I lately did one thing kind of uncommon: I went to a preview occasion for a recreation that’s been out for nearly three years.
I’ve performed round 400 hours of Pokémon Scarlet, in line with my Nintendo Change, because it was launched in late 2022. It’s secure to say I do know the sport fairly effectively. And but, after I was invited to preview Pokémon Scarlet and Violet on the Nintendo Change 2 forward of the brand new console’s launch, I gladly took the chance to see three-year-old video games I already personal. I needed to seek out out simply how a lot they’d improved.
I’ve a excessive jank tolerance with video games — it builds character — however I’m effectively conscious of Scarlet and Violet’s shortcomings on the unique Change. There’s lag. The body price is… inconsistent. There are on-line connectivity points. For lots of people, efficiency issues overshadowed what was in any other case an important new era of Pokémon video games. With the launch of the Nintendo Change 2, and the accompanying free efficiency replace for Scarlet and Violet, that may lastly change.
Beginning up the demo of Pokémon Scarlet on the Change 2 at The Pokémon Firm Worldwide’s workplace in Bellevue, Washington, I knew instantly the place I needed to go first: Casseroya Lake, typically referred to as “Lag Lake,” the place the video games’ graphical points are most obvious. On the unique Change, the sport actually chugs while you’re on the lake; the body price takes a dive, and it struggles to render greater than a handful of pokémon in your speedy neighborhood. Exploring the liveliest open areas and encountering the pokémon that populate them is one among Scarlet and Violet’s greatest strengths, however on the Change, Casseroya Lake is uninteresting and empty at finest and unimaginable to navigate at worst.
Enjoying on the Change 2, nevertheless, Casseroya Lake ran fantastically. There have been much more pokémon in view (and I used to be instantly accosted by a torpedo-like Veluza, similar because it ever was), and the lag and stuttering I’d come to anticipate have been nonexistent. I battled that Veluza with no issues. I stumbled upon a Slowpoke outbreak and despatched out my Clodsire to auto-battle them — no lag. I discovered a wild Tera Pokémon and watched the Tera animation play out, wanting sharper than I’d ever seen it. (I used to be enjoying in docked mode at a station arrange by TPCi, so possibly that final one could possibly be credited to the TV. However nonetheless.)
It was the identical case in every single place I went throughout my 30-minute demo: a secure and clean body price, considerably quicker load instances, and much more pokémon populating the world. The Change 2 replace is just not a whole overhaul of the graphics themselves — the grass textures seemed simply as unremarkable as all the time to my eye, for instance — but it surely does appear to remove the efficiency points which have dragged Scarlet and Violet down for almost three years. It’s a noticeable enchancment on the planet, in battle, in Tera raids, and even in menus.
Is it praiseworthy for a recreation to easily run effectively? Perhaps not. I don’t fake to understand how video games are made on a technical degree, or actually any degree, however I do know they’re not simple to make. And I had sufficient enjoyable with Pokémon Scarlet to play for 400 hours with out the efficiency points bothering me a lot. But it surely did really feel bittersweet, briefly, to suppose how far more these video games might have shone in the event that they’d run effectively within the first place.
Then, within the final 5 minutes of my demo, as I waded in a distinct physique of water to substantiate that it too ran easily, I noticed it: among the many pods of Buizel dotting the shore, a shiny.
A superb portion of my 400 hours in Scarlet have been spent shiny looking, as a result of despite the fact that the alternate-color variations of pokémon will not be fairly as onerous to seek out as they have been in earlier video games, I get excited each time I see one, with out fail. It’s the right encapsulation of the form of pleasure Scarlet and Violet have to supply: exploring a energetic space and discovering one thing particular. I caught the shiny Buizel regardless of figuring out that it wasn’t my save file and never mine to maintain.
The Change 2 replace is arguably arriving a bit late for my Scarlet save file, relying on what number of hours you suppose are affordable to spend enjoying this recreation. However I additionally personal Violet, and I’ve performed about two hours of that model whole. Trying on the shiny Buizel I didn’t get to maintain, I noticed I used to be actually excited to have a purpose to play Violet lastly — to rediscover what I favored most about these video games, in a state that does them justice.
