Pokémon Violet is the lowest-rated mainline game on Metacritic, but it’s still selling like hotcakes

The ninth generation of Pokémon games have been on the market for a few weeks now, and they’ve gained quite a reputation. Fans are having fun, but Scarlet and Violet are still loaded with glitches and other technical issues. For these reasons, they’re now the lowest-rated mainline Pokémon games on Metacritic — Violet, specifically.

Check the reviews aggregator, and you’ll see a score of 72 for Violet and a barely-higher 73 for Scarlet. This makes Violet the overall lowest ranking in terms of review score, while Scarlet ties with last year’s Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Scarlet and Violet also have awfully low user scores, and that’s where Scarlet actually ranks lower than its sister game. It has a 3.0, while Violet has a 3.5 Checking the comments under both the critical and audience reviews, you’ll see a lot of the same complaints about performance, graphical fidelity, frame rates, and all those infamous glitches.

It makes for an interesting dichotomy because, despite those clear problems, the new Pokémon games are still selling incredibly well. They passed 10 million units sold within three days of launch, when the technical issues were already well known. Thankfully, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have acknowledged the problem, and the next Pokémon Scarlet and Violet update will fix both bugs and add Ranked Battles.

We also just learned about the game’s next Tera Raid event, which will pit players against 4- and 5-Star Tyranitar in Scarlet and 4- and 5-Star Salamence in Violet. Tera types aren’t set for either of those encounters, so you could catch a variety of special Pokémon during the event. See our guide on how to do a Tera Raid with friends if you’re looking to squad up.

For those just starting Scarlet and Violet, we have some helpful tips surrounding the starter Pokémon too. We have recommendations for held items for Sprigatito, Fuecoco, and Quaxly.