So I finally finished Pokemon Shield. I am not really sure what to say. All around it was pretty disappointing. The story is terrible, Hop's whole thing could of been interesting but they fumbled that and made him the worst rival in the entire series. The ending is also super anticlimatic, and while Eternatus is cool everything else is just uninteresting. They dont give any time to flesh out nearly any character and the only one I liked in the end was Marnie. The game is also just really boring at times. The combat is still the same old, but with barely any animations or flare to it its just really quite dull. Also its about time this series gets some voice acting, its seriously jarring to just see a bunch of mouths moving with nothing in cutscenes. But its not all bad. Its pokemon so there is some banger music, depsite Hop sucking balls his battle theme is one of my favorite pokemon songs. The character customization is also really great, I dressed my girl up in the maximum drip, spent a lot of time on that and definitely made the game worth it for me. Also while some towns are kinda bland, some are really beautiful and seeing Pokemon on a larger scope makes me happy, hell even just being able to play Pokemon on the TV with the switch dock nearly made me cry but that's just more of a cool thing with the switch than a positive for the game lol. What else did I like uh.... the new pokemon designs are all pretty good? liked most of those... hm. Thats kinda it really. It's not a bad game by any means and I definitely liked it more than I disliked it but for Pokemons mainline debut on a home console it just kinda falls flat. This series has so much potential and so much fucking money that its absurd its getting this little care put into it. Pokemon can do better. Legends was a step in the right direction. I really hope they can do something better with this.
Champion Team
Inteleon lvl 60
Falinks lvl 60 (best boy, so cute)
Coalossal lvl 58
Hatterene lvl 59
Toxtricity lvl59
Corviknight lvl57
Time Played - 36 hours 53 Minutes
Nancymeter - 64/100
Game Completion #36 of 2022
April Completion #5
Champion Team
Inteleon lvl 60
Falinks lvl 60 (best boy, so cute)
Coalossal lvl 58
Hatterene lvl 59
Toxtricity lvl59
Corviknight lvl57
Time Played - 36 hours 53 Minutes
Nancymeter - 64/100
Game Completion #36 of 2022
April Completion #5
Pokemon Shield is not a good game. An unfortunate result of rushed development leading to a mind numbing story experience, poorly implemented new features with so much wasted potential (like the wild areas), and a lack of polish that sticks out like a sore thumb in the new generation.
With that being said, I can't deny the fun I had. I grew to really like Hop and Marnie as rivals, and Leon is one of the best champions in the series. Pokemon models and moves in general were pretty well animated and looked crisp (Never cared for the National Dex either). And above all else, the main hook of catching and training Pokemon is as engaging and rewarding as ever.
I hate this chain that Game Freak holds over me; despite them seemingly entering a new era of mediocre titles with little effort, it'll still garner some enjoyment purely based off of the namesake - and unfortunately I'm a product of this. I hope Legends ends up being the right step forward we're all hoping it is.
With that being said, I can't deny the fun I had. I grew to really like Hop and Marnie as rivals, and Leon is one of the best champions in the series. Pokemon models and moves in general were pretty well animated and looked crisp (Never cared for the National Dex either). And above all else, the main hook of catching and training Pokemon is as engaging and rewarding as ever.
I hate this chain that Game Freak holds over me; despite them seemingly entering a new era of mediocre titles with little effort, it'll still garner some enjoyment purely based off of the namesake - and unfortunately I'm a product of this. I hope Legends ends up being the right step forward we're all hoping it is.
2019 foi definitivamente um dos anos de Pokémon, aquele ano foi bastante polêmico, tudo por causa dos jogos Pokémon Sword e Shield, várias tretas como a National Dex cortada, entrevistas estranhas do Masuda, Animações reaproveitadas dos Pokémon e dos personagens, mas será que apesar de tudo isso, eles são bons ? É o que vamos ver !
Começando pelos gráficos... É, são bem feios, de longe um dos jogos mais feios da série, perdendo apenas para os jogos de Game Boy mesmo, as texturas são feias, sem graças, quase todos os cenários são vazios e genéricos, a única excessão é Ballonlea, aquela floresta que tem um ginásio do tipo fada, aquilo sim é extremamente bonito.
A história é muito sem graça, infelizmente Galar não possui uma boa história e Lore, a história do Zacian, Zamazenta e Eternatus tinham muito potencial, mas foi jogado no lixo, a parte do Dia da Escuridão foi uma péssima ideia.
A Gameplay é a mesma de sempre, as batalhas em turno funcionam da mesma maneira como nos outros jogos, mas existe uma nova mecânica chamada Dynamax, o Dynamax é um fenômeno que deixa o Pokémon gigante, assim deixando seus Status bem maiores, além da vida aumentada, os golpes também mudam, também existe o Gigantamax, basicamente é o Dynamax mas além de deixar o Pokémon gigante, ele muda a aparência e dependendo do Pokémon ele terá um golpe exclusivo, poucos Pokémon podem ter a Gigantamax, ao contrário de todo mundo, eu gostei muito dessa mecânica mas ela foi mal aproveitada, a gente usa poucas vezes e os Pokémon com Gigantamax são basicamente Pokémon de Kanto e Galar, isso mesmo, KANTO, de novo.
Outra coisa nova da Gameplay é a Wild Area, basicamente é a área mais mundo aberto, mas é só uma área com vários Pokémon, nada de cidades ou algo do tipo e é feia demais, você pode fazer as Max Raid Battles, são batalhas com um Pokémon em Dynamax ou Gigantamax, são bastante divertidas, encontrar Shiny nas Max Raid Battles é bem legal também.
Os Pokémon novos são muito bons como sempre, temos uma média de 80 Pokémon novos, os Starters são Grokey, Scorbunny e Sobble, uma coisa que retorna são as Galarian Forms, elas são formas alternativas de Pokémon de outras gerações, mas ao contrário das Alola Forms, você não é limitado apenas Pokémon de Kanto, temos Pokémon de várias regiões, como Johto, Hoenn e Unova e também temos evoluções de Pokémon antigos ! Como o Obstagoon que é a evolução do Galarian Linoone, Cursola que é a evolução do Galarian Corsola e etc.
Os Designs dos personagens da região também são muito bons, o que é um destaque da série, acho que essa região de longe possui os melhores líderes de ginásio, os NPCs que lutamos nas rotas também são bem legais.
Vamos falar da polêmica, o corte da National Dex, muitos não gostaram por limitarem a Pokédex, mas na minha opinião foi muito bom, mais do que a obrigação, exatamente, primeiro que completar a National Dex com 898 Pokémon seria um tremendo saco e segundo que você só pegaria os mesmos 6 Pokémon de sempre.
Outra polêmica são as animações, principalmente as animações de batalha, elas são as mesmas dos jogos de 3DS, mas por algum motivo eles conseguiram piorar, o Double Kick é vergonhoso e engraçado, agora sobre as animações no geral, o Hop (o nosso "rival") possui as mesmas animações do Hau (nosso "rival" lá de Sun e Moon) e os personagens quando tentar ir para outras direções, eles ficam girando, isso é BASTANTE notável principalmente os lendários girando no Pós Game.
OUTRA polêmica foram as entrevistas do Junichi Masuda, já que ele tinha dito que o corte da National Dex foi para equilibrar o competitivo e melhoras as animações, sendo que elas estão piores do que nunca, essa desculpa não rolou para os fãs, ainda mais que depois eles adicionaram alguns dos antigos Pokémon como DLC, além disso, ele também disse que as mecânicas como Mega Evolução e Z-Move não voltariam nesses jogos.
Uma das piores coisas é o Pós Game, especificamente a história dele, depois de zerar a campanha principal, o jogo apresenta dois novos personagens, o Sordward e o Shielbert, que são de longe um dos piores personagens da franquia, além de repetirem os cenários, é extremamente chato, basicamente é enfrentar os Pokémon Dynamax e é só isso, existe a Battle Tower também, mas é só uma série de batalhas que só acabam quando você perde, mas isso não é novidade.
A trilha sonora é muito boa ! Todas elas são muito boas, especialmente os temas dos lendários Zacian e Zamazenta e os remixes de batalhas do Regis, a música da Battle Tower é nada mais e nada menos composta pelo Toby Fox ! Exatamente, o mesmo compositor do Undertale e Deltarune, ultimamente ele está fazendo músicas para todos os jogos da Gamefreak, ou seja, isso é absolutamente divino.
As DLCs vou falar nas análises que farei algum dia delas, mas resumindo, são melhores que o jogo base mas o problema é que deveria estar no jogo base e não como DLC, sinto que é mais obrigatório como um bônus.
Pokémon Sword e Shield não são jogos ruins, mas como um Pokémon do Switch, eles deviam ser muito melhores, minha nota é um 6,5 ou 7, mas isso por causa das DLCs, eles tem coisas boas, o jogo é divertido mas possui problemas que não podem passar batido.
Começando pelos gráficos... É, são bem feios, de longe um dos jogos mais feios da série, perdendo apenas para os jogos de Game Boy mesmo, as texturas são feias, sem graças, quase todos os cenários são vazios e genéricos, a única excessão é Ballonlea, aquela floresta que tem um ginásio do tipo fada, aquilo sim é extremamente bonito.
A história é muito sem graça, infelizmente Galar não possui uma boa história e Lore, a história do Zacian, Zamazenta e Eternatus tinham muito potencial, mas foi jogado no lixo, a parte do Dia da Escuridão foi uma péssima ideia.
A Gameplay é a mesma de sempre, as batalhas em turno funcionam da mesma maneira como nos outros jogos, mas existe uma nova mecânica chamada Dynamax, o Dynamax é um fenômeno que deixa o Pokémon gigante, assim deixando seus Status bem maiores, além da vida aumentada, os golpes também mudam, também existe o Gigantamax, basicamente é o Dynamax mas além de deixar o Pokémon gigante, ele muda a aparência e dependendo do Pokémon ele terá um golpe exclusivo, poucos Pokémon podem ter a Gigantamax, ao contrário de todo mundo, eu gostei muito dessa mecânica mas ela foi mal aproveitada, a gente usa poucas vezes e os Pokémon com Gigantamax são basicamente Pokémon de Kanto e Galar, isso mesmo, KANTO, de novo.
Outra coisa nova da Gameplay é a Wild Area, basicamente é a área mais mundo aberto, mas é só uma área com vários Pokémon, nada de cidades ou algo do tipo e é feia demais, você pode fazer as Max Raid Battles, são batalhas com um Pokémon em Dynamax ou Gigantamax, são bastante divertidas, encontrar Shiny nas Max Raid Battles é bem legal também.
Os Pokémon novos são muito bons como sempre, temos uma média de 80 Pokémon novos, os Starters são Grokey, Scorbunny e Sobble, uma coisa que retorna são as Galarian Forms, elas são formas alternativas de Pokémon de outras gerações, mas ao contrário das Alola Forms, você não é limitado apenas Pokémon de Kanto, temos Pokémon de várias regiões, como Johto, Hoenn e Unova e também temos evoluções de Pokémon antigos ! Como o Obstagoon que é a evolução do Galarian Linoone, Cursola que é a evolução do Galarian Corsola e etc.
Os Designs dos personagens da região também são muito bons, o que é um destaque da série, acho que essa região de longe possui os melhores líderes de ginásio, os NPCs que lutamos nas rotas também são bem legais.
Vamos falar da polêmica, o corte da National Dex, muitos não gostaram por limitarem a Pokédex, mas na minha opinião foi muito bom, mais do que a obrigação, exatamente, primeiro que completar a National Dex com 898 Pokémon seria um tremendo saco e segundo que você só pegaria os mesmos 6 Pokémon de sempre.
Outra polêmica são as animações, principalmente as animações de batalha, elas são as mesmas dos jogos de 3DS, mas por algum motivo eles conseguiram piorar, o Double Kick é vergonhoso e engraçado, agora sobre as animações no geral, o Hop (o nosso "rival") possui as mesmas animações do Hau (nosso "rival" lá de Sun e Moon) e os personagens quando tentar ir para outras direções, eles ficam girando, isso é BASTANTE notável principalmente os lendários girando no Pós Game.
OUTRA polêmica foram as entrevistas do Junichi Masuda, já que ele tinha dito que o corte da National Dex foi para equilibrar o competitivo e melhoras as animações, sendo que elas estão piores do que nunca, essa desculpa não rolou para os fãs, ainda mais que depois eles adicionaram alguns dos antigos Pokémon como DLC, além disso, ele também disse que as mecânicas como Mega Evolução e Z-Move não voltariam nesses jogos.
Uma das piores coisas é o Pós Game, especificamente a história dele, depois de zerar a campanha principal, o jogo apresenta dois novos personagens, o Sordward e o Shielbert, que são de longe um dos piores personagens da franquia, além de repetirem os cenários, é extremamente chato, basicamente é enfrentar os Pokémon Dynamax e é só isso, existe a Battle Tower também, mas é só uma série de batalhas que só acabam quando você perde, mas isso não é novidade.
A trilha sonora é muito boa ! Todas elas são muito boas, especialmente os temas dos lendários Zacian e Zamazenta e os remixes de batalhas do Regis, a música da Battle Tower é nada mais e nada menos composta pelo Toby Fox ! Exatamente, o mesmo compositor do Undertale e Deltarune, ultimamente ele está fazendo músicas para todos os jogos da Gamefreak, ou seja, isso é absolutamente divino.
As DLCs vou falar nas análises que farei algum dia delas, mas resumindo, são melhores que o jogo base mas o problema é que deveria estar no jogo base e não como DLC, sinto que é mais obrigatório como um bônus.
Pokémon Sword e Shield não são jogos ruins, mas como um Pokémon do Switch, eles deviam ser muito melhores, minha nota é um 6,5 ou 7, mas isso por causa das DLCs, eles tem coisas boas, o jogo é divertido mas possui problemas que não podem passar batido.
I love wooloo more than life itself but not even pokemon could save Britain
I didn't hate this as much as everyone else did! And even I don't know why! It's an objectively mediocre game but it's the Pokemon game I find myself returning to the most - I'm on my third playthrough. I literally don't know why. God help me.
Instead of this, Game FrEAk should have made a DARK and MATURE game where you can KILL PEOPLE (like in my favorite rom hack: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FMnEcOoX0Accuwv?format=jpg&name=medium)
It bears outlining my experience with the Pokemon franchise before discussing my thoughts on Sword and Shield. Pokemon Blue was the first video game I ever played at the age of four. My Blastoise, who I had cleverly named “Blue,” was my best friend, and we fought long and hard to make it through to the Elite Four and become champions. Since then, Pokemon has been a very central part of my life. I played every game in the series as it came out with the exception of Gen IV and V because at that time I was in high school and was way too cool for video games.
Of course in college being a nerd became cool again, and I distinctly remember the launch of XY when I was a junior. My roommate and I went to Gamestop on launch day squealing like actual children and each bought a 2DS and a copy each of X and Y. I was so unbelievably happy to be back. Pokemon has always been a place I felt I belonged. It’s a place of friendship, collecting fun and cool monsters, learning the power of teamwork, and becoming the best like no one ever was. My brother and I pretty much only ever played with Pokemon toys as kids. I had tons of plushes, played every spin off game, watched every episode of the show dozens if not hundreds of times. What I’m trying to say is that there is no media franchise more important to me than Pokemon.
Pokemon Sword and Shield is a Pokemon game. That may seem like a non-statement, but it’s perhaps the best summary I can muster. Pokemon is something that, because of its status as biggest franchise in the world as well as the biggest commonality between all of our childhoods, is impossible to review unbiased. If you reviewed Sword and Shield without having any prior experience with the series, I likely wouldn’t care about your review. Not because it’s invalid, but because we’d be seeing the game through two incomparable lenses. I am going to try and review this game as well as I can, but I want to confess up front it will be biased. As I said, I love Pokemon. It’s a huge part of my life. The main problem with trying to review this game is that no matter how bad it was, it was always going to be fun. Pokemon will never not be fun, no matter how bad it is. Such is a truth of the universe, and we’d all be happier if we’d just lay back and accept it.
The biggest negative of this game is not, in fact, the missing National Dex; Perhaps this is a bold statement, but Pokemon Sword and Shield would have been no better if it had featured all 900-something monsters. No, it is the frankly unacceptable visual and technical quality of the game, particularly the wild area. Already, here we are, exhibiting my previous point. This game’s quality is unacceptable, yet here I am accepting it because it is Pokemon.
The animations of Pokemon in the Wild Area (the open world online portion of the map) vary from unbelievable attention to detail to something that would have looked out of date in 2009. One minute you notice that Zigzagoon runs in zig zags like its name suggests and chuckle at it; the next minute you notice that Gyarados turns at sharp 90 degree angles as it swims like it’s a Disney World animatronic. The Wingull are floating on the breeze without flapping their wings like they’re supposed to, but, oh, that Hawlucha is running like a human man instead of flying. Pokemon based on prey animals run when they see you, those based on predator animals chase you when they see you to attack, and those that fit into neither category get confused and pause when seeing you. But once you move ten feet away from any Pokemon it vanishes in a puff of almost comical smoke.
The infamous image of the “N64 Tree” from the trailers is not a nitpick or out-of-context image. Every tree in the Wild Area looks like it’s straight out of Halo 2. The grass is rendered so badly I felt embarrassed for GameFreak while looking at it. The rocks, the dirt, rain. It all would have looked pretty bad in 2009. In 2019 it is, again, unacceptable. To use common parlance, this game looks like hot garbage. This is the biggest franchise in the world. The main series games should not look like hot garbage.
In the overworld, Pokemon are scaled appropriately to their recorded sizes. Step into a battle, however, and suddenly Caterpie is half the size of Wailord. Pokemon Colosseum, a game from 2002, had properly scaled Pokemon in battles. The graphical capabilities of the Switch are not the issue. Alongside Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8, Dragon Quest 11, Mario Odyssey, and Luigi’s Mansion 3… how could this game even be on the same system as those technical masterpieces? I can think of no explanation besides that the Galar Region’s map was made for 3DS and just blown up to 1080p as an afterthought.
The National Dex missing did not have the negative impact I had anticipated. I didn’t even notice, to be honest. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the game might be better for it. The smaller roster did allow for some forms of balance. I am upset my old team isn’t coming forward with me from Sun and Moon, but I left them on the Poke Pelago. They’ll be hanging out, eating beans, digging through the mines, and chilling in hot tubs for the rest of time. There are worse fates for the creatures I care about so deeply.
The game is not as long as previous versions, although that’s mostly due to the fact that it is the easiest game in the series — and that’s a pretty low bar. In fact, the only way I could create a challenge is to specifically avoid grinding at all. Fighting every trainer I saw, ignoring the wild area until the post game and never fighting wild Pokemon set me consistently at the perfect level to make each gym challenging and barely beatable. I slid through every gym on my last Pokemon with this method and felt that rush you only get when you beat that goon’s last dude with your guy in red health. Even for a children’s game, Pokemon Sword and Shield are much too easy. The permanent experience share unbalances the entire game and makes you much too powerful if you play the way you’ve played the other games. If you thought XY or Sun and Moon were too easy, those two are like hard mode compared to this.
The online experience has not improved much. Nintendo’s online functionalities continue to be lacking, and with the convoluted Y-Com and Link trade system set up here it’s hard to understand what your $20 a year is going to, however cheap it is. With the Global Trading System relocated to the smartphone app Pokemon Home, the online capabilities of Sword and Shield are actually a downgrade from the previous generation. But hey, Max Raid Battles are awesome.
The story is incredibly badly written. Not that I expect a lot from Pokemon stories, but this one was so purposeless and meandering that I started just skipping the cutscenes towards the end (at least they let you do that now). The characters are a mixed bag. Professor Ivy is so forgettable that I had to look up her name to write this review. I liked Sonia, Professor Ivy’s assistant, quite a lot. In anime we don’t often get female characters that are allowed to be both girly and very intelligent. Hop, your rival, is Hau from Sun and Moon but dumber and worse at Pokemon. Much more annoying, too. The champion, Leon, is his asshole older brother modeled after a professional English footballer. As much as he helps you out with a recommendation letter, he definitely has the presence of a hotshot professional athlete. Beating him is pretty satisfying, and he actually puts up a pretty good fight when you do take him on. The gym leaders are fairly interesting characters, and I remember like half of their names, which is better than usual. I definitely remember Nessa. And who could forget Ball Guy? Marnie, your other rival, is your cute teen goth girlfriend with a toxic fan club. Which is a good coaster into my next point.
Team Yell has set a new low for evil teams, and I say that with Team Galactic on the table. The follow-up for the brilliant Team Skull, is … a teenage girl’s fan club. They only reason they battle you is to try and deter you from the Pokemon League challenge so Marnie has a better shot at winning. They corner you, fight you, lose, get sad, and disappear. All without Marnie being aware of it. This is a 14-year old girl with a fan base of dozens of adult men and women, with nothing better to do than to humiliate themselves by losing Pokemon battles to a 14-year old kid over and over again. It is offensively dumb. They are weird, creepy, annoying, and we’d have been better off with no villains at all in Sword and Shield.
On to a few positive notes. After a year of jamming it out, I feel confident saying that this game has the best music in series history. All of the tracks, from the sleepy piano of the Slumbering Weald, to Toby Fox’s (Undertale) battle theme, to the rave party gym leader theme, are good as hell. It might be too good; the wild area theme evokes a sense of exploration and adventure that the wild area doesn’t manage to fulfill. There’s a wide variety of styles too, ranging all the way from ethereal folk songs to industrial metal. The punk aspects feel like a tribute to the UK’s stance as the birthplace of the genre, and it’s the small things that help to remind me a lot of people working on this game did care.
Gym battles are a massive upgrade, maybe my favorite new thing about this game. Instead of a small room with some lines drawn on the ground, gym battles are now a nationally televised spectator sport. You step into a full sized stadium packed with people, screaming and cheering. The EDM music pumps up. And the way that it builds, when the gym leader finally tosses out their last Pokemon and hits that Dynamax button, you can’t help but get excited.
I did not hate Dynamaxing as much as I wanted to. I was never a fan of mega evolutions because they were used in totally the wrong way. Salamence and Charizard and Gengar did not need megas. You know who did? Xatu, Octillery, Venomoth, Castform. Pokemon that are otherwise useless. Z-moves were fine by me, I liked that they evened things out even if I never used them. One thing they don’t tell you in the trailers — Dynamax can only be used against gym leaders and in online raids. That’s it. So 95% of the game, it basically doesn’t exist. If you’re offended by Dynamax, take a step back and try to figure out why you’re actually angry about this game. There are a lot of valid criticisms, as I’ve outlined here, but this mechanic that only pops up a dozen times in 40 hours isn’t the one to lean on. Some Pokemon get special Gigantamax forms, but I believe only ~30 so far. More are to come!
The wild area is nice — there was a lot of potential in this idea and they build on it well for the DLCs. If you connect to the internet while in the Wild Area, you’ll see avatars of hundreds of other players running around, creating a momentary illusion that you’re in the Pokemon MMO we’ve dreamed about since childhood. That illusion is shattered the moment you try to talk to anyone; the only thing that results from an interaction is a stock catchphrase and a random food item.
It may have taken 20 years to get here, but I can’t emphasize how much Pokemon Sword and Shield’s Wild Area is improved by the ability to control the camrea. The open world aesthetic, featuring Pokemon wandering around in the overworld feels amazing when it doesn’t look like Halo 2. I love seeing a herd of Koffings free floating while a Stonjourner watches in silence, plotting. A stoic-looking Beartic mother watches over its Cubchoos as they hunt for fish in the frozen lake. The freedom feels nice and for a few hours you can pretend they really did do a Pokemon: Breath of the Wild.
I love most of the new Pokemon. Some of the top tier designs are Toxtricity, Grapploct, Cursola, Stonjourner, Centiskorch, and Galarian Weezing. However, the starters were probably the worst Pokemon of the bunch. I love Sobble, and ended up picking it to continue my tradition of water starters over the last 20 years. The final evolutions are disappointing at best. Intelleon looks way too much like a person and approaches the uncanny valley; its animations are also laughably bad. Cinderace, Scorbunny’s final evolution, is actively bad. Rillaboom is probably the best starter final evolution and it’s still pretty bad. Some designs, like Mr. Rime, are downright upsetting. But all in all, it’s not a bad haul. Probably the best batch since Ruby and Sapphire.
EV and IV training is a lot easier now, as is breeding. You can just check IVs in your PC now and alter EVs either the standard way or with berries. You can also have like Pokemon teach egg moves to each other and use mints to alter a Pokemon’s nature. All in all, competitive has never been easier. Get into it!
I love the art style and designs of the new towns. Hammerlocke City has an awesome medieval aesthetic, Motosoke is cool and steampunk, and the ice town Circester is gorgeous. While the cities aren’t much bigger than they have been in the past, there’s a lot of background inaccessible area that makes it seem like thousands of people could actually be living there. It’s not much, but it’s something. And it’s worth noting that the visuals inside the towns look like a nice 2016 game rather than a 2006 game. Nothing impressive, but an upgrade for Pokemon for sure.
Out in the open world, there are Max Raid Dens where super powerful Dynamax Pokemon live. Group up with your friends (if you can figure out the convoluted online system) and co-op against a giant Gyarados, or whatever. I have done ~40 raid battles, all but a few online with at least one friend. Honestly, this rocks. In particular, the 10 or so battles I did a full team of four on voice comms were some of the most fun I’ve had all year. Trying to coordinate who gets to Dynamax with how many hits the shield has left is exciting, and everyone will end up scrambling to try and be the one in charge. Because of the shield mechanic in which the boss builds up shields every few turns, coordination is pretty much required for five star raids. At the end of the battle you get a chance to catch it, and out of the 40 raids I did only 2 Pokemon escaped.
In the first DLC, the Isle of Armor, you’ll travel to a nearby temperate island that I believe is based off the Isle of Mann. You’ll join a dojo, get a new incompetent and annoying rival, and run across the island doing quests for an eccentric martial arts master named Mustard. It was tedious and disappointing. The quests were honestly pretty tedious here, but the Isle of Armor offers a lot in the way of the whole island being a Wild Area. Full control of the camera and Pokemon walking around the overworld is worth the price of admission. It does at least provide some more content for endgame, but getting Urshifu at the end kind of feels like little reward for the tedium of battling a less-than-exciting new rival and chasing Slowpokes around the island. After you get Kubfu, however, also note that your lead Pokemon will walk around the overworld with you, so do that as quickly as possible. If you’re a fan of collectibles they’ve added hidden Digletts that act like Koroks seeds in Breath of the Wild.
I enjoyed the second DLC, The Crown Tundra, substantially more than the Isle of Armor. Although I disliked working with Peony, I kind of enjoyed Calyrex’s quest for the carrot and such, plus chasing the legendary birds around different areas was hilarious and way more rewarding than chasing Slowpokes. It was a lot of tedious backtracking but it kind of paid off with the Regi puzzles and discovering new areas. I once again lament how awful the environments look; they wouldn’t be out of place in Halo 2. Still, I am very happy that my Pokemon got to walk around the overworld with me again and that the whole Crown Tundra was wild area.
Overall, if you just want something else to do with your Pokemon, might as well grab the expansion pass. I recommend if it’s on sale — not really worth $30. It does help fill out the game, but the problems I had with the base game persist into the DLC.
Despite being unimpressive, rushed, or downright disrespectful to the brand at times, Pokemon Sword and Shield was probably the most fun I had with a game all year. The gym battles, Pokemon League system, and Raid Battles were all excellently done. The Wild Area, while looking like a PS2 game, had a lot of great ideas that could have been executed well with a few more months in the oven. The visuals an animations of this game are downright unacceptable in a 2019 game, let alone the biggest franchise in the world. But you won’t care about any of that when you get chased by Grapploct, the big blue wrestling octopus, into a lake as it tries to actually punch you. Because it is fun. This is a bad game. But after 40 hours traipsing through the Galar region, you’ll realize you don’t really care how good it is — it’s Pokemon. And that’s enough.
Of course in college being a nerd became cool again, and I distinctly remember the launch of XY when I was a junior. My roommate and I went to Gamestop on launch day squealing like actual children and each bought a 2DS and a copy each of X and Y. I was so unbelievably happy to be back. Pokemon has always been a place I felt I belonged. It’s a place of friendship, collecting fun and cool monsters, learning the power of teamwork, and becoming the best like no one ever was. My brother and I pretty much only ever played with Pokemon toys as kids. I had tons of plushes, played every spin off game, watched every episode of the show dozens if not hundreds of times. What I’m trying to say is that there is no media franchise more important to me than Pokemon.
Pokemon Sword and Shield is a Pokemon game. That may seem like a non-statement, but it’s perhaps the best summary I can muster. Pokemon is something that, because of its status as biggest franchise in the world as well as the biggest commonality between all of our childhoods, is impossible to review unbiased. If you reviewed Sword and Shield without having any prior experience with the series, I likely wouldn’t care about your review. Not because it’s invalid, but because we’d be seeing the game through two incomparable lenses. I am going to try and review this game as well as I can, but I want to confess up front it will be biased. As I said, I love Pokemon. It’s a huge part of my life. The main problem with trying to review this game is that no matter how bad it was, it was always going to be fun. Pokemon will never not be fun, no matter how bad it is. Such is a truth of the universe, and we’d all be happier if we’d just lay back and accept it.
The biggest negative of this game is not, in fact, the missing National Dex; Perhaps this is a bold statement, but Pokemon Sword and Shield would have been no better if it had featured all 900-something monsters. No, it is the frankly unacceptable visual and technical quality of the game, particularly the wild area. Already, here we are, exhibiting my previous point. This game’s quality is unacceptable, yet here I am accepting it because it is Pokemon.
The animations of Pokemon in the Wild Area (the open world online portion of the map) vary from unbelievable attention to detail to something that would have looked out of date in 2009. One minute you notice that Zigzagoon runs in zig zags like its name suggests and chuckle at it; the next minute you notice that Gyarados turns at sharp 90 degree angles as it swims like it’s a Disney World animatronic. The Wingull are floating on the breeze without flapping their wings like they’re supposed to, but, oh, that Hawlucha is running like a human man instead of flying. Pokemon based on prey animals run when they see you, those based on predator animals chase you when they see you to attack, and those that fit into neither category get confused and pause when seeing you. But once you move ten feet away from any Pokemon it vanishes in a puff of almost comical smoke.
The infamous image of the “N64 Tree” from the trailers is not a nitpick or out-of-context image. Every tree in the Wild Area looks like it’s straight out of Halo 2. The grass is rendered so badly I felt embarrassed for GameFreak while looking at it. The rocks, the dirt, rain. It all would have looked pretty bad in 2009. In 2019 it is, again, unacceptable. To use common parlance, this game looks like hot garbage. This is the biggest franchise in the world. The main series games should not look like hot garbage.
In the overworld, Pokemon are scaled appropriately to their recorded sizes. Step into a battle, however, and suddenly Caterpie is half the size of Wailord. Pokemon Colosseum, a game from 2002, had properly scaled Pokemon in battles. The graphical capabilities of the Switch are not the issue. Alongside Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8, Dragon Quest 11, Mario Odyssey, and Luigi’s Mansion 3… how could this game even be on the same system as those technical masterpieces? I can think of no explanation besides that the Galar Region’s map was made for 3DS and just blown up to 1080p as an afterthought.
The National Dex missing did not have the negative impact I had anticipated. I didn’t even notice, to be honest. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the game might be better for it. The smaller roster did allow for some forms of balance. I am upset my old team isn’t coming forward with me from Sun and Moon, but I left them on the Poke Pelago. They’ll be hanging out, eating beans, digging through the mines, and chilling in hot tubs for the rest of time. There are worse fates for the creatures I care about so deeply.
The game is not as long as previous versions, although that’s mostly due to the fact that it is the easiest game in the series — and that’s a pretty low bar. In fact, the only way I could create a challenge is to specifically avoid grinding at all. Fighting every trainer I saw, ignoring the wild area until the post game and never fighting wild Pokemon set me consistently at the perfect level to make each gym challenging and barely beatable. I slid through every gym on my last Pokemon with this method and felt that rush you only get when you beat that goon’s last dude with your guy in red health. Even for a children’s game, Pokemon Sword and Shield are much too easy. The permanent experience share unbalances the entire game and makes you much too powerful if you play the way you’ve played the other games. If you thought XY or Sun and Moon were too easy, those two are like hard mode compared to this.
The online experience has not improved much. Nintendo’s online functionalities continue to be lacking, and with the convoluted Y-Com and Link trade system set up here it’s hard to understand what your $20 a year is going to, however cheap it is. With the Global Trading System relocated to the smartphone app Pokemon Home, the online capabilities of Sword and Shield are actually a downgrade from the previous generation. But hey, Max Raid Battles are awesome.
The story is incredibly badly written. Not that I expect a lot from Pokemon stories, but this one was so purposeless and meandering that I started just skipping the cutscenes towards the end (at least they let you do that now). The characters are a mixed bag. Professor Ivy is so forgettable that I had to look up her name to write this review. I liked Sonia, Professor Ivy’s assistant, quite a lot. In anime we don’t often get female characters that are allowed to be both girly and very intelligent. Hop, your rival, is Hau from Sun and Moon but dumber and worse at Pokemon. Much more annoying, too. The champion, Leon, is his asshole older brother modeled after a professional English footballer. As much as he helps you out with a recommendation letter, he definitely has the presence of a hotshot professional athlete. Beating him is pretty satisfying, and he actually puts up a pretty good fight when you do take him on. The gym leaders are fairly interesting characters, and I remember like half of their names, which is better than usual. I definitely remember Nessa. And who could forget Ball Guy? Marnie, your other rival, is your cute teen goth girlfriend with a toxic fan club. Which is a good coaster into my next point.
Team Yell has set a new low for evil teams, and I say that with Team Galactic on the table. The follow-up for the brilliant Team Skull, is … a teenage girl’s fan club. They only reason they battle you is to try and deter you from the Pokemon League challenge so Marnie has a better shot at winning. They corner you, fight you, lose, get sad, and disappear. All without Marnie being aware of it. This is a 14-year old girl with a fan base of dozens of adult men and women, with nothing better to do than to humiliate themselves by losing Pokemon battles to a 14-year old kid over and over again. It is offensively dumb. They are weird, creepy, annoying, and we’d have been better off with no villains at all in Sword and Shield.
On to a few positive notes. After a year of jamming it out, I feel confident saying that this game has the best music in series history. All of the tracks, from the sleepy piano of the Slumbering Weald, to Toby Fox’s (Undertale) battle theme, to the rave party gym leader theme, are good as hell. It might be too good; the wild area theme evokes a sense of exploration and adventure that the wild area doesn’t manage to fulfill. There’s a wide variety of styles too, ranging all the way from ethereal folk songs to industrial metal. The punk aspects feel like a tribute to the UK’s stance as the birthplace of the genre, and it’s the small things that help to remind me a lot of people working on this game did care.
Gym battles are a massive upgrade, maybe my favorite new thing about this game. Instead of a small room with some lines drawn on the ground, gym battles are now a nationally televised spectator sport. You step into a full sized stadium packed with people, screaming and cheering. The EDM music pumps up. And the way that it builds, when the gym leader finally tosses out their last Pokemon and hits that Dynamax button, you can’t help but get excited.
I did not hate Dynamaxing as much as I wanted to. I was never a fan of mega evolutions because they were used in totally the wrong way. Salamence and Charizard and Gengar did not need megas. You know who did? Xatu, Octillery, Venomoth, Castform. Pokemon that are otherwise useless. Z-moves were fine by me, I liked that they evened things out even if I never used them. One thing they don’t tell you in the trailers — Dynamax can only be used against gym leaders and in online raids. That’s it. So 95% of the game, it basically doesn’t exist. If you’re offended by Dynamax, take a step back and try to figure out why you’re actually angry about this game. There are a lot of valid criticisms, as I’ve outlined here, but this mechanic that only pops up a dozen times in 40 hours isn’t the one to lean on. Some Pokemon get special Gigantamax forms, but I believe only ~30 so far. More are to come!
The wild area is nice — there was a lot of potential in this idea and they build on it well for the DLCs. If you connect to the internet while in the Wild Area, you’ll see avatars of hundreds of other players running around, creating a momentary illusion that you’re in the Pokemon MMO we’ve dreamed about since childhood. That illusion is shattered the moment you try to talk to anyone; the only thing that results from an interaction is a stock catchphrase and a random food item.
It may have taken 20 years to get here, but I can’t emphasize how much Pokemon Sword and Shield’s Wild Area is improved by the ability to control the camrea. The open world aesthetic, featuring Pokemon wandering around in the overworld feels amazing when it doesn’t look like Halo 2. I love seeing a herd of Koffings free floating while a Stonjourner watches in silence, plotting. A stoic-looking Beartic mother watches over its Cubchoos as they hunt for fish in the frozen lake. The freedom feels nice and for a few hours you can pretend they really did do a Pokemon: Breath of the Wild.
I love most of the new Pokemon. Some of the top tier designs are Toxtricity, Grapploct, Cursola, Stonjourner, Centiskorch, and Galarian Weezing. However, the starters were probably the worst Pokemon of the bunch. I love Sobble, and ended up picking it to continue my tradition of water starters over the last 20 years. The final evolutions are disappointing at best. Intelleon looks way too much like a person and approaches the uncanny valley; its animations are also laughably bad. Cinderace, Scorbunny’s final evolution, is actively bad. Rillaboom is probably the best starter final evolution and it’s still pretty bad. Some designs, like Mr. Rime, are downright upsetting. But all in all, it’s not a bad haul. Probably the best batch since Ruby and Sapphire.
EV and IV training is a lot easier now, as is breeding. You can just check IVs in your PC now and alter EVs either the standard way or with berries. You can also have like Pokemon teach egg moves to each other and use mints to alter a Pokemon’s nature. All in all, competitive has never been easier. Get into it!
I love the art style and designs of the new towns. Hammerlocke City has an awesome medieval aesthetic, Motosoke is cool and steampunk, and the ice town Circester is gorgeous. While the cities aren’t much bigger than they have been in the past, there’s a lot of background inaccessible area that makes it seem like thousands of people could actually be living there. It’s not much, but it’s something. And it’s worth noting that the visuals inside the towns look like a nice 2016 game rather than a 2006 game. Nothing impressive, but an upgrade for Pokemon for sure.
Out in the open world, there are Max Raid Dens where super powerful Dynamax Pokemon live. Group up with your friends (if you can figure out the convoluted online system) and co-op against a giant Gyarados, or whatever. I have done ~40 raid battles, all but a few online with at least one friend. Honestly, this rocks. In particular, the 10 or so battles I did a full team of four on voice comms were some of the most fun I’ve had all year. Trying to coordinate who gets to Dynamax with how many hits the shield has left is exciting, and everyone will end up scrambling to try and be the one in charge. Because of the shield mechanic in which the boss builds up shields every few turns, coordination is pretty much required for five star raids. At the end of the battle you get a chance to catch it, and out of the 40 raids I did only 2 Pokemon escaped.
In the first DLC, the Isle of Armor, you’ll travel to a nearby temperate island that I believe is based off the Isle of Mann. You’ll join a dojo, get a new incompetent and annoying rival, and run across the island doing quests for an eccentric martial arts master named Mustard. It was tedious and disappointing. The quests were honestly pretty tedious here, but the Isle of Armor offers a lot in the way of the whole island being a Wild Area. Full control of the camera and Pokemon walking around the overworld is worth the price of admission. It does at least provide some more content for endgame, but getting Urshifu at the end kind of feels like little reward for the tedium of battling a less-than-exciting new rival and chasing Slowpokes around the island. After you get Kubfu, however, also note that your lead Pokemon will walk around the overworld with you, so do that as quickly as possible. If you’re a fan of collectibles they’ve added hidden Digletts that act like Koroks seeds in Breath of the Wild.
I enjoyed the second DLC, The Crown Tundra, substantially more than the Isle of Armor. Although I disliked working with Peony, I kind of enjoyed Calyrex’s quest for the carrot and such, plus chasing the legendary birds around different areas was hilarious and way more rewarding than chasing Slowpokes. It was a lot of tedious backtracking but it kind of paid off with the Regi puzzles and discovering new areas. I once again lament how awful the environments look; they wouldn’t be out of place in Halo 2. Still, I am very happy that my Pokemon got to walk around the overworld with me again and that the whole Crown Tundra was wild area.
Overall, if you just want something else to do with your Pokemon, might as well grab the expansion pass. I recommend if it’s on sale — not really worth $30. It does help fill out the game, but the problems I had with the base game persist into the DLC.
Despite being unimpressive, rushed, or downright disrespectful to the brand at times, Pokemon Sword and Shield was probably the most fun I had with a game all year. The gym battles, Pokemon League system, and Raid Battles were all excellently done. The Wild Area, while looking like a PS2 game, had a lot of great ideas that could have been executed well with a few more months in the oven. The visuals an animations of this game are downright unacceptable in a 2019 game, let alone the biggest franchise in the world. But you won’t care about any of that when you get chased by Grapploct, the big blue wrestling octopus, into a lake as it tries to actually punch you. Because it is fun. This is a bad game. But after 40 hours traipsing through the Galar region, you’ll realize you don’t really care how good it is — it’s Pokemon. And that’s enough.
I want to give this game a better score, I really do. I could easily spend a long time playing this for the character customization alone, plus with the dock its always been a lifelong dream of mine to play pokemon on a tv and its just awesome. But besides some cool locations and a couple really good songs (Hau's battle theme) theres just a lot missing with this and how long its taking me to beat despite being a big pokemon fan is proof enough of it. It doesn't feel like a step up in any way and it lacks a lot of the charm from the previous ones. 3D pokemon leaves a lot of opportunity for some really cool shit and it sucks that its potential is being wasted on this pretty bland and boring story
The last Pokemon games I played through from start to finish were X and Y, so going in, the controversy around Sword and Shield almost put me off giving them an honest try.
I'm really pleased I did, typing this as the credits roll!
The new QOL features, gym challenges and region all feel great for the new generation; not ground breaking by any means, but definitely an improvement.
The story is serviceable, and has enough of that Pokemon charm to keep you moving between towns to see what comes next.
On the subject of the Pokemon themselves... There's plenty to catch! The current number in the dex (pre expansion) feels tight and gives plenty of creatures to hunt for, without dragging things out.
Overall, definitely an evolution, rather than a revolution, but amazing nonetheless!
I'm really pleased I did, typing this as the credits roll!
The new QOL features, gym challenges and region all feel great for the new generation; not ground breaking by any means, but definitely an improvement.
The story is serviceable, and has enough of that Pokemon charm to keep you moving between towns to see what comes next.
On the subject of the Pokemon themselves... There's plenty to catch! The current number in the dex (pre expansion) feels tight and gives plenty of creatures to hunt for, without dragging things out.
Overall, definitely an evolution, rather than a revolution, but amazing nonetheless!
There's a few good ideas and designs sprinkled throughout the game, but otherwise it's so incredibly bland and uninspired. Like if there was two additional years of development and this foundation was fleshed out and refined, this could have been a good game.
Five of the six Pokémon on my team were new to this generation, because I actually quite liked some of them. However, I caught most early on and then basically kept the same team throughout the entire game, as I didn't feel much incentive to "catching them all". Despite these early pickups lacking various typing coverages, I was still able to breeze through the game pretty easily.
Most components of the game had the issue of being okay but unpolished. The one component that stands out as the most egregious however is the game's story. You spend almost the entirety of the game with no real antagonist organization, and when it does finally show up, it's over pretty quickly. There's some lore dropped throughout, but it's all very basic.
If this game released even just a decade ago, it would have probably gotten away with having these flaws and with being incredibly boring, but this series continues to coast and be left in the dust of more modern RPGs and games in general.
Five of the six Pokémon on my team were new to this generation, because I actually quite liked some of them. However, I caught most early on and then basically kept the same team throughout the entire game, as I didn't feel much incentive to "catching them all". Despite these early pickups lacking various typing coverages, I was still able to breeze through the game pretty easily.
Most components of the game had the issue of being okay but unpolished. The one component that stands out as the most egregious however is the game's story. You spend almost the entirety of the game with no real antagonist organization, and when it does finally show up, it's over pretty quickly. There's some lore dropped throughout, but it's all very basic.
If this game released even just a decade ago, it would have probably gotten away with having these flaws and with being incredibly boring, but this series continues to coast and be left in the dust of more modern RPGs and games in general.
SwSh are games with a lot of flash and little substance. I played Shield concurrently with a replay of Soulsilver, and it made how little there actually is to do in Galar glaringly obvious. Complete a gym, do a rival battle, run to the next gym, do another rival battle, and repeat almost without rest all the way to the Champion battle. What happened to quaint side locations like Sprout Tower or the game corner or even a department store?
It was nice to look at while I played it, but the story was thin, the characters got little depth (outside of Bede), and the gameplay loop got boring early on and never really mixed it up. I can't really recommend it for more than the visual experience of First Pokémon Entry On The Switch -- and Centiskorch, I guess!
It was nice to look at while I played it, but the story was thin, the characters got little depth (outside of Bede), and the gameplay loop got boring early on and never really mixed it up. I can't really recommend it for more than the visual experience of First Pokémon Entry On The Switch -- and Centiskorch, I guess!
This review contains spoilers
The two stars are there because the Pokémon designs are great, the trainer designs are great, and Hop has a great character arc.
Everything else is rubbish.
Galar is an ugly region, and half of its routes consist of straight lines. The game that decided to make the Escape Rope a Key Item has ONE cave in the entire region, and it too is a straight line. Team Yell are a non-entity that feel like a pale imitation of Team Skull without understanding anything that made them good or memorable. Marnie and Bead get almost no screentime, their character arcs happen offscreen, and are both completely unrelated to anything we're introduced to them caring about. Marnie gets forced into taking over as her town's gym leader despite the whole game expressing that she had zero interest in the role, and Bede gets kidnapped by a witch and brainwashed into believing Fairy-type Pokémon are the only thing he has ever thought or cared about.
Zacian and Zamazenta have no place in the greater world of Pokemon for being box legendaries, Eternatus has zero story attached to it outside of a few lines of dialogue involving a dream of an energy crisis, and the game's BIGGEST sin is missing the entire point of Pokemon: that anyone can participate.
The whole game the player character is constantly being told that they should focus on their gym challenge instead of getting involved with whatever shady plot seems to be happening in the background, that the game makes zero effort to detail in the slightest, or give us any glimpse of. Nothing happens the entire game until the last ten minutes of it, which comprise of an elevator ride into a non-encounter, and a final boss that had decent spectacle but was ultimately devoid of player input.
EXP share has been made to be ON by default at all times, and as a result, if the player at any point decides to catch new Pokemon in the new Wild Area, or does any sort of battling outside of the main straight line that is the gym challenge, you will became hopelessly overleveled with no way of course correcting without picking a completely new team, and will steamroll the rest of the game with little issue, robbing the game of any tension for the rest of its meager playtime.
The game's new gimmick, Dynamaxing, is essentially just another take on the prior game's Z-Moves. Unlike Mega Evolution, any Pokémon can do it, and you get three turns to either use big powerful attacks or guard against big powerful attacks. There's some strategy to using certain moves to lay down weather or stat boosts, but visually they're a step down and mechanically they lead to forcing the other player into activating theirs just to avoid losing their whole team strategy to funny supermoves.
There's also 'Gigantamax' forms, which have unique appearances, but ONLY while that Pokemon is dynamaxed, and prior to the soup introduced in the DLC they method of obtaining a Gigantamax Pokemon was laughably absurd to a degree I don't have the energy to rant about right now. I'll just say that Raid Battles sucked - either you got absolutely wiped playing solo cause the AI partners were useless, or you steamrolled the fight playing with a human squad with zero difficulty, still hindered by the fact that you can only do a set amount of damage max to the boss before it caps and enters another of like 5 phases. Just a colossal waste of time.
Lastly, thanks to the decision to leave the National Pokedex out of this installment and future ones to come, more than half of the franchise's mons are completely unusable even with Pokemon Home support, which limits post-game teambuilding to whatever's available in the region.
Sword and Shield, in my opinion, are the most hollow, phoned-in, devoid of soul Pokemon games in the entire franchise, and it speaks volumes that at the used game store I work you'll find copies of these titles taking up an entire shelf themselves.
Everything else is rubbish.
Galar is an ugly region, and half of its routes consist of straight lines. The game that decided to make the Escape Rope a Key Item has ONE cave in the entire region, and it too is a straight line. Team Yell are a non-entity that feel like a pale imitation of Team Skull without understanding anything that made them good or memorable. Marnie and Bead get almost no screentime, their character arcs happen offscreen, and are both completely unrelated to anything we're introduced to them caring about. Marnie gets forced into taking over as her town's gym leader despite the whole game expressing that she had zero interest in the role, and Bede gets kidnapped by a witch and brainwashed into believing Fairy-type Pokémon are the only thing he has ever thought or cared about.
Zacian and Zamazenta have no place in the greater world of Pokemon for being box legendaries, Eternatus has zero story attached to it outside of a few lines of dialogue involving a dream of an energy crisis, and the game's BIGGEST sin is missing the entire point of Pokemon: that anyone can participate.
The whole game the player character is constantly being told that they should focus on their gym challenge instead of getting involved with whatever shady plot seems to be happening in the background, that the game makes zero effort to detail in the slightest, or give us any glimpse of. Nothing happens the entire game until the last ten minutes of it, which comprise of an elevator ride into a non-encounter, and a final boss that had decent spectacle but was ultimately devoid of player input.
EXP share has been made to be ON by default at all times, and as a result, if the player at any point decides to catch new Pokemon in the new Wild Area, or does any sort of battling outside of the main straight line that is the gym challenge, you will became hopelessly overleveled with no way of course correcting without picking a completely new team, and will steamroll the rest of the game with little issue, robbing the game of any tension for the rest of its meager playtime.
The game's new gimmick, Dynamaxing, is essentially just another take on the prior game's Z-Moves. Unlike Mega Evolution, any Pokémon can do it, and you get three turns to either use big powerful attacks or guard against big powerful attacks. There's some strategy to using certain moves to lay down weather or stat boosts, but visually they're a step down and mechanically they lead to forcing the other player into activating theirs just to avoid losing their whole team strategy to funny supermoves.
There's also 'Gigantamax' forms, which have unique appearances, but ONLY while that Pokemon is dynamaxed, and prior to the soup introduced in the DLC they method of obtaining a Gigantamax Pokemon was laughably absurd to a degree I don't have the energy to rant about right now. I'll just say that Raid Battles sucked - either you got absolutely wiped playing solo cause the AI partners were useless, or you steamrolled the fight playing with a human squad with zero difficulty, still hindered by the fact that you can only do a set amount of damage max to the boss before it caps and enters another of like 5 phases. Just a colossal waste of time.
Lastly, thanks to the decision to leave the National Pokedex out of this installment and future ones to come, more than half of the franchise's mons are completely unusable even with Pokemon Home support, which limits post-game teambuilding to whatever's available in the region.
Sword and Shield, in my opinion, are the most hollow, phoned-in, devoid of soul Pokemon games in the entire franchise, and it speaks volumes that at the used game store I work you'll find copies of these titles taking up an entire shelf themselves.
Hey at least it’s better than Pokemon Sword
I have a friend who actually loves this game and i dont value his opinion
Good enough, not the best main installment by far.
I excitedly began playing this on November 15th, 2019, the day it released. It started out fun enough — the beginning is cinematic, has some nice music and pretty locations... Exploring the Wild Area was novel and enjoyable for me at the time. I spent a lot of time there, actually, squeezing every bit of enjoyment I could out of that place; camping with my Pokémon as they became inadvertently over-leveled, hoarding items I would mostly never use... until I wound up dropping the game for a few years. Over the course of those years, I saw some of the criticism that this game received, and I didn't really get it. Everything seemed fine to the point that I'd played. Oh well, Pokémon fans can be pretty critical at times.
I picked it back up more recently, and pushed ahead with the main story. From there, it just went downhill. Lower, and lower. This sucked. If I weren't so loyal to the Pokémon main series of games, I probably wouldn't have pushed to complete it, especially with how much of a drag the final parts of the game were, wherein an utter lack of content gave way to anticlimactic repetitiveness.
The main thing I have to say is that everything about this game is so surface-level when compared to the other main-series Pokémon games. They tried putting a coat of pretty paint on stuff, but there's nothing of substance behind it. It might fool you for a bit, but it can't keep it up for long at all. It shows in things like the lack of flavor text after leaving the first town, for objects you'd be able to examine in other games (except Scarlet and Violet, which is similar and even worse in that regard), and the inability to enter the majority of buildings. (Of the structures that can be entered, many look near identical to each other, with the exception of buildings one is required to be in for story scenes. They wouldn't want you to miss the few locations they put any effort into designing, after all.) Where new towns in other games often promised crannies to peek into, small discoveries to be made, or unique features... this game largely presents the facade of new towns, where all you can do is pass through them.
In other Pokémon games, there are optional activities to participate in, some of which have a lot of depth to them! TV/radio programs, contests and performances/musicals, underground mining and secret bases, riding Pokémon, flying through the sky from location to location, the Safari Zone, Trick House, little side quests,gambling, photography, an entire second region to journey through (HGSS was just WOW), optional Legendary Pokémon to pursue, Entralink, the ability to pet or walk with one's party members — I could go on and on. There are no such treasure troves of optional content, locations, and features in this game. The most there is to mention here is like, Max Raid Battles and making curry. And you can play fetch with your Pokémon. (I believe it goes without saying, but I'm judging this game based on the $60 USD full game, not based on paid DLC.)
Once you're done in the Wild Area, I felt there's no real incentive to return — it's all behind you — and everything from there is a straight shot from one Gym to the next, broken up only ever so slightly by bits of an absolutely mediocre plot that had so little thought and care put into it. Pokémon games aren't known for their high quality story telling, but this is a new low. I can't even say that it seemed to me like the writers were trying. It felt so lazy, stingy, and stale, and not once did it touch me emotionally. It's devoid of the adventurous magic I've found to varying degrees in the games that came before it, as well as the more recent Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet. The story lacks imagination... They tried going for some plot twists, but they fell completely flat. Most of the characters have so little personality, you could copy the words spoken by one of them and paste them on another character's text box and it might not be apparent at all that you'd done so. There were a couple of main characters who could have been interesting, but the writers just didn't... really do anything with them.
There are a few nice music tracks, but not much I enjoyed relative to most Pokémon game soundtracks.
Overall, this game is an empty disappointment.
I picked it back up more recently, and pushed ahead with the main story. From there, it just went downhill. Lower, and lower. This sucked. If I weren't so loyal to the Pokémon main series of games, I probably wouldn't have pushed to complete it, especially with how much of a drag the final parts of the game were, wherein an utter lack of content gave way to anticlimactic repetitiveness.
The main thing I have to say is that everything about this game is so surface-level when compared to the other main-series Pokémon games. They tried putting a coat of pretty paint on stuff, but there's nothing of substance behind it. It might fool you for a bit, but it can't keep it up for long at all. It shows in things like the lack of flavor text after leaving the first town, for objects you'd be able to examine in other games (except Scarlet and Violet, which is similar and even worse in that regard), and the inability to enter the majority of buildings. (Of the structures that can be entered, many look near identical to each other, with the exception of buildings one is required to be in for story scenes. They wouldn't want you to miss the few locations they put any effort into designing, after all.) Where new towns in other games often promised crannies to peek into, small discoveries to be made, or unique features... this game largely presents the facade of new towns, where all you can do is pass through them.
In other Pokémon games, there are optional activities to participate in, some of which have a lot of depth to them! TV/radio programs, contests and performances/musicals, underground mining and secret bases, riding Pokémon, flying through the sky from location to location, the Safari Zone, Trick House, little side quests,
Once you're done in the Wild Area, I felt there's no real incentive to return — it's all behind you — and everything from there is a straight shot from one Gym to the next, broken up only ever so slightly by bits of an absolutely mediocre plot that had so little thought and care put into it. Pokémon games aren't known for their high quality story telling, but this is a new low. I can't even say that it seemed to me like the writers were trying. It felt so lazy, stingy, and stale, and not once did it touch me emotionally. It's devoid of the adventurous magic I've found to varying degrees in the games that came before it, as well as the more recent Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet. The story lacks imagination... They tried going for some plot twists, but they fell completely flat. Most of the characters have so little personality, you could copy the words spoken by one of them and paste them on another character's text box and it might not be apparent at all that you'd done so. There were a couple of main characters who could have been interesting, but the writers just didn't... really do anything with them.
There are a few nice music tracks, but not much I enjoyed relative to most Pokémon game soundtracks.
Overall, this game is an empty disappointment.
The people who hate the game over not having 900+ Pokemon genuinely make me want to give this game a higher score.
Name one game that looks better. YOU CAN’T! One of the best looking games of all time with great commentary on deforestation through its tree models. Subtle social commentary on Brexit due to its culling of the National Dex. One of humanity’s best achievements. Intelligent allegorical discussion of corrupt Reddit moderation is provided through Team Yell as well. An amazing ludonarrative that draws parallels and uses allegory and metaphor to represent our real world with its Pokemon.
Pokémon Shield may have been the Pokémon game straw to break my back of tolerance for mediocrity. I grew up loving the first three generations of Pokémon, and I really enjoyed my time with the games through X and Y, but rather than launching forward on the Switch, Pokémon Shield marked a clear backslide for the franchise.
After completing the fifth gym, I resigned myself to simply “getting through” this game. The story was more forgettable than usual—Team Yell is more of a joke than an actual enemy, and the towns made great first impressions only to be unmasked at empty shells as I walked into the seventh “painted door” in each one... The story never made me explore the cities the way Blue/Red and Gold/Silver did, and it often felt like that was true only because GameFreak couldn’t fill the cities with unique substance in the 3D engine.
The biggest problem I realized while playing this game, however, is that Pokémon has now reached that troubling point in every franchise where it no longer motivates the player within the game, but counts on the player’s compulsions from previous entries in the franchise... My team was set after the third gym and did not change except for one Pokémon in the late game. I never felt like it was necessary to explore the Wild Area, and I completely forgot it even existed during the grind of badges 4-“8.” This game was more Pokémon for everyone who wanted more, but for someone looking to be revitalized in my love for the franchise, this fell completely flat. I’m sad to have reached this point, but I sure am glad this particular journey is over.
After completing the fifth gym, I resigned myself to simply “getting through” this game. The story was more forgettable than usual—Team Yell is more of a joke than an actual enemy, and the towns made great first impressions only to be unmasked at empty shells as I walked into the seventh “painted door” in each one... The story never made me explore the cities the way Blue/Red and Gold/Silver did, and it often felt like that was true only because GameFreak couldn’t fill the cities with unique substance in the 3D engine.
The biggest problem I realized while playing this game, however, is that Pokémon has now reached that troubling point in every franchise where it no longer motivates the player within the game, but counts on the player’s compulsions from previous entries in the franchise... My team was set after the third gym and did not change except for one Pokémon in the late game. I never felt like it was necessary to explore the Wild Area, and I completely forgot it even existed during the grind of badges 4-“8.” This game was more Pokémon for everyone who wanted more, but for someone looking to be revitalized in my love for the franchise, this fell completely flat. I’m sad to have reached this point, but I sure am glad this particular journey is over.
The game is overall very mediocre. the music is great, and it does have some exciting moments like the gym battles that are well done. it feels like there was passion put into the game, but it was rushed and did not meet its full potential. also it looks visually atrocious for the amount of money Pokemon makes.
Barebones story that constantly teases you with cool stuff you don't get to do, and a very idiotic plot twist by the end. The cuts are kind of lame but I don't particularly care. I'm more annoyed at how the game feels incomplete even more than usual and they wanted us to put so much money for Home.
Wild Area was a neat idea and I liked the sports aesthetic for the gyms but overall this was disappointing.
Wild Area was a neat idea and I liked the sports aesthetic for the gyms but overall this was disappointing.
woo i love nintendo
(I do feel the need to mention this is from someone who gave up after the 6th gym)
Awful experience. Even ignoring all the controversy from before the game released (getting rid of half the roster to 'focus on animations' and then releasing a paid companion piece with all the Pokémon in it could solve world hunger using the water filtered from the piss that was taking) the game is terrible. The one piece of praise I'll give is that a lot of the new Pokémon look good, just like every other Pokémon game (minus the starters and box legendries). Now for the bad things.
The map design is terrible. Nothing but straight lines with one bland open world area with barely anything to do in it.
I hated Hop. Easily one of the worst rivals in the series who worships your existence for knowing basic mechanics like type advantages. I did like Bede somewhat as I actually felt compelled to fight him, however.
The combat is way too easy. Forced EXP share makes it so you easily overlevel every pokemon and trainer in the area where one shotting gym leaders becomes easy. There's also dynamax, where you make your pokemon big. The only strategy regarding it is to go big when your opponent does. It's just the admittedly unbalanced Mega Evolution from gen 6 but worse in every aspect.
Overall, there's nothing here you couldn't get in any other Pokémon game, play any other one. Getting one star instead of half because the quality of this game got me to play SMT which is an infinitely better series
Awful experience. Even ignoring all the controversy from before the game released (getting rid of half the roster to 'focus on animations' and then releasing a paid companion piece with all the Pokémon in it could solve world hunger using the water filtered from the piss that was taking) the game is terrible. The one piece of praise I'll give is that a lot of the new Pokémon look good, just like every other Pokémon game (minus the starters and box legendries). Now for the bad things.
The map design is terrible. Nothing but straight lines with one bland open world area with barely anything to do in it.
I hated Hop. Easily one of the worst rivals in the series who worships your existence for knowing basic mechanics like type advantages. I did like Bede somewhat as I actually felt compelled to fight him, however.
The combat is way too easy. Forced EXP share makes it so you easily overlevel every pokemon and trainer in the area where one shotting gym leaders becomes easy. There's also dynamax, where you make your pokemon big. The only strategy regarding it is to go big when your opponent does. It's just the admittedly unbalanced Mega Evolution from gen 6 but worse in every aspect.
Overall, there's nothing here you couldn't get in any other Pokémon game, play any other one. Getting one star instead of half because the quality of this game got me to play SMT which is an infinitely better series
I tried the game for a little bit off of my cousin's copy. I didn't get very far before I returned it, but I was honestly really impressed with all the quality of life changes and even the art design.
Perhaps the only really jarring part of the first couple of hours might have been the opening sequence, where characters had their dialogue animated, but no audio indicated that at all; I think Pokémon could really benefit from Ace Attorney-style text scrolling sound effects, which could also let them convey expression a lot better than they do currently (shouting is done through a sharper textbox - even a simple textbox shake would help in emphasizing the volume).
I got out of Pokémon after Gen 5, so maybe this feels a lot more impressive to me than people who played through the 3DS games, but the world design feels a lot more satisfying to walk through - this was the first Pokémon game I felt a little bad to run in because of how pleasant the world felt.
Character customization is also one of my favorite feature in this game so far, and I easily spent half my playtime with it.
One last thought I have on the game has to do with the first battle with Hop: in a single battle, Pokémon Shield teaches about neutral attacks and stat changes, levelling up, and type advantages, possibly with the bare minimum of interruptions from Hop.
It's a stark contrast from Red and Blue, where after a boring Tackle-fest that feels more like a game of chance than anything, it's all too possible to wander into Route 22 straight out of your first time in Viridian City, encounter your rival and learn about super effective moves by being on the receiving end of them.
It's not better or worse - just different. Personally, I like this a lot. I think there's a lot to like in this game, and I wouldn't mind getting a copy for myself one day if the games stop going for full price for a second.
Perhaps the only really jarring part of the first couple of hours might have been the opening sequence, where characters had their dialogue animated, but no audio indicated that at all; I think Pokémon could really benefit from Ace Attorney-style text scrolling sound effects, which could also let them convey expression a lot better than they do currently (shouting is done through a sharper textbox - even a simple textbox shake would help in emphasizing the volume).
I got out of Pokémon after Gen 5, so maybe this feels a lot more impressive to me than people who played through the 3DS games, but the world design feels a lot more satisfying to walk through - this was the first Pokémon game I felt a little bad to run in because of how pleasant the world felt.
Character customization is also one of my favorite feature in this game so far, and I easily spent half my playtime with it.
One last thought I have on the game has to do with the first battle with Hop: in a single battle, Pokémon Shield teaches about neutral attacks and stat changes, levelling up, and type advantages, possibly with the bare minimum of interruptions from Hop.
It's a stark contrast from Red and Blue, where after a boring Tackle-fest that feels more like a game of chance than anything, it's all too possible to wander into Route 22 straight out of your first time in Viridian City, encounter your rival and learn about super effective moves by being on the receiving end of them.
It's not better or worse - just different. Personally, I like this a lot. I think there's a lot to like in this game, and I wouldn't mind getting a copy for myself one day if the games stop going for full price for a second.
Yikes. I won't get into the cutting of the Pokèdex or Gamefreak's reasonings for it here because it's irrelevant, but this game is just pure dog piss. It's almost like as soon as the Switch came out, everything produced on it has to be so mind numbingly babified by default and this game was the catalyst for that.
Every step of the way this game is just death gripping your hand with never-ending tutorials and constantly spoon feeding you one of the worst plots of the series. The most punchable rival is constantly waiting around every corner to just explain to you how to do the most mundane, basic shit that's in every Pokémon game before it. I wouldn't complain about it if it was optional, but it ISN'T. There's no way to acknowledge that you're not a 4 year old holding the joycons, and so, you suffer because of it.
I've played Pokémon my entire life like a typical Chad, and also the ones that have come after this one, and I just really hate this game lmao. It looks and runs like ass, the Wild Area seems expansive but is actually very limiting. It's really just a giant field of small pockets of Pokémon, with level 40 Pokémon body blocking certain areas that they don't want you to access yet. Raids are okay but can be annoyingly time consuming.
They've also made it harder to challenge yourself in this game by removing the ability to turn off the easy features, making every playthrough basically the same. The difficulty is so trivial and I stampeded everything even without my starter and with a team of all gimmick Pokémon. (It's the only way I could make it harder for myself.)
This generation probably also has the weakest setting for me, it's just simply not as interesting as other regions in the series. I don't really use the combat gimmicks, like Mega Evos and Tera Types, unless the game forces me to.
That being said, Dynamaxing gotta be like lamest gimmick yet. It looks incredibly stupid and only a handful of Pokémon get their own designs around it. You can still one-shot Dynamaxed Pokémon without being Dynamaxed yourself, it's just pointless. Didn't bother with the post-game or DLC. The Pokémon designs in this generation are okay. Some of them are some of my all-time favorites and others are kinda icky.
After having played Legends Arceus and Violet, I do think they are taking steps in the right direction to execute these new open world ideas properly, but Jesus Christ, it's highway robbery having people pay $60, sometimes $120 for both versions, so they can take literal baby steps getting to a good three dimensional console game.
On a positive note, music in these games still reigns supreme. That gym battle theme goes hard.
Every step of the way this game is just death gripping your hand with never-ending tutorials and constantly spoon feeding you one of the worst plots of the series. The most punchable rival is constantly waiting around every corner to just explain to you how to do the most mundane, basic shit that's in every Pokémon game before it. I wouldn't complain about it if it was optional, but it ISN'T. There's no way to acknowledge that you're not a 4 year old holding the joycons, and so, you suffer because of it.
I've played Pokémon my entire life like a typical Chad, and also the ones that have come after this one, and I just really hate this game lmao. It looks and runs like ass, the Wild Area seems expansive but is actually very limiting. It's really just a giant field of small pockets of Pokémon, with level 40 Pokémon body blocking certain areas that they don't want you to access yet. Raids are okay but can be annoyingly time consuming.
They've also made it harder to challenge yourself in this game by removing the ability to turn off the easy features, making every playthrough basically the same. The difficulty is so trivial and I stampeded everything even without my starter and with a team of all gimmick Pokémon. (It's the only way I could make it harder for myself.)
This generation probably also has the weakest setting for me, it's just simply not as interesting as other regions in the series. I don't really use the combat gimmicks, like Mega Evos and Tera Types, unless the game forces me to.
That being said, Dynamaxing gotta be like lamest gimmick yet. It looks incredibly stupid and only a handful of Pokémon get their own designs around it. You can still one-shot Dynamaxed Pokémon without being Dynamaxed yourself, it's just pointless. Didn't bother with the post-game or DLC. The Pokémon designs in this generation are okay. Some of them are some of my all-time favorites and others are kinda icky.
After having played Legends Arceus and Violet, I do think they are taking steps in the right direction to execute these new open world ideas properly, but Jesus Christ, it's highway robbery having people pay $60, sometimes $120 for both versions, so they can take literal baby steps getting to a good three dimensional console game.
On a positive note, music in these games still reigns supreme. That gym battle theme goes hard.
Not the best Pokemon but I do like it
Has some of my favorite Gym Trainers and Starters
Has some of my favorite Gym Trainers and Starters
My expectations for this one going in were low, as I was late to the party and saw so many people dunking on it. I liked it! It was neat. Definitely needs improvement but for what it was, I enjoyed it.
I personally wouldn't say this is the worst modern Pokémon game. But the story is the worst for modern pokemon. I liked the gameplay and the graphical upgrade of the switch. The DLC carries for the game though. I enjoyed this game with friends especially the raid and dynamax adventures.
What I like to call the "People Dont Know How To Dress Themselves" era of Pokemon, which spirals out to the rest of the game design also. I think the only positive experience I had was when the soundtrack kicks up in the stadium when Gym Leaders start Dynamaxing, it does amp up the drama a bit (for like 2 minutes while you Dynamax also and continue to one-shot them)
Haha silly shield doggo :) but seriously I really enjoyed these games! Fun new Pokemon and very cool new characters :)