It appears that the massive open-world setting of Violet and Scarlet has a negative impact on performance. Early reviews for the newest Pokémon game have reported that the Switch can’t handle the game. A now-viral video shared by gamer @Cherrim on Twitter gives a better idea of the extent of the issue. The game stutters when a player attempts to capture a Pokémon in the wild. Reports also indicate that the scenery disappears or gets distorted when the trainer throws Pokéballs.
— cherrim @ pkmn scarlet (@Cherrim) November 17, 2022 Other players shared that NPCs will sometimes clip through each other and seemingly walk down the street merged together. Twitter user @GoldilocksP4 reports they’ve experienced a massive framerate drop whenever he runs around the map. Another viral video shows a part of the animation where the character is just placed on top of the background. The video shared by @Starjeti shows the player eating a sandwich. The user comments that “This is the tackiest animation I have ever seen… the off-kilter sandwich, whilst the trainer bites the air with no easing on the tweens…. the floating Pokémon in their idle animation staring at nothing.”
— Starjeti (@Starjeti) November 16, 2022 Players have also reported that the avatar rides the legendary Pokémon Koraidon facing backward. The Koraidon motorbike also gets stuck in certain places when traversing uneven terrain. Others have reported that there is a delay when the game loads the NPCs and they seem to magically appear out of nowhere. Gamers have also shared videos of Pokémon seemingly getting stuck inside a wall as well while others have said that the rendering of terrain features and NPCs is terrible. Fans have been speculating that the game is not properly optimized for the Nintendo Switch. The massive game paired with ambitious graphics is giving the handheld console a hard time. Optimization issues are most often a concern when a game gets ported to another platform. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are native to, and will only release on, the Nintendo Switch. The Pokémon Company has issued update 1.01 as a day one patch of the game. It is unclear whether the issues would be resolved by the patch. Hopefully, the issues for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet gets fixed soon. It’s wasting so much of its potential by being hampered by bugs.
