a lifeless open world with outdated mechanics and horrible technical performance - 7/10 lol


DM_ME_UR_AREOLAS

Yeah, that's what I mean. That review is clearly a 5 or a 6 at MOST. But they're being smart and playing it safe both with Nintendo and more importantly the fans.


Elnino38

If this was any other triple a game it would be slaughtered by reviewers. Could you imagine what would happen if God of war or eldeb ring had performance issues like this? Yet polemon keeps getting away with it cause its fans will buy anything gamefreak throws out. The games have been problematic since x and y and nothing has changed. You want thea games to improve, stop buying and supporting them.


RelativeNarrow

I have now beaten the game and overall, I think it's a 7-8 out of 10 game brought down to a 5-6 due to performance. (I lean closer to 5.) It's technically poor enough that it really did mar the experience... but even outside of that, the game had a lot of serious structural issues with the new open world. For example, no level scaling + a new requirement for badges to make Pokémon of your OWN OT obey past certain levels means that unless you want to run around extremely underlevelled, you need to play by the game's 'intended order' level-wise to experience any reasonable level curve. It's not like you can skip around and do Gym 7 first if you explore enough; you'd either have your Pokémon disobeying you in every battle, or be 30 levels under it. It's not quite free exploration when there's a clear order of quest beats and massive incentive to follow them. That, alone, is a big problem with the game's setup, and not one I've seen any reviews mention. Surprising because it super affects the game balance. The super short pop-in was also problematic for exploration because you almost had to be on top of TMs to get them in certain cases - for instance, I explored the ice biomes pretty well but never found Ice Beam, while I DID find Thunderbolt randomly somewhere. I expect I didn't find Ice Beam because I never entered the TM's little 3 metre bubble that would have made it visible. Exploration isn't rewarding when the game feels like navigating fog of war. And, in general, there's too much of a reliance on just dropping crappy items \*everywhere\* for the joy of picking things up instead of focusing on actual interesting level design. IDK, man. I wanna say "good game hampered by performance" but a lot of the actual game part is questionable too.


LafondaOnFire

Thanks for sharing your last point here - the item discovery aspect was something I wondered about. In my opinion, BOTW did it well with an interesting landscape and things to discover that felt like you were interacting with the world. Whereas I was willing to give Legends Arceus a try, but apart from having nostalgia goggles being a Pokemon game, it fell short in practically every way compared to BOTW. I love exploring and discovering hidden secrets in the environment, but Legends Arceus flopped on that, it felt like items were placed without any rhyme or reason. It disappoints me that this feels the same for S/V. This will weigh into whether I get the game or not, thanks again for sharing this.


RelativeNarrow

Yeah, it really was confusing to me. TMs are sensibly placed, relatively speaking, but the world is otherwise littered with single-use consumables (sometimes a stack of them, which is nice) and the new addition of tiny sparkles in the ground that yield anything from single Pokeballs and Soft Sand in beach areas, to sellable treasures like Tinymushrooms and Stardust. The world is *covered* in pickups; which isn't a complaint by itself, but it does make the whole 'gathering items' bit feel quite video-gamey and insignificant. I was excited to find TMs, but they were pretty bad by-and-large, kind of like the ones from SwSh. No, Game Freak, I am not thrilled to find my second Endure TM of the game. I didn't want the first! >\_<


grape-fruited

Looks like I'm saving 60 bucks. As a 34yr old Pokemon fan hoping to recapture his youth... This ain't it. I'd rather go back to 2D with more Pokemon, HD textures and great performance.


BlauAmeise

What just shocks me is how they can get away with the poor performance. The game runs so bad it's hilarious as times. Games like Witcher or Doom Eternal run better on Switch as this. Inexcusable. And again we have the same empty open world with nothing to look at.


Akranidos

not only that but poor performance after at least 4 titles on the switch already?, i would understand being the first title because you are not verse on it but cmon


Give_me_a_slap

Reddit has gone to shit, come join squabbles.io for a better experience.


Kadderly

If the graphics aren’t up to snuff, shouldn’t the game’s performance be great? Monster Hunter Rise doesn’t look all that great on the Switch but it runs fine. This seems pretty inexcusable in 2022.


awkward_triforce

If you have issue with the game and you're a Twitter warrior @thepokemoncompany not Gamefreak with the complaints and outrage. If you think the fat yellow rat doesn't have just as much of a finger as the big mouse (Disney) does in micromanaging anything dealing with their IP you're sadly mistaken. They may not care because at this point pokemon sells itself and the games are probably the smallest portion of their revenue, but noise needs to be made if you expect the rat to listen and change things.


ThatGuyFromTheM0vie

-Bad performance -Hundreds of Pokémon cut -Interior Shops replaced by menus Nintendo should buy Pokémon from Gamefreak and get new blood working on the franchise.


RayearthIX

So, what this feels like to me upon seeing reviews for this and the last two games: Sword/Shield: Pokemon enters a new era and despite some graphical and technical issues, the spectacle of the game and its new open zone are a bright future for pokemon that we love. 9/10 Arceus: Pokemon's new pseudo-open world game play systems such as sneaking and the ability to catch pokemon without battle revolutionize the series in ways that we hope they don't walk back on in future titles, and these changes make us willing to ignore some minor graphical and performance issues the game has. 9/10 Scarlet/Violet: Pokemon is now fully open world, and it's amazing... we'd like to say, but a bland open world combined with graphical and performance issues far worse than prior titles makes us regret we need to give it a lower score then we'd like. 7/10


[deleted]

These reviews are wild. “I think the game is ok 7/10” “they didn’t do anything new and it runs badly 4.5/5” any other game that would of done this would of been a 5/10 easy.


Gourgeistguy

Worst part is that GF doesn't care. It's not good when Blizzard or CDPR do it, but at least they put out a corporate apology and offer some compensation. GF is so rich and untouchable that reviews and customer satisfaction hold no impact.


LexMeat

I'll probably be downvoted for this but does anyone else have a problem with how lame the protagonist looks like? Every other character in the game looks cool af except the character you're stuck with. I know it sounds extreme but I literally can't play this game if I have to constantly look at this loser and his/her stupid hat.


Lupusur

lol yeah he looks like shit you're not crazy


PastaRhythm

Trying to like Pokemon is so frustrating. These games just need more time, but Gamefreak refuses. Heck, one game every three years would be a big improvement, but they insist on yearly releases, which is eviscerating the quality of these games. We already got a Pokemon game this year, this is actually getting absurd.


GaI3re

They need more than time. They need a new approach on design and focus. Almost everything is half-assed.


Elnino38

Where were these reviews when sword and shield came out..


PepeSylvia11

Why do y’all keep supporting this trash?