Pokemon Let's Go Not Working Offline Without Internet Connection

Pokemon Let’s Go is not working without internet connection for some players. Reports of the game refusing to start while the Switch is offline have started to surface, and those affected are starting to become desperate. It seems like there’s a bug that throws up a message that the console is “checking whether the game can be played”, and stays there indefinitely. If you run into this problem, there are a couple of things you could try, and we’re going to list them in our Pokemon Let’s Go not working offline guide.

Pokemon Let’s Go checking whether the game can be played error

If you get stuck in this offline limbo, there are several things you could try. Simply putting the console in airplane mode seems to allow most of the affected to proceed into the game, but without the online features. It’s a nice temporary solution, but it doesn’t make the problem actually go away. If you want to use the online features, it won’t help you.

It seems to only happen to people with a digital copy – cartridge owners aren’t reporting such problems. Most of those who’ve complained about it seem to have the game preloaded with the console. In several cases, it turned out the affected players used to own another Switch before the one they’re playing on. In that case, the solution is to migrate the data from the old console to the new one, by making the new one primary in your Nintendo account settings.

There’s a nifty set of instructions on Nintendo’s official support site. Follow the steps described there, and you should be good to go. If the procedure doesn’t help, your only remaining option would be to contact Nintendo’s support and explain the issue.