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