Pokemon Sword and Shield

I have some thoughts. Big surprise, as that is the basis for everything I’ve ever written. But much to the happiness of a few friends of mine, I have put away the Ducky Tie and stopped showing my poofy haired, unkempt bearded face in favor of a more typical Review style of content creation! While I have shifted gears to more retro games, things that I have a lot of memories for, when I have an inkling I will also be covering more recent games. Especially when I have a specific reaction to it.

Case in point, Pokemon Sword and Shield! I love me some Pokemon. Quite a bit. In fact, I’m planning on doing one of these for each and every generation, but I’m going to skip ahead a little bit and start with one of the most recent gens. Going into it, I was prepared for it to be a lukewarm game that did not capture the spirit of the franchise. I had seen a ton of internet hate thrown its way, for the lackluster story, to what is commonly referred to as Dexit, the removal of even the option to use some of the games roster, a roster that now includes almost 900 different Pokemon, and that is not even including the regional variants of a decent chunk of them.

I’ve seen accusations that this is the worst Pokemon game EVER, that there are no redeeming qualities, that the Pokemon Company has no heart and no soul regarding the franchise that has become this massive, successful being! If you’re at all familiar with my previous works, you know where I’m going with this one. I completely disagree. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience so far with this game, and I will attempt to describe why.

So I’ve already let the cat out of the bag on this one. Yes, I think this one is worth it. Instead, I wanted to dedicate the bulk of my time explaining exactly why I think so. To do that, I want to start with giving some background into exactly how far this rabbit hole of an addiction goes, generation by generation.

Gen 1: I have beaten this one multiple times, got a complete 151 Pokedex once, and a complete “Regional” dex, basically the ones that can only be acquired in game, with no extra trading, also once. I’ve done Solo runs, full party runs, different team compositions, all across the board.

Gen 2: Owned Silver first, which was my absolute favorite for quite some time, got Gold sometime later in an effort to complete the ‘Dex, but never did. Crystal I got several years later to own them all, beat the Elite 4 and Red a fair few times but never 100% completed.

Gen 3: Beat FireRed two or three times, owned either Sapphire or Ruby a couple of times, but always traded them in. Temporarily stopped following the series around this point.

Gen 4: I was working at EB Games at the time, grabbed Pearl, beat it once with help from a friends team, bought Platinum and beat it with my own team (I feel like the level balancing was vastly improved with Platinum over the original Diamond and Pearl), but I would need to replay them both to really solidify my thoughts there.

Then there’s SoulSilver. Got 100% of the Regional Dex, got the game itself at launch and did not stop playing it until I beat the Elite four. Twenty something hours straight before I went to sleep. Then woke up and continued through. I took a week off work just to play this one, and it VERY quickly became my favorite of the series. Strong contender for my favorite Pokemon game of all time.

Gen 5: Owned White, played and beat it once. I’ve been told that the sequels far surpass the original, but the experience scaling was kind of a major turnoff for me. I felt underleveled going into the Elite 4 section, wild encounters didn’t net a ton of EXP, I just wanted to beat it. Then I sold it years later without replaying it. I do want to give this one another shot.

Gen 6: Got the X half of X and Y, and Omega Ruby for the remakes. Aside from anything involving the Story, I hardly did any Post-Game stuff. Around Gen 5 and 6 is when I was focused more on beating games in general, rather than doing all of the side stuff, so a lot of my feelings I think are linked to that. Definitely a contributing factor to me wanting to replay the series again.

Gen 7: Did this one kind of in reverse. Played and beat Ultra Sun first (got stuck at the Necrozma boss fight, died a few times before finally getting past). Then bought Moon on the E-shop and played through it. I think this is where I stopped understanding everyones deep seeded hatred of the Experience Share. Maybe it's because I don't spend hours catching every available Pokemon in every available area, but by just battling trainers and gyms, I feel like my team was about the same level as my opponents.

Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee I played through once each, just to the Elite Four. Again, will cover more of this in a future review, but again, I have thoughts. Very positive thoughts.

Since when was positivity a BAD thing?

Anyways, long winded track record over. Moving forward to Gen 8!

To start with, the intro sequence seems to be shorter than Gen 7. There is definitely more of a focus on story elements, and while it’s not incredibly deep, I’m not surprised or offended. These are games designed FOR children after all. That is the target demographic.

With our Rival, it’s leaning once again in the Friendly Rivalry territory rather than the I’m Gary Mother Canucking Oak territory. There’s something Iconic to me about a guy who goes “I am better than you in every way that matters, and I’m gonna prove it”. Blue had it, the Red Headed child from Gen 2 had it to a lesser and faux edgier degree, but the series has moved steadily more towards less of a Jerk and more of a “Hey, we’re all just trying our best, yeah?” kind of vibe.

I mean I guess I kind of get it. You can’t proceed without beating your rival either way, so the massive amount of bravado you get from the Jerk Rival archetype… actually doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense in the grand scheme of things. They always brag about how much better they are than you yet… they ALWAYS lose! Little bit of story-telling disconnect.

That being said, having a rival who’s your best friend… also doesn’t make much sense AS a rival! Might as well be your tag team partner at that point. Actually… now that I think about it, that would be neat, although somewhat difficult to make work. A rival but they aren’t actually your rival, just a game of mostly Two versus Two battles with your rival actively working with you? I’d like to see that one day.

Near the end of the opening story bit and you get to pick your starter, and once again, a growing trend from Gen 5 onwards is that your rival actually chooses the Pokemon who is WEAK against your choice, rather than the one who has the type advantage. I’m mostly apathetic towards this since the only fight this will ever affect is the very first one. By the time you fight your rival a second time, you should have something that has the advantage over his choice. In Gen 5, when this started, you had two rivals, but the trend continued with every game since.

And then you’re off! A few story segments, a little bit of freedom to explore and catch this games Rattata and Pidgy varients, very typical Pokemon stuff. It’s right around here that one of the major differences shows up: The Wild area.

For those who haven’t played this or other Pokemon games before, the Wild Area is different in a multitude of ways. For one, in previous Pokemon games you run back and forth in designated area’s and wild pokemon just show up. You don’t really see what is going to be fought until you go into Battle mode. In Sword and Shield, you actually see the wild pokemon as sprites in the field! I love this aspect. It makes it easier to find Pokemon that you are missing to complete your Pokedex, and it makes the grind a tad easier since if you have a specific Pokemon that you are leveling up, you can go after the wild Pokemon that are specifically weak to the one at the head of your party.

Then there’s the size! There is a good chunk of time between when you get your first Pokemon and go through all of the Tutorial things, and start moving towards your first Badge. The Wild Area is less of a point a-b Route and more just a big chunk of random encounters.

To go along with this big variety is the sheer number of varied species! Typically before Badge 1 in a Pokemon game, you would have maybe a dozen or so different species, and they all have very similar typings. Here, you get a large area with a vast amount of different typings, all to get a well rounded team going.

I would also say that because of that, while the beginning portion is on the longer side, it also makes replaying the game different every time. You can focus on different typings, or different areas of the Wild section and run through the game multiple times, all with different teams built!

On the negative side, the wild area hosts some really strong random encounters. The strength of the monsters you fight isn’t the issue, and in fact could be considered another point in the positive side as if you can defeat one that is 15 levels above yours, the massive amount of Experience you get will shoot you up in levels incredibly fast. The problem is in catching.

In previous games, the badges are a sign of skill, the more badges you have the more your team of Pokemon recognizes your authority as a Pokemon Trainer. For the ones you catch on your own, it affects basically nothing. For your trades on the other hand, it will change whether or not they do what you are ordering them to. Traded Pokemon will gain experience faster, making the grind even less of an issue, but if you don’t have enough badges they may not attack, or put themselves to sleep, maybe even use a different move than the one you selected, different ways of showing that there is a lack of respect.

In Sword and Shield, this badge equals respect angle also spills into the wild Pokemon you encounter in the Wild Area! While it doesn’t change the level of the ones you encounter (they saved that one for the post game), it does STOP you from being able to capture certain leveled Pokemon until you have the appropriate badge. Basically, it creates an artificial stopgap. So even if you level up, or choose to try your hand at challenging yourself in capturing certain types before you’re “ready”, you can’t capture the monster in question until you’ve reached the proper part of the story.

I don’t like it. I think that if you are making the choice to go after monsters that are a higher level than you can handle, you should still have the option to try and catch it. We already have stopgaps in regards to only having certain items available depending on your Badge count, as well as the aforementioned Traded Pokemon not necessarily listening to you. Adding this caveat to captures feels unnecessary.

However, I rarely bring up problems without having a potential solution in mind. In this case, my solution is simple. You can catch the Pokemon, but if you capture one before you have a proper number of badges then it falls under the Trade rule, IE it could potentially ignore your commands in battle! It would still gain normal EXP rather than Trade Boost gains, as you are the Original Trainer, and over time if you exceed the number of badges required, it would go back into the “Maybe it won’t actually do what you say” style. You can even have a special ribbon for capturing Pokemon beyond your Badge Count to separate which ones you caught when you were supposed to, and which ones you skipped ahead for.

After the wild area, we get another taste of what makes Sword and Shield different: The Gym challenge. Every Pokemon game has its version of this, where you battle eight leaders spread out across the region to earn your right to challenge the Elite 4, and the Champion. In Sword and Shield, the Gym Challenge is brought to the forefront. There is not only you and your Rival, but a good portion of the NPC’s who are all participating in the challenge.

Rather than just walking a straight path from the door to the Leader, you have to do some random task like turning off Switches to change Waterflow, or herding Wooloo from the beginning of the stage to the end. These are not difficult puzzles, but it DOES help to separate the Galar region from its predecessors. Previous games had elements of this, Blaine from Gen 1 comes to mind, but it’s never really pointed out or shown to be a major feature like it is here.

The battles themselves are also shown to be these huge events! Random civilians are seated on the sides, the arenas themselves all appear to be these massive Stadiums, think like the UK with the WorldCup, or even the old Pokemon Stadium games. It brings a sense of importance to the Gym Challenge that was sorely lacking in all of the previous Gens.

One thing that takes a backseat is this game’s Evil Team. From Gen 1 onwards, you get a group of pseudo gangsters who steal NPC’s Pokemon, use almost exclusively Poison types, and are trying to rule the world! Later on, they are even linked in bringing to light the Box Legendaries, massive creatures who are generally linked to the main story, lore, and world-building of the region.

In Sword and Shield, the box legendary pops up in the very beginning…. And the very end. Also the first chunk of the post-game story. And that’s it! The evil team this time around isn’t even an evil team, just a group of guys from one of the towns that is cheering on one of your Rivals. A rival who is also taking part in the gym challenge.

In so doing, the finale is… well, lacking. Without an evil team stopping you in your tracks, or a rival that is truly pushing you instead of being essentially another trainer battle, it forced the Gym Challenge to be the main focal point… right up until it isn’t. Once you get to the final town, it starts a tournament to crown the next #1 contender for the Galar Champion. During the tournament at the end of the game, the story takes a sharp left turn for about 2 hours where you need to defeat Chariman Rose.

This would not be such a terrible idea if it was woven into the story better. During previous games, the main evil team pops up all throughout, with the leader of said team usually trying to invoke some kind of change. Even if their methods and reasoning is tenuous at best and outright insane at the usual, it gives you a goal to strive towards, and 90% of the time gives you a nice powerful legendary to wreck any semblance of balance for the rest of the game.

In Sword and Shield, Chairman Rose jumps off the deep end at the END of the game, rather than a slow burn throughout. It also feels largely unnecessary, because the gym challenge was strong enough, to me at least. It was a welcome change to not have a large focus on what is ultimately a pathetically easy team to defeat. To take something that was always a part of the Pokemon franchise and focus mostly on that. The Chairman Rose swerve at the end, to me, seems like a largely unnecessary thing that was included because every Pokemon game has an evil “leader” to defeat before becoming the Champion. If there was just a little more focus on it along the way, it could have worked. If they had left it out, it could have worked. Because it falls somewhere in the middle, there wasn’t enough for it to matter.

For me, the journey to the ending matters just as much as the end itself. It’s one of the reasons why spoilers hardly ever bother me, since knowing one thing that happens isn’t the whole story. How do we GET to the ending? What lead up to it? Was it forshadowed, are there hints along the way, or did it just twist for the sake of twisting? Story wise, I feel like for the most part it worked, just the ending didn’t quite hit well for me.

Another aspect that seems to be lambasted all throughout the internet regarding Pokemon Sword and Shield is the difficulty. Specifically that it is not difficult in the slightest. This is one of those things that I agree… and also really heavily disagree with.

Starting with leveling. In previous games, you would get an item in the lategame called Experience Share, which takes the experience of a defeated Pokemon and re-distributes it in some way, usually reducing the total amount received. Sometimes the item is for your entire party, sometimes it’s a hold item for a specific Pokemon to benefit from, but in all previous cases, this was an option.

In Sword and Shield, this item is just always on. You don’t get an option to switch it off, in every battle your whole party gets EXP like it participated. And I am very much on the side of loving this change! From X/Y onwards, this was a thing, but it was an optional thing. An optional thing that I left on for the entirety of the game! Especially on a first playthrough, when you don’t quite know what you’re going to be up against, or what you want your team to look like, this allows your team to catch up to a usable status!

Take for example in the original Gen 1, Red and Blue. In the first Pokemon center after the first badge, right outside Mt. Moon, you get the option to purchase a Magikarp. In order for it to ever level up, you need to keep it in the first slot of your party and use up your first turn switching out to a Pokemon that wasn’t totally useless. Ever since X and Y though, just having it in your party would help in leveling up.

Does having EXP Share off increase the difficulty? No, but it does make the prospect of training up a team less tedious. There is nothing difficult about swapping out Pokemon to level them up. It just takes a few more clicks of a button, instead of one. Slightly less time, to accomplish the same goal.

This also has the added bonus, for me anyways, for increased experimentation. With an EXP Share always on, I am more likely to try out new team compositions that I never would have. When I see a new Pokemon, even one that is severely underleveled in comparison to the rest of my team, I know it won’t take overly long for it to catch up, and be a valuable member.

And finally, the most anger inducing aspect of Sword and Shield: Dexit. In every previous iteration, with the sole exception being the jump from Gen two to three, not only were you able to catch the new monsters of the region, but you were able to port over your old reliables as well. Your favourites. A team that you could truly call your own, and re-use over and over and over again.

Am I the only one who thinks that kind of defeats the purpose of a new game?

Whenever I run through a new Pokemon Generation, or replay one that I have practically memorized, I usually start completely from scratch. Sometimes I go back to Pokemon that I enjoy, like Houndoom and Ampharos, but most of the time I’ll go completely fresh with Pokemon that I’ve never used before.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of options either. The series currently has two short of nine hundred unique monsters. That is not including variants of existing monsters with different typings based on the region they’re in. Like I said about the Wild Area, it’s a great opportunity to take the same game, and make things different every single time.

While I’m repeating myself, 898! The total number before type changes of different Pokemon to find, capture, and collect. Each game takes the National Pokedex and makes it even longer to complete. And yeah, I hardly ever did it. But with moving certain monsters from previous games into the newer ones, not actually catching them again… isn’t that also kind of defeating the point? Sure, you still have your full Pokedex, but you’re just moving them from one game to another, not actually re-catching them. Am I missing something here?

Well, Sword and Shield certainly are. Before the DLC, the complete Pokedex was limited to around 400. That is absolutely more manageable, AND still a relatively decent chunk of time to sink into it. You get a decent variation of different monsters, almost all of which are available during the game and not just the post-game, while still not being such a large, arduous task that you just kind of give up halfway.

However, what about the other close to 500, what if someone’s favorite wasn’t included to be caught? This is where I am a little more understanding. Sun and Moon also had a similar issue where some Pokemon just weren’t part of the Pokedex, couldn’t be acquired through the games themselves, but they were still able to be transferred in. Sword and Shield do not have that option, and while the DLC did increase the number of catchable Pokemon, there are still some that aren’t included.

Again, not something that really affected me one way or another. I don’t go for complete Pokedex, nor do I forward over my favorites from one game to the next, but I can definitely see why removing those options would upset people. Which I think is the largest point here.

The ease of difficulty and the removal of certain monsters is, in actuality, a removal of choices, any players given Options. You don’t have a choice about the EXP All, it’s just always there. You don’t have the option to use a Greninja, or an Arceus to blitz your way through, they just can’t be put in at all. Just because something does not affect me, does not mean it means nothing to someone else.

The opposite to this is also true. Just because having a complete DEX is impossible this time around does not mean that every single person who bought the game is going to care. In fact, as in the case with myself, it made the game easier to get into.

FINAL VERDICT:

Is this game worth it? Well, I said at the beginning that yes, I absolutely enjoyed my time with it, and I do think that the game is worth a purchase! The increased attention to the Gym Challenge is a welcome change. The Wild Area makes the beginning, where you normally only get a half dozen different species, well now the game is going to be different on each replay.

Leveling up is “dumbed down” thanks to the Experience Share always being on, and the type advantages being on full display when selecting a move, but for me that just removes the grinding aspect. Besides, Super Effective moves, once you’ve fought a monster once, you’ve fought it a thousand times.

In my opinion, like most game series’ once they reach a large number of entries, there are certain aspects that it does well, and certain ones that I wish were different. The grinding both for leveling AND completing the Pokedex got reduced, but that also meant, for me anyways, a lower overall playtime, at least until the DLC came out.

I liked the presentation, I liked the changes, and those changes appealed to me, but I would never say that those changes didn’t upset a lot of people for a lot of valid reasons. That being said, for a lot of others, I know that this one was an enjoyable experience.

My final verdict is an enthusiastic while also cautious yes, Pokemon Sword and Shield are worth playing. Maybe just look online to see if your favorites are there first, if that’s the sort of thing you care about.