IGN has had the opportunity to briefly test out Pokemon Scarlet & Violet on the Nintendo Switch 2 and have come away suitably impressed. As we already know the new update (available now) brings enhanced resolution and framerate, which is a major boon considering how the games performed at launch. Here’s a sample of their impressions of the latest Pokemon games running on Nintendo Switch 2.
“As soon as I loaded into the game, on a huge 4K TV, I was stunned by how nice everything looked. No jagged pixelated edges on blades of grass, or even Pokémon, here.”
“I saw numerous Pokémon swim along the surface from a distance and didn’t experience any noticeable stuttering once I began to swim. Even when it began to rain, Pokémon Scarlet on the Switch 2 still didn’t struggle even a little. In fact, it continued playing like normal, as if the weather effects were meant to just… work.”
“This, I’m relieved to say, isn’t the case on the Switch 2. Sure, they’re still not perfect–I did experience one stutter when dashing on Koraidon, and there are still texture issues and texture pop-ins–but the visuals and performance are far from garbage. They’re so much better, in fact, that I’m tempted to say the free Switch 2 updates are closer to a light remaster than just an optimization.”
“These were my first impressions from just thirty minutes of hands-on play, so there could certainly be issues I missed or that reveal themselves later, but I encountered significantly less issues in these thirty minutes on the Switch 2 compared to the thirty minutes on the original Switch I spent capturing the comparison footage.”
