Let's Talk About: Pokemon Sword and Shield

This could have gone better. As a Pokemon fan I've been waiting for a home console Pokemon game for a very long time, Coliseum and XD may have given us a tease of this back on the GameCube but they weren't exactly what I wanted since they lacked wild Pokemon or a proper region. But here we are with Pokemon Sword and Shield, the first full-on Pokemon RPG on a home console with all the trappings that one would expect. One would think that Pokemon fans are ecstatic about this game, one would think that if one wished to be wrong. Oh, things started out great but then at E3 game producer Junichi Masuda announced that Pokemon Sword and Shield, which I will refer to as SwSh from now on, would be the first Pokemon games to not include every single Pokemon and you couldn't transfer Pokemon over if they weren't in the games regional dex. This, naturally, pissed off a lot of people as many Pokemon fans have grown an attachment to these Pokemon and could no longer battle with them in the upcoming generation. To make matters worse, the reason being said as to why the Pokemon were being removed was to improve the graphics and animation as it was hard work to keep remaking the models for each Pokemon. This did not hold up to scrutiny as many saw the graphics as little better than a 3DS game and found evidence the Game Freak had future-proofed the models so they could use them for future games. Then the game got leaked a few weeks before launch and data miners went and revealed everything about the game, which Pokemon was and, more importantly, wasn't in the game, the features it had and revealing that the models were indeed reused from the 3DS games. They also revealed things that Game Freak didn't tell us, like how they had removed a large number of moves from the game, which only further pissed people off. This led to the hashtag #GameFreakLied to trend on Twitter. It was even worse in Japan where they weren't even informed as to what was going on. I could go on but I think you get the point. Suffice to say what should have been a series highlight has instead become one of the most divisive games of the generation, something that's impressive considering it came out a week after Death Stranding, another incredibly divisive game. But what is the game actually like? well, let's find out.

The story is exactly what you would expect. You get a Pokemon, travel the region catching a variety of magical beasties and try to beat the Pokemon league to be the best, the very best like no one ever was. The main difference this time is that the league is now portrayed as a sporting event, every gym battle takes place in a massive stadium with large cheering crowds with the gym leaders and champion being treat like celebrities with their collectable cards for good measure. I really liked this aspect of the story since it made the league feel more important than previous entries, it's just a shame that the rest of the story doesn't hold up. The biggest issue for me was a lack of focus. The last two generations have struggled with keeping the balance between the league journey and the major end of the world threat storyline each Pokemon game has. Gen 6 barely focused on the evil team making them little more than an afterthought and Gen 7 felt like it derailed the league story far too often to focus on a threat that felt too far out there for a Pokemon game. SwSh, somehow, manages to do both. It barely focuses on the big end of the world threat to the point that the main villain doesn't even reveal himself until the end of the game and yet the game constantly derails you to give you a brief history lesson on the region and the new legendary Pokemon. I liked learning about this but it never became relevant to the plot until the very end and the storyline revolving around the two legendary Pokemon didn't get resolved until the post-game. It honestly felt like the game didn't know what it wanted to be. I'm still of the opinion that Pokemon Red and Blue have the best stories in the series because they have a greater focus on what Pokemon is all about. SwSh could have had this and there are things I liked about it, the new rival is a much better character than Hau even though I'm not a fan of the friendly rival, to begin with, Marnie was adorable and the Galar region is so British it hurts, but there wasn't enough here to make it interesting.

Alright, let's address the Donphan in the room here and talk about the graphics. Now I'm gonna be fair here and talk about the good and the bad because there's is both. First the good, the game is very colourful. The Galar region has a variety of environments and the towns have a unique look and design that helps them stand out. The human models look pretty good and some of the new animations look great. Then there's the most important aspect of any Pokemon game, the Pokemon themselves, more specifically the new designs. I liked a lot of the new Pokemon designs in SwSh, the new starters are great, Corviknight is incredible, the new Galarian forms like Farfetch'd and Zigzagoon breathe new life into old Pokemon and there are many more designs that will likely become strong fan favourites. Not all the designs are killer but every generation has a few duds.

That's the good, but now we must address the bad. For starters the texture work is awful, people like to point out the trees in the wild area as looking like they're from a Nintendo 64 game and while I think that's a little bit of an exaggeration it doesn't change the fact that they don't look good. Even Let's go arguably had better texture work. The performance was also a mixed bag, the game ran fine for the most part but in certain instances, the frame rate did noticeably suffer. I only really noticed it in the wild area but that's the issue, I noticed it. That's not even getting into the pop in. The draw distance isn't bad but at certain distances, objects will blink out of existence and it's distracting when it happens, which is all the time. Also remember when I said that some of the animations looked great, well there's an equal amount that looks not so great. This is especially noticeable in the overworld where the canned animations are painfully obvious. Even in battle many of the attack animations look weak, some of the new or updated ones are good but a lot of the old ones are very clearly reused which would be fine if this wasn't running on superior hardware to previous Pokemon game but it is and I expected more. I don't want to say the game looks bad because it doesn't for the most part but the technical shortcomings bring the game down.

But you know what Pokemon has never been a graphically impressive series anyway it's always been about the gameplay and thankfully SwSh keeps the series quality gameplay intact, but that's about all it does. The core gameplay is pretty much the same, battling and catching work as they have done since the beginning and they're just as fun as ever. I did notice that catching Pokemon was harder if they were at a higher level than you but I don't know if that's the game or not, maybe I'm seeing things. Battles were also noticeably faster than the last two generations, it's not Gen 5 levels yet but it was much faster than the last game. The only significant addition to battling in the new Dynamaxing mechanic which replaces Mega Evolution and Z Moves from the previous gens. Basically, it makes your Pokemon giant and gives them access to super-powered moves for 3 turns. I'm torn on Dynamaxing, on the one hand, I like the idea of giant Pokemon battles, it's Kaijumon what's not to love, but I also don't think it's a suitable improvement for Mega Evolutions. I liked Mega Evolutions because it gave the Pokemon a unique form and new ability which changed the way it played. Granted Dynamaxing also has unique forms for certain Pokemon and at least every Pokemon can do it and not a select few so I guess it's a bit of give and take here. It's not a bad mechanic and it is fun to mess with when the game lets you anyway since you can only do it in certain instances, but I don't know why they didn't just keep Mega Evolution instead of creating something functionally similar but not as interesting.

But at least battling and catching is still fun which is at the core of the Pokemon experience, it's everything around that core that's the problem. First let's talk about the big new feature, the Wild Area. I already mentioned it a few times and spoke about the technical problems it brings but as a concept I like it. Having a big open area where you can explore and catch Pokemon is a great series innovation and takes the series a step further. The problem is that there isn't much to actually do in the wild area. Sure there are some items to find or the occasional berries to pick but other than catching Pokemon, and you can't catch high-level Pokemon without collecting Gym Badges anyway. The only substantial bit of content in the Wild Area are the Max Raid Battles. Max Raid Battles work like this, you and 4 friends, or CPU controlled character if you're going solo, try to defeat and/or catch super-powered Dynamaxed Pokemon. These can be very challenging, especially the higher difficulty ones, so best bring some friends for this one. It's worth doing these, not because they're super rare Pokemon but because they reward you with XP candies and Technical Records. Technical Records are like what TMs used to to be, one-use items that each Pokemon a move. Most of the most powerful moves are now TR's so they're worth collecting, unlike the XP candies.

Not because they're useless but because you never need them. Like in Let's Go the EXP Share is on at all times so you never need to level grind at any point. The only time I needed to do this was for the final battle every other fight I was either at just the right level or over levelled for what I was fighting and I never had a hard time with any fight. I'd say the game is too easy but that isn't entirely accurate, it's about as difficult as previous games it's just not as tedious as previous games. As long as I was catching new Pokemon on each Route I was able to handle with whatever the game threw at me. I wish there was an option to turn it off just to have that option but I'm not gonna complain that grinding has been removed. The game has a lot of quality of life changes like that, Move Tutors are now in every Pokemon Centre and will teach Pokemon a forgotten move for free, Pokemon Natures can now be changed with Mint Items and Escape Rope is now a key item so you don't have to keep buying them whenever you go into a cave. All this is good but it feels like every quality of life improvement comes with an aster-ix attached. Having Escape Rope be a key item is nice but there's no reason to use it because there are only two caves in the entire game and no dungeons at all. The game itself is lacking like his, take the routes for example. They're all straight forward paths with no puzzles because the game has no equivalent to HMs. I'm glad HMs are gone but Sun and Moon at least replaced it with ride Pokemon, SwSh has a bike that can go over water but there's nothing to replace Strength and Rock Smash does nothing outside of battle.

This results in the game feeling, empty. Like the Wild Area, there's a lot of Pokemon to catch but very little else to do. No side areas to explore, no extra battle areas to do, not even a very substantial post-game. SwSh might be a fun game but it is one of the most bare-bones Pokemon game I've played in a while. It's still a fairly decent length but outside the main story, there's nothing to do. You can at least camp with your Pokemon and even visit other players camp in the Wild Area, granted you can't do much but you can throw a ball and have the Pokemon catch it, that's nice. The most you could do while camping is cooking a curry for your Pokemon. There are several different curries you can make to the point where there's an entire Curry Dex you can fill up. Curries are a good way of increasing friendship with Pokemon and will fully heal your team if you cook them right. It's obvious that camping was designed with the Wild Area in mind as it's an effective way to heal without relying too much on healing items but here's the thing, you only have to travel through the Wild Area twice throughout the entire game, you can go back to it at any point but you can never fully take advantage of it until the post-game after which you can't do anything other than catch Pokemon. SwSh is fun but it feels unfinished with very little to offer compared to previous entries.

That being said, if you're into competitive Pokemon, or are looking to get into competitive Pokemon, this game makes that much easier. Between being able to change natures and the easier way of increasing EVs and IVs SwSh is the perfect jumping-on point for competitive Pokemon and removes a lot of the tedious bullshit that once plagued it, not all of it mind you since Egg moves are still a thing but it's a step up from before. But if you don't care for the competitive side of Pokemon then, I'm sorry to say, there isn't much here to recommend. Don't get me wrong here, the game is still fun but that's something that could be said for all the other Pokemon games and those offered much more content and were on much weaker hardware and were cheaper to boot. For the first Pokemon game on home consoles, they really dropped the ball here.

So can I recommend Pokemon Sword and Shield? That depends. If you just want to catch and battle Pokemon and maybe battle with your friends, go for it though I would recommend waiting for a price drop. If your looking for the next big series evolution and all the cuts and drama put you off the game, best avoid this one, nothing here will win you over. If you are interested in picking it up and you're wondering what the difference is between the two versions, both have unique Pokemon and, for the first time, two unique gym leaders. I like that they're trying to make each version more distinct but I also think the idea of having two versions of the same game is a concept that has well and truly outstayed it's welcome. Just do what I do and go for which legendary you like more, never steered me wrong.

It hurts to say this but, Pokemon Sword and Shield disappointed me. I had my fun with them but by the end, I was left wanting. Does that make them bad games? No, not at all but there are a lot of games out there that are much more worth your time. This game should have been a massive leap, the next big Pokemon titles, instead, they're just another Pokemon title. I've waited years for the first home console Pokemon game, in some ways I'm still waiting for it.