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I'm sort of trying to do them all at once. It's kind of weird because I'm worried about out leveling because there isn't actually any, well, scaling, right? Like the game doesn't scale to the level of your Pokemon. So because there's no scaling, I kind of don't want to like just go all the way down one story path and then come back to the other. And then it's like super easy and I'm not really experiencing it in its intended way. So look, this is just how I'm progressing through the game. You guys progress however you want. You guys do what you want. Some of you guys already beaten the game and you're crazy stuff. You guys maybe don't have three children to raise so you don't have a lot of responsibility. So you could spend 40, 50, 60 hours this weekend playing Pokemon, but I couldn't do that, right? I had to focus on other things. That being said, we need to have an honest talk about this game because there's a couple of things happening that need to be pointed out both positive and obviously negative. First off, Nintendo, Game Freak, the Pokemon company should be pretty embarrassed. The game has been blasted for three or four straight days and it's deservedly blasted. Pokemon and Scarlet and Violet have a lot of problems and all of these problems are the sort of issues that could have been fixed if the game had one, better optimization, two, better quality control and three, been allowed to be delayed, which is interesting because normally you would argue that well, they can't delay the game because of the anime, except we don't even know when the animated series for this is launching. It sounds like it's gonna be sometime next year, which means they could have realistically delayed this three, four, five, six months and up the quality of the final release. But on the positive side, there's a lot of really good things happening in this game that make it really enjoyable for a lot of people and also some things that I'm noticing between docked mode and handheld mode that I'm one person, I don't know if this holds up in general for the greater audience, but I do think that we do need to and correctly have so far held the Pokemon Company and Game Freak over the coals for what this game is. Maybe even if you wanna throw Nintendo in the mix for allowing Pokemon Company to do this. Granted, Nintendo's always allowed Pokemon Company to do whatever they want. It would be interesting if the reaction to this game is now gonna lead Nintendo to start reviewing their work before coming out. Don't know that we've gotten to that point. This game's continuing to sell well. It's the number one boxed sale game at launch in the UK. We know it broke pre-order numbers and we know it broke pre-order numbers out in Japan, so I wouldn't be surprised to see this be a massive three, four million launch in Japan. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the biggest launch for a Pokemon game ever and I wouldn't even be surprised if this game goes on to become even better selling than Sword and Shield because there's a lot of really good things happening in this game. But there's a lot of bad as well and let's first talk about the bad. So one consistent problem every player could admit to regardless of how much you're enjoying the game is there's frame rate problems. This happens in handheld, this happens in docked mode. It gets worse when you put your game in sleep mode than come back, that's my experience. That suggests that there's a memory leak. So maybe a memory leak is a big part of this and for those that don't know what a memory leak is essentially it's a RAM leak. So what happens is certain data from the game is leaking to the RAM and not clearing out and because it's not clearing out, it's maxing out the RAM and then obviously when you reboot the game that clears the RAM, that clears the cache. Well, without it being cleared, you put it in the sleep mode, you come back and it runs worse. It's just something I've noticed, I'm not sure if anyone else has. This is affecting docked mode and handhelds so there doesn't seem to be a difference there. But frame rate issues are everywhere. We're seeing this sometimes when you're throwing a Pokemon to catch a Pokemon and the game just kind of stops and then all of a sudden boom pops in and continues on. We've seen other things happen, obviously running in the open world whether you're mounted or not and watching the game kind of hitch here and there. It happens in buildings, it happens in the open, it happens everywhere. It seems to be a general problem that this game isn't optimized very well. And I talked about last week how this isn't an indictment on Switch because this game isn't that impressive of a game from a visual or gameplay standpoint just in terms of doing things, the Switch isn't capable of. We've seen all of these things done on Switch before without these problems. In fact, we've seen even more complex catching mechanics in Pokemon Legends Arceus without these problems. So even from the Pokemon company, we've seen better. So it's kind of weird, this is not a hardware issue. You want further proof of that, people are emulating this game naturally on some pretty powerful PCs, including ones with 4090s and 1200Ks and guess what? They're having frame rate problems too because it's an engine issue, it's an optimization issue, it's not a hardware issue. More and better hardware doesn't fix the frame rate problems which already tells you that that means it's not related to the power of the Switch. It's just a poorly optimized game. And look, frame rate issues suck and game freaks have frame rate issues with games in the past. This is by far the worst and this is unacceptable. I talked about Sonic Frontiers and how I'm disappointed in some of the frame rate drops in that game. This makes Sonic Frontiers look like a well optimized game. So that's how bad this is. And then obviously we have all of the other graphical glitches. Now I haven't seen personally, like I haven't had happened to me any of the fall through the map glitches. I have, I did have that happen once in Sonic, no wait, sorry, three times now in Sonic Frontiers I have actually fallen through the map. I have not had that happen yet in Pokemon but I've seen other people have it happen. It does seem to be a little weird how it gets triggered. So it doesn't seem to be something that I think is a big issue. And if that was the only problem with the graphics in this game then I really would just say whatever, that's something they'll patch out in the future. But the graphical glitches are a little bit intense. One thing I feel like all players are experiencing are some of the texture warping happening on the mountains and hills. It's really, it's really weird. It's kind of off-putting. It makes you kind of think maybe you can go through. Maybe there's a secret entrance there because normally when you see something off like that in a game it meant something. This is just a graphical glitch. It's stupidly weird. Also a lot of people seem to be experiencing the battling or catching a Pokemon and when you're on some sort of hill or incline the game seems to like, you know, half your screen seems to cut through the ground texture and you're seeing like an inverted view of the world. It's really weird. Not a game-breaking graphical glitch or anything but really weird. And a lot of people are also experiencing some of the mountains disappearing. So you get to ride a legendary throughout this game and some people just, it just randomly disappears. For no reason it seems. It doesn't seem to be anything specifically triggering it that anyone's figured out. Just the mount will disappear and you'll just continue riding like you're on your mount but the mount's not visible. So it's a little strange one. I've only ever seen this happen for a few seconds and then it comes back. I haven't seen it be some of those clips out there we're seeing where it's just like, hey it just goes away until you unmount and remount. I haven't seen that personally but it is something that I've had happen at least on a smaller scale for a few seconds. And I just think the camera or the games have a hard time processing bringing the graphics in and out. And this happens as well when people emulate it suggesting again this has nothing to do with the hardware. This is again optimization, quality control, et cetera. The games are rightfully being blasted for all of this. So there's a billion more graphical glitches you'll find out there. I noted some weird things with characters walking down staircases where they were like jittering like crazy. Some people have complained about collision detection for Pokemon and not for Pokemon. I think Pokemon in general don't have much collision detection. That's why you can just kind of walk right through them. But that's neither here nor there. I think that's more of a minor thing but there's a lot of stuff. You guys have seen it by now. This game's an embarrassment and they should be embarrassed to release the game in this state. It is unacceptable and it is rightfully rated as one of the lowest Pokemon games really in the last 20 years in terms of mainline games. Almost all the mainline games score in the 80s somewhere and this is like a 77, 76. It keeps dropping. The user scores are horrible. They're down in the twos and threes and it deserves all of the backlash it's gotten. I'm not sitting here saying that when I'm about to get into the positives here that they are excused from this. This is an embarrassment. If Tears of the Kingdom came out in this state it would be a problem for me even if I'm enjoying other aspects of the game. And I would rightfully call it out and you can consider this a call out. But also, this is where things get really weird because while I am experiencing some of the graphical glitches and I am experiencing some of the FPS and while I am experiencing graphical glitches and FPS problems, I'm also really enjoying my time with the game. And guys, I have not been a Pokemon fan for probably 20 years. I did like Pokemon Legends, Arceus and new Pokemon Snap but I really didn't like Sword and Shield to the point I didn't even buy it. I did play a demo of it at E3, did not like it, didn't like anything about it, decided nope, not this game isn't for me. I bought Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl because hey, you know, I thought Diamond and Pearl were just okay back in the day, personal opinions and everything. And honestly, I had a horrendous time to the point that someone traded me a bunch of level 100 Pokemon just to power through because I promised that I would beat the games. Yeah, that I would just beat the games. And people kept telling me, well, then you're ruining the ending of the game where things get more difficult. And I'm like, yeah, but here's the thing, if I'm not gonna have any fun until the very end of the game, then it's just not a good game for me. It's just not for me. Maybe it's for you, but it wasn't for me. And that's the way I spent Pokemon for a long time. I sort of accepted that I'm a gen oneer. I'll probably always be a gen oneer. And that's cool. I'm okay with Pokemon not being for me, me outgrowing it or the series changing in ways I didn't like. Fine, whatever, I'm cool with that. I'm having a lot of fun with this game. I don't know if it's the fact that I've wanted an open world Pokemon game since I was a kid. I don't know if it's just that there's so much to do. I've never in Pokemon history is I felt like there is this much to do organically. Cause like even legends RC, so it was all about just catching Pokemon, catching Pokemon, catching Pokemon. But here, yes, there's catching Pokemon. And it does feel like a bit of a step back with the catching mechanics. I feel like they could have left in the RC as catching mechanics. And then if the ball, you know, if you couldn't catch it normally, then it triggers a battle. And that's fine. I feel like those mechanics could have been kept. I do think that that's something they can maybe look into in the future because it does make open world travel a bit nicer. But that's neither here nor there, right? We can't do much about that. They didn't include those mechanics. But what I find interesting is how fun the world is to explore how cool it is that there's so much to do. It kind of feels like everywhere I go, there's just oodles of things to go do, whether they're the shiny raid Pokemon that you can get some friends together to do, which I did a couple of times. Or if it is the obviously the online multiplayer, which is one aspect of the game I haven't played around with much, whether it is the gym leaders, which so far I've done two of them. And I found both gym leaders to be awesome. I really like the gym quest. I like that you can do the gyms in any order that you want. I know that there is probably a preferred order since the gyms don't scale. But the bottom line is you can do the gyms in any order you want. And I really like that. Obviously there's an elite four. I've met one of the members of the elite four and they even had a really cool quirky personality I enjoyed. I enjoy the characters, I enjoy the professor, I enjoy your rival, Nimona or whatever, that's the one that I got. I don't know if that's the same in the other game in Pokemon Violet. I'm playing Pokemon Scarlet. But I'm really enjoying my adventure. And I didn't think I would say that about a Pokemon game, maybe ever. Especially one that is this glitchy in this plot. Normally when there's this many glitches and this many QA issues and this much FPS issues, I would be irate. The thing is though the frame rate in Pokemon, it's a turn-based system. So the frame rate doesn't really hurt the gameplay. It just kicks you out of the experience. Like if you're getting fully engrossed in the game and all of a sudden it freezes and then it skips forward 15 frames, that's judder and that's really bad judder. And that does throw you out of the game but I don't know what it is about this game. There is what I feel, this is my personal opinion so far, I haven't beat it. So it could change by the end of the game. But so far into this game, it has the potential to be the best Pokemon game I've ever played. There are things that could get better. I have plenty of critiques, things that not talking about glitches and stuff, choices they made like having the game not scale and some of the catchy mechanics. I do see ways I can improve this and make this even better moving forward. But what is here in this game to me is the greatest Pokemon game ever made that will never get the credit it deserves because and rightfully so, the Pokemon company rushed the game out and did not give the developers enough time to properly QA and properly fix the issues. Now maybe in six months, there's a patch that comes out and a lot of the stuff goes away. Maybe, I don't know. What I do know is it kind of sucks because there's this really amazing game underneath all of this that the stuff that's happening, the glitches and the FPS stuff is hurting people's experience to a point that they just can't enjoy it. Some people won't even buy the game now even though they were excited because these glitches are bad. They're embarrassing. And frankly, I don't blame them. I think that something needs to be better that the Pokemon company needs to do better. With how bad this is, I sort of hope Nintendo's listening because Nintendo says they listen to social media. I feel like if Nintendo's listening, the next Pokemon game, they're gonna step in and be like, hey, can we look at this before we send this live or announce a release date? Because this hurts our reputation too. We own the Pokemon IP. We partially own Game Freak. We partially own the Pokemon company. We own Pokemon's copyrights. We really need to talk and make sure that this is okay. And if not, let me offer you some of our development teams to help with your polish stage of the game and get this game up the snuff because this is an embarrassment but also it's a lot of fun. And it's weird. I'm in this weird place where I'm being called a shill for having fun with a broken game but I can argue the game isn't broken. In fact, when I was playing handheld for four hours yesterday, I didn't experience anything. The only minor thing I saw once was someone that wall warping I talked about. Besides that, it was frame rate issues and that's it, no graphical glitches. And granted, frame rate issues are a real problem. I'm not gonna pretend they're not. I want this thing to run at at least a lock 30 FPS if not 60, right? Like we can get 60 in Mario Odyssey. We can get 60 in this game. I just, I don't know, man. This is, it's an embarrassment and it's also a stark reminder of the difference in Nintendo's quality insurance. Like when we get something like Mario Strikers coming out look, I know it's made by Camelot but Nintendo also wouldn't put that game out there if it was broken like this. It can be missing content, but it won't be broken. When Tears of the Kingdom comes out there'll be some glitches. People love taking advantage of glitches but there's gonna be nothing obvious unless you're intentionally triggering things. And that's a credit to Nintendo, a credit to them willing to delay that game multiple years and a credit to just putting care into one of the biggest IPs in the world. And that's what sucks about this game is there's so much great content underneath all of these problems and these problems unfortunately are gonna make it so millions and millions of people don't enjoy what's there. Whether they buy the game or not. So I don't know what's gonna make them change. Everyone says just boycott the games and that'll make them change, you know, money talks. And I don't think enough people will ever boycott Pokemon for that to be the case. So honestly, it just has to be continual pressure on the Pokemon company, Game Freak, and yes, Nintendo to care, to care about the quality of Pokemon releases. So the next time around, because I don't think they're gonna go away from open world next time. I think we're getting another one. I think the next time around, we need to make sure that we are getting a quality experience. And this just ain't it. Maybe it's because this development took place entirely during the pandemic. But again, that's making an excuse. There's no excuse to release a game from a major IP in this state. If that meant Nintendo wasn't gonna have a major big selling game this holiday. Oh well, Nintendo doesn't have a major big game selling this holiday. I think they'd be just fine. Or maybe if Nintendo would have known earlier this year, this game wouldn't have been ready. They could have had tears of the kingdom ready instead, right? So I'm just saying things could have been adjusted on this earlier this year, knowing what state the game was in. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. And here we are today, stuck with what we're stuck with. So I don't know, you guys let me know your thoughts on Pokemon Skyline Violet so far. I am having a really good time, but also it is bad. And I can't ignore that too. You guys tell me your full thoughts down in the comments below. Anyways folks, I am Nathan and RoboJance from Nintendo Prime, and I'll catch you in the next video.