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Pokémon Scarlet & Violet - Review Thread

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
Fh2TenuaYAA4Mix


What annoys me, I cannot make a Male character without it looking Female! This is the closest I could get to looking like me minus a beard

Lil bitch boy
 

supernova8

Banned
The most jarring thing I saw in the reviews was the weird sprite version of NPCs at a certain distance (surprisingly short distance at that) moving at like 10 fps or something. Also I think it was also in Arceus and the fact they didn't stop doing it just proves they either don't care or they think it's acceptable.

It literally looks unfinished as a game. Alas, people will still buy it in droves and the developers will never fix it.

The issue has to be one of two things:

1) They are competent as developers but simply don't have enough time/money/both (due to it being yearly)
or
2) They are incompetent but their code base is such a mess that handing it someone else would just end in disaster anyway, so we're stuck with Game Freak unless the franchise takes a break (like one or two years), which we know will never happen because...money

If they wanted to (they absolutely do have the money) they could hire more developers and/or poach some real tech wizards to improve their game engine. Check out that video series where the modder dude fixes Super Mario 64 to run at a higher framerate on the N64 itself just by optimizing the game engine. This stuff can clearly be done. It's just a matter of whether Game Freak (management) and Nintendo (a major shareholder) want to do it.
 
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The most jarring thing I saw in the reviews was the weird sprite version of NPCs at a certain distance (surprisingly short distance at that) moving at like 10 fps or something. Also I think it was also in Arceus and the fact they didn't stop doing it just proves they either don't care or they think it's acceptable.

It literally looks unfinished as a game. Alas, people will still buy it in droves and the developers will never fix it.

The issue has to be one of two things:

1) They are competent as developers but simply don't have enough time/money/both (due to it being yearly)
or
2) They are incompetent but their code base is such a mess that handing it someone else would just end in disaster anyway, so we're stuck with Game Freak unless the franchise takes a break (like one or two years), which we know will never happen because...money

If they wanted to (they absolutely do have the money) they could hire more developers and/or poach some real tech wizards to improve their game engine. Check out that video series where the modder dude fixes Super Mario 64 to run at a higher framerate on the N64 itself just by optimizing the game engine. This stuff can clearly be done. It's just a matter of whether Game Freak (management) and Nintendo (a major shareholder) want to do it.
It’s important to more Game Freak doesn’t have the money. It is The Pokémon Company that does. GF can’t do anything without their say. It is no different than looking at 343i and their piss poor treatment of Halo Infinite despite the mountains of money and resources that MS has.
 
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Ozzie666

Member
It's a shame Acerus was a step in a better and different direction. I hope they continue in both directions. But the state of this game is pretty terrible and comes off as lazy. This is EA Madden Level loyal fan abuse, maybe worse. Even with the Switch's power issues, a lot of this appears to be their own fault.

I would never tell people who love these games to stop buying them. Everyone will continue to buy and it's where gaming is now. Just like Diablo Immortal, there is still some fun to be had. But it could be so much more and not such a chore.
 

PhoenixTank

Member
Find it funny as hell that on pokemon release day DF have shown a comparison between the laughably awful original version of ARK on Switch and the shockingly decent looking new switch version that fucking Grove Street Games have built.




ARK was never a light game even on PCs but an an open world it dunks on pokemon here as far as I can tell.

Gamefreak need to spend a lot of time fixing this up.
 
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Elysion

Banned
It’s important to more Game Freak doesn’t have the money. It is The Pokémon Company that does. GF can’t do anything without their say. It is no different than looking at 343i and their piss poor treatment of Halo Infinite despite the mountains of money and resources that MS has.

The Pokemon Company doesn’t own Game Freak though, Game Freak owns The Pokemon Company – or rather, they own one third of it, the other two thirds belong to Nintendo and Creatures Inc. respectively. If GF wanted, they absolutely could’ve delayed S+V by a year. Even if Creatures Inc. was against it, Nintendo most likely would’ve supported GF, since they have no problems delaying games to ensure a certain level of quality.

The decision to release three Pokemon games in the last twelve months is on GF. They are the developers, they decide their release schedule.
 

supernova8

Banned
It’s important to more Game Freak doesn’t have the money. It is The Pokémon Company that does. GF can’t do anything without their say. It is no different than looking at 343i and their piss poor treatment of Halo Infinite despite the mountains of money and resources that MS has.
I should have said "they" collectively instead of "the developers" because it's not necessarily their fault although Game Freak as a company does definitely have money. I could be wrong but I believe Game Freak has like a 30% stake in The Pokemon Company (I thought it was a roughly three-way split between Nintendo, GF, and one other company can't remember the name).

Also I appreciate the comparison to Halo and 343i but I think in that case they really do have a massive team and massive funding so there's really no excuse in that regard (Plus Halo is not an annual release franchise like Pokemon. We should probably compare Pokemon to something like FIFA or Madden. For Pokemon, it might be that they don't have the proper funding, time frame, but between them and Nintendo (who effectively own TPC) they could choose to make a more polished game if they wanted to.

Plus we're just talking polished. I would like a more detailed game personally but even before that just polish the damn thing. Minecraft has shit graphics but it works and is smooth. Same goes for something like Fall Guys. Very simple but it works. Pokemon looks very primitive and still manages to run badly.
 
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Kamina

Golden Boy
A lot of companies seem to be like this these days.
Nintendo: “no need for QA, our fans will buy it anyway”
Nvidia: “no need for lower prices, our customers will buy it anyway”
To be fair though, Nintendo usually has few bugs in first party games. This atrocity is on Gamefreak & The Pokémon Company
 
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hemo memo

You can't die before your death
Wow. Performance issues aren’t exaggerated at all. 1 hour in and this is really really bad. Just be careful jumping in. This is the 2nd worst performing game i’ve ever played after TLG on base PS4. By the end of the game it might take that spot. Also the lack of voice acting on those cutscenes is comical. Indie games put voice acting now. This is beyond ridiculous.
 

Tams

Gold Member
It's getting hurt by its performance, looks like a Gameboy game and it's struggling to run properly.

Yes, the Switch is old, but this is more of a Game Freak issue, they should be able to produce something considerably better than this.

This is what a new Pokemon game should look like in this day and age:

0x0.jpg

This. If anything Arceus showed that the Switch is not good enough* for a full open world 3D Pokémon game. They should have made this like that and then for the next Nintendo console gone for an open world 3D game.

*for a game of this scope and when made by Game Freak. Other developers could do a better job, but would still be hamstrung.
 
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hemo memo

You can't die before your death
I cannot get over how bad the framerate is in this game. Seriously giving me a headache playing on my TV. This is just laziness or incompetence.
It is the same dev who made Acerus and that was okay performance wise both in portable and docked and this is just my experience as an average non tech savy person. Now Scarlet and Violet from the get go is an experience that is not only bad as an AAA game from a performance point of view that is very apparent to the average consumer but very very bad compared to the performance standard of Nintendo games. I mean even 2nd party games from Nintendo perform better than this and this game is big Nintendo first party title.

Don’t blame the Switch for this. We have Witcher 3 on the Switch for the love of god and it performance is better than this first party title which the dev obviously have a more time working with as they are the first to develop for it.

Now i’m not discussing the quality of game. This is a separate discussion, but it is a shame that performance is so bad that it affects gameplay severely.
 

ebevan91

Member
Other than the performance issues, this is the most fun I’ve had with a Pokémon game since like gold and silver. I like the new monsters, I like the game world, and I’m enjoying it.

Yeah I'm really enjoyng the game but man I'm constantly looking at things going "Wow that looks like shit."
 

iHaunter

Member
It is the same dev who made Acerus and that was okay performance wise both in portable and docked and this is just my experience as an average non tech savy person. Now Scarlet and Violet from the get go is an experience that is not only bad as an AAA game from a performance point of view that is very apparent to the average consumer but very very bad compared to the performance standard of Nintendo games. I mean even 2nd party games from Nintendo perform better than this and this game is big Nintendo first party title.

Don’t blame the Switch for this. We have Witcher 3 on the Switch for the love of god and it performance is better than this first party title which the dev obviously have a more time working with as they are the first to develop for it.

Now i’m not discussing the quality of game. This is a separate discussion, but it is a shame that performance is so bad that it affects gameplay severely.
Arceus looked like it was a PC emulation of a PS1 game.
 

Camreezie

Member
Terrastilise and the performance problems are the downsides here . The new forms for pokemon seem pretty dope and half the new pokemon seem cool. Looks like they took inspiration from sun and moon for some of the quest paths.
 

SCB3

Member
Yeah I'm really enjoyng the game but man I'm constantly looking at things going "Wow that looks like shit."
Yea same for me, its a great game, a step in the right direction along with Legends but fuck is the technical limitations letting it down, I'm overlooking as much as I can

That being said, Toby Fox did a great job with the Music!
 

Saber

Member
Does anyone like the terastallise mechanic? I basically never use it because it's a one time thing.

From what I see, looks more balanced and less cancerous than dinacrap. The mons base stats remains intact so its up to the player use it to its best advantage, either defensively to avoid double effectiviness or offensivelly getting stab from a different move or double stab.
 

Hoppa

Member
This has always been an issue with these games but it moves at an absolute snails pace. There’s always a text box or window that you need to confirm to get past. There should’ve been an auto-skip or auto-fast forward button many games ago, I’m going to have to turn on the ‘skip cutscenes’ option because the animations are far too slow, even in battle theres a delay before and after each move, not to mention when a Pokémon is confused/burnt and the game takes its time deciding whether or not it’s going to do anything about it. The presentation is different to old games which is nice, but the gameplay is antiquated in all the worst ways
 
Played the game more than enough in 4 player coop today and the performance is an absolute embarrassment.
There's a windmill in the open world which moves at 5 fps and I refuse to believe that real people decided to design the olive moving challenge before fighting the bug type gym leader. It plays like a game developed by an AI. Just watch the first gym leader challenge on YouTube and you'll know what I mean.
Gonna need eye bleach because of this game after playing GOW Ragnarok on 80 fps.
I just can't believe that these two games released in the same month.
 
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