Blog:TyrantRex's Thoughts on Pokemon Sword/Shield

So Pokemon Sword/Shield had this "big" controversy over the whole "not every Pokemon in the game is available" announcement, which caused a bunch of fans to being an angry hate mob online towards the game. I found the whole thing very facepalming, people were majorly overreacting and making exaggerated rants that invited the usual hate bandwagoner crowds on the internet down to them review bombing the game and making outright fraudulent conspiracy complaints over fake claims... all over "But my favorite Pokemon is not in the game!" because the Pokemon fanbase is one of the worst in gaming.

Putting aside my very VERY "colorful" opinion towards angry internet hate mobs like this aside... is the game actually good? This is of course ignoring the whole "national dex" thing and just looking the game as it is not as what overzealous obsessive fanboys overhyped themselves into assuming nor what the angry haters intentionally go out of their way to complain about. Me personally I've enjoyed the Pokemon games but certainly don't consider myself a major "fan" of these.

Presentation
The graphics in this game certainly aren't the best on the Switch, but the visuals are quite pleasing for the most part. The artstyle is rather simplistic but it makes good use vibrant colors that make it really nice for the eye, it helps that there's a good amount of variety in the different locations you go through. The downside with the graphics is the draw distance, there's very obvious fade in and it gets distracting quick but it's not much of an issue nor a deal breaker by any means. Also the frame rate issues from the 3Ds games are almost completely gone, there were some frame drops but they were very few and hardly, the only time I saw any noticeable lag is when there's a lot of players in the wild area.

As for the soundtrack, it's really good. It's definitely a very different tone from previous Pokemon games but it's energetic and fitting for the different situations in the game while also working as ambient music. Special highlight being the Gym Leader battles.

Story
One of the things most complain about Pokemon games is that the story is almost nonexistant, which is a common thing about Nintendo games, though Pokemon being an RPG I do can see why people would expect more story. With Pokemon Sun/Moon GameFreak attempted to make the games more story driven with more cutscenes, characters, and development... which then led to people complaining that the game is too wordy with overly long unskippable cutscenes.

So with people first complaining about the lack of story then complaining that there's too much dialogue, the story of Sword/Shield can be seen as the end result of these contradicting complaints. For starters you can skip cutscnes entirely, which personally I think would've been all you need to fix the story issue in Sun/Moon. Either way the story in Sword/Shield is for the most part pretty simple, it's the standard "You're a new trainer go battle the Pokemon League and become the champion on the way deal with the evil team" narrative, however this time the story has several improvements.

Importance of the Pokemon League is significantly more highlighted, in previous games you challenge the league just because and it seems like you're the only one doing so in the first place. This time the gym challenge is a competitive sports league where everyone wants to be the champion, you have a clear concrete reason for wanting to be the champion, you see other trainers participating in the league, you have multiple rivals all of which go through their own arcs, and throughout the entire game the final battle with the champion is hyped up until the finale and the champion certainly can be a tough battle if you're not prepared.

The gym battles are especially more atmospheric than ever before, they take place in large stadiums in front of a huge audience that actively begin cheering during the battle which is integrated into the soundtrack to make it more exciting. Also these gym battles are some of the best I've seen, not just from the atmosphere but also the gym leaders can be quite tough. The evil team is the most comically incompetent so far but given the context of the Galar league, they actually do work and have the more plausible motivation for causing trouble. They certainly make more sense than some of the previous evil teams for sure.

Where the story falls flat is the conflcit of the Legendary Pokemon, while the Pokemon League is given more importance, the Legendary Pokemon are pretty much reduced to a minor subplot, which is weird because the opening parts of the game setup the Legendaries very well and do a great job at intriguing mystery and making you want to learn more... only for it to be mostly forgotten until the last hour when some character goes "oh by the way I'm evil" and the Legendaries show up. Other than that the most you get is occasional exposition from Sonia after each gym battle. The premise itself behind the lore of the Legendaries is cool but it needed more build up and foreshadowing. I can take a guess that this is due to people complaining that Sun/Moon had too much dialogue which clearly they wanted to avoid this time, only they ended up not giving enough dialogue for the Legendaries.

Gameplay
So what is the gameplay of Pokemon Sword/Shield? For the most part it's a traditional Pokemon game with several quality of life improvements to make the experience more streamlined while also trying a few new things. I like this, the games improve in several areas that I always found annoying in previous games (mainly grinding for exp which is almost completely gone THANK GOODNESS) which keeps the game at a better pace, older gens were REALLY slow paced, now there's less stopping or backtracking, you keep on making progress more smoothly while still letting you take your time if you want. It took me about 17 hours to beat the main story, you could reduce about 2 hours that I spent doing side stuff, but even then it's still a fairly good length if you ask me. I prefer a quicker game that doesn't overstay it's welcome than a longer one that wastes your time.

The biggest new thing the game does is by far the Wild Area. This is a really good concept, giving you a more open ended experience to roam around while giving you the chance to get lots of different Pokemon and do raid battles which themselves are fun and can be quite tricky. That being said, the Wild Area only makes up a chunk of the overall game map, more than anything it feels like a proof of concept for what an open world Pokemon game could be like.

The EXP Share being fully mandatory is another thing people were complaining about because "you get overleved and kill everything too easy", but it isn't nearly as game breaking as you'd think. The game for the most part is built around EXP Share and balances out enemy trainers with it in mind, you kinda have to go out of your way to get overleveled, I myself never had that issue. It doesn't take much to get adjusted to the EXP share. The criticism I do agree with is the lack of dungeons, there were very few of them and they leave the routes pretty linear without that many branching paths.

Dynamaxing is the new gimmick for this generation, and as far as generation gimmicks go I'd have to say this is my favorite. Visually the concept is really cool, your Pokemon become freaking huge with a large cloud of energy surrounding them with a few taking completely new forms, if you have two Dynamaxed Pokemon you basically turned Pokemon into a Kaiju movie and it's awesome. Mechanically Dynamaxing is certainly more balanced than something like Mega Evolution which made some Pokemon completely overpowered and Z Move were just big attacks with overly long animations. Dynamaxing makes you stronger and gives you better attacks but it only lasts 3 turns so while it benefits you it is by no means game breaking, additionally every single Pokemon in the game can Dynamax, while some can get Gigantamax forms those are mostly cosmetic, you're not getting an unfair advantage for having them.

That whole "only 400 Pokemon" is so minor that it's completely easy to forget, the new Pokemon introduced have plenty of variety and creativity to them, the concept of Regional Variants introduced in Sun/Moon is expanded in several ways that make them standout much more than in Sun/Moon, this time the regional variants even get completely different evolutions from the regular versions. And if you think about it 400 Pokemon is still a lot, more than enough that you should have little to no problem finding new Pokemon to like instead of complaining "my old favorite"!

Apparently the online functions are a bit janky but that's kinda to be expected from any Nintendo game not named Splatoon, it seems to be more of an issue with Nintendo itself rather than the game. I don't really know or care much about that to be honest because I don't care about online gaming in general.

Conclusion
Is Pokemon Sword/Shield a bad game? Hell no, "missing Pokedex" and some questionable animations are far from enough to call an entire game "bad", people just majorly overreacted because they take cartoon characters too seriously. It is good, pretty good, it improves on old archaic concepts while trying new things and making more of an effort to streamline the overall experience. THAT BEING SAID... there are some areas where the game is a step backwards and it can't be ignored, at times it feels like Sword/Shield wants to innovate and move away from the old formula, but at the same time it's trying to play it safe.

I've seen several people say that the game is good and enjoyable but it gives you that "it could be more" feeling here and there. I can see that and agree to some extent, but that's not a deal breaker by any means.