The recently-released Pokemon Scarlet and Violet titles have officially been rated as the two weakest mainline titles in the entire series on Metacritic, scoring only a tiny bit lower than Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, the Generation 4 remakes that launched in November of last year. While they have their strengths in new gameplay features which aim to innovate in the latest generations, Scarlet and Violet's many bugs and undeniable performance issues have tarnished the games' reviews.

The Generation 9 games have been the focus of much of the gaming community since their launch just over two weeks ago. Fans eager to set out on their journeys around the vast Paldea region have met many new endearing characters and Pokemon that have been added to the rich world of Pokemon with the new games. Many of the games' highlights on social media have involved players sharing moments that are as hilarious as they are ridiculous, often featuring wild glitches that could cause NPCs to vanish or player models to spontaneously mutate into massive monsters. Despite the comedic value in what seems to be the majority of the games' bugs, other common glitches have caused players to fall through the map or clip into an area which they can't escape.

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Mixed with the seemingly endless list of technical glitches, Scarlet and Violet's unfortunate lack of polish has also resulted in blatant performance issues that have affected a large portion of players. While some players have been able to see past these issues, as well as the underwhelming graphical fidelity of the titles, there's no question that these many shortcomings have seriously impacted Scarlet and Violet's reviews in the eyes of most critics. Metacritic has given a metascore of 72 to Pokemon Violet and a score of 73 to Pokemon Scarlet, interestingly enough. While these scores fall just below Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, the previously lowest-rated Pokemon titles, Scarlet and Violet's 3.0 user rating is by far the lowest the series has ever seen.

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Despite these poor ratings, it's important that Game Freak doesn't view this as a sign that fans are rejecting the new directions that the franchise is being taken in. In fact, many players have been thoroughly enjoying the new cooperative multiplayer mechanics and true open world aspect of Scarlet and Violet, with many players encouraging the developers to continue working on these new gameplay elements in the future.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have been some of the best-selling entries in the series' lengthy history, selling over 10 million copies in three days. While fans are interested to see current mechanics developed further in the future, it's clear that the poor technical state of these games have been the main factor impacting reviews. If Game Freak aims to retain the attention and respect of its fans, players have made clear that future Pokemon titles must never launch in this state again.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are available on Nintendo Switch.

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Source: Metacritic