Pokémon Scarlet & Violet performance problems have an easy fix

Try this if you're having trouble getting the game to behave

(Credit: Nintendo)

➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Scarlet & Violet woes

• 🪨 Pokémon Scarlet & Violet has had a rocky launch

• 🪲 Reports of dire technical bugs and performance glitches have flooded social media

• 🔧 Fortunately, there’s a handy fix that’s clearing up the worst of them

• 😩 Not a great start for the latest mainline Pokémon game

Pokémon Scarlet & Violet is out in the wild, but it probably needed a little longer in the oven.

As we noted in our Pokémon Scarlet & Violet review roundup, no one can fault the open-world creature catcher for lack of ambition, but its performance leaves a lot to be desired. Reports of technical bugs and graphical glitches have flooded social media, as players find their journey through the Paldea region is off to a rocky start. The game undoubtedly won’t find a place on our pick of the best Nintendo Switch games.

If you’re planning to play the game on a launch-version Nintendo Switch, expect to face numerous problems. Intense texture popping is the norm, as NPCs, trees, grass and entire mountains suddenly appear out of nowhere, even during cinematics, and bring the framerate down with it.

cherrim @ pkmn scarlet @Cherrim

oof the reviews arent kidding about the terrible performance #PokemonScarletViolet #NintendoSwitch

The characters don’t fare much better even after they eventually pop into existence. NPCs collide with each other and clip with the environment, causing them to stutter about the place. Even the texture quality leaves a lot to be desired, with some players comparing the game’s graphical power to that of a PS1 game.

Weirdest of all, though, might be this incredibly strange animated cutscene, which looks so unbelievably rudimentary that it’s difficult to believe it ever made its way into the final version of a blockbuster Nintendo game. Between the crude sandwich bite to the pokémon hovering absent-mindedly beside the trainer, I’m struggling to comprehend what I’m seeing.

Starjeti @Starjeti

This is the tackiest animation I have ever seen... the off kilter sandwich, whilst the trainer bites the air with no easing on the tweens.... the floating Pokemon in their idle animation staring at nothing😭😭😭

One industrious player even accidentally discovered a way to skip straight to the game’s fourth region. Should you do it? Probably not, but it’s great to know you have the option to bypass vast quantities of the game if you ever become bored of the glitches.

Pokémon Scarlet & Violet performance fix

Fortunately, there’s at least one handy trick you can use to improve the game’s performance. Twitter user CentroPokemon and fans on Reddit suspect Scarlet & Violet’s poor performance is caused, or at least exacerbated, by a memory leak triggered each time the player enters a city. 

A memory leak occurs when the liquid RAM stored inside your Switch escapes and chemically reacts with the LCD screen, creating a burst of gamma rays that slow down the console. I’m kidding. It means the game isn’t properly managing memory requirements, so struggles to access the appropriate data when it's needed.

The best way around the issue is using frequent resets. Rebooting the game each time you enter a city – by backing up to the home screen, closing the game down and reloading it again – you can plug a hole in the leak and stop Scarlet & Violet from hemorrhaging memory resources. Some users are reporting improvements in the game’s most egregious bugs and glitches. 

It’s worth a shot if you’re tired of watching pokémon sporadically fall through the earth and NPCs get stuck in walls.