Pokemon Violet is now the lowest-rated mainline Pokemon game

Pokemon Violet is now the lowest-rated mainline Pokemon game ever.

As noted earlier today on December 7 by a user on Twitter, Pokemon Scarlet now sits at a 72 rating on Metacritic, as per its critic reviews. As a result, this means Pokemon Scarlet is now the lowest-rated Pokemon game ever, taking the title from Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, which sits at a 73 rating on Metacritic from critics.

When Pokemon Scarlet and Violet launched last month in November, critics were fairly polarized on the two games. While some reviewers praised the open-world direction of the two new games, others dismissed the new structure of the Gen 9 games, as well as pointing out a litany of performance issues holding the pair back.

For what it's worth, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet both sit at user scores of both 3 and 3.5 on Metacritic from user reviews. It's pretty safe to say, therefore, that players have generally been a lot more down on the two new Gen 9 games as a collective than reviewers have, given these scores.

Our own Pokemon Scarlet and Violet review drew attention to the massive performance issues underpinning both games. We wrote that while Paldea was "conceptually interesting," the actual open-world mechanics aren't well integrated at all, and the overall plot lacked both focus and direction.

Since Pokemon Scarlet and Violet released though, Nintendo acknowledged the performance issues, and pledged to listen to fans and their complaints going forward. That's accompanied by several post-launch patches, which some players said have improved performance issues somewhat for them.

Check out our full Pokemon Scarlet and Violet PokeDex guide if you're currently exploring Paldea for yourself.