Thread by @GridVGC

A few days ago, I finished the regular story mode of #PokemonScarlet

Although it was a bug filled mess that ran like absolute garbage at times, it is by far one of the best Pokémon games I have played in years

Here is all the wonky stuff I ran into and my opinions on the game

A little background on my setup: I played around 35 hours on a legitimate cartridge running patch 1.01 on a first-generation Switch. I played almost entirely docked, and only clipped things that happened to me that I thought were funny or interesting. (2/X)

Before going any further, I will state that I believe some of the problems and performance issues I ran into were due to the fact I am playing with a cartridge on a Gen1 Switch. I will also try my best to not spoil anything in this review, and will flag spoilers accordingly (3/X)

Since completing the game, I have also tried to replicate some of the performance issues I had using an emulator and was unable to do so. But just for example, here is what a pretty average water battle can look like for me if I’ve been in the area for a while (4/X)

To start things off, the very first cutscenes that played for me glitched out and had a bunch of the characters T-Posing. I was only able to capture a screenshot as it faded out, but you can roughly make out the t-posing characters in the picture below (5/x)

This was immediately followed up by the first 5 minutes of gameplay. They were clunky. Like so awkward/clunky it is worth noting even after 35+ hours of gameplay. For whatever reason, you cannot run until a few minutes into the game. (6/x)

“uhhh that’s how all the old pokemon games used to be!” No like, you aren’t given running shoes or anything, you just walk extremely painfully slow until you reach a certain point and can magically run. I literally thought I somehow didn’t know how to run? Brief clip below (7/x)

However, both of those issues are extremely minor compared to my main complaint about the game

Almost everything happens in the open world. Trainer battles, wild battles, even some super important battles.

This is usually not a problem, but when it is, it is NOTICEABLE (8/x)

If this game was completely polished and not running on the outdated Switch hardware, this would not be a complaint at all. That is not the case. With only spoiling a starter evo, one of the most important fights of the entire story had a random NPC just walk into the battle(9/X)

It is not just weird visual bugs either, this can have a serious effect on gameplay. Here is a video of me catching a Pupitar and immediately having to fight two more wild Pokémon without moving, as they had moved to my position in the overworld during the battle (10/x)

This is also why my game runs so horribly in these open water areas, even if I’m in a battle the entire world around me is still rendering. The SW/SH wild area lagged, but if you entered battle, you were now in a battle “instance”, not the overworld, improving performance (11/X)

The online servers are not active yet, but I suspect the reason so many of these battles do not create their own instance is to account for how the co-op in the game functions. I personally feel like there had to have been a better way to approach this performance-wise (12/x)

Most of the important Gym/Elite4 battles, and all of the dens/raids are in what I call these “instances”, and do not occur in the Open World. These battles look great – no performance issues and in my opinion the raid battles are overall a lot better than dynamax dens (13/x)

I have plenty of other clips/pics of weird visual/gameplay problems happening, and maybe I’ll post those later; but no use beating a dead-horse. Like I said in the beginning, this is one of the best Pokémon games I’ve played in years, so let’s get to the positives. (14/x)

Jk, just remembered that you can’t change your fkn school outfit in this game. It’s enraging. You can change your hat, gloves, socks, shoes, glasses, and backpack. You can’t change your school outfit. Okay now actually onto the positives (15/x)

The story. Holy shit the story is actually decent, might I even say good???? Like it makes sense, is actually somewhat relatable, and was even genuinely sad at the end??? This was the first Pokemon in a looong time I wished the story went on longer (16/x)

As many of you know, there are three main story lines that you must finish in order to start the final mission of the game. All three of these story lines are great, with the Titan storyline being my favorite. (17/x)

The final mission is incredibly well done. It doesn’t feel forced at all, and really made me wish it had been longer. I miss the days of video games not having DLC to suck-my-wallet-dry, but I would gladly pay for the DLC of this game if it is anything like the final mission(18/x

I have also so far had plenty to do in the post-game, as I originally didn’t go to a single class at the school (LMAO) and have been enjoying re-battling gym leaders and hunting down the various treasures all over the map. (18.5/x)

As far as the new Pokémon designs go – I love them. Ever since Gen5 a lot of my first interactions with new Pokémon have been “oh what the fk” whereas in #PokemonScarlet almost all of my reactions were “oh wow whaaaaaat” (19/x)

Despite all the negatives I said about the game at the beginning of this thread, I really enjoyed it. I give it an 8.5/10 (probably would be even higher if it didn’t performance issues). For context, I gave the SW/SH story mode + hop-pity-party-postgame a 4/10 (20/x)

If you are truly a fan of Pokémon, you will very likely be a fan of this game. I have been playing Pokemon since the late 90s, and this is by far one of the most enjoyable games I have played throughout the series. I’m sure some people will hate it, but I don’t think most will(21

If you read this entire thread, thank you, this has gone on a lot longer than I originally intended. If you have any questions or anything, feel free to ask in a reply or DM me if it's story related. I’m sure I will post some more funny/story related clips after release 😄 (last)

Almost forgot - I did like all of the gyms and missions out of order because I'm big dumb and I still had a great time playing the game. The order is really up to you and how much you want to grind between gyms etc... as the levels do not scale for gyms.