What 25 Years of Metacritic Scores Tell Us About Pokémon

The review embargo for Pokémon Pokopia lifted today, March 2, three days before the game hits Nintendo Switch 2 on March 5. The early score sitting on Metacritic: 89. That's not just the highest score a Pokémon spin-off has ever received, but the highest score any Pokémon game, mainline or otherwise, has ever received.

That number deserves some context. Let's build it from the beginning.

Pokémon Pokopia. The Pokémon Company International / Nintendo / Game Freak / Creatures

The Pre-Score Era

The games that defined Pokémon, Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, don't have Metacritic scores. They predate the platform entirely. What they left behind instead is cultural foundation: the trading, the battling, the playground economy around rare Pokémon and rarer cards. By the time critics started aggregating scores in the early 2000s, the franchise was already a phenomenon.

Twenty-five Years of Mainline Scores

When Metacritic coverage begins in earnest with Generation III, the story is remarkably stable. Ruby and Sapphire (2002) scored an 82. Diamond and Pearl on the DS landed at 85. The remakes HeartGold and SoulSilver in 2009 hit 87, a mark that Black and White, X, and Sun and Moon would all match over the following years. Pokémon Y in 2013 reached 88, the series' mainline peak.

For over a decade, the franchise sat reliably in the high 80s. Critics occasionally grumbled about formula, but the formula worked.

The Switch era changed that. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl landed at 73 in 2021; competent remakes, not much else, if you ask me. Then came Scarlet and Violet in 2022: open-world, ambitious, technically troubled at launch, and scored 72 and 71 respectively. Violet's 71 remains the lowest Metacritic score any mainline Pokémon game has ever received. Sandwiched between those two stumbles was Legends: Arceus at 83, proof the series could still surprise. And last October, Legends: Z-A scored 82; a solid recovery, and a great game, if you ask me.

The Spin-off Track Record

Here's where Pokopia's 89 gets even more interesting. Spin-offs have historically scored well below their mainline counterparts.

The gold standard for Pokémon spin-offs on Metacritic has long been New Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire (2003) at 81, followed by New Pokémon Snap (2021) at 79, and Pokémon Stadium 2 at 78. The genre experiments fare worse: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky sits at 54, Detective Pikachu Returns at 66, Pokémon Friends, released just last year, at 62. Pokémon TCG Pocket managed a respectable 75 on mobile, but the overall picture is clear: spin-offs generally live in the 60s and low 70s, with the occasional outlier pushing toward 80.

No Pokémon spin-off has ever come close to 89. The closest predecessor, New Snap, is a full ten points behind.

What the Arc Looks Like

If you chart mainline scores from 2002 to today, you see a long plateau in the 80s, a dip and wobble through the Switch generation, and then a question mark: can the series find its footing again? Z-A at 82 suggested yes, cautiously. And the trailer for the upcoming main game might say so.

Pokopia, launching in three days, is a different answer. Co-developed by Game Freak and Omega Force, it's more life simulation than RPG, closer in spirit to Animal Crossing than to the formula the series has run for 30 years. Critics who've played it describe it as one of the most ambitious things Pokémon has ever tried. The score reflects that.

An 89 doesn't just beat every mainline game. It beats every spin-off by a country mile. It beats Pokémon Y's 88, the previous series record. It arrives on a brand new console with a franchise that, two years ago, was posting its worst scores in history.

A Score Before a Launch

There's something worth noting about the timing here. The reviews are live, the score is set, and the game isn't available to the public yet. That gap of three days is enough to see a number but not hold the cartridge. Whether Pokopia sustains that 89 or settles slightly as more reviews come in, we won't know until then.

After three decades, after the lows of Scarlet and Violet, after years of debates about whether Game Freak was losing its touch, a Pokémon spin-off just posted the best critical score in franchise history.

Thursday can't come soon enough :D