Pokémon Scarlet

The Teal Mask expansion sets a new mountainous Kitakami region with attractive rice fields, orchards, and appealing new Pokemon, plus a surprisingly chunky storyline worth around 20 hours. Disappointingly, performance was not improved over the base game, frequently dropping to 20 FPS with poor frame pacing and a couple of crashes, and only one small town offers fresh festival content. The base game remains enjoyable to play but is among the worst performers, so value comes down to how much that matters to you.

I'm gonna say wait and see. The glitches are a thing that need fixing, but the content is excellent.

Still considered one of the best mainline Pokemon games, especially after the Switch 2 update cleaned up the frame rate. The wide-open structure, terastallization mechanic, and a thriving, well-supported competitive scene are major strengths, with the Indigo Disc DLC delivering some of the most challenging combat in the series. Weaknesses remain: a muddy, unappealing art style, no dungeons or puzzles to break up the battles, overlong unskippable dialogue, and underbaked co-op multiplayer.

Open-world gameplay impresses but marred by technical issues and bland graphics.