Pokémon is, personally, one of my favorite game series. I’ve played the games as far back as I can remember. I remember stealing my brother’s copy of Pokémon Leaf Green and putting it into my Gameboy Advanced. I’d get so excited to see the startup screen and that excitement hasn’t faded with new releases of Pokémon games. However, that excitement slowly died down as I got older and new games were produced that were just… Subpar. Today, we have Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, an awful mess of glitches and bugs. Despite multiple updates, it still is awful a year and a half after its original release.
Glitches, Performance Issues, and More in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Oh My!
The most obvious mistakes in the game are general performance issues. In Willem’s review of the game, he talks about the different lag issues. They include, but not limited to: rendering of Pokémon in the Pokédex and the boxes as you scroll, battle animations taking forever, and rendering of the world. While traveling through Paldea, it’s a barren landscape until you finally get within the very short render distance and Pokémon appear. It seems like the game was getting too laggy with the amount of Pokémon being spawned, so they made the draw distance and render distance super short. However, this just backfired and made the world seem so… Empty.
Of course, these aren’t the only performance issues. Plenty of issues could be brought to light, but this article would get far too long if I included every performance issue, so let’s move on to glitches.
The Bulbapedia has a list of glitches on Scarlet and Violet specifically. If that doesn’t say something, I don’t know what does. However, from my own experiences, glitches range from the world falling through itself and being able to see under the world to the body stretching glitch where when riding your bike it extends the character’s body parts, making you look like an eldritch horror. There are face glitches, Pokémon glitching where they’ll be clipping through objects, and so much more. Unfortunate, really, because it could be such a fun game… Or could it?
Is Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Worth It?
This portion of the article is very opinionated based on who is playing. While I think it’s fun as a base Pokémon game, I don’t feel like I could replay it and enjoy it as much. My fiancée even mentioned she completes her Pokédex in every Pokémon game. However, in this one, she has no urge to because it doesn’t feel worth it. With over 1,000 Pokémon to procure and how the game runs, it seems like a waste of time.
Along with this, we have the story, which is just… Boring. You have different routes you can go along to make it feel more open world and have multiple places you can go. That being said, it’s the same thing over and over again. You go to a gym, defeat the gym leader, and the twist isn’t too big of a shocker—unless you’re a young kid. You can also fight this version of Team Rocket—Team Star—and stop their outrage. It just isn’t that bad compared to literal world-ending scenarios like in Sapphire and Ruby. Overall, the story is the same as every other Pokémon game, except this time, you’re in school! Yay?
Is the Open World Really Open?
Even in my exploration of Paldea, the game is supposedly an open world. If that’s the case, how is it an open world with some (poorly) painted rock, ground assets, some trees, and tall grass sprinkled around? Even in this IGN review, it seems everyone has come to an agreement that this game holds nothing to Pokémon Legends: Arceus which came earlier that year. It barely holds even a match to other open-world games with beautiful surroundings and—once again, with the render distance so low—it’s just an ugly game. Nothing made me feel excited to see the beautiful scenery. This is such a disappointment; some of the earlier pixel games (like in Black and White) made me feel so enthused to play. They couldn’t transfer it to Scarlet and Violet.
Overall, I want to like Scarlet and Violet, but even years later, the performance issues aren’t fixed, and the immersion is just ruined by how ugly the game is. Hopefully their next announced game Pokémon Legends: Z-A will be better and give us what we’re yearning for in a 3D Pokémon game.
