I'll let you know my bias: I love Pokemon. I own three artsy Pokemon shirts. I bought my children 6 Pokemon plushes and am planning on going to Build-A-Bear with my son to get him a Squirtle. I already beat Sword and Shield. I LOVE Pokemon.*

There is a lot to love about SwSh. A lot that is consistent with older Pokemon games. Great creature designs. Bouncy energetic music. The constant feeling of victory. There is also a lot I like that is new. Moving the camera in the Wild Area. Raid battles are a nice change of pace. You can play catch with Zamazenta.

Pokemon IS its vibes, and it has excellent vibes. But vibes don't make a good game. Mechanics, writing, graphics... These are some of the things that make an excellent game. It is disappointing that Pokemon hasn't evolved** more as a series. Other Nintendo franchises have grown dramatically recently (Mario, Zelda, Fire Emblem, Donkey Honkin' Kong!), but Pokemon doesn't really mature. If anything, it removed some of what makes Pokemon work in this new game. An incomplete Pokedex and a locational based day/night cycle make it feel like Pokemon is moving backwards.

The two concessions I must make with my frustrations are that (1) this game wasn't made for me and (2) who cares, I'm still addicted to it.

1. I played Pokemon Blue when I was 5. It was perfectly suited for me for like 7 years. I have been frustrated with Pokemon for 16+ years now. And that isn't really Pokemon's fault. I have outgrown Pokemon. They're still aiming for the children. I'm playing a kids game, and I can't let myself get too frustrated by a kids game. After all, my 5 year old daughter is playing Sword and shares none of my complaints. If the target audience (my daughter, not almost 30 year old me) loves Pokemon without hesitation, Game Freak has done their job properly.

2. I'm addicted to Pokemon. I have two jobs, and I have spent time this last week committing time theft at both places of employment so I can catch Grimmsnarls. If I had a therapist, I would certainly have told them about my completely unhealthy love of Pokemon while reclining on leather. Then they would shrug, unsure of how to utilize their 7 year degree to help me with my weighing of EVs and IVs. I'm NOT Pokemon's core audience and they got me too. It isn't a game I love, but it is a game I helplessly play. And hotdog, I'll play the next one compulsively when it releases as well.

All that to say if you have loved Pokemon despite its previous issues, you will love this game as well. It is Pokemon. Play it and see a therapist.

*Just not enough to put the accent over the E.

**Pun intended

Pros:

• Setting. The Galar region is a really great homage to the UK which comes through in almost every aspect of the game. The actual scenery, character designs, dialogue, and new Pokemon all help convey the sense that the region is based on Britain. It's a really fun, really cool new region.
• New Pokemon. Speaking of new Pokemon... They new additions are great. They are wonderfully designed and some of them have really fun typings. The Galarian forms of old Pokemon are interesting, and Pokemon from several older generations are given a new form as well.
• Wild Area. The Wild Area is plain awesome. I know many people doubted it because the graphics weren't stellar. Let me tell you: When you get to it, you don't notice. It's breathtakingly beautiful (yes, even if the details aren't all amazing!), and it feels like the way Pokemon was meant to be played. It's semi-open world, full of Pokemon, the experience is shaped by time and weather. It's awesome. There are some things that could be done to improve it, but it's really good overall. I wish the whole map had been designed this way.
• Music. The soundtrack is amazing. It's immersive, has clear British themes, and is just plain fun to listen to. The gym battle music in particular is top tier.
• Quality of Life. So many QOL additions that fix problems from older entries in the series. Not all of them are brand new, but still worth mentioning: Pokemon appear on the over world, so no more random battles. Box is accessible at all times. Move deleter/tutor at every Pokemon center. No more HMs. Move effectiveness displayed in battle. I found all of these in particular helpful.

Cons:

• Story. The story itself isn't horrible. The real problem is that the Player is not really a participant in the story. For the most part, other characters do things and you watch it happen. Even worse are times when characters do interesting things off-screen and you learn about it later. So when you get to the end and they make the big reveal, it barely makes sense. And when you are called in to fix it, as opposed to another character, it's very obviously only because you're the player. An easy fix would be giving the Player Hop's role in the story as the sibling of the Champion. The rest would fall into place and the story would actually be pretty good. If only.
• The Map. The setting is great, but the map sucks. Most of the game, with the exception of 1 or 2 routes and the Wild Area, is way smaller than I wanted or expected. There's really no reason for towns to consist of just the Pokemon Center and the Gym anymore. Even the big towns like Wyndon are actually not that large at all. There are also not enough NPCs to fill them up. The Switch definitely has enough power for most of these to be expansive and lively. Disappointing.
• Post-Game. There basically is no post-game. There's a single episode to go through to catch the Legendary; it takes maybe 1-2 hours. So disappointing considering the Switch should have made it easy to do more. They could have built up the story, let you hop over to Kalos (giving you an opportunity to find new Pokemon), done really anything else to continue the game. This one was an extreme let-down.

Neutral & Mixed:

• Dexit. I know for many people this was a dealbreaker. I have never even attempted to Catch 'em All, so it really didn't affect me, and I honestly don't think it hurt the game that much. None of the recent games have actually had ALL Pokemon in them, so by that standard it's not really anything different. It is stupid you can't transfer in all Pokemon, but I don't think all of them would ever have been available to catch anyway, so.
• Dynamaxing. Another feature which garnered a lot of complaints pre-release. I do agree it's annoying that Pokemon keeps introducing and then removing features like this. That said, it's not a bad feature. I know that it's just Pokemon getting big, but it does really feel cool when you get to do it. The reason this is neutral and not a pro is because of Gigantamaxing. It's extremely stupid that only certain Pokemon can Gigantamax. Not certain species; certain individual Pokemon. I don't think I had a single Gigantamax Pokemon in my team, and I wasn't willing to seek one out. Horrible design which could have made Dynamaxing way more interesting if done right.
• The Gyms. There is a lot to like about the Gyms in this game. The puzzle-then-battle format works really well here since some of the puzzles are more in-depth than usual for a Gym. The problem is some of the puzzles in the Gyms are non-existent; they're just battles. The Gym leaders themselves are great characters, and they are definitely more challenging than an average Trainer. I do wish they had done more to shake up the format. The Dragon Gym Leader does double battles which utilize a weather strategy, and it was easily the most fun and challenging battle of the Gym Challenge. I wish more of the Gym Leaders were like that and had some kind of strategy aside from using their preferred type. Also since there's a minor/major league thing, it would have been great if we could have met and battled the minor-league Gym leaders too.
• Experience Share On. Experience Share was a great QOL upgrade when you could turn it on/off at will. It prevented the need for grinding but didn't make the game too easy. Having it always on does decrease the challenge. But I'll admit I didn't hate it. In order to keep the game from being too easy, I started switching out members of my team pretty frequently (which was also easy to do thanks to the Box accessibility upgrade). So instead of gathering a team of 6 as quickly as possible to have them at a high enough level (like I normally do), I ended up using tons of Pokemon and trying out new members and strategies. I didn't choose my final team until after the 6th gym, and since I took so long they never got over-leveled. It's not a pro, but it does allow you to try something different and have more fun if you let it.

As a Pokemon game, this entry is pretty good. There were some significant improvements to the series and some attempts at shaking up the formula. Unfortunately, given that the game is on the Switch, it feels like even more could have been done. We could have easily had a bigger, more in-depth game, and that makes it disappointing. So while it's a good Pokemon game, it's not a good video game (though it's not a bad one either).

My recommendation: Buy it used. You'll have fun, but it's not worth its price tag.

Where to begin with this one? Well, I guess I've been playing Pokémon since I was a kid, like most kids born in the nineties. (Though to call me a nineties kid is a bit of a stretch) I've played games from nearly every gen, from Kanto, to Hoenn, to Unova and Alola. The reason I bring this up, is to make it abundantly clear that I have severe nostalgia for the games before gen 6. I generally feel like a lot of the charm of the original games was lost in the transition to 3D, and I haven't loved the general direction of any of the games since Unova. That being said, I did my best to go into this game without letting nostalgia fog up my goggles as much as possible.

I picked up Pokémon Shield a few months after release, second hand from a friend who didn't want it anymore. Up to this point, I had seen most of the Pokémon designs online, and many of the unique mechanics to this game, and thought I knew what I was getting into.

I started playing, spent some time doing wild area raids with my friends who had beaten the game, and before I knew it, the game was over. For a 25 hour game, this breezed by, and though time flies, I really wasn't having very much fun.

I want to start with what I enjoyed about this title. Camping is cool, and a few cleverly placed camps give the player a bonus for holding out on camping until they find one set up by an npc. These clever placements are in the middle of a long route when you may be getting tired, and need some health. That being said, I wish the game took advantage of this mechanic more, it was one of the driving forces that made this game feel like a long adventure. Raids were also a fun inclusion, and the pseudo MMO style in the wild area helped make these wide spaces feel more alive with real players. I do wish there was more interaction with these players, as well as more minigames in addition to raids to partake in. That being said, doing a few high level raids with my roommates was a good time, even if the breadth of activities was not fleshed out.

A few sidenotes: Gym 7 had a great theme and aesthetic, and Gym 8 was the most compelling gym in terms of gameplay and made me wish that Gamefreak could design a mainline pokemon game that relies almost entirely on double battles. Some areas (not the wild zone) look pretty, and were a pleasure to wander through. Lastly but not least, most of the pokemon designs grew on me, and I was happy to use a majority of the new pokémon I caught on my journey.

Now, here is the part where I slap this game with the tagline of "worst main line Pokémon game." The story made me want to put my head in a wood chipper. The story introduces characters like Marnie and Bede to the plot, who were characters I was excited to see in action, only to have them get shelved for the climax of the game, basically doing nothing for the majority of the story. Meanwhile, the game kept shoving Hop down my throat, who grew to be my least favorite Rival of all time, beating out the unmemorable gang from Gen 6. His incessant whining and gushing over his older brother made him an unlikeable and uninteresting character who has a boring and predictable arc. Not only that, the antagonist motivations are awful and nonsensical, the "antagonist team" does nothing for the majority of the game, and for the post game, all the trouble that the baddies cause are forgiven with a single "I'm Sorry." Lastly, the story just has this weird pacing issue where everything in the story happens in the last 3 hours of the game.

In addition, The game is hyper linear and doesn't spend time developing any side characters or areas. It just keeps pushing me along before I can stick around long enough to enjoy any of the wacky side characters or pretty towns and cities. The game still features single battles which are generally boring, and are basically a big dick contest between whoever is currently on the field. Double battles would add some level of strategy and planning to the game, but the era of Pokémon Colosseum is past us. Side note: For being the starter Pokémon, the movepool for Cinderace is awful and I was stuck using Double Kick literally until the end credits. In terms of gameplay, it is just so painfully standard for Pokemon, nothing interesting or unique about it, to the point where it feels stagnant. Single Battles only further this issue as team synergy hardly matters at this point.

Unfortunately, while the music is usually a strong take away from any Pokemon game, the last few gens have had weaker soundtracks, this one included. Aside from the battle tower, gym battle theme, Pokejobs, and “Battle! (Mysterious Being) tunes, all the music is unfortunately forgettable and unremarkable.

Overall, the game was not particularly fun or engaging to play, and any strengths this new title brought to the table were overshadowed by its shortcomings and monotony. It is absolutely not worth full price, and is only worth picking up at 50% off if you just have to play the next Pokemon game. But honestly, I’d say don’t waste your time.

Unfortunately, because this game has outsold every other Pokémon game, I would not expect anything to change for the next title either.

I know I glossed over certain complaints, but if I spend any more time writing about this game, I’m going to pop a blood vessel. Feel free to comment or DM me with any questions.

Final Score: Strong 5

Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield are remarkable games. I've never played a game that had such attention to detail and polish in a few specific areas, while being an absolute disaster in so many other respects.

Pokemon SwSh has incredible music, detailed sound design, wonderful environments and character design (most of the time...) and amazing quality of life improvements over previous Pokemon games. However, it also has wild technical issues, a hugely rushed story and just, overall a lack of polish.

But here's the thing. For all the controversy, for all the shortcomings and hot takes surrounding this game, despite everything... I had fun. I'm not a huge fan of Pokemon, but I had a ton of fun with this game. As a busy adult I didn't mind the shorter, more streamlined story. I don't mind the reduced Pokedex; dex completion actually feels achievable to me now! I had fun doing raids with my friends, and cooking curry, and dressing up my character. I even liked the story! As shallow as it was, I saw the vision Game Freak was going for and really liked it (and boy you know those gym battles bop)

There's a lot to dislike about SwSh, there's a lot to be critical about and Game Freak's obvious apathy towards the series is unacceptable. But, what can I say, I liked it, okay?

I've been a fan of Pokemon since I was 9. It is an amazing game series that has generally a great reputation in gaming. Im going to have to say however, that these games deserve to be criticized for multiple reasons, which I will now list.

1. The poor quality textures in the game. The Switch is powerful enough to support better textures.
2. The animations were lazy, and not worth the Dexit (so much for "High quality animations")
3. The story, was the worst out of all previous generations (to add to this, team yell was mostly a glorified fan group)
4. The dexit itself
5. Maybe this is just a me issue, but I dislike the fact you can't change the uniform you use.

Now, there are still good things about the game, which I will go on about now.

1. The customisation is pretty good in this game.
2. The camping feature is quite a bit of fun
3. Dynamax raids are really fun to do with friends and/or family.
4. There is no more unneeded obstacles in the games.
5. The loot you get after sucessful raids
6. This is also a me thing, but I like that Mum's design changes depending on your skin/hair color.

To sum it up, while the gameplay is still fun, the story is awful, and it looks like an emulated 3ds game. If you really have an itch for pokemon, go get the games, but if you want the quality games that Gamefreak delivers again, (which I know is hypocritical of me to say), don't buy them. This game isn't a $60 dollar quality game.

15th Game Completed in 2023

So just to preface, this is only a review for the base game. I will cover the DLCs in a different review once I complete those. They are large enough and content-rich enough to be counted as their own games, so that's what I'll do. I'm actually played raid battles as I write this, kek.

This is my second time playing this game, as I played Shield at launch and just recently got a import copy of Sword + Expansion. And my thoughts the second time around are... This game kinda sucks. In the broader picture of Pokemon as this giant, multi-generational saga of games, it brings a ton of major improvements: Roaming Pokemon, easier EV manipulation, great new online features that sometimes work, and just all around a really polished iteration upon an old formula.

But as a self-contained game, as an isolated campaign, this is probably the worst game in the series for a number of reasons. I made some notes as I went, so I'll try and follow those to keep things organized.

Awful characters. Sword/Shield has probably the worst roster of characters in... Maybe any RPG I've ever played? Your main Rival, Hop, is Generic Happy-go-lucky Pal Number... What is it, 6? In a row. From Gen 3 to Gen 8, the rival was ostensibly the same architype, and Hop will interrupt battles to remark when you land a super effective hit. The Team Rocket equivalent in this game, Team Yell, just sucks. They have an obnoxious design and bring absolutely nothing interesting to the story. And the post-game losers, Swordman and Shieldguy or whatever? Awful. That being said though, a handful of characters like Bede and Opal were quite excellent, so it's not all bad... Just mostly bad.

Lazy animations. This has been a problem in Pokemon games since the 3DS, but this was a huge problem on the Switch, as the price of the games increased significantly. The lazy battle animations - like a disembodied cone of light meant to be Peck or a Pokemon hopping in place for Double Kick - have been heavily memed upon, and rightfully so, but every cinematic is similarly lazy, misusing canned animations for inappropriate context - like a scene in the post-game with characters "clapping" where none of them are clapping, just doing their trainer battle intro pose. Considering Pokemon games on the Gamecube have much more intricate and appropriate animations, it's really embarrassing for a full-priced, modern video game to be this egregious.

Feels cheap. Kinda goes back to the animation thing, but everything here feels cheap. There are major story beats that are never shown on screen because the developer could not be arsed to create them. The story as a whole is a bloody mess, with no real writing to speak of... The game is presented as a series of things that happen, with few overarching themes and only occasional character development. And it's all done so amateurishly that nothing ever really drives you forward. It's a bee line to the expansions, and not much else.

Long animations and text skipping. So this was a huge bugbear through this replay. The story sucks, I wanted to hammer through the dialogue and move on to the expansion stuff... But you can't. Because this game is full of transitions and character animations CONSTANTLY that make fast scrolling or navigating menus a serious pain. You literally cannot skip to the next text box until a character completes their canned animation sometimes, for instance. On top of that, battles frequently get bogged down with status effects, stat changes, weather effects, and other guff that constantly slows down the experience. If memory serves, Gen 9 improved on this a lot, but as it stands here... It's pretty miserable.

For a positive though? The use of dynamic music in this game is excellent. The way stadium crowds cheer and react to battles, and the way the music scales accordingly, is freaking awesome. That's the sort of polish I expect from a AAA game, and I hope to continue to see flourishes like that in the expansion.

In general too, I really enjoy the ease by which you can obtain Pokemon in this one, significantly reducing the time it used to take to find or evolve certain Pokemon that used to be a serious time sink to obtain. Wonder Trade continues to be an excellent addition to the series too, but it is worth a fair warning that, in late 2023, the system is flooded with artificially generated Pokemon advertising streamers and hacking sites. The Raid Max battles are pretty excellent ways to obtain rare Pokemon too, AND I LITERALLY JUST CAUGHT A SHINY UMBREON IN ONE AS I WRITE THIS, but the bafflingly obtuse online matchmaking system only works when it feels like it.

Overall, Pokemon Sword and Shield are kind of miserable to play through, and I genuinely don't recommend them to people who aren't crazy Dex completionists like me. While it does have better technical performance than Arceus or Scarlet/Violet, those games are tremendously more interesting, and strongly recommended over this one. That being said though, extremely positive first impressions of the expansion content might make this one worth suffering through just to play that. And that's not just because I'm basically in love with Klara, I promise.

See you again soon as I hammer out the Expansion content. 😎

TLDR: Quality of life takes a huge leap forward. This is a great game to start or get back into the series.

Pokemon is my favorite series. I have played every generation, and any time I do not know what to play, I typically find myself playing one of the games. While there may be controversy over not being able to catch them all in this game, I think the quality of life improvements introduced in sword and shield are one of the biggest leaps forward the series has seen. While each distinct activity in the game might seem a bit watered down, I feel that the game is designed in a way that allows any activity to be a more fulfilling way of completing the main story. In the past, things like contests were boxed off in their own (albeit complex) sections. Camping & cooking (and the fact that they give exp) provide a more viable way to progress for those more interested in bonding than battling/collecting than ever before. It is easy to play and train with a wide variety of pokemon now due to the exp share and access to boxes anywhere. And finally, you can make a significant chunk in creating a living dex much more easily in this generation than any prior. Although I had every generation of games, I never tried to collect them all until these games. And while I could not catch everything, I was able to catch a lot more for a lot less effort. Any other sacrifices for me are overcome by the ability to play on a big screen and on the go. The game no longer feels like an archaic RPG (although I wish I could skip more story scenes) and I have recommended (with success) to multiple friends who were interested in the series but never actually played.

I love Pokemon. I've been playing theses games from generation 1. I have experienced the good, the bad, and the weird. Pokemon Sword/Shield is a great addition to the franchise with new changes that work and with some issues here and there, just like every other Pokemon game.

I liked the Dynamaxing feature a lot. The recent Pokemon games have started to notice that the formula can get stale if nothing new is introduced (like Black/White). So every generation they introduce a new gimmick, Sword/Shield got Dynamaxing. I liked the battles, they felt epic in scale and reached a certain level of difficulty that was fun and pushed you as a player. However, you do have to raid with strangers to take down the high lever Pokemon, NPC's can only do so much. Outside of Dynamaxing which I adored, I liked the new Pokemon designs. That is a big factor for these new games, the designs where stellar. The starters were unique and different enough from previous generations to stand out. The legendaries were some of the best in a long time, a wolf holding a SWORD with its mouth, what? That is the most video game thing ever, I loved it. On the technical side, the music is so epic and the graphics stepped it up, not as much as I expected, but enough from previous installments. The gyms especially felt renovated and memorable, the characters were unforgettable in this game from Gyms to rivals, to Champion. Lastly, the ending really changed up the Pokemon formula for the better and I hope we see the new format for future installments.

Now for the hiccups. The story although I liked it was not 100% there for me. Better than other games for sure, but it was not that impressive on that front. Another issue I faced was the wild area although impressive and one of my favorite places to spend time in this game had bugs. It was laggy with quite repetitive designs and textures. After a while, the location of Pokemon did not change and it just did not feel as "open world" as they promised it would be. Hopefully, this is a step in the right direction and I hope they don't abandon the concept but improve on it. Outside of that, the game did not have any contest, sports, or beauty pageant mini-games that I love in Pokemon so much, I missed that. The battle animations could also have used more work so they felt more personalized based on Pokemon. All these criticisms are based on what modern games are currently doing, Pokemon needs to catch up on the current standards of gaming. Lastly, the most controversial thing about this game, the Pokedex. While I loved the new Pokemon and the addition of old favorites it did not bother me as much that so many where missing. Would I have liked more Pokemon to be included? Hell yeah, but it was not such a big deal to me. The world in itself is not that big, so I don't know where they would have fit all those Pokemon, but hopefully, we see some DLC in the future, who knows. Last nitpicks are that I hated the biking/gym uniforms, lacking trainers to do battle with, and I wish we had voice acting at this point, it's time.

Overall, I loved the game despite its issues which for sure it has. But the franchise is moving into new territory and it was about time, they can't keep putting out the same formula over and over while gaming in general moves into new heights. It is a step in the right direction but not one big enough, I hope it is a beacon of change for future Pokemon games to be bolder and break the mold.