Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Review

Structurally this is the boldest the series has been. Paldea is one continuous region you can tackle in any order, three separate storylines run in parallel and converge, and the Area Zero finale is a genuinely moving piece of writing about a parent's obsession and what a child inherits from it, which is not a sentence anyone expected to write about this franchise. Arven and Penny are the best supporting characters the games have had, the terastallising mechanic is a competitive addition with real depth, and picnics and co operative exploration make the world sociable.

All of that is trapped inside a build that should not have shipped. Frame rates collapse in towns, distant creatures animate at a handful of frames per second, geometry pops in metres ahead of you, and there are documented cases of players falling through the world. Nintendo issued an apology and promised patches, most of which arrived slowly. The design deserved the development time the release schedule refused to give it.