Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have been out for less than a week now, quickly becoming an internet sensation - just not in the way that we would have expected. Despite receiving large amounts of praise across the board for their ingenuity and ambition, the games have been ridiculed both in reviews and on social media for their poor technical performances.
Now, the tech experts at Digital Foundry have given their thoughts on the games, presenting a technical review of how they run on Switch. The findings are just as bad as we expected.
From the larger picture of the games' appearance, the artwork and textures "often looks ugly and cheap," with pop-ins and reduced animation rates becoming "a highly distracting issue". This is emphasised in the urban areas in the game, where NPC's will appear out of the blue and background objects will drop to 2FPS or lower when standing at a distance from them.
The story is much the same on the performance side of things. With "questionable" image quality in docked mode and "near-constant frame-rate dips and stutters" while traversing the open areas, the games come off as a "pretty unpleasant experience in general". All of this occurs regardless of the fact that they have been drastically pared-pack performance wise, yet they "still can't manage to hold on to 30fps".
When compared to Pokémon Legends: Arceus, the problems are only emphasised further. While Scarlet and Violet have improved the open world aspect of the franchise, they remain "well below the technical standards set by prior Pokémon titles" and are considered to be "comprehensive technical failures".
The full Digital Foundry report can be watched in the video above or read on Eurogamer. If you are eager to hear a second opinion on the games, be sure to check out our Nintendo Life review: