- Yes there are significant performance issues but mostly just concerning framerate and a bit of pop-in in busy areas. There's some hitching but I haven't experienced it during the flow of gameplay, just during scene/camera/view transitions, which is less noticeable. Haven't fallen through level geometry or anything like that.
- OVerall the game is quite playable and people saying it's in an awful state must never have played a Switch title before.
- A big point of emphasis in Legends Arceus was clearly improving the pace of play which was horrendously slow in past pokemon games and had gotten worse, and ScVi definitely continues that. Overall this game is very carefully plucking what it can from Legends Arceus while still functioning as A Mainline Pokemon Game with fully developed, traditional battle mechanics.
- Battling is very deemphasized as a part of the experience, though. You just play through a lot less pokemon battles. Gyms, for example, have just the fight against the gym leader - with puzzles, minigames, or sidequests replacing the ramp-up of gym trainers.
- This is a true open world game, no caveats. "Why not just put the whole game in the Wild Area" was an implicit question in SwSh and ScVi answers with "yeah why not." Right after going through the initially bottlenecked start of the game, the game explicitly tells you to go pursue different objectives and that you can go off in different directions to chase them. Gyms and the like don't have a set order either. But they do have a progression curve and the game isn't very good about cluing you in as to what the actual recommended level is for a given thing, so you absolutely can pick some unwinnable fights.
- I have no idea what to think of terrastalization so far. It feels far less impactful than dynamax, probably for the best.
- Raid battles are MUCH snappier now (again, pace of play improvements) but also feel a bit more skippable because it's so easy to see one and know off the bat you don't really want the pokemon because it has a bad terra type/species combination.
"mr storylets"
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- brunodias.dev/
writer (derogatory). lead designer on Fallen London.
http://twitter.com/notbrunoagain
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in reply to @bruno's post:
I'm actually quite glad to hear the new games leave it up to the player to determine which gym to tackle when. I only recently started Shield myself and I'm really enjoying the fact that it'll occasionally put me up against wild Pokémon 10+ levels higher than my own. In previous games the level caps determined by gym badges felt like a measure just to stop you trading for a vastly over-leveled Pokémon and wiping the floor with everything in the early sections, but now there are actually battles against things I might be able to defeat, but not yet catch. Getting to attempt a gym and then decide to save it for later sounds like a similarly interesting situation.
I am finding it interesting hearing so much feedback on glitch issues when I completely agree with you - should it have been fixed pre launch, yes - but it's not broken broken and still enjoyable to play. (some of the camera angles though, oof). What do you think of the fast-fight/clean up mob-type function? I think it's an interesting dynamic they've introduced