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.

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!

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.

Some of this review might be contextualised by the fact that this is my first Pokemon game (unless you count a brief foray into DS spin-off Blue Rescue Team when I was too young to really comprehend what I was doing) - as a result, I might not always know which complaints or compliments are SWSH-specific or apply to the series in general. On top of that, I ended up shelving this game once I hit the Dark gym because it just wasn't keeping my attention much anymore and I was getting distracted by other games, so all of my thoughts are based on the game up to that point.

I probably did like this more than most, likely as a result of it being my first, but even I grew tired of the extreme hand-holding at the beginning. Now, I personally don't like being dropped in a game with no indication of what to do - I'm autistic, so I like clear instructions - but this was pretty stifling. You'd get a dialogue telling you to go to X place down Y road, walk ten steps down said road, get interrupted by another dialogue telling you X place is up ahead, walk another ten steps, get interrupted by another dialogue telling you you've reached X place and how exciting that is, etc.

I enjoyed the Wild Area, though it quickly lost its novelty to me as it still contains the same general kinds of Pokemon and after you've caught those it's very rare to find a new kind you don't already have there.

The characters weren't very gripping; the most interesting ones to me were probably Bede, Nessa, and Kabu, but even then the latter two mostly stood out to me for their designs rather than their actual characterisation or actions.

There were some genuinely beautiful locations, such as Ballonlea, and I don't fully understand the criticism of graphics, but again that might be down to this being my only experience with Pokemon thus far.

I liked the Dynamax/Gigantamax thing well enough, mostly for the sake of playing around with different Pokemon and seeing what they looked like with it, but as a gimmick in itself it's just okay.

The game did motivate me to get more into Pokemon and go back to some of the older games, and I did discover a genuine love for catching and collecting Pokemon and filling out my Dex (which makes the Dex cut a little disappointing even for me as a newcomer), so I'll be doing that sometime for sure.

Maybe I'll get back to this someday, though it's not a super appealing thought as of right now. I'd restart and begin fresh, but the concept of trudging through all the hand-holding at the beginning again is putting me off.

[Biased review warning]

Perhaps not the most acclaimed Pokémon game in the franchise, but it is my favourite! Me and my best friend have this tradition where we play this game every new year; we start when the clock hits 12:00, and we don't stop playing until we've beaten the champion. It's a tradition that I keep close and dear to my heart.

All the towns have a gorgeous visual aesthetic, and they feel unique. The wild area they introduced here is also a welcome addition, as it breaks up the game a bit, and lets the player roam freely, on bike or on foot, and chill out and take in the stunning landscapes. The pokémon dens which reside here are really fun, as well!

The broad assortment of clothing and customisation options here are entertaining to play around with. Each town has a boutique with a unique set of clothes, so it's fun to collect them whenever you visit the location for the first time!

Overall, a fun experience, definitely one of the better pokémon games in recent memory.

É um game complicado de dar review. Eu gosto muito dele, mas ele é muito falho, história rasa e curta, dificuldade tão simples que até uma criança iria reclamar, e bastante conteúdo que foi cortado só pra ser colocado em DLC. O jogo tem um belo trabalho em design de personagens, cada um tendo uma personalidade, uma trilha sonora belíssima, que te deixa bem hypado na batalha de ginásio só pra você dar uma lapada e vencer sem perder um Pokémon sequer, e design de cenário que são até que bem feitos por mais que sejam bem longe de ser o melhor da franquia.

The game came out with many divisive topics, but I wanted to give it a good chance. Overall though, as of now this sits as one of my least favorite mainline games. Combining the worst elements of the last two generations, and adding a couple more I disagree with.

To discuss, the graphics, they aren't up to the standard provided by the Switch's first party library, I am unsure if there were bugs but everything looks incredibly fuzzy on console whenever I attempted to play docked, as if the resolution had not been changed, this is without discussing the lackluster wild area.

In terms of gameplay. there were many changes that I wasn't happy with. Although probably in the minority. Random battles were never exciting since every battle was intentionally entered or a nuisance. This meant I ran from almost every battle not encompassing a new pokemon to catch. Because of this change, I also felt like routes were less exciting, which may coincide with the shorter amount in the game overall. Since I never found it necessary to train all my pokemon equally thanks to the always-on exp share, I actually found myself caring less about my pokemon, and sticking to a couple of power houses for anything but type advantages. Even playing this way, I never found myself in dire shape.

Although the story felt just as stop and start as pokemon sun and moon, there were some interesting ideas presented with the gym leaders, and the last area. Although. in the end. the game diminished these by making these points extremely easy.

What I can say is the the music is great as always, and even if you do skip this game. I do suggest giving it a listen.

Honestly, I can't give the game a recommendation as it doesn't excel in anything the series is known for. You would do better to go back and try an older game to get a probable better experience.

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This was reviewed in 2019 and this game actively killed any enthusiasm for further pokemon. As in the game was so against my enjoyment of Pokemon lasting from Generation 1 (A continuous player), that I am no longer excited for new Pokemon games.