This review includes the DLC

With all of Game Freak's cards on the table it becomes very clear that they have no clue what they want this game to be. It's very easy to say that they were lazy but that misses the point of the fundamental disconnect that Game Freak has with their audience. Disregarding the omissions compared to prior games in the series, there is no clear vision for this game. The base game touts an open world area that the developers are clearly proud of when it permeates so many aspects of marketing and gameplay with the many endeavors towards co-operative player raids and the like, but clearly the focus was misguided at best when there are so many crippling design issues that limit what they can even do with what they have.

This is no more prevalent than the game's swan song, the Crown Tundra which boasts a legendary hunt, the best open world section to date, and a new type of co-operative content, and all three of which managed to exhibit the same type of flaws as their base game. They all share the same level of mismanagement and misunderstanding of the concepts behind good co-op design of their content often times making their nature of group content a hinderance more than anything, and this kind of example is emblematic of the entire Pokemon Sword and Shield experience. Honestly, even as a casual Pokemon fan I can't even imagine recommending this game when there are so much better Pokemon experiences out there and this game won't offer you anything new.

It’s difficult to talk about this game now that it has DLC because I think that it’s only worth playing if you own that too. The base game is a barebones like fan project. It’s so strange. There is absolutely nothing to do other than follow the strict set path and then do raids. I don’t really care much about story but Jesus Christ this is one of the biggest messes Iv ever seen in medias. The only story beat happens right as the game ends and it’s so bizarre and completely boring that it frustrates me every time i see it. I actually think I would have liked it better if it didn’t have a story, it was simply just the gym challenge because the story is god awful.
The raids are mostly fun but as you get further into the game they get so long winded and slow. I hope they fix this for S and V. The last thing I like about the base game is Camp. I think it’s cute to see your team playing together, cooking for them. I just wish there was a little more to do. Oh I forgot about the post game; there is maybe 1 hour of content and it is also painful to play. It annoys me that I have to play it to complete the dlc.

Now the DLC.

Isle of armour is nice to have access to from the start, it breaks up the insane set path of the main game. You can fly here and explore when ever you want. It has facility type battles, world building, things to spend money on, so many items to find and my favourite part, following Pokémon. It annoys me that they can’t follow you in main Galar but oh well. It brings so much more Role-playing feel to the game when you can see them with you. Even in legends, they can’t follow you but you can send them out to all chill out together, it’s just so much more immersive.

Crown tundra is the best part of the game. It has 4 activities to do story wise, it has a huge world, hidden little secrets, more world building, a different take on raids. And once again following Pokémon. These expansions just add so much more life to the game. I really hope the same doesn’t happen to scarlet and violet, where the base game is the blandest thing you’ve ever seen but then the dlc actually makes it worth while.

The main disclaimer for this one is that the game is kinda bland, and many aspects feel rushed and incomplete. For every good thing you can say, there's that negative or lacking aspect. A shame, but I'm hoping the best stuff will be carried over the next Switch game.
(I'm not taking into account the DLCs, which I'm still playing).

The character/pokemon design is fantastic, as are the scenario/city ones. The places you visit are memorable, and look super nice (thinking, specially, of Ballonlea, Stow-on-side, Circhester, the electric generation tower or the place where Zamazenta and Zacian "sleep"). That's its best trait, I'd say.
For example, I feel like they made an extra effort for the houses to feel populated and "realistic", making them bigger, more decorated and with extra bedrooms/closed doors (accounting for every inhabitant). Those are nice touches, I think.

What I don't think I'll remember is the music, for the most part (except, maybe, the awful one Hulbury has).

Annnd the clearly bad part, for me, is that the story is absolutely predictable and rushed. They chose a more anime-like style of framing the action than ever before (including, but not only, the visual aspect), and it would work way better if it was explored in a longer, more detailed story. What the actual result works like is a few genuinely cool nuggets in a mountain of "eh" ones.
The characters, even when having a strong personality/design, are not developed enough. (I ended up liking them, but that's because I'm weak. Not because they're complex . Others in past Pokémon games weren't that complex either, but I feel like they had a bit more to them than this batch).

(Actually... why does every female character feel so flat? If I had to read a bunch of Nessa, Bea and Marnie's lines without seeing who's speaking, I wouldn't be able to tell them apart).

And the game's very very easy, too... I get it's aimed to young audiences (maybe add an optional, more difficult mode? I'd love that), but I didn't enjoy using purposely weak attacks to give the AI a chance.

Finally: even though the postgame content is not as nearly elaborated as it could be, it gives me more Piers content, something I can really get behind. And old gym leaders' IDs, yay!!!!!

Full disclosure: I don't think this is "the worst thing ever" that many make it out to be, but regardless this is still a really mediocre game. I'm honestly thankful I never had to buy this game and my sister was kind enough to lend one of the copies she had for me to try it out, because let's be honest, it wasn't just Dexit that stopped me from buying this game when more of it was revealed.

In terms of the Galar region and the Pokémon in it, gotta say I'm not a fan. The region itself has some interesting town areas aesthetic wise but layout wise it's so basic and dull, like we regressed back to the Gameboy days with these simplistic straight shot routes and little to no puzzles or actual dungeons (in fact one could argue it offers less than the GB games in terms of design), and as for the Pokémon themselves, they...exist I guess? Some of them I found neat (Corviknight for instance) but I just never liked the design of a whole bunch of them, the starters in particular being super weak and uninteresting.

The game as a whole just feels like it's content squeaking by doing the absolute bare minimum in terms of anything really. Difficulty was practically non existent, and despite the many accounts I have heard about how "balanced" this game was around the mandatory EXP share, that doesn't seem to be the case. I was like 10-20 levels above my competition by just fighting trainers I came across, and this is without using the game breaking candies you can easily obtain that skyrockets your team's levels even more. None of the towns were interesting and most were just blatantly copy pasted in terms of layout (pokecenter, gym, clothes store, repeat) with barely any interesting new locations and buildings to visit whatsoever. The new things the game brings to the table are the wild area and raid battles. The wild area puts you in a huge sprawling area with tons of Pokemon wandering around of many different varieties, and this is by far the best idea the game had. The problem is, it's easily explored in no time flat and there's only one wild area in the game. There should've been WAY more for me to actually care and get invested with this new feature (and no I'm not buying the DLC to have a better experience. This stuff should've been in the base game period). Raid battles are fine distractions where 4 people team up to fight a dynamax boss Pokémon and catch it to win rewards, but this feature got old after the 5th battle, and again, doing raid battles early gives you candy which completely snaps the already easy game in half like a twig.

On the topic of Dynamax, this is the other "new" gimmick the game brings to the table, and in all honesty this adds absolutely nothing to the gameplay whatsoever. You can only Dynamax during gym battles and Raid Battles, so its usage is already limited, but moreover there's just nothing to it. Using a Dynamax move is basically an "I win" button on normal Pokémon, and with other Dynamax Pokémon it becomes a 3 turn slap fight to see who tires out first. There's really nothing else to this shallow but otherwise visually fun mechanic.

Speaking of visuals (man my segues are on point today), I think it's time to address the elephant in the room. This game uh...doesn't look good. Like, at all. Art style wise it looks fine I guess? There are areas of Galar I think look pretty decent, but the wild area and a slew of other locations look downright bad. Textures are muddy and genuinely look like they belong in an N64 game, draw distance is laughably bad, animations for Pokémon and NPCs are stiff, simplistic and awkward (and in most cases straight up recycled), the framerate is stuck at 30 and yet still manages to dip in areas, especially when other people are online in the wild area, the water reflections are completely missing, the game in general just looks like a mess. It really does feel like a 3DS game that was upscaled and put on Switch at the last minute. There also isn't any voice acting either, and this makes for really awkward moments where characters are opening their mouths and talking but nothing is coming out so you just get this really painful silence that just makes me cringe. Black and White 2 managed to get someone singing on stage, come on man.

But in general I think it's shocking how little there is to DO in Sword and Shield. You got trainer battles, raid battles, wild area gym battles and that's it. The post game is just a bunch of copy pasted raid battles with no reward, an expected battle against your box legendary, and then the battle tree is all you get. No Battle Frontier, no contests or shows, no interesting post game, no extra unlockable areas to go to after beating the game, no movie studios, no NOTHING. I'm kind of baffled at how little there is to do in this game, to say nothing about the story where literally nothing interesting happens throughout the entire game and all the characters are about as likable as a Styrofoam cup with googly eyes implanted on it.

Overall like I said this isn't the worst thing I've ever played in my life, I have played far worse and I can see the glimmers of potential and good ideas, but Sword and Shield has way too many issues. At its worst, it's an unpolished boring slog devoid of content, interesting things to do, difficulty and severely lacking in creativity in almost every way possible, and at its best...it's just Pokémon. Again.

Btw this was $60 at launch, which is incredibly funny I have to say

As far as Pokemon games go, Sword is actually a pretty solid one. It has a good regional dex (I don't care about Dexit) and a really neat framework for the region. Having Pokemon be a huge spectator sport is really enjoyable and it makes the gym challenge compelling. Unfortunately, Gamefreak decided that even though 99% of the game is good fun times with the homies, you NEED a world-ending threat to interrupt the climax of the game in an absurdly obnoxious way that demolishes the pace. Until the Elite 4 challenge is interrupted, the game is actually fairly solidly paced. I do recommend holding off on the DLC until the post-game because it also breaks the pace so hard. The DLC also doesn't scale well at all. Isle of Armor is built so that it either works very early game (sometime between gyms 1-3) or after you beat the main game. I haven't done Crown Tundra yet, but I've heard better things about it than IoA and know it is specifically built to be post-game. The biggest downfall of Pokemon Sword is that it's still a Pokemon game so the best it ever hope to achieve is a 3.5/5.

Currently finishing up Violet and it's really driving home how boring and lifeless and uninspired this gen was. In retrospect it almost feels like they made the Wild Area as a proof of concept for what an open world Pokemon game could look like and then just decided to construct all of gen 8 around it as an afterthought. I missed Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and Diamond/Pearl/Platinum because they came out when I was in high school and thought I was too mature for Pokemon but Sw/Sh is pretty easily the worst gen that I've played to date.

Pokemon Sword is like wild because it's really one of the only reasons I still use discord. In early 2020, like before quarantine early some random guy in a server wanted to make a sword and shield group chat since the dlc was dropping and he wanted to play with some people. I lied my ass off and said I had the game to get in, I don't really know why other than just I thought it would be a good time. I rarely played the game with em but we all started talking about random shit we liked and became pretty good friends and still talk to this day. So I guess if this game is worth anything it did give me a pretty cool friend group to talk to about my interests since my real life friend group doesn't really share the same video game interests I do, still a shit game though glad I never played it much with others lmao

The stuff they did with gyms here is simply fantastic. Turning them into sport stadiums with a crowd from all the region going nuts every time you land a crit or a status effects is pure hype, and the build up to every gym leader battle still sends chills down my spine. The actual battles themselves are worth all the hype, too - you will get your shit kicked in if you aren't prepared to the fullest, and that's GREAT (rip my nuzlocke run, Bea doesn't take prisoners). And the gym challenge being the focus of the game? 's good.

Having not played any prior Pokemon game outside of Platinum that I didn't even finish, I don't really have any major criticisms that some other people might have. I had a lot of fun, all the new Pokemon in this game are great and I love them all, and a special shoutout goes to the OST that goes places.

However, starting with Spikemuth, the money seemingly ran out? The level curve flatlined, so I was overprepared for the rest of the game, the plot decided it needed an evil team right near the end in the most baffling, contrived way (though the fight with the main villain I guess had stellar presentation so it was worth it), and that was, really weird, but it NAILED the fight with the champion of this region, so I came out of this game with a glowing impression.

Raihan is kind hot ngl