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.