Pokémon Sword is probably the weirdest game in the series for me so far. For a little more context, I've played the remakes of Gens 1-3, played 4-7. and also 9. I decided to replay them and try out the ones I never got around to in order to see how my opinion changes from my first time playing them years ago. Generation 8 was the only one I haven't touched, and after a conversation with one of my friends, I decided I'd finally try it out for the first time. I kept my expectations low because I heard this one is one of the worsts in the series. So what's my verdict? Well, it leans close to being mediocre unfortunately. Now in all honesty, my problem with this game isn't really much, but it's such a big factor that I can't ignore it, though I'll get to that later. First, the good. I think the new Pokémon are pretty damn cool. For these reviews (minus Kalos), I'm only using Pokémon that debuted in that Gen (or regional forms). All of the Pokémon I used on my team were pretty great in both the strength and design departments, so no complaints there. The gameplay itself is fine, it's kind of easy at times but the level scaling felt pretty tight in a good way, where I never really felt over or underleveled (though I did skip some battles near the end). I will say though, most of the Gym Challenges were pretty fun, even if they were really simple in concept. The ones that stood out the most to me were Bea's with that weird rotating disk you have to guide yourself in or Gordie's with the dowsing machine where you need to watch out for the pits. Not all of these are great though, and some of them are literally just... regular battles. I would've preferred the puzzles they'd do in the older games but I don't completely mind these. The Gym Leaders themselves were a pretty good difficulty, not being as easy as I expected but not hard where I'd need more than one attempt, with the exception of Nessa since my team wasn't exactly suited for her battle at that point (I didn't know Applin only learns two moves before evolving into Flapple or Appletun). The aesthetic of the game is also really nice, the region barely feels stale visually (graphics aside), such as with Ballonlea and Circhester. Last but not least, the OST is seriously great. The battle themes especially shine, mainly the Gym Leader's, Hop's, Pier's and especially Bede's which is probably my favourite song in the game. The unfortunate thing is, some of those amazing songs are strapped onto certain characters, and the main things I don't like about this game are the story and characters. The story has very little substance to it until the final act, and that final act is... horrible. Let's start with the elephant in the room, Chairman Rosé is probably the WORST character not only in the game, but dare I say the series. His plan is so crazy that I genuinely can't wrap my head around his line of thinking and I don't think I want to understand anyway. So let me get this straight: He wants to stop the energy crisis in Galar. Got it. So when does this energy crisis occur? A THOUSAND YEARS IN THE FUTURE??? It baffles me because not even ten generations could pass for that crisis to occur. So he's paranoid about something that won't happen for many, many, MANY years. Okay, so what's his plan? He talks to Leon about it, Leon says he wants to help after the final match with the player. For some reason this upsets Rosé so much he decides to bring about the Darkest Day early by waking up Eternatus right before the match started? Why? For what purpose? I don't even care if I got some of the details wrong because frankly, Rosé sucks and I hate him. Unfortunately, most of the other characters aren't much better. Hop, Leon, Marnie, and Bede especially are either extremely annoying or extremely bland. Hop and Leon don't shut up about the latter being THE unbeatable champion, Marnie is literally the least interesting important character I've seen in the series, and Bede is trying so hard to be a good asshole rival but is too busy talking about how he got endorsed by the Chairman to be a good rival (I consistently one-shot his team each time). I saw someone say Marnie was a "walking character design" and that honestly feels true because she barely shows up and she isn't really as interesting as she looks. I bring this up because that feels like the game in general. The game has a lot of stuff that looks interesting, but it falls flat. Luckily, the Gym Leaders were all pretty cool and are pretty memorable to me at least, such as Nessa, Raihan, Bea, and the highlights are Gordie and Piers. I just love how expressive Gordie is and Piers was the highlight, him having a banger theme and a unique stadium, plus no Dynamaxing in his Gym. I forgot to mention, I think Dynamax as a gimmick is... not bad. I'll admit, out of the main gimmicks, Mega Evolution is definitely the coolest one. However, my issue with Megas comes from how there's no limitations on them, unlike the others where they're more limited in use. Dynamax feels like the compromise between Mega Evolution and Z-Moves. You have three turns to have this powered up gigantic version of your Pokémon and all your moves change to certain Dynamax versions. It's not a bad gimmick at all, and Gigantimaxing has basically what I wanted with the design changes, and some of them are pretty cool like Gengar and Alcremie's. I do understand why some people don't like it though, really my only issue with it comes from the Dynamax raids which just really aren't fun if I'm being blunt. I liked the Tera Raids in Scarlet and Violet much better since they feel a lot quicker and as a result these are just painful since they feel super long. Anyway, I don't plan on doing the DLC for a while because I just wanted to do a base game playthrough to get my opinion on it. Overall, this game is pretty good in a lot of qualities, but the story and characters really drag it down.