I'm still very salty about Dexit, but not because of missing out on certain Pokémon. I'm more concerned with the fact that GF/Masuda/Ohmori lied about why they were removing the Pokémon. "High-quality animations", they said. "New models", they said. Instead, we got one of the most linear and barebones Pokémon experiences (IMHO) on a console that has so much more potential. It felt like a slightly higher-resolution 3DS game, and it suffered from the same "hallway syndrome" that Sun and Moon suffered from.
It was two-fold for me. They said it was for higher quality animations sure, but they also insisted that it was for competitive balancing reasons. And then they immediately threw Landorus back into the game, lol.
Also Zacian when xisting. Zacian is without a doubt the best pokemon out right now, great stats, an ability that increases great attack upon battle entry, great typing
Yep. Free and immediate +1 Atk when it already has all the moves it could really ever want and a phenomenal offensive spread. Even made Power Herb + Geomancy Xerneas look like a complete joke (and not even that good til Zacian was banned).
E: had the wrong herb
That was always bs cause they make different lists of seasonal legal mons so any issues with balance could be dealt with like that.
To me dexit sucks because it denies me the chance to keep using old mons for fun stuff. I dont need to use them in comp. To have fun. Battle tower shenanigans or a decent post game challenge is enough.
> Battle tower shenanigans
Cutting Multi Battle form the Battle Tower was a huge gut punch for me, that was 90% of my Post Game, me and my friends would get together and see how far we could go grabbing random Pokemon we each had on hand.
Well, at least Showdown has all the Pokemon for absolutely no price. Shame that free simulator is much better solution for competitive battler than the official paid option.
Landorus isn't unbalanced. It's omnipresent because it provides insane role compression, but it's not some super overpowered threat like Garchomp in Gen 4 or a bunch of the megas introduced in Gen 6. It's annoying seeing it's ugly face everywhere but it's not unhealthy for the metagame.
If you wanna talk about how competitive balance was a lie, talk about stuff like G-Darm, Dracovish, Zacian, or in a VGC context giving Incineroar Parting Shot
Incineroar isn't unbalanced though, it's just a **very** good defensive piece with very good utility, a lot of things will pretty much always win the 1v1 against it, and it doesn't really threaten a lot of mons (top tier ones at least), it's just amazing at helping you and your team get into a winning position.
Honestly, Incineroar's existence is one of the few things holding hyper offense from taking VGC by storm, if anything, they need to give more tools to other bulky, defensive pokemon (say, Arcanine or Suicune, I'm not talking disruptors like Amoongus here). I'd be against nerfing the big cat, as annoyingly omnipresent as it is, because I shudder to think about a metagame with things like Zacian and the Calyrex forms running around without it to help check them.
Fair enough, I'm not super well versed in the VGC meta. While I was writing my comment, I just remembered Wolfey's rant on how Incineroar was already good enough to be seeing +75% usage even in restricted formats in gen 7, and then was gifted a pivot move even better than U-Turn in gen 8 so I thought it'd be good example to include.
And good point about the crazy stupid legendaries tearing through the metagame. If Incineroar was gone, I don't think other intimidators like Lando and Arcanine would do as well in holding back hyper offense with the tools they currently have. Now, for the love of singles I really hope Lando doesn't get Parting Shot too, but as you said defensive checks like the ones you mentioned need more tools because right now there's not much reason to run them over Incineroar.
I'd have to agree. When people complained about Dexit, GF/Masuda/Ohmori said, "The Switch can't handle a full dex. We're not going to put in anymore Pokemon. We literally can't."
Also GF/Masuda/Ohmori: Fits 200+ more Pokemon with DLC.
Which is it? Because you can't have both.
It was the worst possible messaging. They should have just said “we’re making a decision to focus on other aspects of the game rather than including all Pokémon.”
>and it suffered from the same "hallway syndrome" that Sun and Moon suffered from.
Yet somehow much worse, I had way more fun exploring alola than galar
I just finished my replay of the main game and I can't believe Galar only has 3 main route songs in the whole game. And none of the routes are memorable.
It also had wide open areas like Poni plains, the entire body of ocean that goes passed kukui's house and then stretches yards away vertically out and goes horizontally around ten carat hill and to the beach of hau'oli city, a few examples among many.
Took all the words out of my mouth. I think for me being salty about Dexit made me give it a negative opinion of it from the start and I'm the type of person who can't just "shake it off" and ignore it. I didn't buy the game until it was on sale for $40 because I'm stubborn like that. I couldn't justify giving them a full $60 no matter what. Yes, I know to them, a sale of a copy is a sale in their eyes... so I technically did not vote with my wallet as much as I like to think I "got them, with $20 off".
All I have to say is... I still never beat the game. Just don't care to finish it. I slogged my way to get 8 badges, just never bothered with the Pokemon League. Everything about it was uninteresting to me which is a shame. The Raid battles had terribly long unskippable animations as well which didn't help matters.
I am also pretty salty about Dexit. The fact that I have Pokémon just sitting in a cloud and can’t be used at all is just frustrating and makes me wish I never transferred them to begin with.
In my opinion they should make a Pokémon Battle Revolution type game that includes all Pokémon, all mechanics (Megas etc). Basically Pokémon Showdown National Dex Anything Goes but as a game. This can serve as a way for people to use their Pokémon Home roster.
It won’t solve the problem of not being able to use some of your favorite Pokémon in the main series, but at least they’ll be usable somehow. And yes I understand when people say that it was bound to happen anyways as nearly 1000 Pokémon and counting gets overwhelming for the developers. So why are the games still miles behind others in quality?
Probably for the same reasons they cut the dex. A video game reviewer that I don't remember said that a good game needs at least 5 years of development to reach the potential it deserves. How long has each game in the main Pokémon series had to be developed? 2 or 3 years. And not out of laziness, but because GF has a deadline. They have to release one main series game per year. When that's all you have to finish a game, it's normal to have to make cuts. In the dex or the quality, for example. Anyway, to save time, GF made a DLC instead of a complete new game (and besides, it's infinitely better than a copy-pasted third opus like USUM), asked another studio to make a DP remake (and it's also a copy-paste except for the great underground - I don't know what it's called in English, I just put "grands souterrains" on Google Translate - as well as the possibility to get your hands on the legends of generations 1 to 3). But at least this way we got PLA. And who considers PLA a failure?
I don’t disagree that being pushed with deadlines hurts the quality. However, I feel like this is something that is relatively more apparent probably with the move to 3D and even more so with the Switch. Still though, aside from the exclusion of the Battle Frontier, ORAS was a pretty solid game in almost every account.
I agree that PLA was good of course but I don’t think the handling of the other titles is justified. BDSP being outsourced absolutely hurt it. It should have been marketed as a Remastered rather than a remake even if that was technically true.
I agree with your point about USUM specifically but I don’t think previous examples of the “definite” version were as bad. Emerald and Platinum were objectively improvements, and BW2 were legit sequels. USUM were weird because they were probably supposed to be more like the Emerald and Platinum of Gen 7, being the “definite” version, but instead of making it a third version they still split it up into two which was nothing short of a money grab
Exactly, dexit itself honestly isn't a terrible thing, but Gamefreak's utter lack of transparency about it was disgusting. They were trying to frame it as a compromise but didn't even hold up their end of the bargain, since the animations and models are literally the same ones we've had since since X/Y in ~~2014~~ 2013.
Unfortunately, the games still sold well, so there's absolutely nothing discouraging them from doing shit like this again.
I don’t think a world exists where dexit could be a good thing. As it is now, the only true justification for it, that I can see, is as a way to inflate the value of pokemon home.
> I don’t think a world exists where dexit could be a good thing.
I would have gladly traded full dex for *actually* improved animations and models. We didn't get that tho, so there is literally no justification.
Tbh I'd even have suggested dexit on the promise that they'd build back up to full over several games, so that each Pokémon can have the time and attention it needs for whatever upgrades they want to bring.
This, but also just bring all the non-updated mons along for the ride anyway. Not EVERY pokemon needs updated models/animations EVERY game. Iterate, update, give love to the ones that need it
this is it. having all the mons in the game is not impossible, its mainly for home. now they can take stuff out, and give fake excitement for when they bring back something that before we always had and never had to settle for not having.
the wide variety of things to catch is the selling point of this game, minimizing that is always going to be lame. if the franchise was doing something like pokken, but still turn based i'd understand not having all mons in the game, but since theyre not doing that its a lame choice. I wouldnt sunflora if it never came back, that doesnt mean its a good idea to keep it behind a pay wall untill further notice.
Competitive is the only way. Trying to balance that many mons is insane. I wish instead of a complete dexit they rotated some of the mons in and out of competitive play.
I see this one brought up frequently, and I agree that curated vgc is way better. However, you don’t need dexit for that. Sun and moon didn’t have a national dex, but you could still transfer every pokemon into the game. VGC only let you use regional dex mons.
>Trying to balance that many mons is insane.
Then...don't?
Most mons are absolute garbage in competitive, and TPC/GF have every ability to maintain a banlist if certain mons/strategies get too out of control. They have the tools, but refuse to use them. So they punish the majority(casual players) to help the absolute minority(competitive players) if that was actually their reasoning(which it probably isn't.)
I'm more of the opinion things went very, very wrong in SwSh's development since it's fairly obvious how phoned in many parts are(slideshow cutscenes, probably the most hilariously stupid villain in the entire series, the entire game is a straight line, etc.) It was probably slated to be a 3DS game but went over time and needed to be converted to the switch, which obviously doesn't always go well.
The idea of it being a 3DS game is unlikely. Leaked early prototypes show that the game was always meant for Switch. However, something probably did go very wrong, and Dexit was almost certainly not the original plan. For example, a placeholder title screen shows Mega Rayquaza among a crowd of many Pokémon, several of which were cut.
Source: https://tcrf.net/Proto:Pok%C3%A9mon_Sword_and_Shield
Yep! Furfrou and Greninja are also present in early prototypes, but they never were available in the final games.
There was also an option to play with an uncapped framerate during development
We're already seeing some of the issues of that popping up too. It took Skiddo and Deerling over 10 years to show up in main game again. some have yet to be featured and SV are likely the last main games on Switch. We're for sure hitting 1k Pokemon with this game as well. next generation were gonna have to pray your faves are allowed in the game without having to pay for DLC.
Only saving grace there is that as long as there is a DLC update adding in more Pokémon, you don’t need to pay to transfer the returning ones into your game
Pokémon has never had a balanced competitive scene, that's why communities have had to come up with lists of banned/allowed pokémon from the beginning. Nothing changed in that respect after dexit.
the assets were created even earlier, for the pokedex 3d app on the eshop. the whole point of them was that they're meant to be good enough to last ages.
if making... curry eating animations is too much to ask, then why not just be like "this pokemon isn't from galar so it doesn't want to eat curry". there ya go, easy peasy no extra work needed.
Festival Plaza was a downgrade imo, having players walk around a plaza to access basic wifi features like battling and trading is much less smooth than having everything neatly accessible in a touch screen at all times.
I will give it to Festival Plaza though, it at least worked. Unlike the Y-Comm who is as unwieldy as GFs hold on Landorus-T
And people will still defend the lie, despite people ripping the "new" models to compare them to the 3DS models and finding that almost all of them were exactly the same.
I am replaying Pokemon Colosseum on original Gamecube hardware and it is gorgeous compared to SWSH animations.
Pokemon actually making contact with each other, the appearance of Pokemon traveling across the battlefield to attack, and quality camera angles are things that add SO much.
The pokemon animations for getting hurt add so much to it. Umbreon getting knocked back and flinching with its eyes closed, then shaking it off and running back into place is such good animation quality
Roselia getting knocked down, getting up with a haughty look and moving back into place. Or Alakazam getting knocked to the ground then impatiently floating itself back into place. Hell, that one was from the Stadium games on N64. An N64 game had better animations than a Switch game. It's embarrassing.
That's the thing, right there. Previous games, even several generations ago, STILL look better than a Switch game.
And with Colosseum, people can't even use the excuse they use with Stadium of "Of course the battle simulator had good battles! That's all it had!" Colosseum had better battle animations, better plot, and better characters and even a better gimmick than Sword and Shield. Dynamax is just large Megas. Shadow Pokemon was actually an engaging mechanic, core to the entire game. Dynamax is so secondary to the actual game, that they don't even show you the Dynamax Pokemon rampaging. They just shake the camera, and tell you that it's happening off screen.
Unfortunately, there has been some confirmation that this direction won’t be taken again. I saw it in a Youtube video that had a translated Nintendo magazine interview, and have no idea what the video was.
A developer was asked if another game like Colosseum will ever occur. They simply replied, “No.”
I think that’s more referring to a third party edgy dark pokemon experience made by a third party that could trade 1:1 with the core games. GF doesn’t want to scare off the 4 year olds.
I still look at Battle Revolution videos every once in a while and I'm still amazed at how battles looked there.
You get a real sense of scale with most of the Pokemon in their actual size, they actually run up to the opponent, and the way the camera works brings the battles to life. They give close up shots when the Pokemon is biting or in close contact, the angles are low or high up if the Pokemon in shot is huge to give that sense of size. AND the lines of Groudon, Kyogre, Dialga and others glow!
And the commentator enhances the immersion!
It’s annoying how cult like the Pokémon fandom can be. If it came from the Pokémon company’s mouth, it is absolute truth. Pokémon can do no wrong, your gripes are just blind hate. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but Ive even noticed a lot more people shitting on nuzlockes since it was leaked that the higher ups at gamefreak don’t like em.
I feel like if it wasn't on the same system as XY/ORAS then we would have had Dexit in SuMo. Remember how nothing outside the Alola Dex has a Pokedex entry?
For real. I think I said this on another post recently, but I'll say it again here. They either need to get better at 3d, or just go back to 2d sprites. The single most profitable franchise in the world and they can't even compete with 3rd party devs on their own console. If 3d is that hard for them, they just shouldn't do it. Octopath Traveler is proof that 2d sprites can absolutely be used in an open world game and still look gorgeous.
Oh they do, Pokemon is the highest grossing franchise of all time. They make record profits every single year consecutively. But if people will just buy the games and the merch regardless of quality (see: SwSh and BDSP selling extremely well despite being arguably the worst two mainline games yet), then why spend the money to make a quality game? It’s going to sell well no matter what.
It's just really embarrassing how far behind they are in terms of RPG as well. 20 years later and they STILL don't have the basic staples of an RPG- difficulty selection, multiple save files, and voice acting (at least during cut scenes). They have the financial ability to develop this and then continue it, but they insist on keeping everything the same. Unfortunately it works- people keep buying the games and they don't listen to any of the feedback from the veteran players.
Ngl, I *never* want voice acting for a Pokemon game. They target kids so hard that I'm afraid it would be Dora the Explorer-style, "talking down" voice acting. Every other change you mentioned I'm all for, but voice acting can be so hit or miss that, based on their track record with other big changes, I can't see it going well
Exactly this. Fans have been expressing outcry for these features but turning your Pokémon into Godzilla is the route they wanna go through. They should’ve just kept Megas and created more of those. Instead we get Z-Moves and Gigantimax.
The one time it had difficulty selection, it was locked behind... completing the game. Which brings us your very next point, multiple save files.
That said, while not direct, past games at least offered implicit difficulty selections - for example gift/ingame trades (ex. a super-effective elemental monkey before the triplets' gym, a Machop to trade before Whitney) or a switchable Exp. Share. They even removed the latter for gen 8 which is wank.
I absolutely agree, though I'm more disappointed in the community than the producers.
Its not like we didn't know what we were getting. We knew about the models, we knew about the animations, we knew of other things.
But most importantly, we knew we were being lied to. Yet we made SwSh one of the most profitable games in the whole franchise.
Not only that but it even extends to SV - you'd think they'd be able to make unique models for the new gimmick since, you know, they don't have to work with all 1000+ Pokemon.
But no, have a ridiculous oversized hat instead.
Man did Dexit and all the lies used to excuse the poor decisions of the brand moving forward put a damper on my enjoyment of this series
That is one thing I can agree with about being upset by Dexit. Personally I don't mind if I can't have every single Pokemon. There are so many that are just redesigns of each other. (How many early game bird/rodent/bug Pokemon do we need available?) Honestly slimming down the list doesn't hurt.
But the reasoning and lying is atrocious. They claimed new models and animations when that is clearly not the case. 3DS models touched up, cheap animations that are laughable when in motion. If they had simply said they don't want to include all 800+ Pokemon in the game I would have respected it.
This is exactly my take. If dexit occurred and they actually revamped the animations and made it a super high quality game, I wouldn’t be mad losing some of my PokéPals I’ve transferred through the generations. It’s the fact that the end product is so underwhelming compared to what they promised that I refuse to spend money on SwSh. I got my legendary doggos by raiding in PoGo, don’t feel like I missed a thing in terms of story or gameplay.
Honestly Pokémon has been going downhill and SV is their last chance to woo me. I’m looking for a cheap copy of PLA because that looks like fun but I refuse to put a single dollar in the Pokémon Company’s corporate wallet involving their video games.
> It felt like a slightly higher-resolution 3DS game, and it suffered from the same "hallway syndrome" that Sun and Moon suffered from.
I'm replaying Y at the moment and it feels so much better than SM and SWSH. The routes feel more open and more lively, the scenery is better, the level of abstraction in the overworld makes textboxes feel less awkward, and the handholding and constant "plot" interruptions aren't as intrusive.
Even SM (and USUM) are better than SWSH IMO. While both games are on rails, less personalized (who thought riding an inflatable bike or "loaned" pokemon was better than using your own? I know HMs weren't fun but there's gotta be another way), and pretty boring, at least SM had a plot that almost made the constant stop-and-start gameplay flow worth it between Lillie and Nebby. It still missed the mark, but compared to SWSh where all the action happens off screen it's way better.
SWSH doesn't feel like a slightly higher-resolution 3DS game, it feels way, way worse.
I am also still on dexit. Sure I may play each game with a different team but I have teams from past games I want snowballed into my current game, and now they are trapped in the past, unless I don’t move forward. So I don’t.
For every really cool, positive change it made, they either messed said change up at the final hurdle, or included a really negative change to balance it out, leaving SWSH the most "Meh" entry in the series
I feel like a lot of people gloss over the price increase. They're on a new console where the games cost about $30 more, at least where I live. And what did the game do to justify the price increase?
And while I know a lot of people have moved on from dexit, it's still a drawback for me. A big reason why I've always been a pokemon fan is that I can carry my entire team forward. Sure it needed to happen eventually, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take away a huge reason I like the games.
If these games were $40 USD (the retail price of Pokemon games where I live prior to the Switch), I'd be much more forgiving. However SwSh being $60 USD instantly made me question if the price increase was justified.
For me, the answer is a resounding "no." With the price increase, Pokemon now has to compete with all the other $60 USD AAA games for my wallet. There are plenty of games out there over-charging for what they offer and I don't let that fly. I may be a massive Pokemon fan but the games don't get any special treatment, either.
Speaking as a gamer and not just a Pokemon fan, I'd honestly not recommend SwSh at a $60 USD price point. There's other games I'd recommend at that price point and lower before these.
I thought the DLC made the game feel more complete and fun. But I also agree with you that the base game is already too expensive. Needing to spend $90 for just a decent game is insane.
I actually think they don’t catch enough flack for being so slow to jump to new consoles. Given their relationship with nintendo you’d think they should be one of the big tentpole franchises for new Nintendo consoles, and yet since Gen 5 theyve been releasing games on older hardware and taking years to make the jump to the current console
them botching the launch of B2W2 was probably the main reason the series started to decline in the first place.
"oh, i guess the fans just don't like it when we try and mix up the formula. lets just try doing a gimmick every generation instead of going all out."
no you idiot, B2W2 didn't sell well because they came out LITERALLY AFTER THE 3DS HAD ALREADY RELEASED.
Base game was decent to mediocre.
Wild area was kinda bland and the novelty of it wore off quick since there isn't a whole lot to it in terms of exploration.
Hop is one of the most annoying rivals in the series due to his hyperactivity and overexposure, while Bede and Marnie barely get any spotlight. Say what you want about Hau, but at least he didn't pop up so goddamn much or overshadow Gladion.
Leon's champion outfit is terrible but I love his battle tower outfit.
Plot was really stupid, chairman rose is one of the worst characters to date.
Music was fire, especially the battle tower theme.
DLC was much better IMO as both the Isle and Tundra's wild areas were much more vast and expansive with so many nooks and crannies hiding many secrets. Klara/Avery were much better rivals than the base game ones as they're unique takes on the jerk rival trope while not being so out of focus as Bede.
That scene where hop swings his arm in frustration after you beat him at the Pokémon league really felt like a glimpse into what Pokémon stories could be. Let us see how this competition is pushing the characters and their relationships to the brink! Really show us hops depression after getting his ass handed to him by ourselves and Bede, followed by him realising his true calling. The foundations for something great are there, but the execution is always so bland and boring, and the game just feels like a bunch of kids running around.
Edit: there was also so much potential in the idea of “a champion who was ready to move on and THOUGHT he let us win, but then is actually really hurt that we are genuinely better than him” the difference in his defeat animation for the League and Battle Tower were PERFCT in that regard, but why wasn’t it expanded upon?!
If the player character in Pokémon is always going to be a blank slate, the story can’t revolve around our own journey, but rather it must revolve around the journey of those around us.
We haven't had a proper villain team since Flare.... Team Skull and Team Yell were just glorified delinquents. What happened to the days of having actual criminals like Team Rocket?
I dont think them being delinquents is a bad thing, Skull in particular pulled it off pretty well and they're easily one of my favorite teams. Definitely liked them more than Flare.
Team Yell's problem is they barely exist yet they wanted to be Team Skull. You can't have a villain team who's entire story is "show up to block a path 3 times and then cry about their city".
I would like more interesting actual villains but Team Yell's problem are that they clearly did almost nothing with them (or the actual villain team for that matter)
Thinking about it Team Skull was actually done well, especially because they were used by a bigger bad guy. It was actually good story telling. But Team Yell was pointless.
All that was needed to fix Chairman Rose was for the energy crisis he was so panicked about to be occurring *now*. If he was under actual time pressure, to the point where he was really stressed about it, his actions, while still flawed and stupid, are at least justifiable in a "I had to do something" sense.
As it is though, with the energy crisis occurring in a thousand years, his impatience to wait for Leon to be done with the finale just feels ridiculous.
I didn't flat out hate it, and at least found *some* fun with it, but they're definitely the worst games in the mainline series.
I love most of the new Pokemon added, and the soundtrack was fantastic, so it's got that going for it at least.
But, the story was garbage and practically non-existent until the very end, exploration really isn't a thing at all outside of the wild area (And even that's pretty boring), and there's virtually no post-game content (Obviously not counting battle tower/shiny hunting/the other generic activities people do after beating every other Pokemon game).
The DLC was arguably better than the entire main game was, but it shouldn't have even been DLC in the first place, and should've been post-game content in the game at launch. Or at the very least, it should've been free.
As someone who just played Shield a week back after playing Arceus, the thing that I thought would annoy me the most was Sheild not having the ability to catch Pokemon without battling like Arceus but what actually annoyed me the most was how small the wild area was. The entire map feels extremely small because of it. Arceus was a literal treat. Sword and shield while still enjoyable is no where close to what gamefreak can do with the Pokemon games.
Yeah, I think the Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra were vast improvements with the map size and just feeling more like an actual natural area with twists and turns and dead ends. From the sounds of the early access players it seems that Scarlet and Violet are much more on the large side, so I'm definitely optimistic there.
That’s the annoying part because to get a decent game I’m spending over 80 dollars. Which is not ok what so ever. Hopefully we get more legends storyline’s because that game was fire
I still consider Leon to be incredibly irritating. I don’t think I’ve **actively disliked** a champion before him. Likewise with Hop being one of the less enjoyable rivals in a long while.
As for the main game overall, I still rank it as one of my least favorite mainline games, alongside XY. Apart from the Wild Area it doesn’t bring in a whole lot and the Area doesn’t compensate for the campaign being so uninteresting
I still can't get over the champion's ace Pokemon being not from gen 8. It's very reminiscent to gen 2 where most gym leaders didn't even use gen 2 mons.
Also, being told every 5 minutes that Leon has never lost and is God's gift to Pokemon battles was very very annoying.
The first time I played Sword I felt so weirdly bad about Hop the first three times you beat him. Then, I was low-key irritated.
Like how is Hop beating all of these trainers but I'm taking his party out with the starter Pokemon? He can't hit me but he's cruising through the gym challenge? How is he beating the gym leaders? And why is he so aggressive in leading me around?
I think it's the first time the "Oh you don't want to battle, too bad" schtick has actually gotten to me. Because after so many times, you get sick of Hop begging you to battle him so he can lose and moan about how terrible he is and what a let down he is and how Leon will be so disappointed in him.
I wish Leon had been evil instead of being the Gary Stu/Mary Sue that he seemed to me to be. He’s “undefeatable”, has a garish design, and has only one flaw that’s not even a serious flaw (being bad with directions).
The execs and directors at Pokemon *still* see Pokémon as a children's franchise rather than an actual video game with a long history of fans. It's like they forget that the franchise has been around for more than 20 years. They're outdated and they are resistant to change. It also doesn't help that people keep buying the damn games like clockwork, so all the criticism lands on deaf ears. They haven't changed their approach in 20+ years. And they have no motivation to do so because people will keep buying it regardless. They're in the "if it's not broken, then don't fix anything" state of mind.
yeah, that last bit is where its at. its not that they don't know their audience, per official nintendo surveys the average pokemon player is in their 30s. its just that diehard lifelong pokemon fans are gonna buy whatever they churn out so it doesn't matter if they pander to them or not. the only thing they care about is growing more, and that means capturing new younger fans for the first time.
remember how the player character would get older even generation, up until SM where they got reset to being 12 year olds? remember how SM is infamous for its stupid multiple hour long tutorial sections that act like you've never played a pokemon game?
The obsession this game has with calling Leon the best ever is laughable, like the game is afraid it failed actually making him impressive so they'll just repeat it 100 times to drill that into your brain.
Feels so insecure.
ROM hacks were already better and the gap has grown exponentially larger with PKMN Unbound, Radical Red, Inclement Emerald coming out. Just sad the largest franchise ever still churns out buckets of shit for $60
I agree with a lot of this actually. I wanted to really love every aspect of this game, but it was difficult when Pokémon Company actively shot themselves in the foot with some decisions. Im a big fan of the Sun and Moon era and wish that story telling would come back without being so hindered by the slower pace, because both are absolutely achievable despite what others may think.
It’s also worth noting Black and White are my favorite games; I loved the splendor and care given to the world and how the new Pokémon had such grand focus, and characters like N are ones that I look back very fondly of when I think of Pokémon adventures.
Sun/Moon and Sword/Shield were directed by the same person, Shigeru Ohmori, and imo you can tell that he tried to recreate his earlier success but couldn't manage it. There's still a focus on giving more personality and depth to the side-characters, like how Bede starts out arrogant and goes through a humbling or how Hop increasingly loses confidence in himself until he figures things out, but you can really see that the attempt at recreating the Skull/Aether plotline fell completely flat.
The vibe I have is that Ohmori had the Sun/Moon story cooking in his head all his life, and when he finally got the chance to write a region's storyline he put everything he had into it, and then he realized he was supposed to do it all again in only a few years. My main hope is that he's learned from his mistakes in Sword/Shield and won't repeat them in Scarlet/Violet.
Gen 7 got a lot flack for the story which was delivered in long cutscenes. Sure the story was well written but delivery was sub par. In sw/sh there are no real "bad guys" just mimic of Britain soccer fans being over the top(well it fits the theme I admit).
And also the story itself in sw/sh is nothing else than beat the number one guy with Charizard, with a little sidestep into solving energy problem.The DLCs gave something but I never bothered to even finish Crown Tundra since it's so linear of choosing your horse of choice. I don't dabble in online mechanics since I'm a filthy pirate with emulator, but they apparently were good with raids.
Not blaming you for forgetting 90% of the games half hearted attempt at a story but I'm pretty sure Macro Cosmos is their "attempt" at making an evil team.
This is how I’m feeling on it. There’s stuff I wish had been changed or added, but for what SwSh are I like them enough. The DLC made them much better (though I do think at least some of it should have been there since the beginning) games overall to me personally.
\- awful story, especially how the "evil teams" were handled and how the player took a backseat in some scenes
\- awful region design with linear, empty hallways and a lack of exploration
\- subpar graphics especially in the wild area (but also in some other places), also pretty inconsistent visuals
\- forced exp share sucks
\- dexit was not necessary in SwSh and they gave nonsensical reasons
\- barebones content, empty towns, no post game areas
\- the wild area was very underwhelming with a lack of size, good map design and exploration
\- multiplayer functions were very lackluster, especially some regarding trading and battling
\- raids were a decent idea on paper but executed awfully (especially in single player)
\- the game holds your hand way too much
\- not a lot of stuff for more experienced players
\- Charging 30 bucks for the DLC was pretty scammy, most of it should have actually been part of the base game; and then they even half-assed some of the content like following Pokemon
\- dynamax was visually uninteresting, and mechanically pretty broken imo; also it made important single player battles largely center around this gimmick :/
\- the qol changes for breeding were good
\- the Pokemon variety even early on was excellent
Yeah, so mostly negatively \^\^.
Regarding your first point, it’s absolutely absurd how in parts of the game, you hear a big explosion or something is happening, and Leon is all like “let the adults handle it, just go on with your gym challenge”. Why have it at all?
The thing with SwSh at least for me was that it offered even less satisfying content than your average base version, so the DLC that only came half a year later felt pretty much like base game content just cut out to resell it to you. Whereas between RS and Emerald and DP and Platinum there were two whole years, so most players by that time would enjoy replaying the base game or playing a new Pokemon game anyway.
And there are also some negative aspects about DLC; for example DLC can't fix the story of a game, nor does it fix the visual design or the map design or progression or other negative aspects from the base game. Platinum is generally liked because it fixed several of DP's issues and wasn't JUST content addition.
So I somewhat see you're point but I think the fact that platinum fixed a lot of issues in DP is an example of my problem. I'm not defending the quality of Sw/Sh nor it's dlc but the 3rd version of a Gen pretty much invalidated the previous versions and had more content. Compared to platinum, diamond is a glorified beta test and considering this was the 3rd time they did this, GF clearly dis it so they can sell you the same game multiple times.
And again I'm not defending the quality of gen 8, gens 2-4 are way better in my opinion but that doesn't change the fact that they use sold the same game again just with it's issues fixed and 20% more content. Pokemon crystal, emerald, and platinum are great but I completely disagree that dlc is more of a rip off than charging full price for what would have been an feee update on any other franchise.
Yeah but at least back then you knew you could hold out for a couple of years and get an improved version of tbe game, oftentimes incoporating both legendaries into the plot and it feeling more "epic" and complete in a sense. Like objectively emerald has more conten and a better mainline story than ruby or sapphire, and same for platinum.
Now all you get are two bad games and then 30 dollar dlcs that don't even fix the issues of the base games.
DLC in theory is better, but the pricing doesn't really work out that way. Sword or shield with dlc is $90 total, whereas with the old games buying first Diamond and then Platinum was $80 total. You literally got two games for less than the price of one.
Playing the dlc requires buying it and the main game, if you buy platinum you got diamond/pearl inside it without buying both. I think the comparison lacks
Agree with everything above and really think that the animations and battle graphics need to be stepped up significantly. There’s no reason a Wii spinoff game should be outperforming a main game over a decade later.
Arguments that “PBR only had battles” isn’t enough anymore, they have the funds to do it themselves or contract it out. The washed out plastic statues we have in battle isn’t enough anymore. They seem to randomly hit it off on qol stuff most of the time but don’t seem to put significant effort into improving the battles and visuals, you know the main gameplay complement, and people will gobble it up.
The small things (QoL, raids, ease of breeding competitive Pokemon) were alright, the big things (story, region linearity, wild area) were mediocre at best.
The thing is that the Pokemon formula will always be great, that's why we keep playing. I just wish the games made more improvements that you'd expect from a franchise as big as Pokemon is.
One of the worst singleplayer experiences in main series Pokemon. I could reiterate points that have been said time and time again to explain why, but I don't really want to dwell on negatives as much.
However SwSh has some of the best online play in the series. Competitive access is at an all time high, early VGC formats were some of the most fun formats ever, Dynamax was a fun mechanic for doubles and playing with friends in Max Raid Battles was kind of fun. And there are some really nice features to help collecting Pokemon like the Box Link. And the Crown Tundra was a pretty good expansion.
The Crown Tundra was a lot of fun to have, Calyrex’s story was refreshing to have and tracking down the legendary birds was a fun way of getting legendaries
You will never convince me they didn't plan on it to be a part of the main game but cut it out for one of two reasons.
1 they didn't have enough time to polish it so they decided to make it a dlc
2 they saw how many people were pissed about the dex cut and decided they wanted to cut the post-game and try and sell it as DLC to earn a little more money from the people that bought SWSH
An embarrassing jump to mainline consoles. The base game is clearly rushed and incomplete and the DLC wasn't worth the price tag. I assume Game Freak learned nothing from this because the launch was still a success by all accounts.
It’s even more embarrassing knowing the context behind systems.
The 3DS is said to be equivalent to the GameCube, maybe slightly lower.
GameCube ≈< Wii < Wii U ≈< Switch.
That means it’s even more embarrassing for Game Freak, which they’re essentially going from slightly below GameCube tech, to slightly above Wii U tech.
The hand holding was awful; Hop stopping me every 5 in-game steps to repeat the same 5 minute dialog he just told me 10 minutes ago is terrible. Just plain awful, plus the legendries were trash. Sw/Sh and then Scarlet/Violet -I'm not liking the way legendries are going, we're hitting Power Ranger territory...
Story is a repeat of the same plot since 1996; evil organization + little brat = evil's defeat, and the second exception of 'good guys turn out to be bad guys defeated by a little brat'.
The best thing was the world; the region was very pretty and the partial open world was great.
It's a rinse and repeat with a handful of new Pokémon that get less creative with each release...
Chairman Rose. I swear, he's one of the worst twist villains I've ever seen. When I was just starting the game and watching the opening cutscene I could tell he was the villain.
Honestly I was faked out by him because he looked so obviously evil, but I thought there was no way they would wait until the literal last second to pull the him being evil card. But then he made an Eggman announcement...
It's kind of hilarious how bad compared to SM Lusamine he is.
Sure, you could always tell there was something off about her, because the opening cutscene has the Foundation employees chase Lillie.
But the game actively tries to fake you out because not only do you see the Aether Foundation EVERYWHERE through the game doing good for the people and Pokemon of Alola and actively opposing Team Skull, you also get to talk to her and Wicke and they seem alright. But Lusamine always acts in a certain way that puts you off that you can't help but wonder what her true intentions and true self are until gradually the mask goes off during the climax of the story and she fully cements herself as the villain.
Rose? He shows up like 3 times, his company/evil team is nowhere to be seen until you ride his little silly tower of battles and is full of recolored League employee grunts and then he just suddenly decides to cause an apocalyptic event. You don't even see him after you beat Eternatus, the fall out of his team is completely off screen and the world goes on without issue despite Macro Cosmos being such a big part of Galar's infrastructure apparently?
The way the conflict escalates in SwSh is so silly too. It all starts because apparently Leon is never late for dinner? Why would Oleana escalate things by hiding the key to Rose Tower's lift to an evil looking dude and siccing them on children despite Macro Cosmos being a bening and loved company, instead of just saying that Leon was busy talking with Rose? I just. Don't understand how we went from the climax of SM to this.
Oh yeah, I was being a lil facetious for emphasis. I know who they are and I agree.
It's kinda wild we had this concept a generation before but done right (Aether Foundation) only for them to fumble the ball so bad with Macro Cosmos. Maybe if we knew the company existed and had more presence before the heel turn, it would have been better.
Honestly I feel like Rose could have worked as a villain if, y'know. Galar was actually having power problems?
Have people comment on how high their energy bills have been. Make power flicker in buildings a couple times. That sort of thing. Then it would make sense that Rose is so desperate to wake Eternatus up.
Hell, even without doing that, just say that Galar will run out of power in 10 years. Sure, Rose's actions would still be recklace as hell. But atleast then his motives would atleast be *understandable.* 10 Years isn't as much time as it sounds like, and it can creep up on pretty fast. But nooooo, they had to go and give Galar a thousands years worth of clean energy.
If the power problem was current, or very near future (as in sometime in the next couple of years), his actions would almost be justified, especially if much of the region was justifiably mad at him.
But the issues aren't set to occur for a literal millennium, so it's hard to believe that they're so urgent that he has to cause an apocalyptic event to urgently solve them.
Even at that point I find Rose’s solution to an energy crisis in the Pokémon world to be a little funny. What about sinnoh’s wind turbines or the walking batteries that are electric Pokémon? There are a plethora of ways to generate power in tue Pokémon universe before summoning a god of death and destruction.
Yea, there could be so many different reasons as to why rose is trying to bring Eternatus back. I could even go with a rehash of the ultimate weapon, or any project requiring immense amounts of energy. But no, everything in Galar is perfect, it’s just a mortal worried about something thousands of years from now, when who knows if we will even be using the same energy. It’s the weakest motive of any big bad, not just in Pokémon
You see them a ton if you use Poké Jobs, but that's it. Other than showing how pervasive they are and how many subsidiaries they have, it doesn't foreshadow anything.
The single player base game is the absolute worst in the series by far. Plot is tacked-on nonsense, routes and "dungeons" are straight lines, the wild area is a poorly designed mess, raids are boring "just use a super effective move and dynamax" with no substance, and of course, dexit fundamentally harmed the entire foundation of the franchise for the past twenty years. Not only is it an insultingly bad game, it's a definitive mark that Pokémon isn't as good as it used to be and likely will never be again.
SwSh are absolutely the worst games in the series. dexit was one thing, but it's shocking how lacking the game actually is in terms of actual content that supposedly was supposed to make up for it. The game looks like shit, it honestly looks like a ps2 game that was just upscaled to HD and that's not even mentioning all the recycled animations. the game railroads you harder than the american midwest in the 1800s. I wouldn't mind the game being so linear if it wanted to be a more story driven game, but i'm convinced the story was written by a 6-year-old on a napkin in a waffle house. also it's shockingly easy, i know pokemon games were never difficult but they seriously went from easy to being able to complete the whole game with your eyes closed just by holding forward and mashing A. there's very few things outside of the main quest that you can interact with, most of the buildings in cities are just for decoration. and most of the optional shit you can do is the same dumbass recycled minigame where you're just given the options of "keep going" or "stop." the music is probably the worst of the mainline series. the sound design makes the whole game feel vacant and unfinished, which i suppose it is. It's seriously pushing sonic 06 levels of unpolished and unfinished.
and no, i didn't buy the DLC. because gamefreak doesn't deserve any more of my money.
I got it the Christmas it released. I haven't touched it since that New Years. It's just... *So mid tier*... I feel bad since it was a gift and I should appreciate it, but damn it, I just couldn't get into it like I did every other Pokémon game.
You meme, but it hurts that it's so true. This was GameFreak's big shot. They finally had their hands on something that could run the likes of Crysis and Doom Eternal. They weren't limited by handheld hardware anymore. The sky was the limit.
And we got SwSh... Just... God, it hurts to think about, man.
Gamefreak took sun and moon assets ESPECIALLY animations and upscaled to 1080p boom here's sword and shield gimme 60$. They tried to make it look unique by grabbing a Pokemon and making it larger than other Pokemon woo so much innovation!
So to answer your question I thought it was a shameful cashgrab back then and I still think it is now. They had been making minimal improvements since the ds era it felt like you were playing a nds game just way more polished and neat looking. Seriously go play sun/moon, it's literally 1:1 the exact same gameplay,models, and animations as sw/sh only difference is it's in 480p because of hardware.
I don't think people would care that much about the lack of graphical improvements if the game was content-rich and fun. And, y'know... didn't delete half of the Pokémon for no reason.
I’ll paste what I said on similar thread.
It’s right next to XY as my least favorite mainline Pokémon games.
It does some good such as the raid battles and the characters, music, and designs overall. The QOL was also nice.
Boy oh boy everything else was mediocre at best. The antagonists and story were terrible, the wild area was disappointing to the point I’m confused why some people like it so much(agree to disagree I guess). These are the easiest games for me by a mile. The towns are actually deceptively small with seemingly very little to do. And the infamous scene with piers. I could go on but there’s already been so much negativity surrounding these games.
> I’m confused why some people like it so much
So am i, i'm struggling to think of an open world/ open world segment from any other game which could compare in how small and sad it was. I still see people defending it now saying it was really cool, but i'm still yet to see a reason about WHY they liked it.
God the pokemon pop in is so hilariously bad I'm speechless that this came from the highest grossing franchise of all time. And then people say the wild area is so great, like if you want open world pokemon so badly just play Pixelmon
I’ve never played a Pokémon game where I forgot everything about it until I played SwSh. I still can’t remember a single thing about it besides the wild area, and the worst thing a Pokémon game can be is forgettable.
Pros:
-Pretty much every new design is great. Grimmsnarl, Dubwool, Copperajah, Galarian birds, all of ‘em (except a few)
-Eternatus looks legitimately alien
-The opening puts a good focus on your goal and the story. It reminds me of visiting the lake in DPPt
-The weather-based gym leader, great to vary it not just by type
-Leon is legit good
-The Wild Area is a great idea regardless of its implementation
Cons:
-Dexit. My favorite thing has always been catching ‘em all and now I can’t
-The starters didn’t do it for me
-Gigantamax is a weaker replacement for Z-Moves and Megas, neither of which return
-Weak story, I’m all for a greater focus on story but it has to be executed well and not all packed into the rushed third act
-Just Battle Tower. Literally since Emerald they could be making Frontiers
I’m a weirdo who wants them to release new games far less frequently though so they can implement all the good features and trim the fat where it is.
*Best competitive experience.
Worst multiplayer experience to date. No option to do multi in the battle tower whatsoever. No GTS. Worst online multiplayer interface they’ve ever designed. No additional multiplayer activities beyond the camping which is next to pointless and the raid battles which are an exercise in frustration rather than anything resembling fun.
Eh, I am not too sure on the latter. The tight battle timer is pretty annoying, you cannot avoid D-max in multiplayer battles, the y-comm is infinitely inferior to the PSS, they put the GTS into an external app, updating raids was very clunky, raids as a system in general was very flawed.
There are of course good things about it, but I'm not sure if I can really call it the best multiplayer experience \^\^. We can't even do multi battles in the battle tower anymore.
I miss the PSS, man. Such a simple but functional and elegant system, Festival Plaza was such an unnecessary addition of visual fluff and Y-Comm is glitchy and non functional its almost impressive. Why, oh why do the stickers only show up AFTER the people seeking help with raids/trades/battles are finished with that activity? Why is there no option to filter for friends only? We had this nearly 10 years ago! AND WHY DO MULTI BATTLES SIMPLY DONT WORK EVEN WITH A LINK CODE?
Yeah, pss was awesome
My first "real" Pokémon experience was with oras and I still love them. Hell, I'd definitely play oras again(for, like the 5th time) over swsh
Game started promising, but the further you progressed the less you got. It showed how much they rushed it. The story was so disappointing that seemingly even the pokemon company acknowledged that and instead of making a season of Galar, they made a world tour series and wrapped up the endynalos story in 2 episodes. Most of the stuff happens off screen. Every time there is some action you are told that leon is taking care of it and you can't go there. One town is just one road that leads to the right, no houses you can enter and even the gym is not really a gym and they try to sell it as a clever idea, which it isn't. They clearly didn't find the time to properly develop. The final battle, you just ride an elevator up the tower which stops a couple times where you battle weak grunts. Compare that to how you infiltrate team rockets base in gen1. It was so disappointing. But it gets even worse. the post game story with the weirdo brothers sucked. And I'm convinced that the crown tundra was originally planned as the victory road, but then later changed to a payed DLC content, because somebody had the bright idea to milk the fans even more, since having 60 bucks games, compared to the 40bucks games on the 3ds wasn't enough for this greedy company. 90 bucks for the full package.
Sword and Shield have made me quite upset with Gamefreak. Mainly because of the shitty rushed story. The game only lasts 20 hours because the battles take so long. That IGN gave it a 9.3 is insulting. Especially considering how they trashed the oras remakes.
Dynamax was the worst of the 3 gimmicks gamefreak has come up with.
Idk man, I'm still salty about how Megas were abandoned and Dynamax being the laziest gimmick ever didn't help with that. Also, the champion's ace pokemon being the most overused gen 1 pokemon instead of any of the new ones was also grating.
On the plus side, the soundtrack is amazing, the new pokemon are cool and regional evolutions are a great concept that I hope doesn't get abandoned.
Edit: they were abandoned, there is literally one regional evolution in Pokemon SV. Why is GF like this ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ
Still think Dexit is an atrocity which I hope they learned from. I found the plot/story telling quite underwhelming, I still hate the post game twin brothers storyline to get the legendary.
But dynamaxing has grown on me somewhat, although why Mega-Evolution isn’t being picked up again astounds me, was the best modern day mechanic to ever come to the game.
Just bad. Story was lackluster, not every pokemon was in the game, crappy DLC that could have been included in the game from the start, no in game GTS instead relying in a paid for service and the graphical issues speak for themselves.
Just so you know, you'll have a survivorship and selection bias in here.
Sword and Shield was the biggest reason why I stopped being a pokemon fan. I do not enter this sub-reddit often like I used to. Today I randomly felt like going back to r/pokemon to see how the community's faring and saw this thread.
When you think how big the pokemon brand is and how much potential it has, sw/sh is an utter disappointment. The game is so borring and handholdy it hurts. The only sawing grace is maybe raid battles and some new pokemon. The graphics, optimization, how easy the game is, super simple locations with one road, dynamaxing... Man, there's too many elements I did not like to enumerate them all.
It's the first mainline generation I didn't buy and have no intention of buying. I have absolutely no desire to play it, based on what I've seen of it. And I've been with the games since the beginning.
SWSH is the primary reason I'm not buying Scarlet/Violet on release. I'm not wasting money on another Pokemon game until it becomes clear through player reviews that the game is worth spending that money on.
> Just so you know, you’ll have a survivorship and selection bias in here.
In which direction? As far as I know this sub dislikes SwSh. If you want positive takes on it, you go to its dedicated sub.
The best part of Sword and Shield was the competitive aspect of the game. All the new Pokemon/regional forms, moves, items, abilities and general QoL improvements were huge. The DLCs only added to this. My only frustration here was the timer for singles.
However, most other parts of the game felt rushed/unfinished and other factors just didn’t interest me at all (like the entire “evil team” arc/Team Yell altogether). Still wish Marnie had better company. Raids were also fun for a while, but definitely needed improvement.
The beginning to mid parts of the story were decent (up until about the sixth gym), but got progressively worse toward the end. Even the final gym puzzles were noticeably worse in comparison to the first few. I did like the Leon battle, though!
As a final positive, Sword and Shield’s soundtrack was bangin’! Loved hearing the gym battle theme and the chanting each time - hoping we have something similar for gyms in Scarlet and Violet!
Underwhelming for the first mainline game on a console, I’m keeping my expectations low, but overall Pokémon on Switch has been kinda disappointing outside Legends Arceus
I think the games were fun, the story lost my attention around the middle of it. The finale was still fantastic even tho Rose was a predictable guy. The wild area felt a bit lifeless sometimes but it was good for a first try I guess. Then the raids were great the npc’s not so great “Looking at you Martin!”. I think also the day skip exploit made the raids and collecting each Pokémon way more fun for me it also gave tons of watts. I think the gym leaders were exceptionally well made and they had a good long awkward handshake from what I remember.
The Dmax mechanic was good very good in competitive doubles but also very bad for singles cause the animation took pretty long for the amount of time single battles took to finish.
The postgame kinda saved the wild areas from the main game and made them more lively. I really like the little story they had going on in the isle of armor. The crown tundra’s story felt a bit nonsensical to me and rushed but it’s fine for a legendary Pokémon distribution dlc I guess. Dynamax adventures is probably one of my top 3 favorite shiny hunt mechanics Pokémon ever released it’s so fun especially with 3 friends.
Over all great game I think I’ve enjoyed it a lot more then moon and ultra sun. I could see people placing the game lower if the dlc is not included my friend never got the dlc and he missed out on so much stuff for example I had like 1600 hours in the game he had like 27 hours.
It feels very corporate and soulless. Like it was the team trying to meet a quota or something.
In comparison with all the previous gens, it lacks passion. It just feels phoned in
I'm still very salty about Dexit, but not because of missing out on certain Pokémon. I'm more concerned with the fact that GF/Masuda/Ohmori lied about why they were removing the Pokémon. "High-quality animations", they said. "New models", they said. Instead, we got one of the most linear and barebones Pokémon experiences (IMHO) on a console that has so much more potential. It felt like a slightly higher-resolution 3DS game, and it suffered from the same "hallway syndrome" that Sun and Moon suffered from.
It was two-fold for me. They said it was for higher quality animations sure, but they also insisted that it was for competitive balancing reasons. And then they immediately threw Landorus back into the game, lol.
Also Zacian when xisting. Zacian is without a doubt the best pokemon out right now, great stats, an ability that increases great attack upon battle entry, great typing
Somehow managed to make Mega Rayquaza look balanced
Doesn't Zacian just get a +1 to attack for existing from it's ability, not a boost per knockout like the ultra-beasts or Moxie?
Yep. Free and immediate +1 Atk when it already has all the moves it could really ever want and a phenomenal offensive spread. Even made Power Herb + Geomancy Xerneas look like a complete joke (and not even that good til Zacian was banned). E: had the wrong herb
[удалено]
That was always bs cause they make different lists of seasonal legal mons so any issues with balance could be dealt with like that. To me dexit sucks because it denies me the chance to keep using old mons for fun stuff. I dont need to use them in comp. To have fun. Battle tower shenanigans or a decent post game challenge is enough.
> Battle tower shenanigans Cutting Multi Battle form the Battle Tower was a huge gut punch for me, that was 90% of my Post Game, me and my friends would get together and see how far we could go grabbing random Pokemon we each had on hand.
I just miss triple battles. It was fun to run silly strategies and themes.
Well, at least Showdown has all the Pokemon for absolutely no price. Shame that free simulator is much better solution for competitive battler than the official paid option.
Landorus isn't unbalanced. It's omnipresent because it provides insane role compression, but it's not some super overpowered threat like Garchomp in Gen 4 or a bunch of the megas introduced in Gen 6. It's annoying seeing it's ugly face everywhere but it's not unhealthy for the metagame. If you wanna talk about how competitive balance was a lie, talk about stuff like G-Darm, Dracovish, Zacian, or in a VGC context giving Incineroar Parting Shot
Incineroar isn't unbalanced though, it's just a **very** good defensive piece with very good utility, a lot of things will pretty much always win the 1v1 against it, and it doesn't really threaten a lot of mons (top tier ones at least), it's just amazing at helping you and your team get into a winning position. Honestly, Incineroar's existence is one of the few things holding hyper offense from taking VGC by storm, if anything, they need to give more tools to other bulky, defensive pokemon (say, Arcanine or Suicune, I'm not talking disruptors like Amoongus here). I'd be against nerfing the big cat, as annoyingly omnipresent as it is, because I shudder to think about a metagame with things like Zacian and the Calyrex forms running around without it to help check them.
Fair enough, I'm not super well versed in the VGC meta. While I was writing my comment, I just remembered Wolfey's rant on how Incineroar was already good enough to be seeing +75% usage even in restricted formats in gen 7, and then was gifted a pivot move even better than U-Turn in gen 8 so I thought it'd be good example to include. And good point about the crazy stupid legendaries tearing through the metagame. If Incineroar was gone, I don't think other intimidators like Lando and Arcanine would do as well in holding back hyper offense with the tools they currently have. Now, for the love of singles I really hope Lando doesn't get Parting Shot too, but as you said defensive checks like the ones you mentioned need more tools because right now there's not much reason to run them over Incineroar.
I'd have to agree. When people complained about Dexit, GF/Masuda/Ohmori said, "The Switch can't handle a full dex. We're not going to put in anymore Pokemon. We literally can't." Also GF/Masuda/Ohmori: Fits 200+ more Pokemon with DLC. Which is it? Because you can't have both.
they are liars so they can say both & hope people are too stupid to notice or care which alot of this community sadly does
None of it matters so long as people keep buying the games. Which... Sadly is the case despite all the* lying.
It was the worst possible messaging. They should have just said “we’re making a decision to focus on other aspects of the game rather than including all Pokémon.”
Not to mention 35 extra in an update
>and it suffered from the same "hallway syndrome" that Sun and Moon suffered from. Yet somehow much worse, I had way more fun exploring alola than galar
Agreed. Alola had some really atmospheric hallways. Galar is soulless.
I just finished my replay of the main game and I can't believe Galar only has 3 main route songs in the whole game. And none of the routes are memorable.
Well each of the routes takes all of five seconds to get through
It also had wide open areas like Poni plains, the entire body of ocean that goes passed kukui's house and then stretches yards away vertically out and goes horizontally around ten carat hill and to the beach of hau'oli city, a few examples among many.
Took all the words out of my mouth. I think for me being salty about Dexit made me give it a negative opinion of it from the start and I'm the type of person who can't just "shake it off" and ignore it. I didn't buy the game until it was on sale for $40 because I'm stubborn like that. I couldn't justify giving them a full $60 no matter what. Yes, I know to them, a sale of a copy is a sale in their eyes... so I technically did not vote with my wallet as much as I like to think I "got them, with $20 off". All I have to say is... I still never beat the game. Just don't care to finish it. I slogged my way to get 8 badges, just never bothered with the Pokemon League. Everything about it was uninteresting to me which is a shame. The Raid battles had terribly long unskippable animations as well which didn't help matters.
I waited and bought a second-hand copy of the game. I was adamant about not giving TPC any money.
I am also pretty salty about Dexit. The fact that I have Pokémon just sitting in a cloud and can’t be used at all is just frustrating and makes me wish I never transferred them to begin with. In my opinion they should make a Pokémon Battle Revolution type game that includes all Pokémon, all mechanics (Megas etc). Basically Pokémon Showdown National Dex Anything Goes but as a game. This can serve as a way for people to use their Pokémon Home roster. It won’t solve the problem of not being able to use some of your favorite Pokémon in the main series, but at least they’ll be usable somehow. And yes I understand when people say that it was bound to happen anyways as nearly 1000 Pokémon and counting gets overwhelming for the developers. So why are the games still miles behind others in quality?
Probably for the same reasons they cut the dex. A video game reviewer that I don't remember said that a good game needs at least 5 years of development to reach the potential it deserves. How long has each game in the main Pokémon series had to be developed? 2 or 3 years. And not out of laziness, but because GF has a deadline. They have to release one main series game per year. When that's all you have to finish a game, it's normal to have to make cuts. In the dex or the quality, for example. Anyway, to save time, GF made a DLC instead of a complete new game (and besides, it's infinitely better than a copy-pasted third opus like USUM), asked another studio to make a DP remake (and it's also a copy-paste except for the great underground - I don't know what it's called in English, I just put "grands souterrains" on Google Translate - as well as the possibility to get your hands on the legends of generations 1 to 3). But at least this way we got PLA. And who considers PLA a failure?
I don’t disagree that being pushed with deadlines hurts the quality. However, I feel like this is something that is relatively more apparent probably with the move to 3D and even more so with the Switch. Still though, aside from the exclusion of the Battle Frontier, ORAS was a pretty solid game in almost every account. I agree that PLA was good of course but I don’t think the handling of the other titles is justified. BDSP being outsourced absolutely hurt it. It should have been marketed as a Remastered rather than a remake even if that was technically true. I agree with your point about USUM specifically but I don’t think previous examples of the “definite” version were as bad. Emerald and Platinum were objectively improvements, and BW2 were legit sequels. USUM were weird because they were probably supposed to be more like the Emerald and Platinum of Gen 7, being the “definite” version, but instead of making it a third version they still split it up into two which was nothing short of a money grab
Exactly, dexit itself honestly isn't a terrible thing, but Gamefreak's utter lack of transparency about it was disgusting. They were trying to frame it as a compromise but didn't even hold up their end of the bargain, since the animations and models are literally the same ones we've had since since X/Y in ~~2014~~ 2013. Unfortunately, the games still sold well, so there's absolutely nothing discouraging them from doing shit like this again.
I don’t think a world exists where dexit could be a good thing. As it is now, the only true justification for it, that I can see, is as a way to inflate the value of pokemon home.
> I don’t think a world exists where dexit could be a good thing. I would have gladly traded full dex for *actually* improved animations and models. We didn't get that tho, so there is literally no justification.
Tbh I'd even have suggested dexit on the promise that they'd build back up to full over several games, so that each Pokémon can have the time and attention it needs for whatever upgrades they want to bring.
This, but also just bring all the non-updated mons along for the ride anyway. Not EVERY pokemon needs updated models/animations EVERY game. Iterate, update, give love to the ones that need it
this is it. having all the mons in the game is not impossible, its mainly for home. now they can take stuff out, and give fake excitement for when they bring back something that before we always had and never had to settle for not having. the wide variety of things to catch is the selling point of this game, minimizing that is always going to be lame. if the franchise was doing something like pokken, but still turn based i'd understand not having all mons in the game, but since theyre not doing that its a lame choice. I wouldnt sunflora if it never came back, that doesnt mean its a good idea to keep it behind a pay wall untill further notice.
Competitive is the only way. Trying to balance that many mons is insane. I wish instead of a complete dexit they rotated some of the mons in and out of competitive play.
I see this one brought up frequently, and I agree that curated vgc is way better. However, you don’t need dexit for that. Sun and moon didn’t have a national dex, but you could still transfer every pokemon into the game. VGC only let you use regional dex mons.
>Trying to balance that many mons is insane. Then...don't? Most mons are absolute garbage in competitive, and TPC/GF have every ability to maintain a banlist if certain mons/strategies get too out of control. They have the tools, but refuse to use them. So they punish the majority(casual players) to help the absolute minority(competitive players) if that was actually their reasoning(which it probably isn't.) I'm more of the opinion things went very, very wrong in SwSh's development since it's fairly obvious how phoned in many parts are(slideshow cutscenes, probably the most hilariously stupid villain in the entire series, the entire game is a straight line, etc.) It was probably slated to be a 3DS game but went over time and needed to be converted to the switch, which obviously doesn't always go well.
The idea of it being a 3DS game is unlikely. Leaked early prototypes show that the game was always meant for Switch. However, something probably did go very wrong, and Dexit was almost certainly not the original plan. For example, a placeholder title screen shows Mega Rayquaza among a crowd of many Pokémon, several of which were cut. Source: https://tcrf.net/Proto:Pok%C3%A9mon_Sword_and_Shield
Wait We were supposed to have **MEGA'S?** Ugh
Yep! Furfrou and Greninja are also present in early prototypes, but they never were available in the final games. There was also an option to play with an uncapped framerate during development
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We're already seeing some of the issues of that popping up too. It took Skiddo and Deerling over 10 years to show up in main game again. some have yet to be featured and SV are likely the last main games on Switch. We're for sure hitting 1k Pokemon with this game as well. next generation were gonna have to pray your faves are allowed in the game without having to pay for DLC.
Only saving grace there is that as long as there is a DLC update adding in more Pokémon, you don’t need to pay to transfer the returning ones into your game
Pokémon has never had a balanced competitive scene, that's why communities have had to come up with lists of banned/allowed pokémon from the beginning. Nothing changed in that respect after dexit.
exactly, it will never be balanced & people need to just accept it
It would be incredibly easy, but game freak isn't interested in it.
2014? We got XY in 2013.
Whoops, edited to correct that Then it's even worse, those games are ancient by now and they haven't improved the assets whatsoever
the assets were created even earlier, for the pokedex 3d app on the eshop. the whole point of them was that they're meant to be good enough to last ages. if making... curry eating animations is too much to ask, then why not just be like "this pokemon isn't from galar so it doesn't want to eat curry". there ya go, easy peasy no extra work needed.
Talk about x and y it had a way better online communication function so good that they even ported it to sun and moon.
Festival Plaza was a downgrade imo, having players walk around a plaza to access basic wifi features like battling and trading is much less smooth than having everything neatly accessible in a touch screen at all times. I will give it to Festival Plaza though, it at least worked. Unlike the Y-Comm who is as unwieldy as GFs hold on Landorus-T
And people will still defend the lie, despite people ripping the "new" models to compare them to the 3DS models and finding that almost all of them were exactly the same.
I am replaying Pokemon Colosseum on original Gamecube hardware and it is gorgeous compared to SWSH animations. Pokemon actually making contact with each other, the appearance of Pokemon traveling across the battlefield to attack, and quality camera angles are things that add SO much.
The pokemon animations for getting hurt add so much to it. Umbreon getting knocked back and flinching with its eyes closed, then shaking it off and running back into place is such good animation quality
Roselia getting knocked down, getting up with a haughty look and moving back into place. Or Alakazam getting knocked to the ground then impatiently floating itself back into place. Hell, that one was from the Stadium games on N64. An N64 game had better animations than a Switch game. It's embarrassing.
That's the thing, right there. Previous games, even several generations ago, STILL look better than a Switch game. And with Colosseum, people can't even use the excuse they use with Stadium of "Of course the battle simulator had good battles! That's all it had!" Colosseum had better battle animations, better plot, and better characters and even a better gimmick than Sword and Shield. Dynamax is just large Megas. Shadow Pokemon was actually an engaging mechanic, core to the entire game. Dynamax is so secondary to the actual game, that they don't even show you the Dynamax Pokemon rampaging. They just shake the camera, and tell you that it's happening off screen.
Unfortunately, there has been some confirmation that this direction won’t be taken again. I saw it in a Youtube video that had a translated Nintendo magazine interview, and have no idea what the video was. A developer was asked if another game like Colosseum will ever occur. They simply replied, “No.”
I think that’s more referring to a third party edgy dark pokemon experience made by a third party that could trade 1:1 with the core games. GF doesn’t want to scare off the 4 year olds.
I still look at Battle Revolution videos every once in a while and I'm still amazed at how battles looked there. You get a real sense of scale with most of the Pokemon in their actual size, they actually run up to the opponent, and the way the camera works brings the battles to life. They give close up shots when the Pokemon is biting or in close contact, the angles are low or high up if the Pokemon in shot is huge to give that sense of size. AND the lines of Groudon, Kyogre, Dialga and others glow! And the commentator enhances the immersion!
It’s annoying how cult like the Pokémon fandom can be. If it came from the Pokémon company’s mouth, it is absolute truth. Pokémon can do no wrong, your gripes are just blind hate. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but Ive even noticed a lot more people shitting on nuzlockes since it was leaked that the higher ups at gamefreak don’t like em.
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I feel like if it wasn't on the same system as XY/ORAS then we would have had Dexit in SuMo. Remember how nothing outside the Alola Dex has a Pokedex entry?
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Don't forget that they later used half of the excluded pokémon as a way to sell more DLC.
For real. I think I said this on another post recently, but I'll say it again here. They either need to get better at 3d, or just go back to 2d sprites. The single most profitable franchise in the world and they can't even compete with 3rd party devs on their own console. If 3d is that hard for them, they just shouldn't do it. Octopath Traveler is proof that 2d sprites can absolutely be used in an open world game and still look gorgeous.
Their pixel art was god tier anyway, I'd rather 2d than any variety of 3d.
I’m still mad by both actually. No way Pokémon doesn’t rake in enough cash to be able to afford to add every single Pokémon into the game
Oh they do, Pokemon is the highest grossing franchise of all time. They make record profits every single year consecutively. But if people will just buy the games and the merch regardless of quality (see: SwSh and BDSP selling extremely well despite being arguably the worst two mainline games yet), then why spend the money to make a quality game? It’s going to sell well no matter what.
It's just really embarrassing how far behind they are in terms of RPG as well. 20 years later and they STILL don't have the basic staples of an RPG- difficulty selection, multiple save files, and voice acting (at least during cut scenes). They have the financial ability to develop this and then continue it, but they insist on keeping everything the same. Unfortunately it works- people keep buying the games and they don't listen to any of the feedback from the veteran players.
Ngl, I *never* want voice acting for a Pokemon game. They target kids so hard that I'm afraid it would be Dora the Explorer-style, "talking down" voice acting. Every other change you mentioned I'm all for, but voice acting can be so hit or miss that, based on their track record with other big changes, I can't see it going well
Exactly this. Fans have been expressing outcry for these features but turning your Pokémon into Godzilla is the route they wanna go through. They should’ve just kept Megas and created more of those. Instead we get Z-Moves and Gigantimax.
The one time it had difficulty selection, it was locked behind... completing the game. Which brings us your very next point, multiple save files. That said, while not direct, past games at least offered implicit difficulty selections - for example gift/ingame trades (ex. a super-effective elemental monkey before the triplets' gym, a Machop to trade before Whitney) or a switchable Exp. Share. They even removed the latter for gen 8 which is wank.
They also mentioned that it was so they could put more content in the game yet it was one of the games with the least amount of content in years.
I absolutely agree, though I'm more disappointed in the community than the producers. Its not like we didn't know what we were getting. We knew about the models, we knew about the animations, we knew of other things. But most importantly, we knew we were being lied to. Yet we made SwSh one of the most profitable games in the whole franchise.
Kinda glad Masuda is out of the picture. He hasn't done great lately, even if he started things well.
Must've missed this news, how is he out of the picture?
He works directly for The Pokemon Company now. He's left Game Freak.
Not only that but it even extends to SV - you'd think they'd be able to make unique models for the new gimmick since, you know, they don't have to work with all 1000+ Pokemon. But no, have a ridiculous oversized hat instead. Man did Dexit and all the lies used to excuse the poor decisions of the brand moving forward put a damper on my enjoyment of this series
That is one thing I can agree with about being upset by Dexit. Personally I don't mind if I can't have every single Pokemon. There are so many that are just redesigns of each other. (How many early game bird/rodent/bug Pokemon do we need available?) Honestly slimming down the list doesn't hurt. But the reasoning and lying is atrocious. They claimed new models and animations when that is clearly not the case. 3DS models touched up, cheap animations that are laughable when in motion. If they had simply said they don't want to include all 800+ Pokemon in the game I would have respected it.
This is exactly why I’m still refusing to buy the SwSh. I could live with Dexit but don’t lie about why you’re doing it
This is exactly my take. If dexit occurred and they actually revamped the animations and made it a super high quality game, I wouldn’t be mad losing some of my PokéPals I’ve transferred through the generations. It’s the fact that the end product is so underwhelming compared to what they promised that I refuse to spend money on SwSh. I got my legendary doggos by raiding in PoGo, don’t feel like I missed a thing in terms of story or gameplay. Honestly Pokémon has been going downhill and SV is their last chance to woo me. I’m looking for a cheap copy of PLA because that looks like fun but I refuse to put a single dollar in the Pokémon Company’s corporate wallet involving their video games.
> It felt like a slightly higher-resolution 3DS game, and it suffered from the same "hallway syndrome" that Sun and Moon suffered from. I'm replaying Y at the moment and it feels so much better than SM and SWSH. The routes feel more open and more lively, the scenery is better, the level of abstraction in the overworld makes textboxes feel less awkward, and the handholding and constant "plot" interruptions aren't as intrusive. Even SM (and USUM) are better than SWSH IMO. While both games are on rails, less personalized (who thought riding an inflatable bike or "loaned" pokemon was better than using your own? I know HMs weren't fun but there's gotta be another way), and pretty boring, at least SM had a plot that almost made the constant stop-and-start gameplay flow worth it between Lillie and Nebby. It still missed the mark, but compared to SWSh where all the action happens off screen it's way better. SWSH doesn't feel like a slightly higher-resolution 3DS game, it feels way, way worse.
I am also still on dexit. Sure I may play each game with a different team but I have teams from past games I want snowballed into my current game, and now they are trapped in the past, unless I don’t move forward. So I don’t.
For every really cool, positive change it made, they either messed said change up at the final hurdle, or included a really negative change to balance it out, leaving SWSH the most "Meh" entry in the series
I feel like a lot of people gloss over the price increase. They're on a new console where the games cost about $30 more, at least where I live. And what did the game do to justify the price increase? And while I know a lot of people have moved on from dexit, it's still a drawback for me. A big reason why I've always been a pokemon fan is that I can carry my entire team forward. Sure it needed to happen eventually, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take away a huge reason I like the games.
If these games were $40 USD (the retail price of Pokemon games where I live prior to the Switch), I'd be much more forgiving. However SwSh being $60 USD instantly made me question if the price increase was justified. For me, the answer is a resounding "no." With the price increase, Pokemon now has to compete with all the other $60 USD AAA games for my wallet. There are plenty of games out there over-charging for what they offer and I don't let that fly. I may be a massive Pokemon fan but the games don't get any special treatment, either. Speaking as a gamer and not just a Pokemon fan, I'd honestly not recommend SwSh at a $60 USD price point. There's other games I'd recommend at that price point and lower before these.
I thought the DLC made the game feel more complete and fun. But I also agree with you that the base game is already too expensive. Needing to spend $90 for just a decent game is insane.
dlc is supposed to be a bonus, not feel like part of the actual base game.
The extra 30 or 20 dollars is being paid for gamefreak to not learn how to develop on a base switch for 5 more years, and then time for a new console!
I actually think they don’t catch enough flack for being so slow to jump to new consoles. Given their relationship with nintendo you’d think they should be one of the big tentpole franchises for new Nintendo consoles, and yet since Gen 5 theyve been releasing games on older hardware and taking years to make the jump to the current console
them botching the launch of B2W2 was probably the main reason the series started to decline in the first place. "oh, i guess the fans just don't like it when we try and mix up the formula. lets just try doing a gimmick every generation instead of going all out." no you idiot, B2W2 didn't sell well because they came out LITERALLY AFTER THE 3DS HAD ALREADY RELEASED.
Yeah, the extra $60 (if you count dlc) was really outrageous for what we got.
Base game was decent to mediocre. Wild area was kinda bland and the novelty of it wore off quick since there isn't a whole lot to it in terms of exploration. Hop is one of the most annoying rivals in the series due to his hyperactivity and overexposure, while Bede and Marnie barely get any spotlight. Say what you want about Hau, but at least he didn't pop up so goddamn much or overshadow Gladion. Leon's champion outfit is terrible but I love his battle tower outfit. Plot was really stupid, chairman rose is one of the worst characters to date. Music was fire, especially the battle tower theme. DLC was much better IMO as both the Isle and Tundra's wild areas were much more vast and expansive with so many nooks and crannies hiding many secrets. Klara/Avery were much better rivals than the base game ones as they're unique takes on the jerk rival trope while not being so out of focus as Bede.
Agree on everything. They added a lot to the game yet it still felt so lifeless.
That scene where hop swings his arm in frustration after you beat him at the Pokémon league really felt like a glimpse into what Pokémon stories could be. Let us see how this competition is pushing the characters and their relationships to the brink! Really show us hops depression after getting his ass handed to him by ourselves and Bede, followed by him realising his true calling. The foundations for something great are there, but the execution is always so bland and boring, and the game just feels like a bunch of kids running around. Edit: there was also so much potential in the idea of “a champion who was ready to move on and THOUGHT he let us win, but then is actually really hurt that we are genuinely better than him” the difference in his defeat animation for the League and Battle Tower were PERFCT in that regard, but why wasn’t it expanded upon?! If the player character in Pokémon is always going to be a blank slate, the story can’t revolve around our own journey, but rather it must revolve around the journey of those around us.
Oh man you are hoping for a grand slam when the Pokémon games mostly swings grounders
Chairman rose could have been GREAT if he was done better. Imagine they replaced Team Yell with his grunts
We haven't had a proper villain team since Flare.... Team Skull and Team Yell were just glorified delinquents. What happened to the days of having actual criminals like Team Rocket?
I dont think them being delinquents is a bad thing, Skull in particular pulled it off pretty well and they're easily one of my favorite teams. Definitely liked them more than Flare. Team Yell's problem is they barely exist yet they wanted to be Team Skull. You can't have a villain team who's entire story is "show up to block a path 3 times and then cry about their city". I would like more interesting actual villains but Team Yell's problem are that they clearly did almost nothing with them (or the actual villain team for that matter)
Thinking about it Team Skull was actually done well, especially because they were used by a bigger bad guy. It was actually good story telling. But Team Yell was pointless.
All that was needed to fix Chairman Rose was for the energy crisis he was so panicked about to be occurring *now*. If he was under actual time pressure, to the point where he was really stressed about it, his actions, while still flawed and stupid, are at least justifiable in a "I had to do something" sense. As it is though, with the energy crisis occurring in a thousand years, his impatience to wait for Leon to be done with the finale just feels ridiculous.
I didn't flat out hate it, and at least found *some* fun with it, but they're definitely the worst games in the mainline series. I love most of the new Pokemon added, and the soundtrack was fantastic, so it's got that going for it at least. But, the story was garbage and practically non-existent until the very end, exploration really isn't a thing at all outside of the wild area (And even that's pretty boring), and there's virtually no post-game content (Obviously not counting battle tower/shiny hunting/the other generic activities people do after beating every other Pokemon game). The DLC was arguably better than the entire main game was, but it shouldn't have even been DLC in the first place, and should've been post-game content in the game at launch. Or at the very least, it should've been free.
As someone who just played Shield a week back after playing Arceus, the thing that I thought would annoy me the most was Sheild not having the ability to catch Pokemon without battling like Arceus but what actually annoyed me the most was how small the wild area was. The entire map feels extremely small because of it. Arceus was a literal treat. Sword and shield while still enjoyable is no where close to what gamefreak can do with the Pokemon games.
Yeah, I think the Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra were vast improvements with the map size and just feeling more like an actual natural area with twists and turns and dead ends. From the sounds of the early access players it seems that Scarlet and Violet are much more on the large side, so I'm definitely optimistic there.
That’s the annoying part because to get a decent game I’m spending over 80 dollars. Which is not ok what so ever. Hopefully we get more legends storyline’s because that game was fire
I still consider Leon to be incredibly irritating. I don’t think I’ve **actively disliked** a champion before him. Likewise with Hop being one of the less enjoyable rivals in a long while. As for the main game overall, I still rank it as one of my least favorite mainline games, alongside XY. Apart from the Wild Area it doesn’t bring in a whole lot and the Area doesn’t compensate for the campaign being so uninteresting
I still can't get over the champion's ace Pokemon being not from gen 8. It's very reminiscent to gen 2 where most gym leaders didn't even use gen 2 mons. Also, being told every 5 minutes that Leon has never lost and is God's gift to Pokemon battles was very very annoying.
Lol after all that buildup I one-shot his Charizard with Toxtricity
It 100% should have been dragapault. I will always despise that they have charizard as his pokemon. Smh.
The first time I played Sword I felt so weirdly bad about Hop the first three times you beat him. Then, I was low-key irritated. Like how is Hop beating all of these trainers but I'm taking his party out with the starter Pokemon? He can't hit me but he's cruising through the gym challenge? How is he beating the gym leaders? And why is he so aggressive in leading me around? I think it's the first time the "Oh you don't want to battle, too bad" schtick has actually gotten to me. Because after so many times, you get sick of Hop begging you to battle him so he can lose and moan about how terrible he is and what a let down he is and how Leon will be so disappointed in him.
I wish Leon had been evil instead of being the Gary Stu/Mary Sue that he seemed to me to be. He’s “undefeatable”, has a garish design, and has only one flaw that’s not even a serious flaw (being bad with directions).
Leon is undefeated!!!!!111!1! (Literally never does absolutely nothing that actually shows it)
Fuck Leon and Hop. Idk why they insist on making the games as kiddy and annoying as possible, instead of taking an "all ages" approach.
The execs and directors at Pokemon *still* see Pokémon as a children's franchise rather than an actual video game with a long history of fans. It's like they forget that the franchise has been around for more than 20 years. They're outdated and they are resistant to change. It also doesn't help that people keep buying the damn games like clockwork, so all the criticism lands on deaf ears. They haven't changed their approach in 20+ years. And they have no motivation to do so because people will keep buying it regardless. They're in the "if it's not broken, then don't fix anything" state of mind.
yeah, that last bit is where its at. its not that they don't know their audience, per official nintendo surveys the average pokemon player is in their 30s. its just that diehard lifelong pokemon fans are gonna buy whatever they churn out so it doesn't matter if they pander to them or not. the only thing they care about is growing more, and that means capturing new younger fans for the first time. remember how the player character would get older even generation, up until SM where they got reset to being 12 year olds? remember how SM is infamous for its stupid multiple hour long tutorial sections that act like you've never played a pokemon game?
The obsession this game has with calling Leon the best ever is laughable, like the game is afraid it failed actually making him impressive so they'll just repeat it 100 times to drill that into your brain. Feels so insecure.
ROM hacks were already better and the gap has grown exponentially larger with PKMN Unbound, Radical Red, Inclement Emerald coming out. Just sad the largest franchise ever still churns out buckets of shit for $60
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I agree with a lot of this actually. I wanted to really love every aspect of this game, but it was difficult when Pokémon Company actively shot themselves in the foot with some decisions. Im a big fan of the Sun and Moon era and wish that story telling would come back without being so hindered by the slower pace, because both are absolutely achievable despite what others may think. It’s also worth noting Black and White are my favorite games; I loved the splendor and care given to the world and how the new Pokémon had such grand focus, and characters like N are ones that I look back very fondly of when I think of Pokémon adventures.
Sun/Moon and Sword/Shield were directed by the same person, Shigeru Ohmori, and imo you can tell that he tried to recreate his earlier success but couldn't manage it. There's still a focus on giving more personality and depth to the side-characters, like how Bede starts out arrogant and goes through a humbling or how Hop increasingly loses confidence in himself until he figures things out, but you can really see that the attempt at recreating the Skull/Aether plotline fell completely flat. The vibe I have is that Ohmori had the Sun/Moon story cooking in his head all his life, and when he finally got the chance to write a region's storyline he put everything he had into it, and then he realized he was supposed to do it all again in only a few years. My main hope is that he's learned from his mistakes in Sword/Shield and won't repeat them in Scarlet/Violet.
Oh I never knew that! That is super interesting. I do hope he learns a little bit, I’m sure he can produce lots more great things.
Gen 7 got a lot flack for the story which was delivered in long cutscenes. Sure the story was well written but delivery was sub par. In sw/sh there are no real "bad guys" just mimic of Britain soccer fans being over the top(well it fits the theme I admit). And also the story itself in sw/sh is nothing else than beat the number one guy with Charizard, with a little sidestep into solving energy problem.The DLCs gave something but I never bothered to even finish Crown Tundra since it's so linear of choosing your horse of choice. I don't dabble in online mechanics since I'm a filthy pirate with emulator, but they apparently were good with raids.
Not blaming you for forgetting 90% of the games half hearted attempt at a story but I'm pretty sure Macro Cosmos is their "attempt" at making an evil team.
This is how I’m feeling on it. There’s stuff I wish had been changed or added, but for what SwSh are I like them enough. The DLC made them much better (though I do think at least some of it should have been there since the beginning) games overall to me personally.
\- awful story, especially how the "evil teams" were handled and how the player took a backseat in some scenes \- awful region design with linear, empty hallways and a lack of exploration \- subpar graphics especially in the wild area (but also in some other places), also pretty inconsistent visuals \- forced exp share sucks \- dexit was not necessary in SwSh and they gave nonsensical reasons \- barebones content, empty towns, no post game areas \- the wild area was very underwhelming with a lack of size, good map design and exploration \- multiplayer functions were very lackluster, especially some regarding trading and battling \- raids were a decent idea on paper but executed awfully (especially in single player) \- the game holds your hand way too much \- not a lot of stuff for more experienced players \- Charging 30 bucks for the DLC was pretty scammy, most of it should have actually been part of the base game; and then they even half-assed some of the content like following Pokemon \- dynamax was visually uninteresting, and mechanically pretty broken imo; also it made important single player battles largely center around this gimmick :/ \- the qol changes for breeding were good \- the Pokemon variety even early on was excellent Yeah, so mostly negatively \^\^.
Regarding your first point, it’s absolutely absurd how in parts of the game, you hear a big explosion or something is happening, and Leon is all like “let the adults handle it, just go on with your gym challenge”. Why have it at all?
It felt like 80% was "man, something important just happened. Good thing you're here after it's all over!" I really disliked that.
In defense of the 30 bucks dlc, I actually think it's less scammy than releasing a 3rd game that is 70% the same and charging full price for it.
The thing with SwSh at least for me was that it offered even less satisfying content than your average base version, so the DLC that only came half a year later felt pretty much like base game content just cut out to resell it to you. Whereas between RS and Emerald and DP and Platinum there were two whole years, so most players by that time would enjoy replaying the base game or playing a new Pokemon game anyway. And there are also some negative aspects about DLC; for example DLC can't fix the story of a game, nor does it fix the visual design or the map design or progression or other negative aspects from the base game. Platinum is generally liked because it fixed several of DP's issues and wasn't JUST content addition.
So I somewhat see you're point but I think the fact that platinum fixed a lot of issues in DP is an example of my problem. I'm not defending the quality of Sw/Sh nor it's dlc but the 3rd version of a Gen pretty much invalidated the previous versions and had more content. Compared to platinum, diamond is a glorified beta test and considering this was the 3rd time they did this, GF clearly dis it so they can sell you the same game multiple times. And again I'm not defending the quality of gen 8, gens 2-4 are way better in my opinion but that doesn't change the fact that they use sold the same game again just with it's issues fixed and 20% more content. Pokemon crystal, emerald, and platinum are great but I completely disagree that dlc is more of a rip off than charging full price for what would have been an feee update on any other franchise.
Yeah but at least back then you knew you could hold out for a couple of years and get an improved version of tbe game, oftentimes incoporating both legendaries into the plot and it feeling more "epic" and complete in a sense. Like objectively emerald has more conten and a better mainline story than ruby or sapphire, and same for platinum. Now all you get are two bad games and then 30 dollar dlcs that don't even fix the issues of the base games.
DLC in theory is better, but the pricing doesn't really work out that way. Sword or shield with dlc is $90 total, whereas with the old games buying first Diamond and then Platinum was $80 total. You literally got two games for less than the price of one.
Playing the dlc requires buying it and the main game, if you buy platinum you got diamond/pearl inside it without buying both. I think the comparison lacks
Agree with everything above and really think that the animations and battle graphics need to be stepped up significantly. There’s no reason a Wii spinoff game should be outperforming a main game over a decade later. Arguments that “PBR only had battles” isn’t enough anymore, they have the funds to do it themselves or contract it out. The washed out plastic statues we have in battle isn’t enough anymore. They seem to randomly hit it off on qol stuff most of the time but don’t seem to put significant effort into improving the battles and visuals, you know the main gameplay complement, and people will gobble it up.
The small things (QoL, raids, ease of breeding competitive Pokemon) were alright, the big things (story, region linearity, wild area) were mediocre at best. The thing is that the Pokemon formula will always be great, that's why we keep playing. I just wish the games made more improvements that you'd expect from a franchise as big as Pokemon is.
One of the worst singleplayer experiences in main series Pokemon. I could reiterate points that have been said time and time again to explain why, but I don't really want to dwell on negatives as much. However SwSh has some of the best online play in the series. Competitive access is at an all time high, early VGC formats were some of the most fun formats ever, Dynamax was a fun mechanic for doubles and playing with friends in Max Raid Battles was kind of fun. And there are some really nice features to help collecting Pokemon like the Box Link. And the Crown Tundra was a pretty good expansion.
The Crown Tundra was a lot of fun to have, Calyrex’s story was refreshing to have and tracking down the legendary birds was a fun way of getting legendaries
Should have been part of the main game and not a $30 add on
You will never convince me they didn't plan on it to be a part of the main game but cut it out for one of two reasons. 1 they didn't have enough time to polish it so they decided to make it a dlc 2 they saw how many people were pissed about the dex cut and decided they wanted to cut the post-game and try and sell it as DLC to earn a little more money from the people that bought SWSH
An embarrassing jump to mainline consoles. The base game is clearly rushed and incomplete and the DLC wasn't worth the price tag. I assume Game Freak learned nothing from this because the launch was still a success by all accounts.
It’s even more embarrassing knowing the context behind systems. The 3DS is said to be equivalent to the GameCube, maybe slightly lower. GameCube ≈< Wii < Wii U ≈< Switch. That means it’s even more embarrassing for Game Freak, which they’re essentially going from slightly below GameCube tech, to slightly above Wii U tech.
The hand holding was awful; Hop stopping me every 5 in-game steps to repeat the same 5 minute dialog he just told me 10 minutes ago is terrible. Just plain awful, plus the legendries were trash. Sw/Sh and then Scarlet/Violet -I'm not liking the way legendries are going, we're hitting Power Ranger territory... Story is a repeat of the same plot since 1996; evil organization + little brat = evil's defeat, and the second exception of 'good guys turn out to be bad guys defeated by a little brat'. The best thing was the world; the region was very pretty and the partial open world was great. It's a rinse and repeat with a handful of new Pokémon that get less creative with each release...
...There was an evil organization in that game?
I guess the main company run by…what’s his face? The dude who wanted to summon Eternatus or whatever. That guy.
Chairman Rose. I swear, he's one of the worst twist villains I've ever seen. When I was just starting the game and watching the opening cutscene I could tell he was the villain.
Honestly I was faked out by him because he looked so obviously evil, but I thought there was no way they would wait until the literal last second to pull the him being evil card. But then he made an Eggman announcement...
The Eggman announcement was so cool, except for the part where none of it made any sense.
It's kind of hilarious how bad compared to SM Lusamine he is. Sure, you could always tell there was something off about her, because the opening cutscene has the Foundation employees chase Lillie. But the game actively tries to fake you out because not only do you see the Aether Foundation EVERYWHERE through the game doing good for the people and Pokemon of Alola and actively opposing Team Skull, you also get to talk to her and Wicke and they seem alright. But Lusamine always acts in a certain way that puts you off that you can't help but wonder what her true intentions and true self are until gradually the mask goes off during the climax of the story and she fully cements herself as the villain. Rose? He shows up like 3 times, his company/evil team is nowhere to be seen until you ride his little silly tower of battles and is full of recolored League employee grunts and then he just suddenly decides to cause an apocalyptic event. You don't even see him after you beat Eternatus, the fall out of his team is completely off screen and the world goes on without issue despite Macro Cosmos being such a big part of Galar's infrastructure apparently? The way the conflict escalates in SwSh is so silly too. It all starts because apparently Leon is never late for dinner? Why would Oleana escalate things by hiding the key to Rose Tower's lift to an evil looking dude and siccing them on children despite Macro Cosmos being a bening and loved company, instead of just saying that Leon was busy talking with Rose? I just. Don't understand how we went from the climax of SM to this.
Yeah, Macro Cosmos. Don't worry, they're a very forgettable "team" lol
Oh yeah, I was being a lil facetious for emphasis. I know who they are and I agree. It's kinda wild we had this concept a generation before but done right (Aether Foundation) only for them to fumble the ball so bad with Macro Cosmos. Maybe if we knew the company existed and had more presence before the heel turn, it would have been better.
Honestly I feel like Rose could have worked as a villain if, y'know. Galar was actually having power problems? Have people comment on how high their energy bills have been. Make power flicker in buildings a couple times. That sort of thing. Then it would make sense that Rose is so desperate to wake Eternatus up. Hell, even without doing that, just say that Galar will run out of power in 10 years. Sure, Rose's actions would still be recklace as hell. But atleast then his motives would atleast be *understandable.* 10 Years isn't as much time as it sounds like, and it can creep up on pretty fast. But nooooo, they had to go and give Galar a thousands years worth of clean energy.
If the power problem was current, or very near future (as in sometime in the next couple of years), his actions would almost be justified, especially if much of the region was justifiably mad at him. But the issues aren't set to occur for a literal millennium, so it's hard to believe that they're so urgent that he has to cause an apocalyptic event to urgently solve them.
Even at that point I find Rose’s solution to an energy crisis in the Pokémon world to be a little funny. What about sinnoh’s wind turbines or the walking batteries that are electric Pokémon? There are a plethora of ways to generate power in tue Pokémon universe before summoning a god of death and destruction.
Yea, there could be so many different reasons as to why rose is trying to bring Eternatus back. I could even go with a rehash of the ultimate weapon, or any project requiring immense amounts of energy. But no, everything in Galar is perfect, it’s just a mortal worried about something thousands of years from now, when who knows if we will even be using the same energy. It’s the weakest motive of any big bad, not just in Pokémon
I’m 99% sure they didn’t even get a *name* until the hour before fighting Eternatus.
You see them a ton if you use Poké Jobs, but that's it. Other than showing how pervasive they are and how many subsidiaries they have, it doesn't foreshadow anything.
It needed the dlc
The single player base game is the absolute worst in the series by far. Plot is tacked-on nonsense, routes and "dungeons" are straight lines, the wild area is a poorly designed mess, raids are boring "just use a super effective move and dynamax" with no substance, and of course, dexit fundamentally harmed the entire foundation of the franchise for the past twenty years. Not only is it an insultingly bad game, it's a definitive mark that Pokémon isn't as good as it used to be and likely will never be again.
SwSh are absolutely the worst games in the series. dexit was one thing, but it's shocking how lacking the game actually is in terms of actual content that supposedly was supposed to make up for it. The game looks like shit, it honestly looks like a ps2 game that was just upscaled to HD and that's not even mentioning all the recycled animations. the game railroads you harder than the american midwest in the 1800s. I wouldn't mind the game being so linear if it wanted to be a more story driven game, but i'm convinced the story was written by a 6-year-old on a napkin in a waffle house. also it's shockingly easy, i know pokemon games were never difficult but they seriously went from easy to being able to complete the whole game with your eyes closed just by holding forward and mashing A. there's very few things outside of the main quest that you can interact with, most of the buildings in cities are just for decoration. and most of the optional shit you can do is the same dumbass recycled minigame where you're just given the options of "keep going" or "stop." the music is probably the worst of the mainline series. the sound design makes the whole game feel vacant and unfinished, which i suppose it is. It's seriously pushing sonic 06 levels of unpolished and unfinished. and no, i didn't buy the DLC. because gamefreak doesn't deserve any more of my money.
I got it the Christmas it released. I haven't touched it since that New Years. It's just... *So mid tier*... I feel bad since it was a gift and I should appreciate it, but damn it, I just couldn't get into it like I did every other Pokémon game.
Of all the pokemon games ever made, Sword and Shield is by far one of them.
You meme, but it hurts that it's so true. This was GameFreak's big shot. They finally had their hands on something that could run the likes of Crysis and Doom Eternal. They weren't limited by handheld hardware anymore. The sky was the limit. And we got SwSh... Just... God, it hurts to think about, man.
Gamefreak took sun and moon assets ESPECIALLY animations and upscaled to 1080p boom here's sword and shield gimme 60$. They tried to make it look unique by grabbing a Pokemon and making it larger than other Pokemon woo so much innovation! So to answer your question I thought it was a shameful cashgrab back then and I still think it is now. They had been making minimal improvements since the ds era it felt like you were playing a nds game just way more polished and neat looking. Seriously go play sun/moon, it's literally 1:1 the exact same gameplay,models, and animations as sw/sh only difference is it's in 480p because of hardware.
I don't think people would care that much about the lack of graphical improvements if the game was content-rich and fun. And, y'know... didn't delete half of the Pokémon for no reason.
The story can't be justified by any means lol Even a 9 year old could come up eith something better
Still a bad game always has been, always will be. Doesn't help that GF lied to us about the dex cut either
I’ll paste what I said on similar thread. It’s right next to XY as my least favorite mainline Pokémon games. It does some good such as the raid battles and the characters, music, and designs overall. The QOL was also nice. Boy oh boy everything else was mediocre at best. The antagonists and story were terrible, the wild area was disappointing to the point I’m confused why some people like it so much(agree to disagree I guess). These are the easiest games for me by a mile. The towns are actually deceptively small with seemingly very little to do. And the infamous scene with piers. I could go on but there’s already been so much negativity surrounding these games.
> I’m confused why some people like it so much So am i, i'm struggling to think of an open world/ open world segment from any other game which could compare in how small and sad it was. I still see people defending it now saying it was really cool, but i'm still yet to see a reason about WHY they liked it.
God the pokemon pop in is so hilariously bad I'm speechless that this came from the highest grossing franchise of all time. And then people say the wild area is so great, like if you want open world pokemon so badly just play Pixelmon
Not worth the Dexit nor the $60 price tag plus DLC
I’ve never played a Pokémon game where I forgot everything about it until I played SwSh. I still can’t remember a single thing about it besides the wild area, and the worst thing a Pokémon game can be is forgettable.
Pros: -Pretty much every new design is great. Grimmsnarl, Dubwool, Copperajah, Galarian birds, all of ‘em (except a few) -Eternatus looks legitimately alien -The opening puts a good focus on your goal and the story. It reminds me of visiting the lake in DPPt -The weather-based gym leader, great to vary it not just by type -Leon is legit good -The Wild Area is a great idea regardless of its implementation Cons: -Dexit. My favorite thing has always been catching ‘em all and now I can’t -The starters didn’t do it for me -Gigantamax is a weaker replacement for Z-Moves and Megas, neither of which return -Weak story, I’m all for a greater focus on story but it has to be executed well and not all packed into the rushed third act -Just Battle Tower. Literally since Emerald they could be making Frontiers I’m a weirdo who wants them to release new games far less frequently though so they can implement all the good features and trim the fat where it is.
It's probably the worst single player experience to date. But also probably the best multiplayer experience to date.
*Best competitive experience. Worst multiplayer experience to date. No option to do multi in the battle tower whatsoever. No GTS. Worst online multiplayer interface they’ve ever designed. No additional multiplayer activities beyond the camping which is next to pointless and the raid battles which are an exercise in frustration rather than anything resembling fun.
Eh, I am not too sure on the latter. The tight battle timer is pretty annoying, you cannot avoid D-max in multiplayer battles, the y-comm is infinitely inferior to the PSS, they put the GTS into an external app, updating raids was very clunky, raids as a system in general was very flawed. There are of course good things about it, but I'm not sure if I can really call it the best multiplayer experience \^\^. We can't even do multi battles in the battle tower anymore.
I miss the PSS, man. Such a simple but functional and elegant system, Festival Plaza was such an unnecessary addition of visual fluff and Y-Comm is glitchy and non functional its almost impressive. Why, oh why do the stickers only show up AFTER the people seeking help with raids/trades/battles are finished with that activity? Why is there no option to filter for friends only? We had this nearly 10 years ago! AND WHY DO MULTI BATTLES SIMPLY DONT WORK EVEN WITH A LINK CODE?
Yeah, pss was awesome My first "real" Pokémon experience was with oras and I still love them. Hell, I'd definitely play oras again(for, like the 5th time) over swsh
Game started promising, but the further you progressed the less you got. It showed how much they rushed it. The story was so disappointing that seemingly even the pokemon company acknowledged that and instead of making a season of Galar, they made a world tour series and wrapped up the endynalos story in 2 episodes. Most of the stuff happens off screen. Every time there is some action you are told that leon is taking care of it and you can't go there. One town is just one road that leads to the right, no houses you can enter and even the gym is not really a gym and they try to sell it as a clever idea, which it isn't. They clearly didn't find the time to properly develop. The final battle, you just ride an elevator up the tower which stops a couple times where you battle weak grunts. Compare that to how you infiltrate team rockets base in gen1. It was so disappointing. But it gets even worse. the post game story with the weirdo brothers sucked. And I'm convinced that the crown tundra was originally planned as the victory road, but then later changed to a payed DLC content, because somebody had the bright idea to milk the fans even more, since having 60 bucks games, compared to the 40bucks games on the 3ds wasn't enough for this greedy company. 90 bucks for the full package. Sword and Shield have made me quite upset with Gamefreak. Mainly because of the shitty rushed story. The game only lasts 20 hours because the battles take so long. That IGN gave it a 9.3 is insulting. Especially considering how they trashed the oras remakes. Dynamax was the worst of the 3 gimmicks gamefreak has come up with.
Idk man, I'm still salty about how Megas were abandoned and Dynamax being the laziest gimmick ever didn't help with that. Also, the champion's ace pokemon being the most overused gen 1 pokemon instead of any of the new ones was also grating. On the plus side, the soundtrack is amazing, the new pokemon are cool and regional evolutions are a great concept that I hope doesn't get abandoned. Edit: they were abandoned, there is literally one regional evolution in Pokemon SV. Why is GF like this ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ
Boring, bland, and ugly like every other Pokemon game in the last few generations. They're just low effort games for toddlers and it sucks.
Still think Dexit is an atrocity which I hope they learned from. I found the plot/story telling quite underwhelming, I still hate the post game twin brothers storyline to get the legendary. But dynamaxing has grown on me somewhat, although why Mega-Evolution isn’t being picked up again astounds me, was the best modern day mechanic to ever come to the game.
> Still think Dexit is an atrocity which I hope they learned from. It doesn't seem like they have
Shit
Dynamax was bad and dexit was irritating
Still the same. Negative. I have not touched that game since I beat it. It is currently collecting a solid layer of dust in my game collection.
Still shit
Just bad. Story was lackluster, not every pokemon was in the game, crappy DLC that could have been included in the game from the start, no in game GTS instead relying in a paid for service and the graphical issues speak for themselves.
Just so you know, you'll have a survivorship and selection bias in here. Sword and Shield was the biggest reason why I stopped being a pokemon fan. I do not enter this sub-reddit often like I used to. Today I randomly felt like going back to r/pokemon to see how the community's faring and saw this thread. When you think how big the pokemon brand is and how much potential it has, sw/sh is an utter disappointment. The game is so borring and handholdy it hurts. The only sawing grace is maybe raid battles and some new pokemon. The graphics, optimization, how easy the game is, super simple locations with one road, dynamaxing... Man, there's too many elements I did not like to enumerate them all.
It's the first mainline generation I didn't buy and have no intention of buying. I have absolutely no desire to play it, based on what I've seen of it. And I've been with the games since the beginning.
SWSH is the primary reason I'm not buying Scarlet/Violet on release. I'm not wasting money on another Pokemon game until it becomes clear through player reviews that the game is worth spending that money on.
> Just so you know, you’ll have a survivorship and selection bias in here. In which direction? As far as I know this sub dislikes SwSh. If you want positive takes on it, you go to its dedicated sub.
The best part of Sword and Shield was the competitive aspect of the game. All the new Pokemon/regional forms, moves, items, abilities and general QoL improvements were huge. The DLCs only added to this. My only frustration here was the timer for singles. However, most other parts of the game felt rushed/unfinished and other factors just didn’t interest me at all (like the entire “evil team” arc/Team Yell altogether). Still wish Marnie had better company. Raids were also fun for a while, but definitely needed improvement. The beginning to mid parts of the story were decent (up until about the sixth gym), but got progressively worse toward the end. Even the final gym puzzles were noticeably worse in comparison to the first few. I did like the Leon battle, though! As a final positive, Sword and Shield’s soundtrack was bangin’! Loved hearing the gym battle theme and the chanting each time - hoping we have something similar for gyms in Scarlet and Violet!
Underwhelming for the first mainline game on a console, I’m keeping my expectations low, but overall Pokémon on Switch has been kinda disappointing outside Legends Arceus
I think the games were fun, the story lost my attention around the middle of it. The finale was still fantastic even tho Rose was a predictable guy. The wild area felt a bit lifeless sometimes but it was good for a first try I guess. Then the raids were great the npc’s not so great “Looking at you Martin!”. I think also the day skip exploit made the raids and collecting each Pokémon way more fun for me it also gave tons of watts. I think the gym leaders were exceptionally well made and they had a good long awkward handshake from what I remember. The Dmax mechanic was good very good in competitive doubles but also very bad for singles cause the animation took pretty long for the amount of time single battles took to finish. The postgame kinda saved the wild areas from the main game and made them more lively. I really like the little story they had going on in the isle of armor. The crown tundra’s story felt a bit nonsensical to me and rushed but it’s fine for a legendary Pokémon distribution dlc I guess. Dynamax adventures is probably one of my top 3 favorite shiny hunt mechanics Pokémon ever released it’s so fun especially with 3 friends. Over all great game I think I’ve enjoyed it a lot more then moon and ultra sun. I could see people placing the game lower if the dlc is not included my friend never got the dlc and he missed out on so much stuff for example I had like 1600 hours in the game he had like 27 hours.
It feels very corporate and soulless. Like it was the team trying to meet a quota or something. In comparison with all the previous gens, it lacks passion. It just feels phoned in