Pokémon Sword (2019)

Even though I have to finish 2023 releases Kona II and Vernal Edge before year's end, and even though I have Gravity Circuit and Baldur's Gate 3 literally in the mail right now, either of which may arrive before year's end, all the news about the Scarlet/Violet DLC has had be in the mood to Pokemon hunt.

So for years and years now, probably since about 2010, I've been working on a "living dex". Which is to say, one of every single Pokemon, including alternate formes, stored in Dex order in Pokemon Home. I got Pokemon Sword + Expansion to snag some of the Sword exclusives and expansion mons I otherwise did not have, and I recently got an absolute steal on the HK version of Violet + Expansion for $70 on eBay.

Sword itself... Fuck, man, this game is not good. Especially now that SV has come out and iterated upon every quality of life improvement this one brought to the table. The characters are terrible, the writing is bad, and everything just feels incredibly cheap. The battle animations are incredibly lazy, it's really quite amazing just how much SV actually improved upon them.

I'm excited to play the Expansion content though, because I never have, and the rival character Klara.... Sounds kind of weird to say of a kids game, but absolutely my "type". Absolutely adore her personality and aesthetic. One of my favourite human Pokemon characters, easily.

Sword is great and all, but the Pokejobs aspect makes NO sense.

"Requires up to 5". Up to 5 of mine or just 5 in general? What do you mean by this? Also there's no telling how long each one will last, none of them have a time limit next to them. Also there's no way I'm ever going to be able to catch enough Pokemon to send them on any jobs considering you can't catch a goddamn thing in this game because it's so unbalanced in terms of wild fights. So yeah, this aspect doesn't make sense, doesn't work and I'm just gonna ignore it lmao

I will say, if I have any real criticisms of this game, outside of how impossible it is to catch literally anything, it's that there's not enough...side stuff going on. In the older titles you had the Teams (which have only gotten goofier and goofier over the years, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just something I noticed) and all sorts of little side stories. This one has virtually nothing besides you going from gym to gym, and most of the gym leaders are easy as pie, which is nice, but still. Sure there's the legendary stuff going on, but it's much more in the background and you are much less involved than usual. For someone who loves linearity in gaming, this is linear to the max.

But yeah, gonna ignore Pokejobs, they don't make sense.

Started playing this one some time ago and I enjoy it a lot. I kinda held off playing it since half the world was shitting on it but what do you know, it's Pokemon alright. It has some nice QoL additions and new features that make it super chill to play. It's also still super easy and the battles feel like they happen in slow motion. If an RPG has battles that can last seconds, it's done a lot to please me already.

I also haven't looked at 8th gen Pokemons beforehand so I'm seeing a lot of new acquintances which is fun.

I beat the main game last night. Of course, everyone knows in Pokemon, even when you’re done with the main story, you’re not really done.

The one thing that annoyed me was when you get to final challenge in the game, it’s not really a final challenge. Because oh no there’s this battle, and then this thing you got to do, and then don’t forget this. And then SURPRISE this thing shows up.

So moral of the story is, don’t be like me and think “oh I’m at the Championship battle now, this is the end.” Because it’s not. If you’re tired, just go to sleep. It’s gonna be a while and it’s not worth staying up late to finish the boss battles because... you got a while.

Now at least I can watch YouTube videos criticizing the Shield/Sword story without being spoiled on it. Not that there’s really a whole lot to spoil since the story isn’t amazing..