I am astounded by how often Pokemon fans settle for mediocrity. Scarlet & Violet arrived on Nintendo Switch months ago and both still look and run like absolute piss. Game Freak rarely communicates when it comes to addressing player concerns and performance updates that other games would be burned at the stake for failing to deliver. Imagine if God of War Ragnarok or Elden Ring launched with bland textures and a frame rate known to frequently dip into the single digits. These games aren’t particularly compelling in terms of Pokemon when you take away the technical shortcomings, but with them, it’s unacceptable.
Despite the long-awaited patches still not yet dropping, Game Freak popped up during today’s Pokemon Presents to announce two downloadable expansions for Scarlet & Violet. The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero will likely add a huge number of new locations, characters, and Pokemon for us to encounter. Its two parts seem to vary greatly in setting and premise, tying into an overall mystery while drawing from several influences. In a better game, I’d be head over heels for ambitious new chapters like this. Here though, it’s a twist of the knife.
The Teal Mask pays homage to classic Japanese cultural imagery as the two protagonists are seen donning traditional garb and hanging out with people new and familiar. The Indigo Disk is a little different, and at first glance is similar to games like Battle Revolution with its eccentric anime designs and Blueberry Academy setting.
I can fawn over the new key visuals all I want, although in the end, I know I’ll be forced to drag myself to a game that isn’t in a worthy state right now. Both entries have already sold millions of units, breaking records even with their glaring faults because fans of the series are driven far more by nostalgia than quality. Game Freak likely knows this, and it put production of two fully-fledged expansions ahead of actually fixing the game because the sales mean a hell of a lot more than our satisfaction. It’s a woefully corporate and cynical aim for a franchise otherwise obsessed with adorable whimsy. We deserve better than a solitary half-baked update before the drop of a massive expansion that will only push the games to limits they are already struggling to meet. Things won’t change, so get used to it.
The situation is hopefully more complicated than Nintendo and The Pokemon Company holding a gun to Game Freak’s head and demanding it produce more content, all while failing to realise how small the team is and that it hasn’t been given much of a chance to evolve and adapt beyond its humble portable origins. Sword & Shield tried and failed in its goal to present itself as a fully-fledged console RPG with half the budget and resources, falling victim to massive technological hurdles even without the addition of an open world.
Legends: Arceus was an inconsistent albeit innovative mess, one that Scarlet & Violet hoped to build upon while keeping the traditional formula intact. It didn’t work. Gameplay mechanics were slow and arduous, while the multi-faceted freedom we were promised in trailers was little more than a few individual storylines that all led to the same conclusion.
Even if it launched in a solid state with impressive performance and visuals, Game Freak would have still underwhelmed thanks to a mixture of forgettable gameplay and uninspired art design. Its expansions seem to address some of those problems, but they’ll be for nothing if an update doesn’t address the flawed foundation. Learn to walk before you can run, and in this case, that means make sure the frame rate doesn’t give me a migraine before trying to charge me top dollar for two new expansions.