Support NeoGAF

[Draugoth]

I didn't think this was possible!

Disgruntled players are review bombing Pokemon Scarlet & Violet. Over on Metacritic, while the latest mainline Pokemon game has a score of 77 based on critic reviews, the user score is telling a far different story. And it seems players are getting increasingly angry.

At the time of writing, Pokemon Scarlet has a user score of just 2.8 based on ratings from 860 people. One user scored it zero and commented: "Everyone giving that game more than 5/10 points is straight up lying. The game is the worst running game I've played in 20 years". Another angry review gave it a slightly higher score of 2/10 and said Scarlet is "barely playable on Switch Lite" and that the game is "ugly". Pokemon Violet, on the other hand, has a slightly higher score of 3.4 based on 409 ratings from user scores on Metacritic. "This game is extremely broken in many ways. The game itself is a broken and buggy mess," wrote one 'joaresazrio123' who scored Violet a zero.

While a game's visuals and how they are perceived is a more subjective interpretation, many have made unfavourable comparisons for Game Freak's titles. While the Switch is aging hardware, many have pointed out how titles like Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which is also an open world game, is able to look far more graphically impressive. Other comparisons have been made to Breath of the Wild and Capcom's Monster Hunter Rise.

 

[Saiyan-Rox]

It's the performance that hurts it the most for me.

Is it visually striking? Hell no not even close but neither was Arceus and I enjoyed that.

But the performance is downright abysmal and needs sorted.

 

[Sojiro]

I mean BotW was a fucking launch game and it absolutely trounces this game visually. Game Freak should be embarrassed with this

 

[Robb]

Well deserved.

 

[Griffon]

I'm not a pokemon player. But if the game is fun and people are enjoying it, who cares?

 

[Thief1987]

Also has highest preorders in the franchise history. TPC execs surely will wipe laughter tears with 100$ banknotes looking at these scores.
Consumers are idiots, it's a fact, and it's sad.

 

[Same ol G]

People who are actually playing the games don't have time to write these fake reviews.
The sales won't reflect these scores

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[Celcius]

Good, rake them over the coals
This my friends is why you never preorder a game. Or at least on Steam you have a 2 hour window to return it.

 

[OmegaSpirit32X]

It's funny how people will shit on Sonic for having an average game but people will give Pokemon a pass for having mediocre ones

 

[Chastten]

The game runs like absolute dogshit, but at least it's fun. Solid 6/10 game for me.

The same can't be said for Sword/Shield and especially Shining Pearl/Brilliant Diamond. Those were probably the worst games I've played in the past 5 years and don't deserve anything higher than a 4/10.

 

[LRKD]

Disgruntled players are review bombing Pokemon Scarlet & Violet

Back in the day, we called this "customers giving their honest opinion on a shit product"

 

[Kamina]

Back in the day, we called this "customers giving their honest opinion on a shit product"

This
A company can take criticism seriously and do something about it or they can choose to ignore it / claim that it is review bombing.
One has potential, the other will produce more shit.

 

[Saber]

Back in the day, we called this "customers giving their honest opinion on a shit product"

Its funny that everytime people gives low scores to a well know game/company, its aways review bombing. But when everyone gives 10, yup its totally normal. No reverse bomb at all, just everyone giving their honest score. Masterpiece.

 

[hemo memo]

Back in the day, we called this "customers giving their honest opinion on a shit product"

It takes less than a minute to write “This game suffers from very bad performance” 3 and press submit. It doesn’t mean that review is fake as that is apparent from the first hour of play.

 

[Sgt.Asher]

Gameplay wise It's far better than sword and shield. On the technical side It's dog shit, i have no idea why they just didn't use cel shading. Wind waker on the gamecube looks better.
It's fun for a jank ass piece of shit

 

[Fake]

 

[Azurro]

Will it affect sales? No? Well then, the reviews mean nothing.

 

[sachos]

I was watching Pink Gorilla game store livestream on Twitch and the line during launch day was huge, they sold like 150+ copies. They sadly won't care as people keep buying it.

 

[Valedix]

Thats what happens when you rush a mainline game series

 

[LordCBH]

Ok.

*goes back to playing the game*

 

[NightmareFarm]

I'm surprised the critic reviews are even CLOSE to 80.

 

[theclaw135]

I'm surprised the critic reviews are even CLOSE to 80.

Professional critics are funny. Puzzle League was a critical darling.

 

[NightmareFarm]

Professional critics are funny. Puzzle League was a critical darling.

Something something paid shills.

 

[Celcius]

Back in my day this meant something:

 

[Majukun]

Back in my day this meant something:

eh not really

it's true that the seal was part of the videogame reinessance led by nintendo in the states, but it was there mainly to indicate that the game would work and that someone had reviewed the content...didn't say much about the quality.

 

[Kataploom]

Back in my day this meant something:

It meant what it means today: Software can be played from beginning to end without any critical error and crashes and won't damage the console, etc etc. Thisv must be the most misunderstood seal ever lol

This won't affect sales much now since a lot of people already preordered before knowing the game was so broken, but can affect sales later imo, a lot of people will be more cautious to get a Pokemon game at launch

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

Back in my day this meant something:

 

[Kamina]

The LJN Rainbow of shit invalidates any seal of quality.

 

[Pagusas]

I'm not a pokemon player. But if the game is fun and people are enjoying it, who cares?

There is a bare minimum graphical/performance metric a game need to hit before you can say it doesn’t matter, sadly this games performance and bugs is detrimental to the actual fun gameplay it’s trying to achieve. Truly its performance is that bad.

 

[Trazyn the Infinite]

I'm not a pokemon player. But if the game is fun and people are enjoying it, who cares?

There does need to be proper criticism of the objectively terrible performance. But I also am having more fun with this than I did Ragnarok. I will take a fun Broken game over a boring technical masterpiece.

 

[AetherZX]

Well, no they're not. BDSP is rated lower and is a mainline game.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

It will sell 25-30 million copies like every other mainline Pokemon title.

For some reason every Bethesda/Todd Howard game also has millions of bugs and runs like shit yet also sells 20+ million copies. Bugs and performance just don't matter as much as people like to imagine.

 

[Mister Wolf]

It's up to the fans to start punishing them for this ineptitude.

 

[Spukc]

The game is fun

 

[Bragr]

You know, it's almost a compliment if you look at it in a stupid way.

That it's still close to 80 is impressive. If it ran well, it would sit at around 90, because the game is frankly one of the best Pokemon games out there.

Doesn't matter though, as the Pokemon fans would buy this shit even if it was on the Gameboy. The brand is just too damn big.

 

[MrA]

It will sell 25-30 million copies like every other mainline Pokemon title.

For some reason every Bethesda/Todd Howard game also has millions of bugs and runs like shit yet also sells 20+ million copies. Bugs and performance just don't matter as much as people like to imagine.

Only if they ruin the fun, sure pokemon is buggy, really buggy this time, but if it doesn't ruin people's fun they won't care, me, I like earth defense force and I get upset if it isn't running at an unstable framerate with millions of bugs everywhere

 

[Cao Cao]

They even removed the option to disable battle animation and Switch/Set Mode...

 

[GymWolf]

After only 2475683 releases, better late than even later i guess.

 

[Bragr]

<a href="">

 

[april6e]

It can't possibly be worse than Sun/Moon and Arceus even with the performance issues.

Both of those games were embarrassments to Pokemon and didn't have the basic core gameplay elements that every other Pokemon game had.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

But they still bought it. I'm sure Nintendo is drying their tears with Franklin's.

 

[NightmareFarm]

It can't possibly be worse than Sun/Moon and Arceus even with the performance issues.

Both of those games were embarrassments to Pokemon and didn't have the basic core gameplay elements that every other Pokemon game had.

Tbf Sun/Moon changed up the formula because everyone had been complaining about pokemon being the same game every year for a long time.

 

[Jubenhimer]

I think we all know by this point that Game Freak is completely inept at anything related to coding or programing.

 

[The Skull]

Nintendo need to kick Game Freak and the other company who co-own the IP in the arse.

Having watched friends play a lot of the game, this is the cyberpunk of Pokémon.

 

[Labadal]

Yet sales wise it's doing great.

Unfortunately, people don't care.

 

[nightmare-slain]

I'm glad I decided to not buy it.

I'm not being a part of the problem anymore. I didn't buy Arceus but I did buy Sword. That was not bad but still not what Pokemon should be.

Nintendo/Pokemon Company will be happy with sales I'm sure but they really ought to sort Game Freak out....well that's just my opinion what do I know

 

[rodrigolfp]

At least it doesn't have almost 500ms of input lag, like some 10/10 (cof cof RDR2 cof) game out there.

 

[wOs]

It can't possibly be worse than Sun/Moon and Arceus even with the performance issues.

Both of those games were embarrassments to Pokemon and didn't have the basic core gameplay elements that every other Pokemon game had.

Why are you implying arceus was a mainline game? Arceus might have looked like shit, but no Pokémon game before it ever made me feel as much like a trainer. I'd take Arceus gameplay as the mainly line gameplay any day is the week. I couldn't get past the opening of sun/moon so boring.

 

[Kadve]

And im sure Nintendo and Gamefreak will cry into their huge piles of money tonight. Pokemon is one of those series where it doesn't matter if the cartridges explodes in your face when you've finished the game. People would still buy them.

I mean, im pretty sure people are ok with this "dual release" thing only because of nostalgia. Any other company/franchise would be burned for trying something like it nowadays.