I hate that they decided to close off all buildings (like residences and offices) and made most entrances storefront screens with no interiors that all sell the same shit. so yeah, the cities may look big and pretty and expansive, but it’s all surface level with no depth to explore or people to talk to.
Wow! How low the mighty GameFreak have fallen ay? They deserve all the loss to their revenue that is coming. I'm so glad I didn't pay for a pre-order which the U.S. got the short end of the metaphorical stick as well. Like just a digital backpack? FTS 🤭🤣🤡
I'm bored of ignoring the problems with Gamefreak and acting like they don't exist. I would never "feel bad" for Gamefreak. They've churned out games with basically the same story, minimal animations, minimal any innovation and despite being the most profitable franchise EVER. They always play it too safe and do the bare minimum. The combat system is massively underutilised and the game has terrible AI. Fan games made by a handful of people have better AI. People use this dead excuse that "It's for kids" as a way to let them be lazy.... where most of the fans are 25-35... It's pure lazy copy and paste stuff. The makers of Xenoblade work for Nintendo, they could easily get tips/ideas. The whole Island of this Pokemon game is being rendered in inefficient ways. We should expect better, this is why they get away with just making passable games. Pokemon has SO MUCH more potential.
Blame the people who gave them a pass for years on end. Pokémon was never this masterpiece franchise that suddenly crashed and burned once the Switch released. The vast majority of problems that Pokémon have on Switch (two versions, bad graphics, paywalled content) is a series staple.
100% they make this crap knowing it will sell anyway. I think gamefreak is terrible and making a modern game. I'm not sure why Nintendo let a game like this release in this state. Number 1 selling Nintendo franchise and this is what they feed us? No more, I won't buy this, I didn't buy Arceus either. This is PS2 level and the switch is way better than that.
Honestly what I found the most shocking is that there’s still no voice acting. Do you think they’re just never going to take it in that direction? It just seems to make the characters feel very lifeless. The world is pretty the Pokémon are wonderfully animated and designed but the characters are very hollow. Having said that I’m only five minutes in but it just struck me immediately how off it felt having no voice acting.
It really is unfortunate at this point that this is where the Pokémon game franchise is at the moment. They have a generous amount of funding and people for development and still can’t do voice acting.
Ehh with a Pokémon game dropping ever single year… most with a 2 year development cycle… I dont think we’re ever getting voice acting Voice acting takes a good bit of time and GF isn’t going to be given that time
●Poor framerates ●Bad textures ●Non-enterable buildings ●only ~400/over 1000 total Pokemon are in the game ●No turning off Exp. Share ●No changing outfits ●No turning off the "switch pokemon?" prompt ●No turning off battle animations ●Slow battles in general ●No battle tower/frontier ●NO LEVEL SCALING ●No voice acting What am I missing? I know there's plenty
True it lags ass behind every Nintendo franchise and has since GBA. Even worse is when GF was making games a middle school program enthusiast could do in their freetime (2D, top down, tile based) they were still the worst quality of any Nintendo franchise. Iwata had to remake Gold and Silver from scratch because the GameFreak spaghetti code.
@@danielforgesson6389 HGSS looked ten times better than this shit. The pixel art of that game completely beats this game in every possible way. Pokemon let's go was probably the best looking pokemon sort of 3d game ever.
Crazy how excited we get just being able to rotate the camera... 😅 Sadly, it's lacking everything else regarding camera options that are standard in 3D games these days. Zero camera controls whatsoever is baffling. It feels slow & choppy (I guess to match everything else?), so not even being able to adjust camera sensitivity in 2022 is just lazy. Then again, that's about the least significant issue in a laundry list of issues 😔
@@Hirotoro4692 Not to mention Breath of the Wild, which while having some pretty intense frame rate drops at certain places ran perfectly just in the open world lol. Something this game is having issues with
@@EdwardSnortinAlso Monster Hunter Rise exists and that game runs well on the switch too. It's no MH World graphically but still looks really good. Pokemon just likes to do just enough to get optimal sales but this time they did much less and the flaws just cant be shrugged off. You know it's bad when ppl are now looking at SwSh and thinking it looks great when that game had similar issues and rants towards it.
Also absolutely agree. The coop in this game is EXACTLY what I've been wanting. I've been saying for 25 years on so many single player games that should have this kind of coop, just let us just be in the same world with no barriers. I'll be so mad if they take it away in the next entry
They will take it away. They only keep whatever is absolutely bare-bones essential to the Pokémon experience in every game. They've even removed the options of Set-style battles and turning off animations this time. They do not care
I saw a floating purse and then a floating head of hair a few times. No bodies, no people, just weird stuff Edit: also I don’t think gamefreak realizes that the people who grew up with the franchise as children are now older and the current largest portion of the player base. I’ve seen less kids playing these games compared to adults/older teens more often than not.
That’s why nowadays I’m much more of a Final Fantasy fan. Square Enix seems to understand exactly what you’re saying and FF always tends to grow with the audience that Square knows is playing them.
They do know! In fact they even acknowledged it in an interview were they said they know that more than half of their audience are not kids anymore. They just don’t care and just wanna keep pumping half baked games.
They did try to grow with the audience. Black n white was a more teen focus player base and it financial struggled to sell. So Gamefreak panicked and when back to child audience.
@@ixaldorran7867 That’s a straight lie! When Black and White came out they sold 11.5 million copies making them the highest selling DS game of that year and the third highest selling Nintendo game overall that year just behind Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort which is a technicality because every Wii already came with Wii Sports. Today Black and White have sold almost 16 million copies making them the 8th best selling Pokémon game out of 18. How are you comfortable just spreading lies like that?!
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills listening to people talk about the "multi-player" in this game. It's just 4 person single player. How the fuck is this good? No double battles to take on together, no collision for the ball during a picnic that isn't yours, no race courses to take on together. It's like a modern day equivalent of having your friends bring their ds to your house and all just playing pokemon in one room. Once the novelty of "oh I see you" wore off, there was nothing there
I played Shield for the first time, like, last year? And I had a fun time with it. Liked the characters, loved the presentation in the gym battles specifically. Should have been better, could have been worse, however.
This game is really addictive and there is so much interesting stuff to do here that I spent an entire day just running off in a random direction and getting in trouble. It is a shame that the technical performance is really horrendous, the textures pop in and out as if coming out from pokeball itself lol. If the technical issues are polished out this would be a solid entry ngl.
Yeah I hit an area and the entire cliff on my side the textures would shift in this funky way, I could keep stepping forward and backwards and the cliff would just keep warping
I actually enjoyed this more than Arceus and enjoying it more now that you are able to link trade and see what the other person doesn't have to complete your Pokedex as well as theirs
Fun game so far. Haven’t even battled the first titan or gym and I have 6 hours of playtime and found a shiny in the first 2 hours. It’s fun getting lost and just exploring. The frame rate does stutter way too much.
@@praisethesun6078 the frame drops are fucked up but besides that its the best pokemon game ever made no doubt if it had a decent performance man best pokemon game its open world literally
@@daniellizarraga1453 but is it really easy? Also does it have forced exp share? The last game I played sword and shield was way to easy and experience share constantly had me over leveling.
The amount of DLC that's been teased in the game files makes me nervous. Pokemon as a franchise doesn't lend itself to DLC at all but there's an entire second half to the game that's just not IN THE GAME, and won't be PLAYABLE until after the current story is over. (Edit: Corrected my phrasing, corrections are in caps. Sorry if anyone thought the DLCs were on-cartridge, they aren't thankfully.)
@@DOSFrost From what I could find? No. But trying to remember from off the top of my head (It's 8PM here) there are tags for 3 whole new world maps and about 100 slots for new pokemon to be added via DLC, some of which are pre-tagged as "paradox".
Live service gaming. Welcome to the horrible future. Devs have singlehandedly ruined so many series this past year alone. Pokémon, Call of Duty, Halo Infinite and Overwatch 2 were all flops as well because of greed.
@@eodyn7 I agree but this is also awful and disgraceful. As was last gen and the one before and the one before and… Everything after gen 4 (MAYBE 5) has been a step back
Sorry, but I DO NOT want the Acreus catching mechanics in the mainline games. It takes the strategy out of it and makes catching Pokemon low risk, low reward. It was fine, great, for Acreus but I like the traditional battle, weaken, catch in mainline games.
I guess I’m in the minority who actually liked sword & shield. I’m gonna stick with it until newer hardware gets released and hopefully game freak supports scarlet & violet in the long run.
No you're in the majority. Every Pokemon is widely beloved across the board. The opinions of internet trolls mean nothing when the games continue to sell well for 20 years
Damn, everyone in the comments is really hating on this game. I agree with a lot of Matty’s thoughts on it. I am having a blast doing co-op with a friend and just exploring the world. Would I love the graphics and technical issues to be better? Of course! Is it detracting from the game for me? Not at all. For me, this series is about relaxing, exploring and catching new Pokémon. I think this game does a great job and I really hope they continue this new open-world formula moving forward. Maybe get more people on the team to iron out the technical issues and improve the graphics. That would make it perfect in my eyes!
I don’t play Pokémon but my wife plays them all… I know the switch isn’t a powerful console but how is it possible for these games to run so poorly when they basically look like a wii game. It’s also baffling that Pokémon has been around for soooooo long and they have endless amount of feedback to create their games with but every time it seems like no one is really happy and they are always missing features that people want
Hardware isn't a problem, the unit is capable of more actually not less. The issue is in a very rushed and shoddy code. Which didn't have nearly enough development time. It needs clearing up. Entire elements redone. Hopefully they spend some time doing so and then release a more extensive patch in time for the holiday season.
Most honest review I’ve seen. Painting this game as unplayable or overtly flawed is a flat lie. But Gamefreaks feet should be held to the fire going forward.
In hindsight working on Arceus at the same time as this was a mistake. Splitting the team between two big open world games, especially for a small company like GameFreak, was not the best plan.
@@JIreland1992 When you put out some of the world's top selling videogames on a yearly basis, you can afford to expand your company staffing enough to put out high quality games. The problem is enough people keeping buying the (mediocre) games despite the problems that GameFreak has been able to "get away with it."
@@simpgod2170 I would say so, I’ve played all the Pokémon games and if you ignore the technical stuff, this game is definitely the best switch Pokémon game. I also found it to be more fun than Sun&Moon, and X/Y but those games are more polished than this one. I have yet to beat it yet but This game checks all my boxes as of now. Just poor performance does hurt it.
@@crispymelon2114 yeah even just playing through the exposition made me genuinely wonder what the storyline is about, as opposed to sword and shield where 5 minutes in you already can tell what’s gonna be the entire story except for the part where your rival gets depressed for like three gyms which was the only interesting part tbh
The coop might not seem like a huge deal, especially since it’s not very cooperative, but being able to play on release with my girlfriend was such an amazing bonding experience. Pokémon was such a big part of both of our childhoods and to be able to play together in the same game was so amazing for both of us. Wish the game was in a better state, but for what it was I don’t regret buying it for that experience alone
This game was developed alongside Arceus, so I fully expected it to be a step back, especially since they themselves didn't expect Arceus to be such a success. I feel Gen 10 will be the one everyone wants if these people are at all competent.
I respect your opinion I personally didn't care too much for Arceus. And I had a blast playing last night with my friends on Scarlet and Violet I just love that you can do everything in multiplayer Like I can run the story if I want while they're out doing whatever and if they find a rare pokémon they let me know I run over there and I catch it
sword and shield was a catastrophic mess. Gamefreak lying to drop quality generation to generation, and holy fk my adult coworker (aged 29) is the kinda person to play bf2042 with bots to "get ahead of the crowd that is hating." He legitimately has 0 sense of quality and bought sw/sh, said it's his favorite, does not care about any issues that halfhearted 3ds port brought. We will never get quality from gamefreak, because consoom
I agree with a lot of stuff you've brought up but I just wanna throw something out there. It was good that the game removed styles. I felt they had this unfair nature to them and did reward skill but a lot of the time, the way your pokemon and your opponent's pokemon moved was out of your control. I feel that it was a smart balance change to remove this feature.
I haven’t been watching your videos for too long but by god you have become my favorite reviewer. You touch on everything in such a calm and brilliant way. You know how to praise and critique. I love you and your content. Keep it up!!! 💕
I love the game and am liking the new direction the game is going in (minus there not being shiny sparkle and sound in over world). The frame rate definitely needs to be fixed. If not for that it’d be the best Pokémon in forever IMO. It actually has some good challenging moments too where i was at with the fire team star boss. I would like to be able to move my character in battle like PLA and throw Pokémon balls to actually catch Pokémon in there too
I agree Arceus battle and catching elements need to be the standard! It’s sorely missed! So bummed it wasn’t in this game. Hopefully it was a trial run to see how people liked it, as I know these games were developed around the same time. My hope is they see how well Received. Arceus was and add it to the next generation. Please!! 🙏
I understand that. But if they can combine some of those mechanics the potential for the next generation will be huge. It would possibly be a breath of the wild moment for Pokémon. They are so close to making the ultimate Pokémon game that we all imagined when we played red and blue years ago
This is one of the best takes of Scarlet and Violet I’ve seen on TH-cam so far. I don’t agree with everything you said but You were able to see all of the good the games have to offer, something I think everyone else is overlooking. As a person who’s very detail oriented I can’t be too hard on Game Freak because of just how much they did here. It still has some things to iron out and fix but in my opinion, this was the BEST Pokémon experience I’ve ever had on Nintendo Switch. They gave me what I wanted and because of that I can’t be too mad at them.
this is a great review dude. this game can be really fun but is held by gamefreaks poor attempt of optimization, and its weird people blame it directly on just switch hardware, they could've made it way smoother. There are lots of things as a long time fan that are worth trying in this game, but desperately needs another patch.
The lack of voice acting stood out right away. The game feels slow as well w/o the catching mechanics from PLA. I really enjoyed that game. With more trainers its perfect. I really hope they go back to that formula.
@@Warshipgamers why would anyone want VA in a Pokémon game that would be so horrible especially because it would have English dub anime VA which always suck
As much as I love pokemon, I just cant justify spending the money on scarlet/violet, the price tag (60 euros?!) is absolutely absurd for all the problems this game has and all the content it doesn't have - learned my lesson from sword and shield. They have ALL the resources in the world to make an incredible pokemon game, but since the fans eat up anything and everything pokemon related it doesn't matter what garbage they push out, as long as it has cute starter pokemon, I guess. 🙄
I think if it weren't for the technical and performance issues of the game, this would have been a resounding success, because the story and content and mechanics are really great, this is in many ways the kind of mainline Pokemon game that we need. I love being able to play the game on my own pace and just spend hours running around in the open world picking up items and battling Pokemon, and I love being able to co-op with my friends and have fun together. TBH this is a genuinely great game that is undermined by the technical problems.
WHY did they not include the awesome mechanic of throwing a pokeball and catching them in real time? That was essentially one of the fundamental reasons why Arceus was amazing and practically a new mechanic that could've revolutionised the franchise' gameplay. SUCH a miss, but so glad it's open world. I hope in the next generation they maintain the open world theme and bring back the catching mechanic of Arceus. FOR now I'm gonna complete my Pokedex in Violet, Woohoo!
My guess would be that, since both games were in development at the same time and Arceus was more of a test project/trying something new, they stuck to the classic main game formula for SV. Arceus turned out to be a success and many people love the new mechanics, but implementing them into SV might have delayed the game. Something the game would have profited from anyway, if just for more polish. But yeah, unlikely with TPC. Hopefully, the next game will have the best of both worlds!
Its also entirely possible that they knew this game would suffer with performance and decided that this would take too long to implement or would hurt performance even more so they didnt put it in.
I will likely pick it up before long, because most people seem to agree there’s a good game under all the issues. But you’re right, it really is inexcusable for them to release the game in this state. I’ve seen lots of people blame the hardware, but like you pointed out, there are plenty of Switch games that look and perform better from franchises that don’t make half as much money as Pokémon does. More powerful hardware won’t change the fact that these games keep getting bigger but have to be made super quickly with no possible delays in order to coincide with the release of trading cards, anime, McDonald’s promotions, etc. Pokémon games need longer development cycles to reach their full potential.
I think this is a good step in the right direction BUTTT how do we have a dev team/company (game freak & Nintendo) gross more money than ROCKSTAR & GTAV and animations on npcs and trees are going at 10fps.. how does GTA 3 from a PS2 RUN SMOOTHER… HOW… with BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.. game freak is a joke… I’m enjoying myself still but man.. why do I feel like I can optimize the game better myself…. When the game freak team has how many millions or billions of dollars at their disposal and one person can do better..
I’m returning my double pack because of the performance. I wanted to like this game so badly, but unfortunately the frame rate renders it unplayable at points. Edit: Also all of the shadows are comprised of cubes and it’s laughable.
Thank you! Everyone defending the performance issues of this game always resorts to "its for kids". Nah man, it's grown adults buying these games, let's be real here. These same people making the "it's for kids" argument are also the same people in Pikemon Scarlett and Violet fan groups on Facebook. We like pokemon. We don't want to see it with issues like these. Everyone is allowed to both praise the game for what it does good and criticize what it does wrong.
The games structure and gameplay is great. But the visual issues/glitches is pretty appalling for such a rich game company. I’d expect more from them. But I will give credit where credit is due. The gameplay and open world is very cool
I’ve been playing for 1 hour now and I already can tell that graphics are a HUGE disappointment. They’ve gone backwards compared to sword & shield! And then the lags I noticed in movements of characters, white outlines everywhere…. some things are worked out so good and detailed but then you have other things that could fit in a Nintendo64 game as well…. doesn’t look like they have finished it properly. I’d rather wait another year to buy a proper version graphic wise than buying this now…. very very disappointing…. It could have been so beautiful
Dynamax was literally your Pokemon getting bigger, but it's far more controversial than that if you look at the competitive scene. Pokemon may be basic in structure, but competitive really shows how wild things can get. The campaigns may tend to be weak, but play online and you'll see what kind of madness happens
Still I find the competitive argument dumb, shoving an unbalanced mechanic in single player down everyone's throat isn't justified just because of the maybe 2% of people who play competitive.
Oo that’s tru just some legendary “have to own other games” exclusive bs that kept meee from finishing the dex 😍 (on a hyper focus binge in the first two weeks and kinda haven’t touched it since 😮😵💫😦) I’m taking scarlet a lot more chill but super excited to try and finish it with some 400 and at least a few trades needed 😮😮😼
And Gamefreak will continue releasing unfinished garbage because people in our age group (mid 20s-early 30s) just continue to buy this crap based of nostalgia. My wife and i were really excited when they announced a pokemon game with open world coop, but after seeing the release trailer for the gameplay and the world, i dont see how anyone that respects themself would still buy this game... AT FULL PRICE!
My all time favorite game is New Vegas. I don't care about super smooth performance as long as the game itself is fun and the story is compelling. Yeah yeah, biggest richest property, blah blah blah. Is the game fun? Can you play the game? That's all the fucking matters.
@@michaelmatthews1567 As long there isn't anything totally game breaking (i.e. most bugs in Bethesda games), the game just needs to be fun and enjoyable.
Game Freak reminds me of old feudal Japan. It’s cool and all, but it keeps rejecting technological advancement out of some misplaced sense of pride with a shade of annoying arrogance.
Fan Fact. Pokémon is the highest grossing franchise of all time surpassing Marvel and Star Wars. So they literally have no excuse to produce make a great game. I wished Pokémon grew up with his fans, but it's clear the Pokémon games are just kid games to make kids buy merchandises.
I think the game took some great elements from other prior Pokémon games. Yes, the technical problems do hunt this game but underneath it is a GREAT game.
In my opinion, I think Nuzlocke really saved the game for me. It’s much more challenging and engaging than playing normally and my preferred way to play Pokémon ever since I saw TFS Leaf Green Nuzlocke. Matty, I think you should try a Nuzlocke play through. I and I’m sure many others would love to watch it!
I really wanna see into Game Freak's inner workings cause everyone always seems to expect modern AAA standards from them, using the "most profitable media franchise" argument as a reason why. I've always just heard that they're a small company, but I really wanna know just how small it is that after four years of releases on the Switch, this is still how these games come out. Most of the profit from this franchise comes from the merch, but it really starts to feel like The Pokemon Company considers the video games supplementary to that. And that's sad. They wouldn't have a brand if not for these games.
SwSh sold over 20 Million Copies and that's the GAME ALONE.. 60$ x 20 Million, so there's no denying the games alone are profitable... And Gamefreak is making games faaaaaaar back 2 decades ago, the studio is f*cking older than most of it's fans so it's not lack of experience as well.. They're just simply disrespectful at this point and I think the Fans deserved the treatment since they will still buy the games and even defend the criticisms it gets..
The harsh release schedule for games release doesn't do them any favour. They basically have 0 time for optimization, because they must keep their deadlines which are solely based on the anime... rather than the other way around. I'm afraid as long as that doesn't change, we can't really expect to get truly, properly polished games.
@@insentia8424 Not to mention they spent most of their time making 2D games on small, handheld consoles. Now suddenly they're expected to jump ahead multiple console generations AND program 1000+ individual creatures, so I'm not surprised Pokemon's being cannibalized by its own brand.
Yeah I still can’t the gym battle music out of my head. So far the music in Violet is very forgettable and I appreciate the osts more than anything else.
This is the last Pokémon game I’m buying, sticking to the good old emulators and playing the classics, it’s too bad they couldn’t finely polish the game before releasing it like the Zelda games, they are definitely pushing for revenue versus user experience now
For clarification, the team behind Pokemon Legends did not make sun and moon, they made ultra sun and ultra moon. Until Legends, they had exclusively made remakes and enhanced versions, which I think has been proven a massive waste of talent and time after what they did with Pokemon Legends (which is imo the greatest pokemon game ever made and its not even close)
Played Arceus and really enjoyed it. The omission of the mechanics in Arceus may make e want to wait for the next Gen hardware and playing Pokemon without limitations. There is so much that is realeased this past month and more to look forward to so I can miss this game.
I agree they should’ve took the catching and fighting from the previous Pokémon game it made catching Pokémon actually feel like a mini game, sort of a skill to get better at, and take focus, then sometimes when you messed up you missed that Pokémon and that made it feel so much better
14.6 hours in and all I've done is get 1 gym badge. Despite it's glaring issues it is SOOOOOOOO FUN and teaming up with 3 of my friends is a great time.
One of the things I see a lot of people complaining about is the lack of level scaling in the games. I thought that the lack was actually a good thing, as in most pokemon game's I have a regular team for almost the entire game. With a few swaps depending on the game needs. I feel like the lack of level scaling has allowed me to level up a team and go back into the next story line with a few pokemon that I might have originally passed up. So far I have 4 basic teams that I use for each part of the story. I have a Gym Team, A team Star team, a pokedex team, and a titan team. It's definitely more enjoyable if you go that route I find. Obviously the game would be less fun if you spent the game with the same team of level 100s plowing on weak trainers and pokemon
they need to take longer when making their games because it’s clear that a 3-year gap isn’t enough, especially when they’re making games in between the gap as well. i think scarlet and violet is a massive upgrade to SWSH but it still could use a few improvements
I have not been in love with a pokemon game in so freaking long and I've played since emerald. I love this game. I cant stop playing it, watching people experience it on twitch, and I freaking love it. I know there are fps issues but they never bother me. I know they need fixed but it truly doesn't interupt my enjoyment of this game.
The catching mechanic of Legends Arceus is really needed in an open world pokemon game. It felt weird that I can throw the pokeballs of my pokemon but I can throw pokeballs to catch them. Also feels weird that I can't just walk away to run away from wild pokemon battles. It's an open world but the main gameplay isn't.
I cant believe how bad Pokemon graphics are like we're in 2022, it's not a fucking excuse anymore. And I dont want to hear all the same lame excuses like "oh but its all about the Pokemon, not the environment, NPCs, etc." like how many excuses do we have to give this multi billion dollar company like its ridiculous. I've seen smaller indie games do so much more with LESS.
Why don’t you ask the fanboys who simped for their older titles with drivel like “Pokémon Black and White pushed the DS to its limits”! When the DS launched with an N64 remake with added content. Pokémon fans need to play other games lmao.
After playing a few hours, this has been by far the best the Pokemon franchise has been presented in 3d thus far IMO. It is much more engaging and cohesive than Sword and Shield. The characters are better, the early game is better, the structure of the entire game is better. It has blended Arceus and traditional Pokemon in a pretty balanced way (still miss throwing balls to quick catch pokemon though). As you explore, the world seems alive and the pokemon are fun to watch as you battle. Much better than the wild areas. One example is being able to knock pokemon down from trees or mid flight as the fly over head adds so much more engagement to the world around you. The UI is the best so far. Its not clunky like Sword and Shield and the way the Pokedex is presented is refreshing and new. I love the map and how you can rotate your character to point where you want to go while viewing the map. As for the graphics, Pokemon have never looked better in a mainline game and the art style is as "Pokemon" as you can get lol. The new pokemon designs are always subjective but for me, are pretty good. Pawmi is my favorite so far, and there is a spider thing with a ball of silk (looks like a ball of yarn) on its ass. Lol. Where Sword and Shield felt lifeless, Violet and Scarlet feel alive and exciting. Yes. There are absolutely frame drops and performance issues that can not be ignored and hopefully as time goes by and the game gets patched, gamefreak will find ways to optimize it. Arceus has the same animation frame drops in distant pokemon and people. Watch Gyarados fly from a distance. It looks hilarious. I also had environments glitch out when starting battles and my Pokemon being invisible in Arceus but it did not take away from the overall experience. Overall, I think if you are a long time Pokemon fan, Gen 9 is nothing but good news in terms of how the games are designed, structured, and presented. There are a lot of fantastic quality of life updates here and the open world is so fun to explore. Vio/Scar also has characters that I actually like (so far) lol. Do not let the negative reviews scare you away. Try it for yourself and see if the performance issues ruin it for you. I think the core game is strong enough for most to tolerate it, especially if new patches optimize the game further.
I think you nailed it right on the head. We're not trying to totally crap all over the game BUT there has to be some level of accountability in it's awful performance. There's "stylistic choice" and there's "we did the bear minimum". If the perfomance of a game is poor, all the new features and cool additionals fall by the wayside. The performance issues I'm seeing right now are why I'm keep my double pack sealed till either a series of patches come out to fix it or my 14 day return window closes. I am also disappointed in some of the AMAZING nuances from Arceus that didn't get brought over. I hope these performance issues do get patched because it's the MAIN THING holding me back from opening my games right now. And I want nothing more than to enjoy these games. I had an absolute blast with Arceus and loved it SO MUCH so this main title launch has been a let down.
There’s a memory leak problem that is probably easy to patch so if you see the game downscaling try to close it and open it, pretty sure they forced them to release it early and this makes me think it’s maybe not even using the CPUs boost mode because in emulators the textures and shadings are way better, I don’t think they would’ve added those to the game only to not be used at all
Pokémon for me is still an iconic franchise, but I’m very much an old school fan. There’s a big part of me that wish there was a more adult evolution of the franchise as well, building on things I remember from the early days of the franchise. I mean, we got a Pokémon for protection against a dangerous world. We butted heads with mobsters, dealt with death, cruelty, and sci-if horror stories like the creation of MewTwo. Pokémon were cute then too, but some were also terrifying and monstrous- especially with the early sprite art and 8-bit cries and music. I know I’m probably an old geezer on this, but I kinda miss the “generic” designs of Pokémon looking like forms of real animals, more than colourful combinations of base shapes. I’d love to see a game that wasn’t mainly aimed at kids. I’d love to set out on a journey where catching Pokémon is difficult so you have to limit your options and connect with your team. Have trainers you meet be challenging so they come across as more than XP-pools in the shape of an NPC. Maybe use online features in ways similar to GTA where other players can exist within your world and you can happen to come across them? How cool would it be to arrive at a Pokémon centre and meet a player at a similar level and chat with them about your experience so far, maybe go out back to a field and have a battle? Ehh, I understand tho. The IP has set its direction for a long time now, and it makes sense to keep it for kids. But then thinking of the tone they set with the older games or even the Origins anime, it’s hard to not ponder on what other directions they could’ve taken..
I dont get the negativity surrounding this release. It feels to play like you imagined it was on gen 1. Its true that on the technical aspect still needs work, but i didnt have any of the stuttering problems mentioned on this video. I miss some of the Legends Arceus mechanics....but well...its easy one of the best mainline modern takes on the franchise
I hate that they decided to close off all buildings (like residences and offices) and made most entrances storefront screens with no interiors that all sell the same shit. so yeah, the cities may look big and pretty and expansive, but it’s all surface level with no depth to explore or people to talk to.
Same, this is one of my least favourite parts of this game :/ I’d rather the buildings just not be there
Wow! How low the mighty GameFreak have fallen ay? They deserve all the loss to their revenue that is coming. I'm so glad I didn't pay for a pre-order which the U.S. got the short end of the metaphorical stick as well. Like just a digital backpack? FTS
🤭🤣🤡
Funny thing is that Pokémon has had big cities full of stuff to do before, like Castelia and even Lumiose.
It's a bit like FF13 where shops were just an item list in an orb.
Except that was in 2010 on a console much older than the Switch. What a joke.
Yep … even final fantasy vii from the 90s Npc’s have more depth than the hollow walking mannequins of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet 😞
I'm bored of ignoring the problems with Gamefreak and acting like they don't exist.
I would never "feel bad" for Gamefreak. They've churned out games with basically the same story, minimal animations, minimal any innovation and despite being the most profitable franchise EVER. They always play it too safe and do the bare minimum.
The combat system is massively underutilised and the game has terrible AI. Fan games made by a handful of people have better AI. People use this dead excuse that "It's for kids" as a way to let them be lazy.... where most of the fans are 25-35... It's pure lazy copy and paste stuff.
The makers of Xenoblade work for Nintendo, they could easily get tips/ideas. The whole Island of this Pokemon game is being rendered in inefficient ways.
We should expect better, this is why they get away with just making passable games. Pokemon has SO MUCH more potential.
Not only that, but then they make two verisons of the same broken game with small differences.
Blame the people who gave them a pass for years on end.
Pokémon was never this masterpiece franchise that suddenly crashed and burned once the Switch released.
The vast majority of problems that Pokémon have on Switch (two versions, bad graphics, paywalled content) is a series staple.
I don’t see a problem with the same game over and over all I can say is the weird lag and blurry news needs to be addressed
100% they make this crap knowing it will sell anyway. I think gamefreak is terrible and making a modern game. I'm not sure why Nintendo let a game like this release in this state. Number 1 selling Nintendo franchise and this is what they feed us? No more, I won't buy this, I didn't buy Arceus either. This is PS2 level and the switch is way better than that.
Cry about it 😢
Honestly what I found the most shocking is that there’s still no voice acting. Do you think they’re just never going to take it in that direction? It just seems to make the characters feel very lifeless. The world is pretty the Pokémon are wonderfully animated and designed but the characters are very hollow. Having said that I’m only five minutes in but it just struck me immediately how off it felt having no voice acting.
It really is unfortunate at this point that this is where the Pokémon game franchise is at the moment. They have a generous amount of funding and people for development and still can’t do voice acting.
Those two trailers that had voice acting with the electric gym leader and the professors were so good so why can't we get that for the game?
Id literally pay for dlc for voice acting.
Ehh with a Pokémon game dropping ever single year… most with a 2 year development cycle… I dont think we’re ever getting voice acting
Voice acting takes a good bit of time and GF isn’t going to be given that time
Pokemon games don't need that to be a good game bru
Never thought being stuck in school uniforms would bug me so much….
ong
Yeah I was pretty disappointed when I realized there are only 4 outfits. SWSH had much better customization
@@mcm426 😵 seriously that sucks 🫣 so no dresses or anything 😭
●Poor framerates
●Bad textures
●Non-enterable buildings
●only ~400/over 1000 total Pokemon are in the game
●No turning off Exp. Share
●No changing outfits
●No turning off the "switch pokemon?" prompt
●No turning off battle animations
●Slow battles in general
●No battle tower/frontier
●NO LEVEL SCALING
●No voice acting
What am I missing? I know there's plenty
@Sleepy 🐉 A "Negative Nancy" for calling out real issues. I hope you are being sarcastic.
@Sleepy 🐉 so pointing out legit issues with something is being a Negative Nancy? Okay then….keep telling yourself that
It is a joke how bad Pokémon has looked for this long now 🤣
True it lags ass behind every Nintendo franchise and has since GBA.
Even worse is when GF was making games a middle school program enthusiast could do in their freetime (2D, top down, tile based) they were still the worst quality of any Nintendo franchise.
Iwata had to remake Gold and Silver from scratch because the GameFreak spaghetti code.
Lol did you play the original games pokemon has come a lonnnng way
It's a bigger joke that people actually like pokemon.
It's the gheyest franchise out there 🤣
Definitely top 5 👩🏾🍳
@@danielforgesson6389 HGSS looked ten times better than this shit. The pixel art of that game completely beats this game in every possible way. Pokemon let's go was probably the best looking pokemon sort of 3d game ever.
@@danielforgesson6389 Compared to other franchises that come out at around that time now? No that's not a long way dude
Crazy how excited we get just being able to rotate the camera... 😅
Sadly, it's lacking everything else regarding camera options that are standard in 3D games these days. Zero camera controls whatsoever is baffling.
It feels slow & choppy (I guess to match everything else?), so not even being able to adjust camera sensitivity in 2022 is just lazy. Then again, that's about the least significant issue in a laundry list of issues 😔
To be fair that’s the standard for pretty much all nintendo games
@@Bound2chaos2botw?? Almost any 3D Mario game ? 😂
First thing I checked and wasn’t there
Remember When We got excited for being able to sit?
Right. In 2022…..we are excited about a rotating camera. I feel like it’s 1995/96 all over again. Ha.
They can't argue it's a hardware problem when they built the game from the ground up specifically for this hardware haha....
They can't argue it's Hardware problem when witcher 3 and xenoblade are far more graphical and yet run better
@@Hirotoro4692 Not to mention Breath of the Wild, which while having some pretty intense frame rate drops at certain places ran perfectly just in the open world lol. Something this game is having issues with
@@EdwardSnortinAlso Monster Hunter Rise exists and that game runs well on the switch too. It's no MH World graphically but still looks really good. Pokemon just likes to do just enough to get optimal sales but this time they did much less and the flaws just cant be shrugged off. You know it's bad when ppl are now looking at SwSh and thinking it looks great when that game had similar issues and rants towards it.
Also absolutely agree. The coop in this game is EXACTLY what I've been wanting. I've been saying for 25 years on so many single player games that should have this kind of coop, just let us just be in the same world with no barriers. I'll be so mad if they take it away in the next entry
They will take it away. They only keep whatever is absolutely bare-bones essential to the Pokémon experience in every game. They've even removed the options of Set-style battles and turning off animations this time. They do not care
Stop the cap. There is no coop
This game doesn't need co op
sadly they will because every hates it ( not me tho )
I saw a floating purse and then a floating head of hair a few times. No bodies, no people, just weird stuff
Edit: also I don’t think gamefreak realizes that the people who grew up with the franchise as children are now older and the current largest portion of the player base. I’ve seen less kids playing these games compared to adults/older teens more often than not.
Yeah, more or less had to bait my baby brother into playing Legends Arceus, and he has exactly 0 interest in Scarlet and Violet.
That’s why nowadays I’m much more of a Final Fantasy fan. Square Enix seems to understand exactly what you’re saying and FF always tends to grow with the audience that Square knows is playing them.
They do know! In fact they even acknowledged it in an interview were they said they know that more than half of their audience are not kids anymore. They just don’t care and just wanna keep pumping half baked games.
They did try to grow with the audience. Black n white was a more teen focus player base and it financial struggled to sell. So Gamefreak panicked and when back to child audience.
@@ixaldorran7867 That’s a straight lie! When Black and White came out they sold 11.5 million copies making them the highest selling DS game of that year and the third highest selling Nintendo game overall that year just behind Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort which is a technicality because every Wii already came with Wii Sports. Today Black and White have sold almost 16 million copies making them the 8th best selling Pokémon game out of 18. How are you comfortable just spreading lies like that?!
I just snuck by Elijah with all the gold bars in New Vegas right as I got this notification. Heart is pounding.
What’s your stats?
Basically impossible that is impressive
New Vegas is awesome
Bde
Dang I remember doing that when I 100% the game, took me so long, good job! Not an easy feat!
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills listening to people talk about the "multi-player" in this game. It's just 4 person single player. How the fuck is this good? No double battles to take on together, no collision for the ball during a picnic that isn't yours, no race courses to take on together. It's like a modern day equivalent of having your friends bring their ds to your house and all just playing pokemon in one room. Once the novelty of "oh I see you" wore off, there was nothing there
I know Sword/Shield gets a lot of hate but I absolutely loved it.
I played Shield for the first time, like, last year? And I had a fun time with it. Liked the characters, loved the presentation in the gym battles specifically. Should have been better, could have been worse, however.
Every pokemon game is gae as heII 🤣
What tf is wrong with y'all 😅
I hate that game so much. I have all of the mainline Pokémon games and that is by far my most disliked.
@@VintageFiendClub yea they were way too easy and way too linear. An animal could probably play those games with how easy they are.
@@TheAlienman123 someone actually had a group of goldfish play one of the older Pokemon. You should check it out.
This game is really addictive and there is so much interesting stuff to do here that I spent an entire day just running off in a random direction and getting in trouble. It is a shame that the technical performance is really horrendous, the textures pop in and out as if coming out from pokeball itself lol. If the technical issues are polished out this would be a solid entry ngl.
Solid for pokemon. So 5/10
Yeah a solid entry for a Pokemon game. A solid 3/10.
Yeah I hit an area and the entire cliff on my side the textures would shift in this funky way, I could keep stepping forward and backwards and the cliff would just keep warping
I hope they fix it soon because personally it’s the only issues I had with the game the rest I’ve been loving
I actually enjoyed this more than Arceus and enjoying it more now that you are able to link trade and see what the other person doesn't have to complete your Pokedex as well as theirs
Fun game so far. Haven’t even battled the first titan or gym and I have 6 hours of playtime and found a shiny in the first 2 hours. It’s fun getting lost and just exploring. The frame rate does stutter way too much.
Is it really easy like the other recent entries?
@@praisethesun6078 the frame drops are fucked up but besides that its the best pokemon game ever made no doubt if it had a decent performance man best pokemon game its open world literally
@@daniellizarraga1453 but is it really easy? Also does it have forced exp share? The last game I played sword and shield was way to easy and experience share constantly had me over leveling.
@@praisethesun6078 It does have the forced exp share on
@@CheddaDaddy is it easy af? Forced exp share was annoying af. I had to constantly take members of my team out so they wouldn't get over leveled.
The amount of DLC that's been teased in the game files makes me nervous. Pokemon as a franchise doesn't lend itself to DLC at all but there's an entire second half to the game that's just not IN THE GAME, and won't be PLAYABLE until after the current story is over.
(Edit: Corrected my phrasing, corrections are in caps. Sorry if anyone thought the DLCs were on-cartridge, they aren't thankfully.)
is it complete on disk dlc?
@@DOSFrost From what I could find? No. But trying to remember from off the top of my head (It's 8PM here) there are tags for 3 whole new world maps and about 100 slots for new pokemon to be added via DLC, some of which are pre-tagged as "paradox".
I mean the third version of the games like emerald, platinum, were essentially dlc
@@KiraSlith New outfits please nintendo :')
Live service gaming. Welcome to the horrible future. Devs have singlehandedly ruined so many series this past year alone. Pokémon, Call of Duty, Halo Infinite and Overwatch 2 were all flops as well because of greed.
The thing is we HAD a good step forward.
Pokemon Legends Arceus.
Here, we have five giant steps back.
Legends Arceus was awful. Not even a real Pokemon game.
I feel you are exaggerating a lot I have both and they both are fun
@@eodyn7 I agree but this is also awful and disgraceful. As was last gen and the one before and the one before and… Everything after gen 4 (MAYBE 5) has been a step back
Sorry, but I DO NOT want the Acreus catching mechanics in the mainline games. It takes the strategy out of it and makes catching Pokemon low risk, low reward.
It was fine, great, for Acreus but I like the traditional battle, weaken, catch in mainline games.
I guess I’m in the minority who actually liked sword & shield. I’m gonna stick with it until newer hardware gets released and hopefully game freak supports scarlet & violet in the long run.
There is always someone that likes something if its popular enough. Sonic 06 has a lot a fans.
Why. Caves were 2 corners. Did you ever play black2? Heart gold? Smh
@@Roxus1 Played them all since red and blue, still like Sword and Shield alot. Don't get all the hate honestly, including the dlc of course.
No you're in the majority. Every Pokemon is widely beloved across the board. The opinions of internet trolls mean nothing when the games continue to sell well for 20 years
Damn, everyone in the comments is really hating on this game. I agree with a lot of Matty’s thoughts on it. I am having a blast doing co-op with a friend and just exploring the world. Would I love the graphics and technical issues to be better? Of course! Is it detracting from the game for me? Not at all. For me, this series is about relaxing, exploring and catching new Pokémon. I think this game does a great job and I really hope they continue this new open-world formula moving forward. Maybe get more people on the team to iron out the technical issues and improve the graphics. That would make it perfect in my eyes!
I don’t play Pokémon but my wife plays them all… I know the switch isn’t a powerful console but how is it possible for these games to run so poorly when they basically look like a wii game. It’s also baffling that Pokémon has been around for soooooo long and they have endless amount of feedback to create their games with but every time it seems like no one is really happy and they are always missing features that people want
Wii game?? Even the PS2 loads better then this game
" I know the switch isn’t a powerful console" - Zelda BOTW 2017 vs Pokemon SV 2022.
Hardware isn't a problem, the unit is capable of more actually not less. The issue is in a very rushed and shoddy code. Which didn't have nearly enough development time. It needs clearing up. Entire elements redone. Hopefully they spend some time doing so and then release a more extensive patch in time for the holiday season.
Sword and Shield gets a bad wrap. It wasn’t a technical mess like this at least and the Pokémon were better.
Most honest review I’ve seen. Painting this game as unplayable or overtly flawed is a flat lie. But Gamefreaks feet should be held to the fire going forward.
Fr I’m so tired of people either saying the game is perfect or that it’s the worst game ever, people need to chill I hate this fandom ngl
idk if i’m alone but man I wish they kept the Let’s Go graphics, i still think those games look the best out of every pokemon switch mainline game.
In hindsight working on Arceus at the same time as this was a mistake. Splitting the team between two big open world games, especially for a small company like GameFreak, was not the best plan.
I hate hearing the "GaMEfreAK's JuSt a sMaLL cOMpaNy" excuse when Pokemon is the world's biggest media franchise.
@Sleepy 🐉 If GameFreak can't make good Pokemon games, then the franchise should be given to a developer that can.
@@dw1419 GameFreak is a small company though. That’s part of the problem.
@@JIreland1992 When you put out some of the world's top selling videogames on a yearly basis, you can afford to expand your company staffing enough to put out high quality games. The problem is enough people keeping buying the (mediocre) games despite the problems that GameFreak has been able to "get away with it."
If not for the performance issues, this would be top 5 pokemon imo
It’s true and such a damn shame
Is it top 10?
@@simpgod2170 I would say so, I’ve played all the Pokémon games and if you ignore the technical stuff, this game is definitely the best switch Pokémon game. I also found it to be more fun than Sun&Moon, and X/Y but those games are more polished than this one. I have yet to beat it yet but This game checks all my boxes as of now. Just poor performance does hurt it.
@@crispymelon2114 yeah even just playing through the exposition made me genuinely wonder what the storyline is about, as opposed to sword and shield where 5 minutes in you already can tell what’s gonna be the entire story except for the part where your rival gets depressed for like three gyms which was the only interesting part tbh
There aren't any performance issues though
The coop might not seem like a huge deal, especially since it’s not very cooperative, but being able to play on release with my girlfriend was such an amazing bonding experience. Pokémon was such a big part of both of our childhoods and to be able to play together in the same game was so amazing for both of us. Wish the game was in a better state, but for what it was I don’t regret buying it for that experience alone
I was thinking of buying the game for me and my girlfriend. I’d imagine just being able to see them right there next to you is cool 😂
This game was developed alongside Arceus, so I fully expected it to be a step back, especially since they themselves didn't expect Arceus to be such a success. I feel Gen 10 will be the one everyone wants if these people are at all competent.
People have been forlornly hoping the next gen will be "the one" since the gen 6 hype.
@@nickchivers9029 Pokémon fans are the equivalent of Charlie Brown kicking the football.
Imagine being such a pathetic defender
@@nickchivers9029 yeah I gave up like 2 guns ago.
I respect your opinion I personally didn't care too much for Arceus. And I had a blast playing last night with my friends on Scarlet and Violet I just love that you can do everything in multiplayer Like I can run the story if I want while they're out doing whatever and if they find a rare pokémon they let me know I run over there and I catch it
sword and shield was a catastrophic mess. Gamefreak lying to drop quality generation to generation, and holy fk my adult coworker (aged 29) is the kinda person to play bf2042 with bots to "get ahead of the crowd that is hating." He legitimately has 0 sense of quality and bought sw/sh, said it's his favorite, does not care about any issues that halfhearted 3ds port brought. We will never get quality from gamefreak, because consoom
I agree with a lot of stuff you've brought up but I just wanna throw something out there. It was good that the game removed styles. I felt they had this unfair nature to them and did reward skill but a lot of the time, the way your pokemon and your opponent's pokemon moved was out of your control. I feel that it was a smart balance change to remove this feature.
Dude, this is the most comprehensive review I’ve seen. Thank you, dude!
I really hate how you can't enter most of the houses and interact with the NPC's properly anymore :(
I haven’t been watching your videos for too long but by god you have become my favorite reviewer. You touch on everything in such a calm and brilliant way. You know how to praise and critique. I love you and your content. Keep it up!!! 💕
I love the game and am liking the new direction the game is going in (minus there not being shiny sparkle and sound in over world). The frame rate definitely needs to be fixed. If not for that it’d be the best Pokémon in forever IMO. It actually has some good challenging moments too where i was at with the fire team star boss. I would like to be able to move my character in battle like PLA and throw Pokémon balls to actually catch Pokémon in there too
You said everything I was thinking. I especially love how you mentioned reviewers review this game without playing.
I agree Arceus battle and catching elements need to be the standard! It’s sorely missed! So bummed it wasn’t in this game. Hopefully it was a trial run to see how people liked it, as I know these games were developed around the same time. My hope is they see how well Received. Arceus was and add it to the next generation. Please!! 🙏
Arceus was a different style of game. It's a different genre. Of course it's gonna have different mechanics.
I understand that. But if they can combine some of those mechanics the potential for the next generation will be huge. It would possibly be a breath of the wild moment for Pokémon. They are so close to making the ultimate Pokémon game that we all imagined when we played red and blue years ago
@@dinosaurtimeandfunnyvideos What genre is it then? Action RPG
I think you give great honest reviews I’m shocked you don’t have more subs. Great job 👏
This is on track to be one of your highest performing videos on the channel. Well done Matt
"I was at the midnight release and it was a bunch of adults/young adults......." Yeah dude.... Not expecting a bunch of 9yr olds at a midnight release
I really loved Arceus alot. Love aiming the ball and catching it I will help others. Great game
This is one of the best takes of Scarlet and Violet I’ve seen on TH-cam so far. I don’t agree with everything you said but You were able to see all of the good the games have to offer, something I think everyone else is overlooking. As a person who’s very detail oriented I can’t be too hard on Game Freak because of just how much they did here. It still has some things to iron out and fix but in my opinion, this was the BEST Pokémon experience I’ve ever had on Nintendo Switch. They gave me what I wanted and because of that I can’t be too mad at them.
this is a great review dude. this game can be really fun but is held by gamefreaks poor attempt of optimization, and its weird people blame it directly on just switch hardware, they could've made it way smoother. There are lots of things as a long time fan that are worth trying in this game, but desperately needs another patch.
Thanks for always coming up with the day one reviews, it’s been very helpful multiple times now
The lack of voice acting stood out right away. The game feels slow as well w/o the catching mechanics from PLA. I really enjoyed that game. With more trainers its perfect. I really hope they go back to that formula.
They’re never adding voice acting and I sure hope they don’t
@@tearsintherain6311 then you're part of the problem
@@Warshipgamers why would anyone want VA in a Pokémon game that would be so horrible especially because it would have English dub anime VA which always suck
@@tearsintherain6311 we’re about to be 2023 stop dickriding
@@Warshipgamers and??? Bro if they added va that’s a deal breaker for me this is Pokémon not nhl or fifa or whatever you play hockey man
Did you play without the Day One Patch?
The most shocking thing for me was how widely available the game was on launch day 😊
As much as I love pokemon, I just cant justify spending the money on scarlet/violet, the price tag (60 euros?!) is absolutely absurd for all the problems this game has and all the content it doesn't have - learned my lesson from sword and shield.
They have ALL the resources in the world to make an incredible pokemon game, but since the fans eat up anything and everything pokemon related it doesn't matter what garbage they push out, as long as it has cute starter pokemon, I guess. 🙄
Literally been playing for 3 hours, already caught a Shiny Pig and Psyduck lol. I'm feeling lucky, should buy a lotto ticket
I think if it weren't for the technical and performance issues of the game, this would have been a resounding success, because the story and content and mechanics are really great, this is in many ways the kind of mainline Pokemon game that we need. I love being able to play the game on my own pace and just spend hours running around in the open world picking up items and battling Pokemon, and I love being able to co-op with my friends and have fun together. TBH this is a genuinely great game that is undermined by the technical problems.
WHY did they not include the awesome mechanic of throwing a pokeball and catching them in real time? That was essentially one of the fundamental reasons why Arceus was amazing and practically a new mechanic that could've revolutionised the franchise' gameplay. SUCH a miss, but so glad it's open world. I hope in the next generation they maintain the open world theme and bring back the catching mechanic of Arceus. FOR now I'm gonna complete my Pokedex in Violet, Woohoo!
My guess would be that, since both games were in development at the same time and Arceus was more of a test project/trying something new, they stuck to the classic main game formula for SV. Arceus turned out to be a success and many people love the new mechanics, but implementing them into SV might have delayed the game. Something the game would have profited from anyway, if just for more polish. But yeah, unlikely with TPC.
Hopefully, the next game will have the best of both worlds!
Its also entirely possible that they knew this game would suffer with performance and decided that this would take too long to implement or would hurt performance even more so they didnt put it in.
It's because Arceus was a spinoff, not a main series game.
@@insertnamehere0112 that doesn’t mean they couldn’t also use the mechanic
I will likely pick it up before long, because most people seem to agree there’s a good game under all the issues. But you’re right, it really is inexcusable for them to release the game in this state. I’ve seen lots of people blame the hardware, but like you pointed out, there are plenty of Switch games that look and perform better from franchises that don’t make half as much money as Pokémon does. More powerful hardware won’t change the fact that these games keep getting bigger but have to be made super quickly with no possible delays in order to coincide with the release of trading cards, anime, McDonald’s promotions, etc. Pokémon games need longer development cycles to reach their full potential.
The new release of today is the retro of tomorrow. You are just ahead of the curve.
I think this is a good step in the right direction BUTTT how do we have a dev team/company (game freak & Nintendo) gross more money than ROCKSTAR & GTAV and animations on npcs and trees are going at 10fps.. how does GTA 3 from a PS2 RUN SMOOTHER… HOW… with BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.. game freak is a joke… I’m enjoying myself still but man.. why do I feel like I can optimize the game better myself…. When the game freak team has how many millions or billions of dollars at their disposal and one person can do better..
I’m returning my double pack because of the performance. I wanted to like this game so badly, but unfortunately the frame rate renders it unplayable at points.
Edit: Also all of the shadows are comprised of cubes and it’s laughable.
You’re wrong
@@ProtoBrown sorry if you like the game man, but the performance of it is atrocious.
@@ProtoBrown except everyone is saying the same thing
Why did you buy the double pack?
@@NineToFiveGamerUC0079 that’s a good question 😂
Thank you! Everyone defending the performance issues of this game always resorts to "its for kids". Nah man, it's grown adults buying these games, let's be real here. These same people making the "it's for kids" argument are also the same people in Pikemon Scarlett and Violet fan groups on Facebook. We like pokemon. We don't want to see it with issues like these. Everyone is allowed to both praise the game for what it does good and criticize what it does wrong.
The games structure and gameplay is great. But the visual issues/glitches is pretty appalling for such a rich game company. I’d expect more from them. But I will give credit where credit is due. The gameplay and open world is very cool
I’ve been playing for 1 hour now and I already can tell that graphics are a HUGE disappointment. They’ve gone backwards compared to sword & shield! And then the lags I noticed in movements of characters, white outlines everywhere…. some things are worked out so good and detailed but then you have other things that could fit in a Nintendo64 game as well…. doesn’t look like they have finished it properly. I’d rather wait another year to buy a proper version graphic wise than buying this now…. very very disappointing…. It could have been so beautiful
Dynamax was literally your Pokemon getting bigger, but it's far more controversial than that if you look at the competitive scene. Pokemon may be basic in structure, but competitive really shows how wild things can get. The campaigns may tend to be weak, but play online and you'll see what kind of madness happens
Still I find the competitive argument dumb, shoving an unbalanced mechanic in single player down everyone's throat isn't justified just because of the maybe 2% of people who play competitive.
Dynamax is stupid bring back mega evo
@@thetabbyguy921 everyone I know who is not a kid plays Pokémon for the competitive
@@tearsintherain6311 I personally don't know a single person who does
@@thetabbyguy921 I only play these games for the competitive battles.
Great review with fair criticism. Cheers 🙌
I love Legend Arceus so much. It's a complete game without version exclusive bs. Though it lacks endgame component.
Oo that’s tru just some legendary “have to own other games” exclusive bs that kept meee from finishing the dex 😍 (on a hyper focus binge in the first two weeks and kinda haven’t touched it since 😮😵💫😦) I’m taking scarlet a lot more chill but super excited to try and finish it with some 400 and at least a few trades needed 😮😮😼
And Gamefreak will continue releasing unfinished garbage because people in our age group (mid 20s-early 30s) just continue to buy this crap based of nostalgia. My wife and i were really excited when they announced a pokemon game with open world coop, but after seeing the release trailer for the gameplay and the world, i dont see how anyone that respects themself would still buy this game... AT FULL PRICE!
My all time favorite game is New Vegas. I don't care about super smooth performance as long as the game itself is fun and the story is compelling.
Yeah yeah, biggest richest property, blah blah blah.
Is the game fun? Can you play the game? That's all the fucking matters.
No, that’s absolutely not “all that matters”
@@michaelmatthews1567 Yes it is
@@michaelmatthews1567 As long there isn't anything totally game breaking (i.e. most bugs in Bethesda games), the game just needs to be fun and enjoyable.
@@michaelmatthews1567 ever heard of personal opinion?
Game Freak reminds me of old feudal Japan. It’s cool and all, but it keeps rejecting technological advancement out of some misplaced sense of pride with a shade of annoying arrogance.
Can’t agree with you more bro, this shouldn’t be happening. I wish I had continued my game dev career so I could get in to GF and change this lol
Fan Fact. Pokémon is the highest grossing franchise of all time surpassing Marvel and Star Wars. So they literally have no excuse to produce make a great game. I wished Pokémon grew up with his fans, but it's clear the Pokémon games are just kid games to make kids buy merchandises.
Best explanation is that the games are just a commercial to sell the real product, merchandise lol
I think the game took some great elements from other prior Pokémon games. Yes, the technical problems do hunt this game but underneath it is a GREAT game.
In my opinion, I think Nuzlocke really saved the game for me. It’s much more challenging and engaging than playing normally and my preferred way to play Pokémon ever since I saw TFS Leaf Green Nuzlocke.
Matty, I think you should try a Nuzlocke play through. I and I’m sure many others would love to watch it!
Nuzlockes seem like it just makes you have to grind more to not lose your team and get a game over
I really wanna see into Game Freak's inner workings cause everyone always seems to expect modern AAA standards from them, using the "most profitable media franchise" argument as a reason why. I've always just heard that they're a small company, but I really wanna know just how small it is that after four years of releases on the Switch, this is still how these games come out.
Most of the profit from this franchise comes from the merch, but it really starts to feel like The Pokemon Company considers the video games supplementary to that. And that's sad. They wouldn't have a brand if not for these games.
SwSh sold over 20 Million Copies and that's the GAME ALONE.. 60$ x 20 Million, so there's no denying the games alone are profitable... And Gamefreak is making games faaaaaaar back 2 decades ago, the studio is f*cking older than most of it's fans so it's not lack of experience as well..
They're just simply disrespectful at this point and I think the Fans deserved the treatment since they will still buy the games and even defend the criticisms it gets..
The harsh release schedule for games release doesn't do them any favour. They basically have 0 time for optimization, because they must keep their deadlines which are solely based on the anime... rather than the other way around. I'm afraid as long as that doesn't change, we can't really expect to get truly, properly polished games.
@@insentia8424 Not to mention they spent most of their time making 2D games on small, handheld consoles. Now suddenly they're expected to jump ahead multiple console generations AND program 1000+ individual creatures, so I'm not surprised Pokemon's being cannibalized by its own brand.
So sad to see one of the biggest franchises on the planet in such a state, but i guess that’s what you get when you put quantity over quality.
Lol literally just got back from Best Buy. I’m gonna eat my five guys and then play Scarlet and Violet but first I watch your video Maddie.
Really like to play but the glitch and lag from ive seen people playing on stream and reviews is a dealbreaker
Lol, dude what. Yeah, Pokemon Sword and Shield had issues, but middling music? I won't accept that slander.
Yeah I still can’t the gym battle music out of my head. So far the music in Violet is very forgettable and I appreciate the osts more than anything else.
Just did a couple of raid battles and I must say they are way better than they were in sword and shield. I can actually join a raid lol.
This is the last Pokémon game I’m buying, sticking to the good old emulators and playing the classics, it’s too bad they couldn’t finely polish the game before releasing it like the Zelda games, they are definitely pushing for revenue versus user experience now
Hey let's not jinx it we don't know the state Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
I've played the first 2 hours so far I think it's great I do hope they fix the fps
Best Pokemon mainline game since omega and alpha. Sword and shield left such a bad taste in my mouth that I almost quit pokemon all together.
For clarification, the team behind Pokemon Legends did not make sun and moon, they made ultra sun and ultra moon.
Until Legends, they had exclusively made remakes and enhanced versions, which I think has been proven a massive waste of talent and time after what they did with Pokemon Legends (which is imo the greatest pokemon game ever made and its not even close)
If Pokemon wasn't so popular, the contrarians would all be praising it as a masterpiece
The pop-in is nuts
Played Arceus and really enjoyed it. The omission of the mechanics in Arceus may make e want to wait for the next Gen hardware and playing Pokemon without limitations.
There is so much that is realeased this past month and more to look forward to so I can miss this game.
I agree they should’ve took the catching and fighting from the previous Pokémon game it made catching Pokémon actually feel like a mini game, sort of a skill to get better at, and take focus, then sometimes when you messed up you missed that Pokémon and that made it feel so much better
Typical GF "oh, we did something you like? "... Well time to change it up
@@jackkawf4449 I think they intentionally do this though so people still buy the previous games lol
Really good review man!
The fact you couldn’t just throw a ball was the most disappointing moment for me. I loved that so much and it doesn’t feel right without it.
It seems like a big step backwards for a mechanic that isnt very complex 🤦
I bought both of them. it is good that people dislike it because I got it $25 cheaper for both. :) Hehe
14.6 hours in and all I've done is get 1 gym badge. Despite it's glaring issues it is SOOOOOOOO FUN and teaming up with 3 of my friends is a great time.
One of the things I see a lot of people complaining about is the lack of level scaling in the games.
I thought that the lack was actually a good thing, as in most pokemon game's I have a regular team for almost the entire game. With a few swaps depending on the game needs.
I feel like the lack of level scaling has allowed me to level up a team and go back into the next story line with a few pokemon that I might have originally passed up.
So far I have 4 basic teams that I use for each part of the story. I have a Gym Team, A team Star team, a pokedex team, and a titan team.
It's definitely more enjoyable if you go that route I find. Obviously the game would be less fun if you spent the game with the same team of level 100s plowing on weak trainers and pokemon
they need to take longer when making their games because it’s clear that a 3-year gap isn’t enough, especially when they’re making games in between the gap as well. i think scarlet and violet is a massive upgrade to SWSH but it still could use a few improvements
I have not been in love with a pokemon game in so freaking long and I've played since emerald. I love this game. I cant stop playing it, watching people experience it on twitch, and I freaking love it. I know there are fps issues but they never bother me. I know they need fixed but it truly doesn't interupt my enjoyment of this game.
The catching mechanic of Legends Arceus is really needed in an open world pokemon game. It felt weird that I can throw the pokeballs of my pokemon but I can throw pokeballs to catch them. Also feels weird that I can't just walk away to run away from wild pokemon battles. It's an open world but the main gameplay isn't.
Did you play it on the OLED switch or on the normal one? I am wondering if the performance differs between the two.
i played it on oled, its still laggy as hell
I cant believe how bad Pokemon graphics are like we're in 2022, it's not a fucking excuse anymore. And I dont want to hear all the same lame excuses like "oh but its all about the Pokemon, not the environment, NPCs, etc." like how many excuses do we have to give this multi billion dollar company like its ridiculous. I've seen smaller indie games do so much more with LESS.
Why don’t you ask the fanboys who simped for their older titles with drivel like “Pokémon Black and White pushed the DS to its limits”!
When the DS launched with an N64 remake with added content.
Pokémon fans need to play other games lmao.
Graphics are not that important lmao
After playing a few hours, this has been by far the best the Pokemon franchise has been presented in 3d thus far IMO. It is much more engaging and cohesive than Sword and Shield. The characters are better, the early game is better, the structure of the entire game is better.
It has blended Arceus and traditional Pokemon in a pretty balanced way (still miss throwing balls to quick catch pokemon though).
As you explore, the world seems alive and the pokemon are fun to watch as you battle. Much better than the wild areas. One example is being able to knock pokemon down from trees or mid flight as the fly over head adds so much more engagement to the world around you.
The UI is the best so far. Its not clunky like Sword and Shield and the way the Pokedex is presented is refreshing and new. I love the map and how you can rotate your character to point where you want to go while viewing the map.
As for the graphics, Pokemon have never looked better in a mainline game and the art style is as "Pokemon" as you can get lol.
The new pokemon designs are always subjective but for me, are pretty good. Pawmi is my favorite so far, and there is a spider thing with a ball of silk (looks like a ball of yarn) on its ass. Lol.
Where Sword and Shield felt lifeless, Violet and Scarlet feel alive and exciting.
Yes. There are absolutely frame drops and performance issues that can not be ignored and hopefully as time goes by and the game gets patched, gamefreak will find ways to optimize it. Arceus has the same animation frame drops in distant pokemon and people. Watch Gyarados fly from a distance. It looks hilarious. I also had environments glitch out when starting battles and my Pokemon being invisible in Arceus but it did not take away from the overall experience.
Overall, I think if you are a long time Pokemon fan, Gen 9 is nothing but good news in terms of how the games are designed, structured, and presented. There are a lot of fantastic quality of life updates here and the open world is so fun to explore. Vio/Scar also has characters that I actually like (so far) lol. Do not let the negative reviews scare you away. Try it for yourself and see if the performance issues ruin it for you. I think the core game is strong enough for most to tolerate it, especially if new patches optimize the game further.
I think you nailed it right on the head. We're not trying to totally crap all over the game BUT there has to be some level of accountability in it's awful performance. There's "stylistic choice" and there's "we did the bear minimum". If the perfomance of a game is poor, all the new features and cool additionals fall by the wayside. The performance issues I'm seeing right now are why I'm keep my double pack sealed till either a series of patches come out to fix it or my 14 day return window closes. I am also disappointed in some of the AMAZING nuances from Arceus that didn't get brought over. I hope these performance issues do get patched because it's the MAIN THING holding me back from opening my games right now. And I want nothing more than to enjoy these games. I had an absolute blast with Arceus and loved it SO MUCH so this main title launch has been a let down.
There’s a memory leak problem that is probably easy to patch so if you see the game downscaling try to close it and open it, pretty sure they forced them to release it early and this makes me think it’s maybe not even using the CPUs boost mode because in emulators the textures and shadings are way better, I don’t think they would’ve added those to the game only to not be used at all
I remember seeing a clip on its bad performance but it's just the same clip each time, so I appreciate you showing more examples of that
frame rate is dog but overall better than sword and shield
Supposedly there's a memory leak, restarting the game may fix issues if you see a bunch of problems back to back. At least until they patch it
Pokémon for me is still an iconic franchise, but I’m very much an old school fan. There’s a big part of me that wish there was a more adult evolution of the franchise as well, building on things I remember from the early days of the franchise.
I mean, we got a Pokémon for protection against a dangerous world. We butted heads with mobsters, dealt with death, cruelty, and sci-if horror stories like the creation of MewTwo.
Pokémon were cute then too, but some were also terrifying and monstrous- especially with the early sprite art and 8-bit cries and music.
I know I’m probably an old geezer on this, but I kinda miss the “generic” designs of Pokémon looking like forms of real animals, more than colourful combinations of base shapes.
I’d love to see a game that wasn’t mainly aimed at kids. I’d love to set out on a journey where catching Pokémon is difficult so you have to limit your options and connect with your team. Have trainers you meet be challenging so they come across as more than XP-pools in the shape of an NPC.
Maybe use online features in ways similar to GTA where other players can exist within your world and you can happen to come across them? How cool would it be to arrive at a Pokémon centre and meet a player at a similar level and chat with them about your experience so far, maybe go out back to a field and have a battle?
Ehh, I understand tho. The IP has set its direction for a long time now, and it makes sense to keep it for kids. But then thinking of the tone they set with the older games or even the Origins anime, it’s hard to not ponder on what other directions they could’ve taken..
I love how balanced this review was. Definitely gonna look into the coop aspect
I dont get the negativity surrounding this release. It feels to play like you imagined it was on gen 1. Its true that on the technical aspect still needs work, but i didnt have any of the stuttering problems mentioned on this video. I miss some of the Legends Arceus mechanics....but well...its easy one of the best mainline modern takes on the franchise
For all the bugs & glitches I'd call it the premier pokemon experience a very close second to Arceus in my opinion at least