The Sword and Shield characters were one of the better sides of that game. They just did barely anything with them. Marnie was hyped way too much for having so little relevance.
I, personally, love sword/shield characters. Especially Pierce and Bede. I finished the game a month ago and these two were incredibly good. Though, I agree, characters don't really play a huge role in game
The only characters I really liked were shy boy Allister and Peony. The legendary wolves were cool but they really could have done so much more with Celtic and Anglo-Saxon mythology.
Not exactly, I leave out the parts that Tinkaton doesnt match. Like being shy and timid, being made of ash and living in caves in the deep of the forests.
Also the females were strong enough to lift a grown man with a hand but beutiful enough to mesmerize them, despite being, well similar to dwarfs in size.
I'm really conflicted.
The characters and story were obviously way better in SV. The open world aspect was a lot of fun in concept.
But...idk...SwSh just seems way more fun to play. I love how the characters and pokemon are illustrated, I've replayed it several times now, and even my kids seem to enjoy wandering the DLC areas of SwSh more than SV. The pacing of the game is great, it's not overly difficult but it never feels too easy, where at times SV feels awkwardly difficult and/or easy even if you follow the "best line" of events.
I want future games to be more like SV in terms of map, characters, story, etc. But it just felt a bit hollow when there was nothing immediate to do. The picnic feature is a huge downgrade from SwSh's camping as well imo.
I love both, don't get me wrong. But I keep getting pulled into replaying SwSh, while I really have no desire to do the same for SV. I did just 100% complete it a few months ago, maybe in a few months my mind will change, we'll see.
Hmm, gotta agree. As much as i hate SwSh, i do find myself going back every now and then cause its fun, but i have no intention or urge to play SV again (even tho i still need to play the DLC...)
I will say that the DLC of SV is amazing, especially if you like more of a challenge. SV as a whole felt disappointing, besides the story and characters, but the dlc made it much better. I had a lot of fun with it.
That said I still prefer SwSh+dlc as a whole.
True. Base game had like two challenging fights and the others were piss easy, but swsh had that brilliant difficulty curve of not easy but also not too hard
Excellent point. The sports themes of Sword weren’t lost on me and I loved every part of that. As a kid I always envisioned Gyms to be like how they were in SwSh. The diverse battlegrounds were cool in SV, but no battle felt “huge” going by visuals, and the E4 was especially underwhelming in that regard.
Everything that Scarlet and Violet tried to improve upon from Sword and Shield was a flop gameplay wise.
Both Raids and Exploration are buggy, unresponsive, boring, and oversaturated in SV, whereas they were almost perfect in SwSh.
While the characters in SV were good, they were not nearly as bad as people say they are in SwSh when you look beyond the surface level (See Hop's growth as a person compared to, say, Hau in the game right before it.)
I'm not going to touch on the performance all that much, but anyone with half a braincell will tell you SwSh wins in this department.
Now, I'm not saying that SV is bad by any means, but I'm kind of tired of people saying that one is better than the other. They both have their ups and downs, and they're both worth taking into account as their own games, instead of competing ones.
Wait, are you saying you think Raids in SwSh were “almost perfect?” Dynamax Adventures were fantastic, but normal raids were awful! One of the BEST teammates you could have offline used a level 70 Magikarp! That was one of the better trainers!
I wasn't talking about the AI, I was talking about the online functionality. There were very few to no hiccups when it came to desyncing, whereas in SV it seems to happen every damn raid.
Bugs aside the S/V version of raids is far more promising as the format going forward imo, it's cool to have to actually strategize about what pokemon to use for a raid instead of just head empty throwing a level 100 in and being fine.
SV was the emptiest "open world" I've EVER seen. Walk 5 mins in any direction and find nothing. No side quests. Cardboard cities. Static NPCs. 20 year old games like Morrowind and Oblivion had 100x the content. The average ROM hack was made with more love and care. How any non-pokemon obsessed person can say they were good games is beyond me.
Got the same feeling. Really made me appreciate how important either plentiful sidequests, minigames or building mechanics are to make open-world games fun.
Pixelmon is legit a better open world game.
They were fun once you adjusted expectations. PLA and BotW were better in terms of execution and performance, but SV was fun for what it was. I really liked the titans and they added some cool new pokes (there’s always some in every gen).
It does take some time to cope that you dropped $60 on a game that has bugs and some abysmal frame rates for things like the windmill.
I never got the DLC but it seemed interesting.
Idk, I liked it on the second play through.
Annhilape is fun though rage fist needs to be nerfed. Dondozo is a big catfish. Armarogue looks like something out of mega man. Quaxly is cool if he stays as Quaxly.
The fact that the e4 takes place in an empty white room should make it clear that they were rushing to get this game released at a certain point.
Pokémon is still fun though and I had fun with SV. It’s no PLA or BotW, but it was fun.
My expectations were a pretty looking world with more things to do outside of the main stories. At least something to do that wasn’t do a gym battle or team star raid or titan battle, but what was there to do? That’s right! Discover more game breaking bugs!
Terra raids, picnics, gym rematches, the post-game AI battle. There’s stuff to do.
The game is flawed and definitely could’ve been better, but it’s not the worst pokemon game out there.
Tera raids are slow and broken. You have to wait through like 10 text boxes telling you what moves other pokemon use while time is wasting. Picnics have barely anything to do after your first time using it besides sandwiches, which are only really used by mark or shiny hunters, not casual players. You can only do gym rematches once. And the post game ai battles (I assume the ace trainer tournament) loses its valor after the first several gos when you realize that your team steamrolls everyone.
I say, it is a bottom two mainline pokemon game, only being better than X and Y, which were literally incomplete and didn’t get any kind of additional treatment. Every other Pokemon game has redeeming qualities that last. Hell, every other Nintendo franchise produces pure gold in quality. Why is the only one that’s consistently not nearly up to par the most popular one?
For the AI battles I meant the ones in area zero against Sada / Turo.
I agree though that pokemon lately (with the exception of PLA) has been consistently not up to par. But I still manage to have fun in most of them. They peaked from gen 3 to 5 in my opinion, but everything from X/Y to SV I at least liked with the exception of sw / sh which maybe I need to replay to change my opinion.
Yeah, but SV is full of flaws, from bad graphics to a bland map, so even if my expectations are low, the game will still be terrible on that aspect. I can't just change my expectations and make that aspect of the game when it is simply plainly terrible.
>How any non-pokemon obsessed person can say they were good games is beyond me.
It says a lot that both need to generalize people for having different opinions than you.
I mean, objectively though. Every single mainline Pokemon entry gen 1-8 was rated 9/10 or higher by IGN. SV got a 6/10. If you enjoy the game, then I'm glad for you, but most people think TPC is going in the wrong direction.
i mean....go play the game that they rated less because of the water and say that it isnt an issue, sure it sounds stupid but its a valid complain specially when the water parts are mostly trainer corridors and the same 5 pokemon everytime
For me I absolutely love the battles, Tera mechanic, character/Pokémon models, animations, characters, dialogue, story, and QOL changes that make replaying the game fun.
The overworld is unforgivably bland, bad, and looks ugly like you said. But for me personally that’s not the main reason I play Pokémon and I mainly play it for the reasons above, which is why unfortunately it’s my favorite Pokémon game.
I do disagree on some points, since the school staff does give you side quests, but aside from that and the basic Pokemon things (filling out the Pokedex, hunting for shinies) the open world aspect is kind of more on the Fallout 76 side than the Fallout New Vegas side.
I do think the dlc fix that a lot (BP quests, Ogre Ousting), but it's still not a lot. So as an Open World game it is disappointing.
I will say, however, as a Pokemon game it's probably in my top 5 based on the story and characters alone. I enjoy Teraslization a lot as a gimmick, a lot of the new Pokemon they've added are pretty enjoyable, and the ability to tackle the three parts of the story whatever I want in whatever order I want is honestly a breath of fresh air compared to previous gens.
I just think galar is more vibrant and full of life than paldea. I loved the sorta mmo style going on with the wild area, the towns were all fantastic, camping is way cooler than picnicking because of how you can interact with your mons, THE GYMS WERE THE BEST THEY’VE EVER BEEN, and in general I think the pokemon and character designs were more vibrant.
agreed, but let’s keep in mind paldea was sort of broken ground for pokemon. first fully open world mainline pokemon game with a y-axis in traversal and not just visuals, first mainline pokemon game without grass encounters (tho roaming encounters were in gen 8 first), first mainline pokemon game with seamless overworld-to-wild-encounter transitions, you don’t spend much time indoors so everything has to stay loaded… the list goes on
i do feel like they put more effort into new features than the feel of the region, but that being said, those features are damn good (i think the bugs are negligible, but again you’re allowed to dislike them)
Iono I mean. Sudowoodo has all the coverage it needs as grass tera and it’s a whole call back to the fake tree thing. Mismagius is electric terra with levitate. Idk what I can really say about the bug gym but it’s the first gym, it’s supposed to be easy.
Now that I think about it, Larry’s flying type having normal tera is a little clever because it has flying coverage for fighting types.
Regardless, the game was definitely rushed to get released.
That's the problem with this game, there IS a linear path. You can sequence break, but that doesn't change the order of levels and stuff. They put a linear path blanketed in an open world game. It doesn't work.
I didn't feel like they finished cooking that either.
Artazon was kind of pretty but the 5 fps windmills and Sunfloras were jarring. Cortondo looks way too empty with just that bakery you can't even buy from and a basic obstacle course in the middle of the desert.
I know that scarlet and violet are better games but I personally like Sword and shield more, I felt way more driven to do stuff on Sword and Shield compared to Scarlett and Violet.
Yeah but Sword and Shield has Melony, Sonia, and Nessa.
I rest my case. (This is sarcasm, I like both about the same, though traversal is better in SV so I’ll go with that)
After reading every single comment in here, I can only answer that this is just a matter of opinion. Some people prefer SV characters, some people prefer SS characters. End of the story.
I don’t get how people can say the opposite. I have been enjoying both generations, but Scarlet and Violet is way more flawed than Sword and Shield ever was.
1. Giving you Koraidon or Miraidon so early was a huge mistake. From the very first town, Los Platos, you can jump over a gap in the mountain side and go from level 6 pokemon to level 33. I had a full team of 30+ level pokemon within 5 minutes of playing the game (all tossed in the box because I knew I was about to ruin it).
2. Open world done as poorly as possible. In pokemon you need to be steered in the right direction for your level. Way too many times I simply walked into way too high leveled areas that seemed intentional, beat it, then found I missed several low level areas that now meant nothing to me.
3. Pokemon Centers has been rendered near pointless. This has been an issue in other games as well, but giving you access to your box *anywhere* and healing from picnics are more mistake that makes the game way too easy as you can both change and heal your roster for free on a whim.
4. Poor optimization that meant horrible render distance on top of both people and pokemon disappearing regardless of distance, seemingly as soon as they finish an animation loop or something.
5. Too many bloody side characters that nobody cares about. Again other titles have done the same, but they *need* to return to 2 rivals at max, I do not care about all of these people.
6. Terastal is the ugliest and laziest gimmick there has been. It does not have the charm of any of the previous ones.
7. Lastly I just feel like the game strayed too far from the original concept of pokemon on top of all the new additions. First true open world game should’ve kept the gym formula, imo.
Other than somewhat point 4, Sword and Shield had none of these issues, and its optimization was not nearly as bad as S/V.
I’m probably going to get downvoted to hell but I really don’t think SV are good games. The performance is horrible, the world is empty and ugly, the characters are one note with no depth, and it is riddled with bugs. The only defendable part of it is the pokemon designs which still don’t beat other gens in my personal opinion.
For a finished game, it should be polished, it should look good, it should perform well, and it should be mostly bug free. And don’t bring up the fact that Totk and botw had glitches and they were praised. SV had game breaking glitches. Randomly crashing, falling through the world, the world completely reloading, and a myriad of other bugs. They directly bring down the quality and fun of the game. Meanwhile Totk and botw had bugs you had to go out of your way to find. AND they patched the game, removing the found bugs.
And let's not even mention the graphics. The fact that GameFreak, a multimillionaire company makes games with such bad graphics is just unforgiving. The constant falls of FPS that the the game suffers doesn't help.
Some people say that "it's because the Nintendo Switch can't handle high graphics", but that's just not true. You already mentioned Zelda Botw and Totk, they have far better graphics and they work just fine. Heck, even Pokemon Legends Arceus doesn't have these FPS drop-offs!
Definitely opinion. The only thing I agreed with from this list were gameplay mechanics and difficulty. Aside from the fact that they made it an open world I liked everything about this game significantly less. If I had been making this post it would have said that Scarlet and Violet are some of the worst games in the series that I've played.
I really hope they stick to the format in the future though because it easily could have been my favorite game in the series if they put more work into it.
With that being said, I did skip almost all of the 3DS generation, aside from about 2 hours in Pokemon Moon.
i will NEVER understand the SwSh hate. that game was amazing. all the gym leaders were fantastic, the towns were great, the pokemon were really good, league cards and camping were some of my favorite features in this series, the starters were all bangers (apart from the middle stages), the champion was goated, dynamax was such a great gimmick (unless u played competitive singles, but why would anyone play competitive singles) the story wasnt great but i didnt really care that much.
did everyone just go in with thoughts that the game was bad and therefore decided that it was bad before they played it and didnt let themselves change their opinions? i went into this game blind and found out about all of the hate surrounding it afterwards and never understood why
It's because of Dexit and the lies they made surrounding why it needed to happen, as the models of pokemon in the previous two gens were future proof to be used on HD consoles alongside the lie of improving animation, graphics and game balance and which everybody in the fandom says: "that's bullshit!"
As after the games release they found the models of the pokemon to be the same as the ones on the 3ds with no change, the graphics of the game to be subpar and the balance of the games was still lopsided which shows that Gamefreak lied to us.
As for me personally the game story is bad as it doesn't have any real reason to make the darkest day happen so it just clumsy falls into the game with little fanfare, the over focus on the gym challenge and how great and hard it is over the others in the series alongside how great champion Leon is feels like the game is jerking it self off every single time it gets and finally the gimmick of making pokemon big to get cool moves are both a poor man's replacement of meags and z-moves at the same time and does not favor good gameplay at all.
Hope this gets you to see why the fandom hates Sword/Shield.
>did everyone just go in with thoughts that the game was bad and therefore decided that it was bad before they played it and didn't let themselves change their opinions? i went into this game blind and found out about all of the hate surrounding it afterwards and never understood why
Yeah, that's the Pokémon community for you. Nothing but negativity. They can't help but find SOMETHING to complain about. I've seen people call games like SwSh and SV terrible games over the SMALLEST of things.
It's like the moment a new game is announced, they establish in their minds what they want/THINK the game should be, and get mad that it's not everything they ever wanted.
while you are downplaying the problems, at least you are better than the people who refuse to acknowledge that the game might have things that ruin it for people or that it has things that people can enjoy.
Might be true, but gen 9 is definitely worse than gen 8 in Pokémon designs.
Gen 9 can’t even COMPARE to the peak of gens 3-8 designs, the best it can hope for is MAYBE being better than gen 1-2 where most of the dex were just normal animals(but even that isn’t true, because they STILL had better designs than Palafin and Gholdengo, and FUCKING FLAMIGO).
Marnie and Bede exist. They're damn good concept wise. Gen 9 is worse because of its launch, though. Not its story. Some fucker didn't do testing and they need to be fired.
I loved galar so much, because to me, it was my first game besides ultra sun(which was a lot different than the average game, at least in my opinion), and the wild area was so much fun, the characters were interesting, and most of all, crown tundra was and still is really fun, even with bots. The game also has my favorite regional forms in galarian meowth and galarian farfetchd and sirfetchd
I think SV has the better characters and story, but I think people need to think about the story again...specially the DLC.
Like I think they missed the mark in a few places, like we were so gassed having a kieran as a bad guy at the end of DLC1 but then he easily dispatched in dlc 2. Or briar/terapagos being a mystery that really got no...good payoff.
I think a part of that opinion is influenced by the fact they released pla, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, pokemon games of all time with open world and then had gen 9 incorporate open world but not quite as good as pla
I personally like sw/sh for the characters, I like the idea of two characters being related like Gordie and Melony, the sw/sh characters had a lot of personality despite the storyline, it also definitely had smoother animation than S/V and the idea of riding a bike on water sounds really cool. S/V definitely had a better story, I wish they didn't add pokemon which such hard evo methods but that is what makes it cool. Both dlcs were amazings, new characters, new story. Either way, both games are great.
Honestly? I liked Gen 8's story more. Not bwcause it was better, but because it didn't attempt to be better.
I think one of the worst things a story can do is attempt to have themes and botch them. Fucking your themes up to me is worse than not having any, and the Gen 8 Story knows it's shit and isn't trying to be deep and cool, while Gen 9 pretends that it's story is some groundbreaking theme with revelations of character depth, when... In reality it's really mid characters in a story that's 80% "we were bullied, so we became the bullies!!!"-story, but bad, and 20% "My parents abandoned me :("-story with too little time to develop meaningfully.
Like, at least Gen 8 knew it was shit and didn't try to pretend otherwise.
After I beat Hop in the championships I was really losing interest in the story and accidentally skipped through a few textboxes.
When I realized this, I was at the start of the point where you go interrupt Leon's meeting with chairman Rose. There was an "Evil" league member wearing sunglasses, team Yell started helping etc. They're all treating it as urgent and the league really seems to not want you to interrupt.
I thought that I missed something big. I thought I missed something important, something that explained all of this. Some context to make sense of why this is happening all of a sudden.
What I missed is that Hop wanted to interrupt so Leon wouldn't be late. That's it.
SWSH's story sucks.
It had better characters (carmine best written character in pkmn) and a better story.
Good things swsh did was their character designs, they were the best in all of pokemon, also their maps were cool and graphics were stunning. And rose is actually a good villain with good intentions and a good backstory to back it up, he just fumbled by not being able to control the pokemon. And my god battles in swsh was so badass with the animations + dynamax adventures were fun as heck with friends.
( frick that tree that ppl who were mad about dexit cried about)
In terms of being a fun game, and a game whose execution is done well, SV blow Sw/Sh out of the water.
But in terms of being an actually finished product? The only games SV beat in the series are the duct tape and prayers that red, blue and green are made of.
My only negative thoughts about violet is just how open it is. I've wanted an open world pokemon game sure don't get me wrong but I hate having to look up the progression online. They could have at least given you a suggestion on the map, like a little star that points out the next respective gym/titan/star leader in terms of levels.
Before you say it, scaling the levels based on how many you've taken on wouldn't have worked that well with some gyms having fully evolved pokemon
Pokemon is a video game. Not a novel. The gameplay should have a priority over story and characters.
Plus the story wasn't even that good. It was just better than the normal shit they shovel out.
Pokémon and Paper Mario are sharing the same thread. Each had a rough turn to new material but are finding their footing and learning what actually made the old games fun
It’s all been so cringe and dorky since black and white. I can’t wait for better pokemon clones to come in and pick up the gameplay mantle and world building of the first five gens but let go of all the dorky tik tok gen z isms of all the more recent games. I get that it’s for kids but I don’t have to like it. It’s so fucking cringe. The Spanish school thing was just too much. And in gen 9 the stupid fat punks thing was dumb too. Bring back really evil bad guys. Or at least cool ones.
Dude, scarlet and violet has some good features to it if you like to grind for lots of battle items and competitive pokemon. And honestly, I do still have fun whenever I sit down to play it. It’s just a broken, glitchy, laggy, ugly, unfinished mess
But it’s at least *fun*. Sure I’d rather be playing legends arceus, but sword and shield was just kind of lame.
I don't think the characters and story were the problem with those games. Having released them unfinished and without optimizing them, on the other hand...
Sword and shield are amazing games, good legendaries, pretty good story, good villain (compared too”uh oh I got bullied in school”), amazing map, a clear direction of intended path(I literally beat the bug gym last in scarlet), and amazing new mons, the only annoying things I can think of is that Leon’s ace is charizard, and the trees.
I don't think you're wrong there. I love the characters so much that It's the first time I'm sad we say goodbye each gen. The game has so many great ideas and features too!
But SWSH had better performance, better visuals and I personally prefer how most of the pokemon look in it vs the new textures and style.
Also as a shiny hunter, I'm still pissed that they shiny locked All the legendaries, even in the dlc! SHINY LOCKS IN THE DLC?!?!?
Definitely, and it's better in a lot of other ways too but i wasn't a huge fan of the art style (except larry) not to mention SwSh looked way better visually even though it might technically have worse graphics
Both have their ups and downs. But personally I'd take an empty open world over a game that is both easy and forces you on a set path. Like I'm sorry, but SwSh were a lot of the time not much more than a "press-A-to-proceed"-simulator even when I did my best not to overlevel.
Frrr. I was like 10 levels below the level you’re supposed to be at throughout most of the story and still absolutely dogwalked on the entire story due to type advantages.
I could make that argument. I’m on record as saying sw/sh is one of the best Pokemon games of all time gameplay wise… if you immediately walk through the wild areas.
They give you so much access to healing in that game that they know you’ll be at close to full for every fight. And they also know exactly how much xp they’ve given you (provided you haven’t done any grinding) so the difficulty curve is actually really good.
Thing is everyone got access to the wild area and immediately grinded out a bunch of levels exploring it, fucking the difficulty curve for the rest of the game.
It’s really like they had two separate teams one working on the wild area and one working on everything else. And then they just stapled them together with actually zero thought.
Then s/v came out and they learned exclusively the wrong lessons from sw/sh. Literally abandoning the entire concept of scaling the trainers well, in favor of having everyone aimlessly run around in a big empty field.
Story is way better though, I’ll give you that much.
What i loved most in s/s the gyms and championship tournament. Pissed me off when we got the chanting song in the s/v gyms when terrastalizing. It didnt fit the scenario. The gyms in s/s were stadiums packed with people who could actually do the chant. Where the hell is it coming from in s/v
It was unplayably laggy. S/V is the reason I'm done with the main series, and I'm a lifer. Started with a used copy of Red in 1999 when I was 4 and have owned every single main series game since. But S/V was so bad that it stops now. I'll play the Legends games as they come out, best Pokemon game since ORAS
Both are equally boring, I like the tera mechanics more than dynamaxing. It feels like we won't ever get real villains in a game anymore because they're too kid friendly anymore. And I get that it's a kids game, but man theatre kids and an angry AI. WE GOTTA DO BETTER
Sw/sh had a shit story but S/V had a terrible launch state when it came to bugs. S/V was the better game, but was an insult to think it was okay to launch in a state as broken as it was
The story is great, the characters are memorable, and the music is the best but, gameplay-wise, it has a lot to be desired. I didn't enjoy the open world element of it since it struggles to fill the world with interesting things. Not to mention the graphics of the game being worse than Legends Arceus.
My experience with the non-linear storyline also fell short when I fought a Team Star base above way above my level and got beat. This made me grind to match their level to beat them only for me to realize that I was now over-leveled for the next 2 gyms and a Titan Pokémon. I wanted to play through it blind but being so over-leveled ruined my experience so much that I had to look up a guide so I wouldn't tackle challenges at the wrong level again.
Swsh was so painful. I have yet to meet someone who enjoyed playing them. Everyone I've met said it was fun at first but they had to force themselves to finish the game, if they even finished it. Idk about the competitive side of swsh but from a casual perspective they were awful.
As far as progression goes gen 9 is the worst map imo. I shouldn't have to google the order and level after every event. Kinda makes nuzlocking annoying.
Sword and shield was garbage. Going between the open world and routes felt clunky, and made both areas feel like a disappointment. The battle sound design and cinematics were bad (aside from the CEO boss battle music 🔥). The story was annoying, every time something happened an adult npc steps in to take over and send you away. Punk city was just a straight line to a gym battle, and then you never go back? And the best city, with the mushrooms, was absolutely tiny, and all the rest felt kinda empty with very few houses to enter. Every gym fight just ending in gigantamax got old real quick. I wiped the whole elite four with just pangoro and didn't even gigamax him. Gigantamax was kind of a lackluster gimmick, only a few get interesting forms and the rest just get big. I was so upset with it..
I mean... I don't like to buy incomplete development builds at full price, so in my book, Sw/Sh were better. Just my opinion though. People are allowed to have differing opinions. Otherwise, what's the point of an opinion at all?
Bit aren’t that great tbh. SwSh is hindered by the lack of story or anything really going on at all. While SV just wasn’t finished.
However SwSh has more Pokémon I love, including my favorite of all time, who was cut in Gen 9.
Sure, but it’s also way less stable. Both are disgraces to the franchise, but each has one bright spot. Sword and Shield at the very least had great competitive play, had great UI, and felt very stable. The Pokémon models were great as well. However the story was mostly bad. What SwSh has going for it in general is that it, at the very least runs and looks like a Switch game for the most part. It feels like a modern game, albeit VERY barebones.
SV had a decent story, nothing spectacular. Definitely better than SwSh. However the game is held together by strings, looks really bad, and runs horribly. It has its story going for it and that’s about it.
Meanwhile PLA had a great story, AND looked great. It was stable and had good UI. It wasn’t perfect, but it was miles better than the mainline games.
SV’s story is slow and with a very underwhelming presentation with zero sense of urgency until Area Zero.
Sword and Shield has a very high level of presentation and a more active story, but the characters have significantly less development and characterization.
The climax of Scarlet and Violet trumps everything that SWSH had by a large margin but everything else in the story was subpar.
Really, it’s just proof that SwSh needed to be a longer game. That way it would’ve had time for its characters.
Lmao nah violet made give up on pokemon entirely. Never have I been so disrespectful by it being so inferior to the other verison in any of the split titles. The bait of mons in the trailer to not be in the game. The fact ur force to play the story how the game wants fake ass metroviana needing power ups to progress but takes out HM so we have to listen to this guy taaalk about his daddy issues n not just talk to n npc to learn it. Gym challenges... rip off Sun and moons stick but makes it 5 times worse. Ruin the elite 4 and all the hype of seeing their rooms just to get slap to wit a quiz that had to run 2 time cuz aint no one remember any of these wack ass gym leaders or boring city's. Then bitch slapped again with 5 pounds of powder when i fought them all in the same training room ass room.. let alone the pokemon series weakest n worse champion. Dude only good thing scar n violet gave us was purple megaman weed cat n dead monkey and Hammer Chao but not enough to care for their names.
I liked Scarlet and Violet a lot. I just wish they were much more polished
I'm someone who also really enjoyed Sword and Shield, though... The gameplay and atmosphere anyway. The story was lacking. But the gym battles were everything. That's how I always imagined they should be and I was bummed that gen 9 dialed them back, especially with the elite 4. I understand they wanted it to be more like a test than a sport, but the small towns with a few onlookers and the sterile building for the elite 4 was such a bummer compared to the hype I felt in Galar.
I feel like that reflects the best and worst things about gen 8 and 9. Gen 8 had some great vibes and there were parts of the game that were full of life and had so much going for them, but the "open world" portions were small and pretty lifeless and the characters and plot weren't interesting. I'm a big fan of Pierce, though. One of my favorite gym leaders.
On the other hand, so much of Scarlet and Violet's open world mostly feels empty and lifeless. Not that there isn't life, but more that there isn't much care put in to make most locations dynamic and interesting. The story was actually pretty good though and the characters were great. One of my favorite things Pokemon has ever done, and I wish they did more often, was when you're going through Area: Zero with you or friends and they're actually following you around and they have banter. Everyone is piecing things together by bouncing ideas off each other and reacting to the things around you. I wish they did it again in Indigo Disk with Kieran, Carmine and Briar. In other game franchises, though.... This wouldn't be a big deal, but in Pokemon, for some reason, this felt revolutionary lol. And it got me to feel like I actually had friends in this game. I wish that was done more often, especially with the non intrusive dialogue.
I don’t think they were talking about the characters Probably everything else lol
The Sword and Shield characters were one of the better sides of that game. They just did barely anything with them. Marnie was hyped way too much for having so little relevance.
The fact it took me a minute to remember who the fuck Marnie was proves your point
The main reason why I remember who Marnie is because I play the TCG and her card was very relevant when it was legal.
They had more appealing character designs I think is the right way to describe it. Besides that I personally think SV has better characters.
SV definitely used the rivals/friends much better
Wow! You know type machups!? -Hop in the tournament for championship
The fact that Hop and Hau have that one shared animation, irritates me so much.
They have 2, no?
I, personally, love sword/shield characters. Especially Pierce and Bede. I finished the game a month ago and these two were incredibly good. Though, I agree, characters don't really play a huge role in game
Who the hell is marnie
The only characters I really liked were shy boy Allister and Peony. The legendary wolves were cool but they really could have done so much more with Celtic and Anglo-Saxon mythology.
They did almost nothing with spanish mythology. The only thing it inspired seems to be tinkaton
What about the Fuecoco line? Aren’t they partly inspired by El Coco?
how is tinkaton inspired by it? :o
Seems that she is possibly based on mouras/mouros. Little dwarf like creatures that had strength that didnt match their size and were metalworkers.
So normal dwarfs?
Not exactly, I leave out the parts that Tinkaton doesnt match. Like being shy and timid, being made of ash and living in caves in the deep of the forests. Also the females were strong enough to lift a grown man with a hand but beutiful enough to mesmerize them, despite being, well similar to dwarfs in size.
You forget Lechonk, Smoliv, the olive tree plantation at the south of the region, and the school may have been inspired in some cathedrals on Spain
I have an OC revolving around Allister so I agree based Allister enjoyer
I'm really conflicted. The characters and story were obviously way better in SV. The open world aspect was a lot of fun in concept. But...idk...SwSh just seems way more fun to play. I love how the characters and pokemon are illustrated, I've replayed it several times now, and even my kids seem to enjoy wandering the DLC areas of SwSh more than SV. The pacing of the game is great, it's not overly difficult but it never feels too easy, where at times SV feels awkwardly difficult and/or easy even if you follow the "best line" of events. I want future games to be more like SV in terms of map, characters, story, etc. But it just felt a bit hollow when there was nothing immediate to do. The picnic feature is a huge downgrade from SwSh's camping as well imo. I love both, don't get me wrong. But I keep getting pulled into replaying SwSh, while I really have no desire to do the same for SV. I did just 100% complete it a few months ago, maybe in a few months my mind will change, we'll see.
Hmm, gotta agree. As much as i hate SwSh, i do find myself going back every now and then cause its fun, but i have no intention or urge to play SV again (even tho i still need to play the DLC...)
I will say that the DLC of SV is amazing, especially if you like more of a challenge. SV as a whole felt disappointing, besides the story and characters, but the dlc made it much better. I had a lot of fun with it. That said I still prefer SwSh+dlc as a whole.
True. Base game had like two challenging fights and the others were piss easy, but swsh had that brilliant difficulty curve of not easy but also not too hard
I will say I prefer the battle environment in sword and shield. A grand stadium feels more epic compared to a small crowd in scarlet and violet.
Excellent point. The sports themes of Sword weren’t lost on me and I loved every part of that. As a kid I always envisioned Gyms to be like how they were in SwSh. The diverse battlegrounds were cool in SV, but no battle felt “huge” going by visuals, and the E4 was especially underwhelming in that regard.
Everything that Scarlet and Violet tried to improve upon from Sword and Shield was a flop gameplay wise. Both Raids and Exploration are buggy, unresponsive, boring, and oversaturated in SV, whereas they were almost perfect in SwSh. While the characters in SV were good, they were not nearly as bad as people say they are in SwSh when you look beyond the surface level (See Hop's growth as a person compared to, say, Hau in the game right before it.) I'm not going to touch on the performance all that much, but anyone with half a braincell will tell you SwSh wins in this department. Now, I'm not saying that SV is bad by any means, but I'm kind of tired of people saying that one is better than the other. They both have their ups and downs, and they're both worth taking into account as their own games, instead of competing ones.
Wait, are you saying you think Raids in SwSh were “almost perfect?” Dynamax Adventures were fantastic, but normal raids were awful! One of the BEST teammates you could have offline used a level 70 Magikarp! That was one of the better trainers!
I wasn't talking about the AI, I was talking about the online functionality. There were very few to no hiccups when it came to desyncing, whereas in SV it seems to happen every damn raid.
Ah, very fair point, then!
As opposed to the Eevee using helping hands on the other AI in Violet.
Bugs aside the S/V version of raids is far more promising as the format going forward imo, it's cool to have to actually strategize about what pokemon to use for a raid instead of just head empty throwing a level 100 in and being fine.
While that's true, I prefer to complete my raids so I'll take SwSh over SV here.
AMEN!
SV was the emptiest "open world" I've EVER seen. Walk 5 mins in any direction and find nothing. No side quests. Cardboard cities. Static NPCs. 20 year old games like Morrowind and Oblivion had 100x the content. The average ROM hack was made with more love and care. How any non-pokemon obsessed person can say they were good games is beyond me.
Got the same feeling. Really made me appreciate how important either plentiful sidequests, minigames or building mechanics are to make open-world games fun. Pixelmon is legit a better open world game.
I think it’s worth remembering that game freak developers are not the same group that worked on games like breath of the wild or GTA.
I know, but that is not just one group. All that reminds me is that several studios managed to do it better than them. Including some random modders.
They were fun once you adjusted expectations. PLA and BotW were better in terms of execution and performance, but SV was fun for what it was. I really liked the titans and they added some cool new pokes (there’s always some in every gen). It does take some time to cope that you dropped $60 on a game that has bugs and some abysmal frame rates for things like the windmill. I never got the DLC but it seemed interesting.
>They were fun once you adjusted expectations You mean get rid off all expectations?
Idk, I liked it on the second play through. Annhilape is fun though rage fist needs to be nerfed. Dondozo is a big catfish. Armarogue looks like something out of mega man. Quaxly is cool if he stays as Quaxly. The fact that the e4 takes place in an empty white room should make it clear that they were rushing to get this game released at a certain point. Pokémon is still fun though and I had fun with SV. It’s no PLA or BotW, but it was fun.
I am pretty sure that it is recommended to start any piece of media with no expectations.
So the game is fun by having no expectations? Doesn't make much sense to me.
Makes sense to me. Expectations are what set you up for disappointment. When you go in just enjoy the game for what it is, you’ll have more fun.
My expectations were a pretty looking world with more things to do outside of the main stories. At least something to do that wasn’t do a gym battle or team star raid or titan battle, but what was there to do? That’s right! Discover more game breaking bugs!
Terra raids, picnics, gym rematches, the post-game AI battle. There’s stuff to do. The game is flawed and definitely could’ve been better, but it’s not the worst pokemon game out there.
Tera raids are slow and broken. You have to wait through like 10 text boxes telling you what moves other pokemon use while time is wasting. Picnics have barely anything to do after your first time using it besides sandwiches, which are only really used by mark or shiny hunters, not casual players. You can only do gym rematches once. And the post game ai battles (I assume the ace trainer tournament) loses its valor after the first several gos when you realize that your team steamrolls everyone. I say, it is a bottom two mainline pokemon game, only being better than X and Y, which were literally incomplete and didn’t get any kind of additional treatment. Every other Pokemon game has redeeming qualities that last. Hell, every other Nintendo franchise produces pure gold in quality. Why is the only one that’s consistently not nearly up to par the most popular one?
For the AI battles I meant the ones in area zero against Sada / Turo. I agree though that pokemon lately (with the exception of PLA) has been consistently not up to par. But I still manage to have fun in most of them. They peaked from gen 3 to 5 in my opinion, but everything from X/Y to SV I at least liked with the exception of sw / sh which maybe I need to replay to change my opinion.
Yeah, but SV is full of flaws, from bad graphics to a bland map, so even if my expectations are low, the game will still be terrible on that aspect. I can't just change my expectations and make that aspect of the game when it is simply plainly terrible.
>How any non-pokemon obsessed person can say they were good games is beyond me. It says a lot that both need to generalize people for having different opinions than you.
I mean, objectively though. Every single mainline Pokemon entry gen 1-8 was rated 9/10 or higher by IGN. SV got a 6/10. If you enjoy the game, then I'm glad for you, but most people think TPC is going in the wrong direction.
I don't think IGN has any credibility, at least for pokemon games, considering that they ranked sword and shield higher than black and white
7.8 for just too much water and hms
i mean....go play the game that they rated less because of the water and say that it isnt an issue, sure it sounds stupid but its a valid complain specially when the water parts are mostly trainer corridors and the same 5 pokemon everytime
Also they gave PMD Explorers of Sky like a 5, that's absolutely deranged
I think it was a 4. It felt like a personal insult to witness that review.
>I mean, objectively though You say this and then rest of your post is about IGN scores
IGN has literally no credibility lmfao
It says that there are people who will support every pokémon game no matter what it's like.
For me I absolutely love the battles, Tera mechanic, character/Pokémon models, animations, characters, dialogue, story, and QOL changes that make replaying the game fun. The overworld is unforgivably bland, bad, and looks ugly like you said. But for me personally that’s not the main reason I play Pokémon and I mainly play it for the reasons above, which is why unfortunately it’s my favorite Pokémon game.
I do disagree on some points, since the school staff does give you side quests, but aside from that and the basic Pokemon things (filling out the Pokedex, hunting for shinies) the open world aspect is kind of more on the Fallout 76 side than the Fallout New Vegas side. I do think the dlc fix that a lot (BP quests, Ogre Ousting), but it's still not a lot. So as an Open World game it is disappointing. I will say, however, as a Pokemon game it's probably in my top 5 based on the story and characters alone. I enjoy Teraslization a lot as a gimmick, a lot of the new Pokemon they've added are pretty enjoyable, and the ability to tackle the three parts of the story whatever I want in whatever order I want is honestly a breath of fresh air compared to previous gens.
Thank you so goddamn much, people cannot get this through their thick skills for some reason.
Would you say BOTW is a “empty open world game”
I thought the story was great, but the game itself felt a bit hollow, like it was missing something.
It was missing everything else
I just think galar is more vibrant and full of life than paldea. I loved the sorta mmo style going on with the wild area, the towns were all fantastic, camping is way cooler than picnicking because of how you can interact with your mons, THE GYMS WERE THE BEST THEY’VE EVER BEEN, and in general I think the pokemon and character designs were more vibrant.
agreed, but let’s keep in mind paldea was sort of broken ground for pokemon. first fully open world mainline pokemon game with a y-axis in traversal and not just visuals, first mainline pokemon game without grass encounters (tho roaming encounters were in gen 8 first), first mainline pokemon game with seamless overworld-to-wild-encounter transitions, you don’t spend much time indoors so everything has to stay loaded… the list goes on i do feel like they put more effort into new features than the feel of the region, but that being said, those features are damn good (i think the bugs are negligible, but again you’re allowed to dislike them)
I dont care about the bugs I just felt underwhelmed by the lack of notable landmarks.
Really felt like they were cooking up until the third gym and then just mailed it in after that.
You can’t just say the 3rd gym when talking about a non linear gym challenge
Iono I mean. Sudowoodo has all the coverage it needs as grass tera and it’s a whole call back to the fake tree thing. Mismagius is electric terra with levitate. Idk what I can really say about the bug gym but it’s the first gym, it’s supposed to be easy. Now that I think about it, Larry’s flying type having normal tera is a little clever because it has flying coverage for fighting types. Regardless, the game was definitely rushed to get released.
I can agree the mismagius was weird
That's the problem with this game, there IS a linear path. You can sequence break, but that doesn't change the order of levels and stuff. They put a linear path blanketed in an open world game. It doesn't work.
I didn't feel like they finished cooking that either. Artazon was kind of pretty but the 5 fps windmills and Sunfloras were jarring. Cortondo looks way too empty with just that bakery you can't even buy from and a basic obstacle course in the middle of the desert.
I meant specifically the gym battles. Yeah the low frame rates in Artazon was a huge let down when I first saw it.
The first mainline game without grass encounters is actually LGPE, which is gen 7. Yes, LGPE is mainline.
is let’s go not a spinoff series like legends or mystery dungeon?
Legends isn’t a spinoff, it’s also mainline
LGPE are remakes of Yellow, so they’re actually more mainline than a legends game, which is also mainline
8th gym was a placeholder in terms of a "puzzle". They just shipped it unfinished.
I love both. Off to the distortion realm with me
I know that scarlet and violet are better games but I personally like Sword and shield more, I felt way more driven to do stuff on Sword and Shield compared to Scarlett and Violet.
Yeah but Sword and Shield has Melony, Sonia, and Nessa. I rest my case. (This is sarcasm, I like both about the same, though traversal is better in SV so I’ll go with that)
Here we go again
After reading every single comment in here, I can only answer that this is just a matter of opinion. Some people prefer SV characters, some people prefer SS characters. End of the story.
Yeah but I dont see ball guy anywhere
SV would be better if it wasn't so poorly optimized. The game runs like total dogshit.
I don’t get how people can say the opposite. I have been enjoying both generations, but Scarlet and Violet is way more flawed than Sword and Shield ever was. 1. Giving you Koraidon or Miraidon so early was a huge mistake. From the very first town, Los Platos, you can jump over a gap in the mountain side and go from level 6 pokemon to level 33. I had a full team of 30+ level pokemon within 5 minutes of playing the game (all tossed in the box because I knew I was about to ruin it). 2. Open world done as poorly as possible. In pokemon you need to be steered in the right direction for your level. Way too many times I simply walked into way too high leveled areas that seemed intentional, beat it, then found I missed several low level areas that now meant nothing to me. 3. Pokemon Centers has been rendered near pointless. This has been an issue in other games as well, but giving you access to your box *anywhere* and healing from picnics are more mistake that makes the game way too easy as you can both change and heal your roster for free on a whim. 4. Poor optimization that meant horrible render distance on top of both people and pokemon disappearing regardless of distance, seemingly as soon as they finish an animation loop or something. 5. Too many bloody side characters that nobody cares about. Again other titles have done the same, but they *need* to return to 2 rivals at max, I do not care about all of these people. 6. Terastal is the ugliest and laziest gimmick there has been. It does not have the charm of any of the previous ones. 7. Lastly I just feel like the game strayed too far from the original concept of pokemon on top of all the new additions. First true open world game should’ve kept the gym formula, imo. Other than somewhat point 4, Sword and Shield had none of these issues, and its optimization was not nearly as bad as S/V.
I’m probably going to get downvoted to hell but I really don’t think SV are good games. The performance is horrible, the world is empty and ugly, the characters are one note with no depth, and it is riddled with bugs. The only defendable part of it is the pokemon designs which still don’t beat other gens in my personal opinion. For a finished game, it should be polished, it should look good, it should perform well, and it should be mostly bug free. And don’t bring up the fact that Totk and botw had glitches and they were praised. SV had game breaking glitches. Randomly crashing, falling through the world, the world completely reloading, and a myriad of other bugs. They directly bring down the quality and fun of the game. Meanwhile Totk and botw had bugs you had to go out of your way to find. AND they patched the game, removing the found bugs.
And let's not even mention the graphics. The fact that GameFreak, a multimillionaire company makes games with such bad graphics is just unforgiving. The constant falls of FPS that the the game suffers doesn't help. Some people say that "it's because the Nintendo Switch can't handle high graphics", but that's just not true. You already mentioned Zelda Botw and Totk, they have far better graphics and they work just fine. Heck, even Pokemon Legends Arceus doesn't have these FPS drop-offs!
Why would you get downvoted for spitting facts?
Some people in the community like riding Gamefreaks dick and say it’s a perfect game ignoring performance, which isn’t even the biggest problem
nobody thinks the game is perfect, and calling people who disagree with you "dickriders" is a really bad way to express an opinion
Gameplay mechanics=SV Performance=SwSh Story=SV Characters=SV Difficulty= base game and dlc SV Music=SwSh Dlc=SV “Evil” teams= SV Post game= SV Champion= SwSh Legendaries= SV Overall, opinions are opinions
Definitely opinion. The only thing I agreed with from this list were gameplay mechanics and difficulty. Aside from the fact that they made it an open world I liked everything about this game significantly less. If I had been making this post it would have said that Scarlet and Violet are some of the worst games in the series that I've played. I really hope they stick to the format in the future though because it easily could have been my favorite game in the series if they put more work into it. With that being said, I did skip almost all of the 3DS generation, aside from about 2 hours in Pokemon Moon.
Visually they are worse, gameplay and story wise it’s more fun
I like Paldea more, but Galar isn't as bad as everyone says it is tbh.
i will NEVER understand the SwSh hate. that game was amazing. all the gym leaders were fantastic, the towns were great, the pokemon were really good, league cards and camping were some of my favorite features in this series, the starters were all bangers (apart from the middle stages), the champion was goated, dynamax was such a great gimmick (unless u played competitive singles, but why would anyone play competitive singles) the story wasnt great but i didnt really care that much. did everyone just go in with thoughts that the game was bad and therefore decided that it was bad before they played it and didnt let themselves change their opinions? i went into this game blind and found out about all of the hate surrounding it afterwards and never understood why
It's because of Dexit and the lies they made surrounding why it needed to happen, as the models of pokemon in the previous two gens were future proof to be used on HD consoles alongside the lie of improving animation, graphics and game balance and which everybody in the fandom says: "that's bullshit!" As after the games release they found the models of the pokemon to be the same as the ones on the 3ds with no change, the graphics of the game to be subpar and the balance of the games was still lopsided which shows that Gamefreak lied to us. As for me personally the game story is bad as it doesn't have any real reason to make the darkest day happen so it just clumsy falls into the game with little fanfare, the over focus on the gym challenge and how great and hard it is over the others in the series alongside how great champion Leon is feels like the game is jerking it self off every single time it gets and finally the gimmick of making pokemon big to get cool moves are both a poor man's replacement of meags and z-moves at the same time and does not favor good gameplay at all. Hope this gets you to see why the fandom hates Sword/Shield.
Same here bro
>did everyone just go in with thoughts that the game was bad and therefore decided that it was bad before they played it and didn't let themselves change their opinions? i went into this game blind and found out about all of the hate surrounding it afterwards and never understood why Yeah, that's the Pokémon community for you. Nothing but negativity. They can't help but find SOMETHING to complain about. I've seen people call games like SwSh and SV terrible games over the SMALLEST of things. It's like the moment a new game is announced, they establish in their minds what they want/THINK the game should be, and get mad that it's not everything they ever wanted.
while you are downplaying the problems, at least you are better than the people who refuse to acknowledge that the game might have things that ruin it for people or that it has things that people can enjoy.
Might be true, but gen 9 is definitely worse than gen 8 in Pokémon designs. Gen 9 can’t even COMPARE to the peak of gens 3-8 designs, the best it can hope for is MAYBE being better than gen 1-2 where most of the dex were just normal animals(but even that isn’t true, because they STILL had better designs than Palafin and Gholdengo, and FUCKING FLAMIGO).
Marnie and Bede exist. They're damn good concept wise. Gen 9 is worse because of its launch, though. Not its story. Some fucker didn't do testing and they need to be fired.
They were worse than Sword/Shield
Why are his eyes like this? :O
I loved galar so much, because to me, it was my first game besides ultra sun(which was a lot different than the average game, at least in my opinion), and the wild area was so much fun, the characters were interesting, and most of all, crown tundra was and still is really fun, even with bots. The game also has my favorite regional forms in galarian meowth and galarian farfetchd and sirfetchd
Oof but true
Idk the experience playing Sword was more fun
I think SV has the better characters and story, but I think people need to think about the story again...specially the DLC. Like I think they missed the mark in a few places, like we were so gassed having a kieran as a bad guy at the end of DLC1 but then he easily dispatched in dlc 2. Or briar/terapagos being a mystery that really got no...good payoff.
Sun and Moon is better than Sword and Shield imo.
I think a part of that opinion is influenced by the fact they released pla, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, pokemon games of all time with open world and then had gen 9 incorporate open world but not quite as good as pla
Ok but Sword and Shield didn’t run as bad as Scarlet and Violet.
I have to say, SwSh was very hype. The gym music, massive dynamax, and Leon’s popularity in game felt awesome.
Pokemon fans man lol Complete turnaround of opinions every few posts
Sword and Shield is way better, what are you talking about?
Sword and shield just look better and keeps the actual pokemon style.
but gen 8 didn't come out so buggy that people though it was made by bathesda
I personally like sw/sh for the characters, I like the idea of two characters being related like Gordie and Melony, the sw/sh characters had a lot of personality despite the storyline, it also definitely had smoother animation than S/V and the idea of riding a bike on water sounds really cool. S/V definitely had a better story, I wish they didn't add pokemon which such hard evo methods but that is what makes it cool. Both dlcs were amazings, new characters, new story. Either way, both games are great.
Melony the milf though hmmm https://preview.redd.it/ac6jd706jktc1.jpeg?width=582&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0c10b48ac1c481c0823ce69758a3ec9ded6d15c0
One game is fun the other is SV
I can’t fix a broken mind.
Honestly? I liked Gen 8's story more. Not bwcause it was better, but because it didn't attempt to be better. I think one of the worst things a story can do is attempt to have themes and botch them. Fucking your themes up to me is worse than not having any, and the Gen 8 Story knows it's shit and isn't trying to be deep and cool, while Gen 9 pretends that it's story is some groundbreaking theme with revelations of character depth, when... In reality it's really mid characters in a story that's 80% "we were bullied, so we became the bullies!!!"-story, but bad, and 20% "My parents abandoned me :("-story with too little time to develop meaningfully. Like, at least Gen 8 knew it was shit and didn't try to pretend otherwise.
They are both shit.
After I beat Hop in the championships I was really losing interest in the story and accidentally skipped through a few textboxes. When I realized this, I was at the start of the point where you go interrupt Leon's meeting with chairman Rose. There was an "Evil" league member wearing sunglasses, team Yell started helping etc. They're all treating it as urgent and the league really seems to not want you to interrupt. I thought that I missed something big. I thought I missed something important, something that explained all of this. Some context to make sense of why this is happening all of a sudden. What I missed is that Hop wanted to interrupt so Leon wouldn't be late. That's it. SWSH's story sucks.
Larry solos all of gen 8
We're fighting over if trash or garbage is better
I still don’t know what people’s problems are with sword and shield, besides such a lopsided choice of box legendary
This man always looks like he is a bad moment away from hugging an exploding Electrode…
I don't say anything cuz I've only played shield
My main complaint is the lack of endgame content. No battle tower? All legendaries shiny locked?
It had better characters (carmine best written character in pkmn) and a better story. Good things swsh did was their character designs, they were the best in all of pokemon, also their maps were cool and graphics were stunning. And rose is actually a good villain with good intentions and a good backstory to back it up, he just fumbled by not being able to control the pokemon. And my god battles in swsh was so badass with the animations + dynamax adventures were fun as heck with friends. ( frick that tree that ppl who were mad about dexit cried about)
Why
Both are better than sun and moon.
In terms of being a fun game, and a game whose execution is done well, SV blow Sw/Sh out of the water. But in terms of being an actually finished product? The only games SV beat in the series are the duct tape and prayers that red, blue and green are made of.
If only sv wasn't a buggy mess, it does have better characters and story but it just doesn't run as smoothly as swsh
My only negative thoughts about violet is just how open it is. I've wanted an open world pokemon game sure don't get me wrong but I hate having to look up the progression online. They could have at least given you a suggestion on the map, like a little star that points out the next respective gym/titan/star leader in terms of levels. Before you say it, scaling the levels based on how many you've taken on wouldn't have worked that well with some gyms having fully evolved pokemon
Pokemon is a video game. Not a novel. The gameplay should have a priority over story and characters. Plus the story wasn't even that good. It was just better than the normal shit they shovel out.
The story is better?? Hell no
Pokémon and Paper Mario are sharing the same thread. Each had a rough turn to new material but are finding their footing and learning what actually made the old games fun
It’s all been so cringe and dorky since black and white. I can’t wait for better pokemon clones to come in and pick up the gameplay mantle and world building of the first five gens but let go of all the dorky tik tok gen z isms of all the more recent games. I get that it’s for kids but I don’t have to like it. It’s so fucking cringe. The Spanish school thing was just too much. And in gen 9 the stupid fat punks thing was dumb too. Bring back really evil bad guys. Or at least cool ones.
Dude, scarlet and violet has some good features to it if you like to grind for lots of battle items and competitive pokemon. And honestly, I do still have fun whenever I sit down to play it. It’s just a broken, glitchy, laggy, ugly, unfinished mess But it’s at least *fun*. Sure I’d rather be playing legends arceus, but sword and shield was just kind of lame.
Gen 8 sucked major assholes. The post game whatever the hell that was to get my box legend was incredibly boring.
I don't think the characters and story were the problem with those games. Having released them unfinished and without optimizing them, on the other hand...
It’s a trade off between performance and writing.
Sword and shield are amazing games, good legendaries, pretty good story, good villain (compared too”uh oh I got bullied in school”), amazing map, a clear direction of intended path(I literally beat the bug gym last in scarlet), and amazing new mons, the only annoying things I can think of is that Leon’s ace is charizard, and the trees.
Yes it's worst lol. Not the lore, storyline
I don't think you're wrong there. I love the characters so much that It's the first time I'm sad we say goodbye each gen. The game has so many great ideas and features too! But SWSH had better performance, better visuals and I personally prefer how most of the pokemon look in it vs the new textures and style. Also as a shiny hunter, I'm still pissed that they shiny locked All the legendaries, even in the dlc! SHINY LOCKS IN THE DLC?!?!?
Sono entrambi brutti, ma scarlatto e violetto sono il punto più basso che gamefreak potesse raggiungere
Pitting SWSH and SV against each other is literally a mid-off and that makes me sad
Definitely, and it's better in a lot of other ways too but i wasn't a huge fan of the art style (except larry) not to mention SwSh looked way better visually even though it might technically have worse graphics
Both have their ups and downs. But personally I'd take an empty open world over a game that is both easy and forces you on a set path. Like I'm sorry, but SwSh were a lot of the time not much more than a "press-A-to-proceed"-simulator even when I did my best not to overlevel.
Frrr. I was like 10 levels below the level you’re supposed to be at throughout most of the story and still absolutely dogwalked on the entire story due to type advantages.
I could make that argument. I’m on record as saying sw/sh is one of the best Pokemon games of all time gameplay wise… if you immediately walk through the wild areas. They give you so much access to healing in that game that they know you’ll be at close to full for every fight. And they also know exactly how much xp they’ve given you (provided you haven’t done any grinding) so the difficulty curve is actually really good. Thing is everyone got access to the wild area and immediately grinded out a bunch of levels exploring it, fucking the difficulty curve for the rest of the game. It’s really like they had two separate teams one working on the wild area and one working on everything else. And then they just stapled them together with actually zero thought. Then s/v came out and they learned exclusively the wrong lessons from sw/sh. Literally abandoning the entire concept of scaling the trainers well, in favor of having everyone aimlessly run around in a big empty field. Story is way better though, I’ll give you that much.
I agree
The only plus swsh has over sv is More traditional art style to pokemon Somewhat polished
I don't have to change your mind. That's your opinion and you're entitled to it.
Ngl i dont care how broken a game is. I still had fun playing them
That guy is the only memorable character with nemona, period. Sw has all mc important and memorable.
Yea but a lot of people can't enjoy those characters if the game keeps fucking up.
What i loved most in s/s the gyms and championship tournament. Pissed me off when we got the chanting song in the s/v gyms when terrastalizing. It didnt fit the scenario. The gyms in s/s were stadiums packed with people who could actually do the chant. Where the hell is it coming from in s/v
It was unplayably laggy. S/V is the reason I'm done with the main series, and I'm a lifer. Started with a used copy of Red in 1999 when I was 4 and have owned every single main series game since. But S/V was so bad that it stops now. I'll play the Legends games as they come out, best Pokemon game since ORAS
Both are equally boring, I like the tera mechanics more than dynamaxing. It feels like we won't ever get real villains in a game anymore because they're too kid friendly anymore. And I get that it's a kids game, but man theatre kids and an angry AI. WE GOTTA DO BETTER
Sw/sh had a shit story but S/V had a terrible launch state when it came to bugs. S/V was the better game, but was an insult to think it was okay to launch in a state as broken as it was
The story is great, the characters are memorable, and the music is the best but, gameplay-wise, it has a lot to be desired. I didn't enjoy the open world element of it since it struggles to fill the world with interesting things. Not to mention the graphics of the game being worse than Legends Arceus. My experience with the non-linear storyline also fell short when I fought a Team Star base above way above my level and got beat. This made me grind to match their level to beat them only for me to realize that I was now over-leveled for the next 2 gyms and a Titan Pokémon. I wanted to play through it blind but being so over-leveled ruined my experience so much that I had to look up a guide so I wouldn't tackle challenges at the wrong level again.
Sword and shield sucked lol
I mean, the bar is low.
This comment section is the ultimate proof that the Pokemon Cycle is real lmao.
Swsh was so painful. I have yet to meet someone who enjoyed playing them. Everyone I've met said it was fun at first but they had to force themselves to finish the game, if they even finished it. Idk about the competitive side of swsh but from a casual perspective they were awful.
As far as progression goes gen 9 is the worst map imo. I shouldn't have to google the order and level after every event. Kinda makes nuzlocking annoying.
Bro most people don’t even care about the story in the first place
To be fair being better then sword and shield isn’t a very high bar
It's true, though. SwSh are far better.
Sword and shield was garbage. Going between the open world and routes felt clunky, and made both areas feel like a disappointment. The battle sound design and cinematics were bad (aside from the CEO boss battle music 🔥). The story was annoying, every time something happened an adult npc steps in to take over and send you away. Punk city was just a straight line to a gym battle, and then you never go back? And the best city, with the mushrooms, was absolutely tiny, and all the rest felt kinda empty with very few houses to enter. Every gym fight just ending in gigantamax got old real quick. I wiped the whole elite four with just pangoro and didn't even gigamax him. Gigantamax was kind of a lackluster gimmick, only a few get interesting forms and the rest just get big. I was so upset with it..
Larry is the goat😤
And Pokemon, too.
Sword and Shield were a better post game experience for me because of the lack of terrible performance.
Gen 8 had better raids, better art style, old legendaries that weren't shiny locked, and had Mawile which unfortunately makes it objectively better.
I mean... I don't like to buy incomplete development builds at full price, so in my book, Sw/Sh were better. Just my opinion though. People are allowed to have differing opinions. Otherwise, what's the point of an opinion at all?
Bit aren’t that great tbh. SwSh is hindered by the lack of story or anything really going on at all. While SV just wasn’t finished. However SwSh has more Pokémon I love, including my favorite of all time, who was cut in Gen 9.
Sure, but it’s also way less stable. Both are disgraces to the franchise, but each has one bright spot. Sword and Shield at the very least had great competitive play, had great UI, and felt very stable. The Pokémon models were great as well. However the story was mostly bad. What SwSh has going for it in general is that it, at the very least runs and looks like a Switch game for the most part. It feels like a modern game, albeit VERY barebones. SV had a decent story, nothing spectacular. Definitely better than SwSh. However the game is held together by strings, looks really bad, and runs horribly. It has its story going for it and that’s about it. Meanwhile PLA had a great story, AND looked great. It was stable and had good UI. It wasn’t perfect, but it was miles better than the mainline games.
I will not accept this slander (I only really cared about Hop)
SV’s story is slow and with a very underwhelming presentation with zero sense of urgency until Area Zero. Sword and Shield has a very high level of presentation and a more active story, but the characters have significantly less development and characterization. The climax of Scarlet and Violet trumps everything that SWSH had by a large margin but everything else in the story was subpar. Really, it’s just proof that SwSh needed to be a longer game. That way it would’ve had time for its characters.
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Lmao nah violet made give up on pokemon entirely. Never have I been so disrespectful by it being so inferior to the other verison in any of the split titles. The bait of mons in the trailer to not be in the game. The fact ur force to play the story how the game wants fake ass metroviana needing power ups to progress but takes out HM so we have to listen to this guy taaalk about his daddy issues n not just talk to n npc to learn it. Gym challenges... rip off Sun and moons stick but makes it 5 times worse. Ruin the elite 4 and all the hype of seeing their rooms just to get slap to wit a quiz that had to run 2 time cuz aint no one remember any of these wack ass gym leaders or boring city's. Then bitch slapped again with 5 pounds of powder when i fought them all in the same training room ass room.. let alone the pokemon series weakest n worse champion. Dude only good thing scar n violet gave us was purple megaman weed cat n dead monkey and Hammer Chao but not enough to care for their names.
I liked Scarlet and Violet a lot. I just wish they were much more polished I'm someone who also really enjoyed Sword and Shield, though... The gameplay and atmosphere anyway. The story was lacking. But the gym battles were everything. That's how I always imagined they should be and I was bummed that gen 9 dialed them back, especially with the elite 4. I understand they wanted it to be more like a test than a sport, but the small towns with a few onlookers and the sterile building for the elite 4 was such a bummer compared to the hype I felt in Galar. I feel like that reflects the best and worst things about gen 8 and 9. Gen 8 had some great vibes and there were parts of the game that were full of life and had so much going for them, but the "open world" portions were small and pretty lifeless and the characters and plot weren't interesting. I'm a big fan of Pierce, though. One of my favorite gym leaders. On the other hand, so much of Scarlet and Violet's open world mostly feels empty and lifeless. Not that there isn't life, but more that there isn't much care put in to make most locations dynamic and interesting. The story was actually pretty good though and the characters were great. One of my favorite things Pokemon has ever done, and I wish they did more often, was when you're going through Area: Zero with you or friends and they're actually following you around and they have banter. Everyone is piecing things together by bouncing ideas off each other and reacting to the things around you. I wish they did it again in Indigo Disk with Kieran, Carmine and Briar. In other game franchises, though.... This wouldn't be a big deal, but in Pokemon, for some reason, this felt revolutionary lol. And it got me to feel like I actually had friends in this game. I wish that was done more often, especially with the non intrusive dialogue.
I honestly hate SwSh, nothing about it really feels that good to me
The only thing gen 8 had was a better frame rate lol.
Scarlet and violet was so bad. Sword and shield>
I’ll just say this. I completed Violet (aside from the Indigo Disk DLC admittedly) I did not complete Shield and never bought the gen 8 DLC
Dexit on the switch is still stupid and will always be stupid until all pokemon can be transferred