New Pokemon games arrive ‘buggy and broken’

The latest Pokemon games have released to heavy criticism over bugs, glitches, and performance issues, with many asking for a patch to fix them.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet released on Friday, but players of the games say they’re experiencing a host of performance issues, bugs, and game-breaking glitches.

The latest games from Pokemon developer Game Freak, which are also published by Nintendo, have been slammed by players, who have called the performance issues “unacceptable” and criticised them for a wide range of bugs and glitches. Players have shared clips to social media showing off the issues, with many gaining thousands of views and shares.

Scarlet and Violet are the series’ first open-world games, which means the entire game world is accessible to players right from the start of the game. The open-world lets players travel between any two points in the game without experiencing any loading screens. Developer Game Freak has toyed with the idea in the past, with the previous two games, Sword & Shield and Legends Arceus, offering areas that were open in nature.

However, clearly the transition to a full open world has been difficult for the developer, as Scarlet and Violet are by far the buggiest games to date. In clips shared to social media, players have shared a variety of issues. Some of the issues have included significant frame drops, where the game has slowed to a fraction of the speed of what it’s supposed to be running at.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have a fully open-world environment and offer players up to four-player multiplayer. Picture: Nintendo

Bugs have also been a constant issue for the games, with the camera frequently clipping through the environment to show things that weren’t meant to be seen. Some Pokemon have been spotted with no textures, instead appearing as their plain black base model, and players have also shown themselves getting stuck in scenery, such as trees, and unable to escape.

Three Pokemon games have been released in the last twelve months, with Pokemon Legends Arceus also being developed by Game Freak, and Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl being outsourced to external developer ILCA. Many believe that the short development time for the titles and the rushed release schedule is the reason for the performance issues.

Many have criticised Pokemon developer Game Freak for ‘rushing’ games, with three games released in the last 12 months. Picture: Nintendo

Fans are hoping that the bulk of the issues will be fixed in upcoming updates for the games, but neither Game Freak nor Nintendo have issued a statement confirming as much.

Pokemon isn’t the only series to face game-breaking bugs and glitches lately. An Overwatch 2 hero was disabled over a game-breaking exploit earlier this month, when it was discovered that hero Mei’s Ice Wall ability could be used to push players out of bounds and offer an unfair advantage.

Blizzard, the developer of the Overwatch series, was set to fix the issue on the 15th, but the Overwatch 2 bug fix patch was delayed at the last second, after even more critical issues were discovered with the patch. The patch was ultimately released over the weekend, but some players are still reporting issues with Mei.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.