A Detailed and Critical Review of: Pokemon Sword & Shield

[Music] this is the rating system that I will be using for this review there are timestamps down below if you wish to hear me discuss particular aspects of the game there will also obviously be spoilers you have been warned [Music] pokemon sword and shield are arguably the most controversial and contentious Pokemon titles ever released before I get into the review I would like to touch on some context surrounding the titles regarding this controversy I feel this is necessary because it is pertinent information that puts the games into proper perspective Pokemon was always a beloved handheld classic but titles such as Coliseum Gale of Darkness and pokémon battle revolution showcase what the classic handheld titles were capable of a much more powerful hardware having the ability to bring the Pocket Monsters to life like nothing seen before that fable title is to finally arrive under the moniker sword and shield and we're technically game freaks second attempt at a console Pokemon experience but we like to pretend that other one doesn't exist the question that was on everybody's mind was would they deliver not much information was known up until the monumental III 2018 Trejo's demo which gave everyone an in-depth look at the upcoming games what was showcased however was a far cry from the concocted childhood dream Pokemon titled inspired by the aforementioned console Pokemon games despite making a giant leap forward in terms of hardware capabilities sword and shield at first glance betrayed that sentiment it was extremely lackluster with terrible muddy textures stiff and sometimes non-existent animations bugs and so on it was a very disheartening presentation that was only the beginning immediately after the presentation it was revealed that the National Dex would not make a return these would be the first games in the series to not have all Pokemon programmed and obtainable in the games this sparked massive outrage that resulted in a movement called bring back national dex or BB ND for short this had Pokemon fans protesting in the hopes that the decision to exclude some Pokemon could be reversed giving rise to a counter movement born out of spite called don't bring back national dex or DB BND the producers of the game reassured that this would grant them additional resources to fully flush out the remaining Pokemon and even allow them to focus on game balance which has been a recurrent issue in the series however these words fell on deaf ears as they did not reflect what was seen in game there were minimal if any improvements especially considering the generational shift from a handheld console to a dedicated home console the switch which has access to significantly more technological resources than any past Nintendo console this is further exacerbated by the fact that Pokemon is the highest-grossing media franchise on the planet time went by and eventually the games were leaked and to everyone's surprise it turned out that only 400 Pokemon made it into the final game which is just under half of all the species this was never officially announced it was also revealed that the Pokemon assets like the models and animations were reused from the 3ds games this means that a significant bulk of the work being the Pokemon themselves was far less demanding them what was required from past titles this also means that Game Freak could pump these spare resources into other areas of the games did Game Freak take full advantage of this opportunity let's take a look [Music] the game starts off a lot more cinematic than past titles thanks to the hardware jump it starts off in a huge stadium with a roaring crowd not all as well however as one of the glaring weaknesses of the game rears its ugly head early there's no voice acting [Music] [Applause] this heavily detract from the cinematic nature of the game is extremely distracting and shatters immersion as characters lips move with no sound coming out of them the beginning is especially jarring as roses movements pause between each sentence as he waits for you to make an input Legend of Zelda series recently introduced voice acting which paid dividends for what little story that game had to offer even the mobile spin-off Pokemon title Pokemon masters takes advantage of what voice acting has to offer it flutters out a character in a way that is not possible otherwise characters are very important when it comes to media especially in the RPG genre which is what pokemon sword and shield are many of the cutscenes feel flat and lifeless as a result of the omission of voice acting nyan also commands his Charizard to Dynomax then proceeds to gigantic max which does the light on the convolution of the mechanic as a whole but we'll get to that in a bit after the opening cinematic the game plays out like it has for the past two decades you are a kid in a small town you have a mum dad is absent you have a rival a professor and you are giving your very first Pokemon between a selection of fire and grass or water it's rather disappointing to see that Game Freak is still unwilling to shake up this formula in any significant way the pace is also still extremely slow especially for veteran players game frico at least attempted to address this by allowing some tutorial skips like the catch tutorial which I admit is a much needed and appreciated addition however game 3 fails to properly implement very basic quality of life features one of the main criticisms of the last generation Pokemon Sun and Moon is that there is way too many cutscenes on top of that there was no way to skip any of them which means you were forced to sit through every single one every single time if you get tempted to correct this by adding a skip cutscene option this unfortunately has many flaws first as long as the option is on it will auto skip every single cinematic cutscene in the game such as the one seen in the intro usually developers give you the option to skip cutscenes you want to skip game freak makes the decision for you every time another issue is that you still can't skip the text-based cutscenes the cinematic cutscenes can be skipped but there's only a select handful of those in the entire game they're significantly more common cutscenes that want to be skipped cannot be this same issue that plague Sun and Moon returned to sword and shield speaking of cutscenes the beginning of the game is completely filled with them you were stopped by hop around almost every single corner this slows the pace of the game to a crawl and is a serious drag hop your arrival introduces you to his big brother Leon he is Guillard very own unbeatable champion Leon as opposed to the region professor is the one who gives you your first Pokemon a first for the series hop picks the starter that is weak to yours which makes them significantly less of a challenge greatly contributing to the lack of difficulty present in the game you meet Sonya who is the regional professor's self-appointed assistant and you eventually meet the professor herself magnolia magnolia introduces you to the main gimmick of the generation dynamaxx an object conveniently falls from the sky at the perfect time and miraculously grants the ability to Dynomax they're called wishing stars and can be used to Dynomax your Pokemon when retrofitted to a Dynomax band a huge amount of power is just handed to you without the need to accomplish anything it would have been more satisfying to earn the ability to Dynomax as opposed to receiving it as a handout Leon then endorses you so that you are taking the gym challenge after you make it through the maze of cutsies you arrive to the wild area and here you find dens where you can battle Dynomax pokemon with up to three other trainers you also find a wide assortment of Pokemon some of which are extremely strong you're physically incapable of capturing these Pokemon however as the game prevents it unless you have a certain number of badges this removes almost all incentive to interact with a stronger Pokemon said you can't capture them anyways instead of locking Pokemon behind badges they should have allow you to catch them whenever but make them fail to obey you unless you have the correct number of badges similar to what happens when you get a strong traded Pokemon this way you would have further incentive to interact with a larger array of species and would make the risk of running into the stronger monsters worth it with the possibility of adding them to your team if you successfully catch them once you have your fun in the wild area you have to head over to moto stoke in order to sign up as a contender for the gym challenge with the champions endorsement once you pick a number and you get fully registered your venture truly starts and unfortunately it's not much of an adventure the gym challenge is really your only priority throughout the entire game game pretty did a fantastic job with the gyms this time around probably the best they've ever been but that's all the game has to offer in terms of the plot the actual plot is taken care of by Leon you hear a large explosion in the distance and you want to investigate too bad Liane Galarza unbeatable champion will take care of it for you he does this several times throughout the game Leon has a more interesting campaign run than you do it made me wish I was playing as Leon instead of the player character Leon is the true main character of sword and shield enjoy having the champion more involved with the story but Leon was perhaps too involved effectively sucking a majority of the fun out of the game most pieces of plot development arrives through interactions with Sonya although they leave a lot to be desired you delve into a bit of lore and you even learned that the true history of the region was hidden and altered this is pretty interesting and brings to light many questions like why was the truth kept secret and by who you unfortunately never get any answers as the plot point is dropped almost as fast as it comes up well Leon is busy playing the game for you you instead proceed with your gym challenge until you get all eight badges to be qualified for the pokemon league instead of the Elite Four this time around you participate in a tournament style challenge making your way through until you reach the championship match where you faced off against Leon before that you have to participate in an odd fetch quest to meet up with Leon who went to Rose tower for some mysterious reason once you reach Leon E is having an important conversation with Chairman Rose this is supposed to be a pivotal moment of the entire game yet you are treated to still images with nothing but texts there's not even any music it's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen this was a great opportunity to learn more about Leon and Rosa's characters as well as fleshing out the story in an interesting and exciting way as we watch the climax of the plot unfold instead you're left confused especially with regards to Rosa's motivations to summon up apparently all energy and gholar will be exhausted in 1,000 years there's literally no explanation for why this will be or what will cause this or even if it's true or not this makes it hard to understand what Rose is doing and why he feels so rushed to avert the tragedy despite having hundreds of years to prepare for the worst Leon refers to Rosa's plan as madness and rightfully so wanting nothing to do with it Leon is much more interested in the championship match with the player the following day but Leon being a stand-up guy insists he will help Rose with his plans but only after his anticipated match this apparently wasn't a satisfying enough compromise for Rose because he proceeds with his plans regardless of Leon's wishes the following day right before the championship match roses plan is to bring back the darkest day which was a prophecy you learned about earlier with Sonia the darkest day was a storm that covered Gallardo 3,000 years ago it causes a leakage of Dynomax energy that forces Pokemon to Dynomax but also has the unfortunate side effect of having the giant Pokemon go berserk how is this supposed to alter the gallery' and energy crisis that's alleged to occur within a thousand years who knows there were instances of wild dynamic Pokemon going berserk earlier in the game it's one of the many side quests that Leon did instead of you once again having a more enjoyable adventure than the actual player these events were apparently caused by Rose rose then says that his hand was forced by Leon to bring about the darkest day because Leon refused to listen except that Leon was actually willing to hear him out after the championship match was finished all Rose had to do was wait a couple of hours and he would have had Leon's undivided attention Rose also stated the energy for the darkest day was too much to contain and he was in a pickle because of it so not only is Rose extremely impatient he's also incompetent dynamaxx energy begins to leak out around goulart while Leon continues to play the game by handling the situation you the player actually get to partake in the plot this time around you start off by investigating the slumbering Weald in the search of the hero pokémon that stopped the darkest day all those thousands of years ago you cane a relic of the Pokemon but the Pokemon themselves are nowhere in sight you head back to hammerlock where ileana roses trusted secretary begs for your help to stop mr. rose she fears the underground power plant where Rose is located will collapse she also informed you that Rose has awakened a Pokemon called eat her on test that emits energy that makes Dynomax impossible what is heater notice exactly where did it come from and how did Rose get his hands on it many pressing questions you head down to meet up with Rose where he claimed that he needs to provide galore with limitless energy to ensure everlasting prosperity and for some reason the darkest day was the only means to accomplish such a task Rose has apparently been giving wishing star two eternities these are the objects that landed in your lap earlier on and bead one of roses assistance was tasked with collecting them for this very reason it appears that a tortoise was encased in kind of egg like structure Rose confesses the odd things happening around the region were a result of him trying to awaken eternity so seems he found eternity debilitated and that's it there's no explanation of where he found he turns his why it was asleep why it was in the egg how he knew were to find it why it woke up suddenly why he was unable to contain it all of this vital information is just pushed to the side as you engage in an extremely easy battle birth chairman rose I literally one-shot every single one of his Pokemon it was really pathetic after you beat him he claims he actually wanted to see the championship match and apologize for ruining everything if that were truly the case then he could have just postponed his nonsensical plan for a few minutes Leon rush to assist Rose by attempting to catch eternity again it would have made more logical sense for Rose to simply wait for the match that he himself stated he wanted to bear witness in order to possibly obtaining the unsupportive out everything blowing up in his face you move up to the roof where Leon is facing off against the mysterious eternity as Pokemon and to my surprise fails to capture it Leon so far has been established as well undefeatable and perfect in basically every way he ran through any challenges that he came across up until this point it probably doesn't help that he used a pokeball of all things a new move for sure the crappy pokeball bursts open because of course it does and this somehow renders Leon unable to continue the concussive force I guess took a moment finally now that the unbeatable champion is out of the way it's the players time to shine after you clap eternity as he goes berserk and proceeds to eterna max that's right there's a third form of the same thing but we'll get to it in the fight you were prevented from using any pokemon attacks due to a mysterious power while you turn it to stands idle storing energy then hob remembers that the two of you have the ancient hero relics and proposes you use them in the hopes that will magically do something turns out hop was right as the two items somehow awaken the legendary dogs from their slumber in the slumbering Weald despite having no effects moments earlier the dogs are also able to fly or teleport and proceed to join both the player character and hop right before eternity has the chance to decimate them the two relics are randomly restored and brings the dogs to their true form there's a pretty sweet transition from the cinematic to the battle which I really appreciate a raid style fight commences with help from the legendary dogs which renders the otherwise challenging battle mundane and spammy simply click the a button until his health is depleted then throw any poker ball as it will work like a master ball without fail and that's it crisis averted and the world is saved the dogs jump away and it cuts to black extremely underwhelming conclusion to an already underwhelming campaign nothing really happens from the first time you register for the gym challenge to the championship match against Leon you come across some ruins here and there and you have a few discussions with Sonya and that's about it regarding the plot the whole game is pretty much just the gym challenge with the world threatening event tacked on at the end as I said earlier the gym challenge this time around is really amazing the best that's ever been but the gym challenge is always only supposed to be the beep lot while the larger story unfolds in front of you there really was no unfolding this time around since Leon handles any obstacle and insists you stick to your measly gym challenge while he saves the world the gym portion of the game doesn't have to be relegated to the B plot but that's just how Game Freak treats sword and shield are no exception after you saved the world the championship match is rescheduled to three days later I will admit that this was the most highly anticipated championship fight I've ever experienced in a Pokemon game and I was actually quite nervous going in this nervousness was mostly attributed to my self-made restrictions I placed upon myself in order to have a more enjoyable experience but it was heightened nonetheless I barely came out on top and finally defeated the undefeatable and then the game ends I believe the campaign would have been significantly stronger if they just focused on the gym challenge aspect more by fleshing it out I remember reading leaked plots before the game dropped one of which stated that Leon was boosted up by sponsors but was a cheater he was winning matches that were rigged and Rose had a part to play in that as well this brief synopsis of a fake leak is infinitely more interesting than the tacked together plot that Game Freak went with the player character is just a side character in the galore quest a second fiddle to Leon until he is chameleon capacitated so that the player can take the wheel for once they should have found excuses to write neon out of the story to give the player the opportunity to play the game but instead he sticks around having a champion time while you're relegated to the B plot don't get me wrong I like Leon as a champion and the fight with him was very satisfying perhaps if they meet Leon the player character instead the game would have been more interesting the post game is pretty abysmal you basically go on a bunch of kwench Elad entacle quest where you need to take down dynamaxx pokemon in certain gyms there are two new antagonists arguably the worst design characters in the game who proclaim to be the new kings of Gilad they run around wreaking havoc by mysteriously forcing Pokemon to the Dynomax their plan is to bring the lar under control of the royal lineage once again they will achieve this by exposing the true nature of the legendary dogs by forcing Pokemon to Dynomax actually no the plan was to bombard the dogs with Galore particles but what are Guillard particles what do they do exactly how did they work where did they get them from how is it administered no clue it's alluded that Galera particles are how the brothers were able to force Pokemon to Dynomax in a throwaway line by peers he claims those random Pokemon were little experiments maybe they were testing the functionality of their Dallara particle emitting weapon not only is no such a weapon mentioned or brought up ever but how it piers possibly no that was the case to me it seems like their little experiments were nothing more than redundant fluff to artificially pad out the epilogue play duration the whole fetch quest of going Stadium and stadiums completely unrelated to the brothers true goal of framing the legendary dogs of atrocities by making them go berserk the twins confessed that it was their ancestors who revised history like hiding the dog statues behind the mural in an attempt to take credit by her scaring the truth this caused the Royals of Guillard to be lauded and revered as heroes even though they were manipulative liars who even to present-day are attempting to obtain that same faux reverence that they recently lost due to the uncovering of recent events they managed to successfully bombard Zaman zento with galore particles causing it to go berserk the player character is tasked with calming it down which it then tries to jump hop this asean comes to the rescue and stop pizzamas enta who proceeds to run away the player is then given the opportunity to battle and catch the box legend after that you head back to the woods to catch up with hop for the final battle for the very first time your rival actually captures a box legend and then fights you with it which I thought was pretty sweet this is followed by some pretty wholesome dialogue with a decently satisfying conclusion to Hopps character arc that's the entirety of the story for sword and shield I'm giving the story portion of the game an okay rating mostly in part because the gym challenge aspect was actually really well done while just about everything else was subpar at best the main story lacks cohesion and the narrative surrounding it is extremely muddled the climax feels contrived and forced Rosa's character is butchered to meet the needs of the plot the player characters exclusion from many of the stories key events also greatly holds it back the story and the epilogue is equally as confusing with the sudden inclusion of Galera particles alongside confusing motivations from the main antagonist this would have been a great opportunity to dive deeper into the history of galore but instead the player character is subjected to random raid battles that accomplish nothing narrative or plot wise the antagonist ik twins are also uninspired extremely one-dimensional uninteresting and overall unlikable with the plot out of the way let's get into the characters I will start off with Leon since I've talked about him a fair amount already as I've mentioned before he's the center of attention in the game stealing the spotlight at every opportunity I like Leon as a character he's confident and sure of himself he wants to do the right thing he reaches out and helps others including the player character and his little brother he's also highly competent and entirely dependable I wish there was more intimate interactions between Leon and hop as hop has a rough time for a bit which we will get into Leon could have been the light in the darkness for ha but we didn't get a chance to see anything like that Leon is just too overpowered for his own good he's literally referred to as the unbeatable champion which suggests that he can't lose there's nothing the player could have done that Leon couldn't have done better some could argue the only reason the player was able to catch Eterna tiss was because Leon warned him down for us and the only reason that player succeeded is because of the legendary dogs assisting before then Leon steamrolled through any presented challenge leaving the player with nothing to do but to continue the Jim challenge he's a pretty impressive champion through and through and I thoroughly enjoyed the battle with him he never backs down from a challenge no matter how hard and even acknowledges that the player character added the strongest Pokemon to their party which invokes a excitement in him he has a true champions mentality hop is your rival he's also extremely annoying especially in the beginning he makes up a majority of the text-based cutscenes and they cannot be skipped which means he drags on and on usually repeating the same thing how he will be the best or other useless information hop is also one of the weakest rivals simply because he chooses the starter wheat to yours so your first few initial encounters are trivialized hop does actually succeed in having a bit of anarchic around near the halfway point hop starts to doubt himself and his capabilities when it comes to Pokemon training he is challenged by bead and proceeds to lose hop takes this loss extremely personal bead implants a seed of doubt that has hop question his desires to become the best pokemon trainer of all time hop is Leone's brother which means he's the brother of the unbeatable champion this places additional pressures on to hop as he now has to meet high expectations placed on to him by his brother he feels he needs to uphold the family name and /or the honor in a sense this is where I feel Leon Dida to step in more to give his troubled little brother some much-needed direction to empower hop and to reassure him that he doesn't need to satisfy any outstanding external expectations he just needs to follow his own path this would have been a great character defining moment for both Leon and Hawk and whatever it hops arc a lot more satisfying in the end after hop loses to beat he goes on a pretty nasty losing streak he continues to lose to the player character which honestly made me feel pretty bad after everytime it crushed him as opposed to satisfied he loses to Gym Leaders he lost to Rose he even lost to one of the weirdos in the epilogue this forces him to take a step back to reevaluate his priorities and motivations and he eventually comes to the conclusion that he's not fit to be a pokemon trainer hop had an odd obsession with imitating his brother as much as possible in the hopes of being successful when you fight hoppy the Pokemon League he even has the exact same intros Leon which I thought was a pretty cool touch but it's not enough to just copy someone else's style or strategy you need to develop your own unique identity that complements you as a person that's the lesson that hop was trying to master throughout his own journey hop is able to jump out from his brothers massive shadow looming over him and is able to carve out his own path even if it's a different path from that of his brother and the player character Sonya is the catalyst user whenever the plot needs to be driven forward she offers almost all of the exposition in the game that has to do with the overarching main plot and that's about it you learned that she went on her own Pokemon adventure back in the day and it was even a rival to the Leon but dropped out while Leon went on to be the greatest trainer in the region not all his sunshine and rainbows for Sonya she's dealing with some very personal issues she recognizes Leones grant accomplishments and often compares them to herself and feels dejected and worthless as a result since she hasn't achieved any significant accomplishments of her own this hazard come across as passive aggressive and snide towards Leon perhaps due to an underlying jealousy an old man in a house right outside the lab in wedge hurts hints that Leon and Sonya use to have a healthy rivalry but fails to get into details this does imply that the rivalry may have gone sour which may be one of the reasons Sonya ended her gym challenge prematurely perhaps Leon was a love interest but fell for another girl or maybe Sonya just couldn't keep up the old man's wife does mention that Leon never held back even in practice matches maybe Leon was just too overwhelming for Sonya for Sally left with only speculation as their relationship both past and present isn't explored in any meaningful way throughout the game which is disappointing seeing as how there's a lot of potential interesting history between the two Sonya's whole deals that she wants to prove to everyone including herself that she's capable of great things is competent and has talent she wants to unearth Galarza mysterious past in order to claim the finding of a lifetime to put her name on a pedestal she yearns to elevate her social status and fear she will grow old and withered without proving her worth Sonya is actually a pretty dark and complex character underneath her bubbly exterior even with a little bit that is revealed to us which makes her a wasted potential all the more frustrating Magnolia steps down in Sonya supplanter taking on the important role of regional professor Sonya is the first character to assume this role during a campaign this is a huge moment for Sonya and is further complimented by a book that documents her many findings regarding the legend uncle our she thanks the player-character and Hawke for helping her find her way giving her insight into what she cherished and why the eight Gym Leaders are some of the more memorable ones as of late this is thanks largely in part to their animations in-game which are expressive and unique to each individual that's right the leaders actually have some high quality animations stuff like right on snapping a selfie before he Giganta maxes his Pokemon is just so awesome it makes you imagine a scenario where he would post the image on social media after securing a fat w and makes you appreciate the character even more despite nothing like that being in the game itself this is only possible because of these solid animations each trainer brings to the table the lack of voice acting hurts for sure and would have fleshed out each of them even or and their involvement in the story is that an unfortunate bare-minimum with peers as the exception despite these shortcomings these new gym leaders are welcomed addition to the series now will personally remember most of them for years to come Rose is arguably the worst villain introduced to the series if you can even call him that there have been some stinkers and the positives for sure with some really stupid ideas and planned execution but at least you could understand their motivations behind those stupid ideas and terrible plans Rose wants to save galore by destroying it it's not clear how flooding the region and dynamics energy is somehow supposed to avert an energy crisis within 1000 years not to mention that it has the unfortunate side effect of unleashing tons of giant rampaging wild Pokemon like something straight out of attack on Titan this has the opposite effect of what Rose is trying to accomplish how did Rose even learn about eternities where did he find it why was Rose in such a rush to fix a problem that has a window of 1,000 years his plan is just so incredibly idiotic and his motivations are contradicted by his actions I was unable to suspend my disbelief enough to the point where I could believe that Rose had exhausted every alternative course of action and had no choice but to go with the one he went with it feels more like Rose did what he did so that the stakes can be artificially increased in order for the campaign to have a grand conclusion instead of having a character act organically of their own accord Rose is nothing but a plot device which is unfortunate because he was an interesting character up until the very end he was established as a very charismatic competent and even brilliant man not only was he the chairman of the Jim challenge but he procured a monopoly on power distribution in galore with his company macrocosmos he's no idiot yet his actions at the end of the game suggest otherwise when he wasn't acting as the Chairman he would go out in his hilarious civilian attire donning a cap and shades with a pair of polka dots short shorts this is in stark contrast whose more serious business oriented suit and makes him come across as more relaxed and comical in nature it's never really explained why he dressed this way but it's funny regardless he has an odd moment with bein where he seems to forget who B it is despite taking beat in at a young age and taking care of him he's B's surrogate father he gave be at his very first Pokemon and he even endorsed him for the gym challenge it's established that Oh lianna asked be to collect wishing stars for Rose in order to give to Eternity to enact his dark they plan which is of the utmost priority and importance to rose he may not have explicitly given the order to be himself most likely and listing only on his help due to being too busy but he had the very least knew about it so I was extremely confusing how or why he would momentarily forget who bead was perhaps rose as some kind of underlying mental deficiency which might be attributed to the extreme lapse of rational judgment later on in the story or maybe rose simply doesn't care much about bead and it's just using him to obtain his ultimate objective when bead attempts to destroy the mural Rose genuinely looks disappointed which would suggest emotional investment on Rose's part in his relationship with bead roses fate is ambiguous it's mentioned in a throwaway line that after the eternities event he turned himself in a flaccid end to a flaccid character speaking of bead he's one of the three rivals in the game he's rude arrogant condescending and cocky to the point of being narcissistic it is actually one of the better characters in the game as it's very satisfying to blow him up in battle so it's tragic when he is practically deleted from the story in the second half he starts off as a giant [ __ ] who has an endorsement even more prestigious than the unbeatable champion the chairman himself he's very full of himself leading to him overestimating his abilities which makes fighting against him and winning very satisfying you learn early on that he's collecting wishing stars although he doesn't specify why the next time you see him you learn that he's more than just the Chairman's endure to see they have a history and you also learn that a huge motivation for bead is to assist the Chairman in any way that he can one can deduce that bead is collecting wishing stars for the sake of the Chairman after you collect your fourth bad you run into beat again who is trying to destroy a historical mural in order to you guessed it collect wishing stars to gain the Chairman's favor it's unclear how destroying the painted wall will somehow grant beed the wishing stars he's looking for as later on when the wall falls there are no wishing stars just a pair of statues that slightly drives the overarching plot forward with some exposition from Sonia it makes no sense why bead would do this and he pays an exorbitant price for doing something so reckless that would have you did zero wishing star net gain in the end anyways did Beaton know that there was a hollowed-out section behind the mural or where his actions simply unnecessary convenience to drive the plot forward I'm leaning towards the latter after losing to the player character for the third time in a row he is confronted by Chairman Rose who was disappointed in bee and decides to revoke his endorsement effectively disqualifying beed from the gin challenge indefinitely this is a devastating blow to beed as a character Wells actions were questionable and selfish completely disregarding the historical significance of the mural he was about to destroy he was doing it to help the chairman he is however crushed in battle removed from the gin challenge and worst of all he disappoints the one person who has been driving beads motivations up to this point in a story each should be beyond traumatized after this event or so you would think you run into beat again shortly after and he seems perfectly fine in fact he's motivated more than ever to continue helping the chairman even though the Chairman crushed his dreams you have to give respect to bead resounding resilience and optimism considering the dire circumstance he finds himself in he's willing to approach the chairman to ask for a second chance until the gym leader opal approaches him and he decides to go with her instead of helping the chairman and then disappears from the game until the very end in the pokemon league when you chat with bead in the pokemon league he admits that the Chairman completely disowned him for making a single mistake which no one really seemed to care about in the end anyways he then goes into a bit of detail about his experiences with opal bead is a different character and I would argue a worse one he went from being overly confident sure of himself and dismissive to weak diffident and submissive literally all of his recent development was off-screen so it doesn't feel earned and you aren't as sympathetic and investing in bead as a result before you fight beat for the last time he wagered that if he lost he would retire but when he loses the crowd pleads for him to not retire so he does it he is always too easily influenced / manipulated by somebody else and this doesn't change he's first manipulated by Rose / Juliana them by opal and then by complete randoms in the crowd he never makes important decisions for himself throughout the entire game he just does what others tell him to do which is disappointing he didn't decide to become the next fairy gym leader on his own he was coaxed by those around him his cockiness that made him surprisingly likeable and charming has washed away in the end and replaced with nothing that is as endearing or memorable essentially killing the character Marty is the last of the three rivals and is an extremely underwhelming underdeveloped and largely inconsequential for the entirety of the game she doesn't really do anything and she doesn't have much of a character to go off of she's essentially unexcused to include yo who are equally a disposable and the worst evil team introduced to the series leaked rumors posited that Marnie was some kind of runaway princess who wanted to take down the evil and corrupt organization run by Rose the actual Marnie comes nowhere near as intriguing as that premise she's just a girl that's there and remains that way from beginning to end you don't really learn why she's doing the gym challenge other than to become champion for herself and the only reason I can think of team yel following her around is because she's Peters sister Pierce is the leader of Team yellow so team yel is basically just a bunch of weirdos obsessed with their boss's sister Oh Leona is just as wooden and hollow as Marnie she's Rose's assistant is always by a side and that's it she seems to have the capability to flip her typical and different demeanor into one filled with intense rage well Leona's animations and her battle have more character than her entire inclusion throughout the story which speaks volumes to how little she has to offer her soul motivations are directly tied to the Chairman's similar to how bead was in the beginning they should have flushed her out by diving deeper into macrocosmos a large business conglomerate owned by Rose whom she's the vice president of they're very similar to aether Foundation Room Sun and Moon but are way less significant to the overall story and the player is only introduced to them in the end of the game where you fight off a bunch of them in order to reach Rose even though the Pokemon don't speak a great amount of character can be derived from the designs cries and rolls within the game speaking of the designs they're really well done in fact my all-time favorite Pokemon ever comes from Jenny I also really appreciate all the non wild overworld Pokemon the main allure of a Pokemon game is the Pokemon themselves so seeing them sprawled out wherever you go is an excellent way to immerse the player into the world of Pokemon to conclude the characters some had decent arcs some were ruined and others were planks of wood the designs for the most part is solid especially the Pokemon over all the characters are okay [Music] the music was one of the few things I was looking forward to before the game dropped and I would say I wasn't disappointed for the most part there are some straight bangers like Olli Anna's battle theme [Music] Marni's battle team [Music] and Eternity sis first encounter theme [Music] I could go on honestly some otherwise great tracks I feel were ruined with the inclusion of the dog locals I mean I get it the Box legends are dago's but the dog such wolf vocals clash and distract more than contribute to making the piece better the music does a great job of establishing the tone and feel within a given area that wild area has some tracks that capture that breath of the wild aesthetic with the common piano [Music] bagpipes serve up that Scottish feel which ties into the inspiration behind the region the UK [Music] one of the essential contributing factors to the success of the gym challenge is thanks mostly in part to the music it captures that epic scale that made me fall in love with the older Pokemon console titles the music for the gym leaders is dynamic meaning it changes throughout the course of the battle it starts out very energetic which gets you pumped up and excited for the battle that is about to unfold when one of your Pokemon faints the music tones down in energy and the main melody is drowned out by a roaring bass which does a great job at heightening tension knowing that you're closer to possibly losing when you finally reach the gym leader his last remaining Pokemon the music shifts again slowly building up in tempo as the crowd erupts into a chance this is followed up by the gym leader Dyna maxing the Pokemon significantly increasing their power and threat level this was amplified a my run due to denying my ability to you Dynomax which means the gym leader was a genuine threat forcing me to make the best place I could in order to come out on top all of this is why the gym aspect of this game is the best it has ever been game freak's succeeded in making the gym challenge feel like a real sport of Guillard and for that I commend them overall the music is good and is one of the best parts of sword and shield hands down now let's get into the actual game itself it plays just like any other Pokemon game and has all of the elements present in past titles with a few tweaks here and there you no longer need to hold a button to run as the character moves how you would expect them to tilt a bit to walk tilt all the way to run this is a great addition it makes traversing the game more enjoyable without having to break your thumb in the process this is a far cry from the other switch Pokemon title let's go where a movement felt very rigid as opposed to the smoothness present in sort of shield a change that was introduced in let's go unfortunately found his way into sword and shield and that is permanent experience share and past titles experience share was always optional in order to cater to different kinds of play styles typically if you wanted to make things easier you would turn it on and if you wanted a bit more of a challenge you would turn it off Pokemon has always lacked a basic difficulty setting so turning off experience share was seen as hard mode Game Freak has made the decision for the player this time around by forcing experience sure to be on at all times for the entire party this has detrimental consequences to the games first of which it makes the game's mind numbingly easy trivializing every encounter and removing basically any incentive from training any of your other Pokemon seeing as how the game does this for you to avoid over leveling due to the experience share it force me to speed through the game while avoiding anything that gave additional experience this means that I was forced to skip many new features of the game like raid battles and polka jobs to avoid over leveling and lobotomizing the game in the process I also avoided while battles almost entirely which is unfortunate because overworld and is a nice addition that carried over from let's go that I never really got to play around with even forgoing these additional sources of experience and still found myself over level during certain parts of the game there is the option to box your entire team and just run around with a single pokemon but not only is this time-consuming and tedious you shouldn't be forced to jump through hoops that were not only not present in past titles but place they are deliberately by the developers that's called bad game design in order to produce any semblance of challenge to circumvent the disastrous experience share system I had to put in place some self-made restrictions which were one removed Pokemon Center healing the game unfortunately fully heals you around almost every corner regardless but there was some nice resource management required and taken care of my own Pokemon was surprisingly rewarding to know dynamics which is the premier gimmick of this generation that I will get into shortly 3 no items during battle and 4 set battle style thankfully this option was still available as shift style breaks the game these restrictions actually made the game enjoyable and challenging especially with regards to the gym leaders and their dynamics Pokemon game freak's recurrent design philosophy is to introduce a new battle gimmick each generation first it was mega evolutions a welcomed addition that breathed new life into some obscure and forgotten Pokemon this was followed by Z moves which were one-time use terribly animated super powerful attacks the news gimmick is Dynomax I was unimpressed when it was first introduced since the Pokemon just get bigger and my opinion has not really changed since then the only good thing about Dynomax is that it makes the campaign more exhilarating and difficult but only if you refuse to use the mechanic itself which is ironic that's the only thing I like about Dynomax the mechanic itself is inherently broken being banned from smokin singles banned in doubles and even restricted in ubers a tier dedicated to the most broken things in the game a testament to how absurdly powerful Dynomax actually is this is because dynamics makes the pokemon extremely bulky by doubling its HP making it almost impossible to one-shot said Pokemon even with a four time super effective attack the dynamics Pokemon has given access to hyper beam level attacks that cannot miss that grant very beneficial bonus effects during the three turn duration of the Power dynamaxx also makes some attacks outright fail and the Pokemon cannot be removed from battle this limits both strategy and counterplay when facing up against dynamics it can also be activated at any time with any Pokemon which adds a surprise factor to the mechanic and makes it hard to play around the Pokemon is also free to hold any item they wish dynamaxx has the ability to outright decide the result of the battle some mega evolutions were obscenely powerful as well but it was limited to a select pool of mons and they had to sacrifice their health item dynamaxx has no such restrictions I also find dynamics unappealing because the Pokemon just gets bigger game free tried to address this with new Dynomax forms called Giganta max which is literally just giant mega evolutions except almost every single Giganta max form is extremely ugly with very few exceptions the only difference between Dynomax and Giganta max is that Giganta max grants a new form it's limited to certain Pokemon and their main stab gets a slight animation tweaked with a different bonus effect and that's it there's the third transformation called the tournament's but so far this is exclusive to wild eternity z' the mechanic as a whole is a confusing mess that gets stale pretty quickly especially with regards to competitive battles each battle is decided by Dynomax as opposed to the players skill this makes the game feel more like a coin flip than a game of chess battles are focused more on Dynomax use than how the game is played and finally dynamaxx trivializes every encounter in the main campaign if you do choose to use it further contributing to the lack of challenge found in the game without self-made restrictions challenge is only derive from the player not the developer despite that being a developer's job not the players battles are still sluggish and slow and feel virtually identical to the 3ds counterparts despite being on superior hardware with additional resources sword and shield really do feel like a 3ds sport a majority of the time Kempton is a good example to show tiny tweaks that optimize performance and experience in battle for example instead of having status effects played one at a time like in sword and shield tantum has them resolved at the same time this may not seem like much but it makes each encounter feel more responsive concise and speeds up interactions greatly other turn-based games like persona allow you to fast forward gameplay during battle greatly speeding up the tempo of a fight if you so desire Pokemon hasn't changed up the battle formula at all it still plays exactly like it always has ever since the Gameboy it is making sword and shield feel dated and clunk majority of the animations are lacking some attacks not even animated at all this is because every single animation for all Pokemon were reused from past titles despite the removal of half of all species and the promise of enhanced expression this is not to say that all of the Pokemon animations are terrible there are some impressible inside parable the inconsistency in the quality of the animations is dumped on me I can't believe that double kick a move not even animated is in the same game as pyro ball one of the best-looking Pokemon attacks I've ever seen guess that's what happens when you shove a bunch of six-year-old low quality animations from the 3ds into your switch game without revising or updating them to be appropriate for the console the models are also exactly the same with only a select few Pokemon receiving minor tweaks the Pokemon malls are not properly scaled and seemed to retain their 3ds proportions despite now being on a home console which supports the 3ds port aspect of the game this is disappointing as one of the main draws of a console Pokemon title was having the opportunity to see Pokemon size relative to one another something that a game boy simply couldn't accomplish was demonstrated perfectly on home consoles sword shield fails to capture this magic it's odd that Game Freak introduced a mechanic where the Pokemon are gigantic but somehow failed to scale the regular Pokemon properly this shows a lack of care and attention to detail that was captured in much older games the only reason I can surmise to explain why the Pokemon retained their 3ds proportions is because Game Freak are obsessed with a particular camera angle it's an angle that emulates the one used in the handheld games showing the back of your Pokemon in front of the opposing Pokemon this angle would not be possible if the Pokemon say where Lord came out because there would be too large and it just wouldn't work from the specific perspective that Game Freak insists on retaining despite not translating to 3d very well Game Freak was fine with emitting this absurd and unnecessary design restriction when introducing Dynomax as the camera pans out accordingly to fit the massive pokemon into the frame this is not an issue at all in other console titles due to a dynamic camera that pans all around the battlefield Sauron shield also have a dynamic camera but it always defaults to the Game Boy perspective at the start of every turn it's a neat homage to the Game Boy days but it has some major repercussions to the actual game that just worth it one of the things missing from current Pokemon games that was present and past titles with regards to the Pokemon themselves is nuanced old Pokemon always made a return but each game they felt new and fresh due to an overhaul in assets they would get new sprites some of the sprites being animated depending on the generation some creatures were familiar but they still felt new all the same the shift to 3d makes development easier of the same assets can be repurposed for new titles but at the cost of nuance a large portion of sword and shield isn't new it's stuff we seen for the past six years and this takes away a bit of the magic of the region especially for the first real attempt at a pokemon console title the Emmy feature from XY or refresh in Sun and Moon returns for the third time and Pokemon can and overall it's a downgrade you can no longer feed or even pet your Pokemon like you could in the past instead you were given toys like the stick which you wave around in your pokemons face until they're fed up an attack and a ball which your Pokemon fetch and then bring back to you petting your Pokemon or feeding them by hand was a lot more personal and meaningful and you were rewarded with some of the best animations in the series the toy stripped this intimate experience and replaces it with a sterilized watered-down version that is less enjoyable it's also prone to glitches and bugs occasionally trapping Pokemon and infinite run cycle loops that they can't escape from which completely shatters what little immersion that was gained you can technically feed your Pokemon with the curry minigame sword oohs the Pokemon pretend to eat invisible curry while the player-character eats the real stuff which comes across as awkward and downright cruel at least you're rewarded with a cute animation like in Pokemon at me / refresh the curry minigame itself is like the popping minigame from gen 4 just like with those games the appeal of making curry with the minigame wears off pretty quickly Pokemon camp was another feature that I skipped entirely thanks to the mandatory experience share in order to avoid gaining additional experience that was stripped difficulty and therefore lower enjoy ability of the game the concept of the wild area is the series first encounter with a controllable camera it took the franchise over 20 years but they finally managed to do it and it's honestly not very impressive the wild area is one of the worst looking locations in the entire game the textures used here are terrible like the infamous trees and despite their now being over oil Pokemon in the game the wild area at times feels lifeless and Barun due to the short render distance of the Pokemon Pokemon only render when the player is within a very close range this means that Pokemon pop in and out of existence as you run around in the wild area which not only looks bad but has the game come across as unoptimized and cheap it's a shame the dev team wasn't able to implement a more clever way to mask the popin or find a way to extend the range the wild area itself is about as large as Hyrule Field from ocarina of time and about just as empty - at least Hyrule Field has some secrets for you to uncover incentivizing the player to explore in order to uncover all of them the wild area has no such thing it's nothing more than a very large route with a controllable camera that isn't very pretty to look at exploration doesn't yield any gain except for a few items true to pebble there are new species you could hunt for but as addressed earlier if the Pokemon is too high of a level you cannot even catch them so it defeats the purpose of interacting with them until you get the necessary badge there are portals laid out everywhere that gives you access to raids that I will discuss later on the buy all day is a great concept offering that open-world field that so many have desired for a Pokemon game but it definitely needs a lot of work hopefully the next game is able to build off of the wild area as opposed to placing it into the game what seems like the last minute as this is the only area with camera manipulation and the while there is overall presentation feels unfinished while the wild area is a graphical disaster the rest of the game doesn't look nearly as bad with some areas actually looking like they belong on the switch places like Balon Lee are using with personality and are great to look at unfortunately most towns are extremely tiny so despite some of the locality looking great they are mostly forgettable some towns are a bit larger but are mostly empty and lifeless this is in stark contrast to places like host Elias city in black and white who are populated with NPCs that brings a sense of life and energy not present in places like windin from sword shield towns are mostly memorable depending on how useful they are to the player in past titles you would always remember the town that the movie Lerner resided in or where the move de leader was located in order to rid yourself of those pesky HMS thankfully HMS are not present for the second generation Roah with the taxi service taken care of flying and the bike taking care of surfing these are great additions and traversing the world of Pokemon has never been so streamlined the movie learner and deleter have also been merged into one location the Pokemon Center which means you can travel just about anywhere to access these useful features there's never any real reason to return to a town once you visited it for the first time except for the talents at house customization stores this is gabe restored iteration of trainer customization and just like before you can change your hair eyes and clothes to your own preference a minor criticism that ends up being very annoying once your clothing collection gets larger is that you can't see the items in your list only their names so if you don't remember the name of your favorite shirt you need to equip every single piece of clothing until you land on the correct one typically when playing with avatar customization in a game the customization piece is usually displayed visually so you know what it looks like the weirdest part is I gained free solve this problem back in X&Y game freak's very first attempt at trainer customization in X&Y whenever you hover over an item it would show you exactly what that item look like this was very helpful when looking for a specific item without having to equip every single piece every single time Sun and Moon suffer from the same issues found in sword and shield despite being the third iteration the customization system in sword and shield is technically worse than it was in X&Y due to not being as user-friendly exploration as a whole is extremely linear sword and shields suffer from corridor syndrome where majority of the game is nothing but straight lines spiked muth one of the towns in the game is quite literally just a straight line for beginning to end there's no real exploration and therefore no true sense of adventure to be found throughout the campaign the older titles have large sprawling caves and locations that required thought and effort to traverse successfully these locations were separated into floors each as big as the last there are also some hidden areas where it wasn't immediately apparent how to reach or required story progression to gain access sword and shield doesn't really have anything like this the game only has two caves both of which are just straight lines with the very little diverting paths in between the only verticality of the game has to offer our ladders that bring you from one small area to another small area these ladders also have the unfortunate side-effect of freezing the game whenever they're in use this doesn't break the game or anything but it certainly detracts from your immersion and investment in the world the escape robe was changed into a key item in this game at first I thought it was a cool idea but this change actually lessens resource management not that it would have made much of a difference in sort and shield to anyway because you never have any reason to use the escape rope this is because the entire game is extremely straightforward a straight line from beginning to end this is perfectly illustrated in sword and shields panel right Victory Road usually the very last route in a Pokemon game is the final challenge before the Elite Four typically it's a difficult place to navigate as it requires you to bring along every skill you've learned up to that point it's also flooded with strong wild Pokemon and trainers alike the victory road in sword and shield is called a route 10 aside from having some of the strongest trainers seen up to that point it's just a straight line is an excellent representation of what sword and shield plays like for almost the entirety of its a relatively short campaign fudge a fellow content creator sums up the linearity issue in sword and shield really well I highly suggest you check out footage stuff he makes great videos a link to the video I'm about to reference from him as well as a link to his channel will be in the description but fortunately we have not lost the mini Ahri I've said before that linearity in and of itself is not a problem and I stand by that but here's the thing most games that are linear in the way that Pokemon sword and shield is linear are linear because they have complex deep and interesting stories that they need to tell you games like Okami and the Last of Us that I've talked about before these games don't want you straying too far off the beaten path because they have a story to tell you and that story is important and even then especially in the case of okami they still let you do a little bit of expiration and traversing the world on your own sword and shield story is not deep complex or interesting enough to justify how much it is boxing you into small areas with no opportunity to explore almost every single time you make it to a new major town city or location in this game you're there like you're stuck there you have to do everything you can do there to satisfy the story before you can move on your paths out of that location are going to be blocked off in basically every direction apart from back at no point can you ever journey ahead to the next route or town ahead of time and have your own little adventure when you first stumble upon at lockdown it feels amazing because it's so tucked away from everything else and quite hard to get to and hard to find and finding this whole new pretty secretive area is really really cool this is the kind of thing that pokemon sword and shield is missing and in my opinion this is the kind of thing that pokemon has been missing for a while now this sense of a cohesive open world a sense of genuine exploration and not constantly being boxed off and forced into small areas there's no town in sword and shield that is non compulsory you'll go everywhere and basically do everything the game wants you to do there's also a lot of empty space with nothing of substance to offer I came across a giant hotel that was nothing but one giant empty floor no hidden items and barely any NPCs interact with none of which offered any useful items or advice the game doesn't reward the time you invest to explore what little it has to offer there's also a line of several houses in windin better a direct one-to-one copy-paste of one another right down to the placement of garbage in the trash can tiny things like this make the world feel incredibly small artificial and inorganic the postgame gameplay wise is lacking in content the brave battles during the epilogue aren't any different from rate battles you can experience in the wild area dens after the epilogue you finally gain access to the battle tower sword and shield have one of the worst iterations of the battle tower it's so unbelievably limited they for some reason completely removed multi battles which was present in the battle tree in their recent titles this is very disappointing because playing with friends in the battle tower was actually really fun multi battles also allowed you to team up with the many different characters you came across on your journey something you can no longer do in sorting shield they remove the super formats in favor of a tier system this is worse because the battle tower is brain-dead easy for every single tier and doesn't get substantially more difficult in between the tiers unlike the difference in past titles from regular to super they also remove the awesome feature of recognizable and notable trainers from across the Pokemon franchise the only super boss trainer in the battle tower is Leone who is rocking different attire dynamaxx completely destroys the battle tower as Leone is one of the only trainers who is actually capable of Dino maxing and it's always the same Charizard which makes Leone pathetically predictable so you can easily run through any trainer you come across by blowing them up with your busted Dynomax Pokemon there's way less Pokemon to play with as a result of the National Dex man as well as less Pokemon to play against this battle tower is a horrible downgrade compared to the battle tree in every way the only good thing I can say about the battle tower is that you can purchase mints with battle points which allows you to change the active ability of your Pokemon this is one of the few examples of exclusive sword and shield innovation that is sorely lacking other than the terrible battle tower you're left with the dex completion and shiny hunting the Dex is way easier to complete due to the pool of available Pokemon being much smaller and shiny hunting is actually worse than it was in let's go as you can't see shiny pokemon in the overworld despite that not being a problem and let's go you can also breathe and train up competitive teams a nice change that makes trading easier is the supplements are no longer capped at 100 V's per stat and can now be used to max stats which defeats the purpose of Eevee trading against wild Pokemon so long as you have sufficient capital breeding functions the exact same and the bottle cap system that maxes out IVs via hyper training makes your return but you still need to max out your pokemons levels in order to use the bottle caps which is extremely inconvenient and you're better off just breeding pokémon with IVs in mind the overall gameplay experience is bad [Music] there's very little improvements or innovation throughout and there are quite a few regressions which is just unacceptable for a series of over two decades of games to improve upon under their belt the battles play out just as they always have they are still sluggish and feel like the entire system which has ported over from the 30s a Wii game from 2006 has a more engaging and exciting battle system that makes every battle feel grand and important I will concede that gym battles managed to capture this feeling with its atmospheric setting mixed with the dynamic music and high-stakes gameplay most things look better than they did on the 3ds thanks to the massive spike in hardware capabilities allowing a native HD resolution of 1920 by 1080 but the game is capped at 30fps despite not being not technologically impressive and even bit in some areas like in the wild area sword and shield don't boast groundbreaking AI they don't utilize physics there's very little collision but the mechanics are extremely simple the gameplay itself is actually quite static the quality of the textures dipped substantially in some areas and the graphics as a whole are some of the weakest on the console at least for a triple-a title the game doesn't look or feel like it's pushing the system at all yet the performance is unimpressive regardless the game removed all touchscreen capabilities which makes it feel less intuitive than even let's go which still has touch functionality intact this is sorely missed especially when playing with a switch undocked we're having access to the built-in touchscreen would make the experience more enjoyable and accessible another awesome feature left behind from let's go is the ability for your Pokemon to follow you a beloved staple from heartgold SoulSilver Game Freak lets you not only have follow Pokemon but they even allow you to ride your own pokemon which was so awesome and this Pokemon interactivity is my favorite part about the terrible let's go games it's disappointing to see Game Freak omit the inclusion of this great feature Game Freak will let you ride your Pokemon in the retro Gameboy era routes yet when they finally introduced their very first open area they stripped the ability to ride your Pokemon or have them follow you it honestly makes no sense why there are no follow pokemon or writable pokemon and sword and shield it's cool to see the bike returned other than the atrocious clown suit they forced upon you whenever you ride it I don't know why Game Freak insists on implementing these ugly ride uniforms you've never needed to equip a clown suit in the past and they dropped it in let's go but then brought it back randomly for sort and shield it seems like gamefreak just arbitrarily decide what to bring back and what to exclude depending on how they feel any given day most of the innovative features present in the game are just carried over from other titles like the mobile PC box or overworld Pokemon Pokemon interactions exploration the battle tower the online which we will get to the postgame trainer customization and the amount of overall content is just simply worse in almost every way progressing in quality from what was previously established in past titles this is devastatingly disappointing and hurts even more when considering how highly anticipated this game was and what this game could have been there's an obscene amount of hand-holding due to the linear nature of the game there's basically zero incentive to play through a second time as each sequential save will play out exactly like the last with little variance between them this is because the game tells you where to go and when everyone will have near identical experiences while playing this game because you're constantly forced into a box and prevented from exploring there's nothing new or exciting to incur for yourself no thought is required when traversing and the rails that you are put on from start to finish is generally insulting to the players intelligence the wild area grants some leeway but it doesn't take long to see all of it and when you do there's nothing left although the HTM system is flawed it was a great tool used to generate secrets and hidden areas removing them has opened up the game to the player but that leaves no room for discovery it would be really cool if game break implemented a requirement based system for progression purposes maybe requiring certain Pokemon or certain attacks to access new locations instead of forcing the player to teach Pokemon hmmm cut an extremely underwhelming and less than useful move require the player to teach their fire type Pokemon a fire type move to burn down a tree blocking a path you see an item on a cliff that you can't reach require the player to use a Flying type Pokemon with a flying-type move these are moves that your Pokemon learn naturally and are useful it rewards the player for expanding their team by catching many different kinds of Pokemon it rewards them for properly training their Pokemon it rewards exploration and the player gets the satisfaction of uncovering a secret that wasn't hand fed to them by the game anybody chronicles to does something similar to this effect for example if I want to interact with the spot it requires a certain blade with certain skills this would translate perfectly in a Pokemon game instead of requiring the HM Move die just required the player to have a water-type pokemon or specific pokemon that is established as an underwater guide maybe when the proper requirements are met it will give the player access to a huge secret underwater cavern that has additional glory and lore and maybe even some ultra rare Pokemon this gives power and agency back to the player elements that have been absent in the Pokemon franchise for quite some time now this proposal sounds both exciting and fun it pains me to admit that there's nothing remotely like this found within sword and shield sword and shield are the very first Pokemon games where you need to pay additional cash in order to access its online features this is a fault of Nintendo non came free Nintendo have always had relatively terrible online functionality and the switch is unfortunately no exception despite now costing a subscription to play online game freak perfected online with the player search system or PSS back in X and Y for the 3ds you had quick and easy access to your friends if I had any allowing you to establish trades and battles with minimal issues the GTS was also just one click away for your convenience speaking of GTS it was removed from sword and shield in order to monetize it in Pokemon home but we'll put that aside for the time being everything you ever needed functionality-wise could be found tied up in a neat bow on the bottom screen ever since then online functionality in Pokemon games has been steadily regressing in quality Sun and Moon introduced the atrocity known as festival Plaza a convoluted maze that obscures you from your friend list you just dead see your friends randomly in the overworld I think you have access to a guest list which is random people I think the fact that I don't even know how it works is a testament to how confusing festival positives there's also a VIP list where I put my friends from my friend list due to it being difficult to connect with them because there is no friendless in-game to interact with Game Freak managed to one of themselves by making an even worse system than festival Plaza meet sword and shields why calm and stamp based system this system has completely forgone any list interaction and instead uses a confusing and messy stamp based system how do you find your friend stamps I have no clue it's completely random there is no way in game to communicate with your friends directly to prompt for a trade or a battle or to meet up for a raid you need to establish communication outside of the game in order to organize and arrange a connection the only way to connect in-game is via a passcode be careful however because if the passcode is not unique enough there's a high probability you'll connect with a complete stranger the system is so insanely and unnecessarily bad I don't even know how to properly express it with words knowing you have to pay in order to access this garbage just adds insult to injury trades are more or less the same as they've always been asinine connectivity aside battles however I've taken a massive blow with regards to six-on-six Pokemon sort of the shield adopted yet another terrible let's go edition the battle timer this isn't your typical timer it gives you a total of 20 minutes which seems generous at first until you realize that the timer counts down even during animations it's not like a chess timer where each player would have access to a total of 20 minutes further plays where the timer would pause until the next player was able to make a move it's 20 minutes total animations and all this means that it's an optimal strategy to run the timer with a stall team to win this change alone is incredibly toxic and has killed any motivation for me to partake in full-fledged battles this is one of my favorite things to do any Pokemon games so my disappointment was immeasurable to say the least no restrictions why are you restricted the time there's another online feature called the Victory station where you partake in competitive battles in the battle stadium the battle stadium utilizes the same tier based system found in the battle tower where you start a poke ball tier until you reach a master ball there's only two modes for single and double battles respectively singles has you select up to three pokémon while doubles you can bring in for the semi competitive mode is actually kind of fun until you realize that almost every single battle is decided by Dynomax resulting in each match feeling sailor from one to the next the king enjoyment at a much higher rate compared to previous titles not only is the pool of available Pokemon significantly smaller but the attack pool was also limited with many useful attacks being removed from the game this severely limits the number of creative strategies otherwise possible the dens in the wild area allow you to rate with up to three other players online sometimes I had difficulty connecting to anyone the game of just timeout being unsuccessful in its attempt to establish a team once in the raid itself the flaws of the battle system are more prevalent than ever the gameplay slows to a crawl as you need to wait for each interaction to resolve one at a time this is exacerbated when weather comes into play as each Pokemon week to the weather is ticked each turn individually this adds up turned out to turn and feels like most of this could have been avoided with minor optimized tweaks to the battle system when you are online in the wild area the frames dip substantially you're able to see other players in the wild area but there is no option for you to invite your friends to join you in the wild area which is a missed opportunity overall the online is terrible [Music] it's an embarrassing mess when compared to the PSS and gamefreak should honestly be ashamed beloved features were removed and the player is constantly restricted and prevented from having fun at every turn it's great that game free has made a ranked mode much more accessible than in the past but their gimmick kills a majority of the enjoyment after a while due to it being incredibly over centralizing connecting with friends should never be this difficult organ efficient they streamline this process in the passo it's very frustrating being subjected to this terrible stamp system the experience doesn't feel like a twenty20 mainline Pokemon title on the strongest Nintendo console in existence at the moment to conclude game free continues to play it extremely safe twenty years later the Pokemon franchise refuses to evolve which is ironic for a series focusing on monsters that continually evolved to get better despite all the cuts that were made Game Freak was unable to capitalize on the additional resources granted to them I understand what Game Freak made the cuts that they did it's a harrowing task to include so many different unique characters into a game that gets worse every subsequent installment Sakurai experienced something similar with regards to trophies in Smash ultimate trophies were completely removed but a compromise was made where Sakurai I dumped all of that development time into bringing back every single fighter from the game's inception up until smash 4 on the Wii U this is a fantastic compromise that I'm sure every single fan of the series would agree with the trophies aren't even that important in the grand scheme of things but Sakurai went above and beyond to ensure that no one would be disappointed by their exclusion so what was they compromise for sword and shield keep in mind that the Pokemon aren't just random trophies they're the lifeblood of the entire franchise and over half of them are completely disregarded over 400 pokemon literally every single one being someone's favorite were unusable in the game where was the compromise the graphics well no because most assets like models and animations are completely reused most of which are poor quality let alone all of the awful textures found throughout the game the online well no because the online system and sword shield is borderline offensive you get where I'm going with this the overall game doesn't feel like the additional developmental resources gained from omitting over 400 pokemon or invested elsewhere I'm not going to pretend that developing a game is straightforward or easy issues arise all the time but that's where game three could have gained ground by being transparent with their consumers instead it seemed like Game Freak was more interested in deceiving consumers if it wasn't for the massive leak no one would have known the true extent of the decks cut most assumed that would only be a handful of Pokemon Game Freak also gave off this impression I too thought there would be at least 500 Pokemon and sword and shield so came as a great surprise to learn that sword and shield would only have a total of 400 which is far less than what was available in Pokemon diamond pearl and platinum that drop over 13 years prior at no point did Game Freak or the Pokemon company express to the fans the true gravity of the cut of Game Freak made many excuses for the cut like creating new models and made promises like enhanced expression of the remaining Pokemon and making adjustments to the battle balance instead they reused all of their old assets and they introduced one of the most broken mechanics to the series accomplishing the exact opposite of what they promised I understand the cut but from what I see the cut was not justified no compromise was made and instead consumers are expected to pay more for less since which titles have larger inherent price tags attached to them compared to 3ds titles the worst part is that game free got away with murder the sales restore and shield are conclusive they revealed that the consumer base is complacent with paying more money for less content this sets a precedent where Game Freak doesn't need to put in 100% to produce a commercially successful Pokemon game people will buy it regardless of quality why do more when you can do less as a standalone triple-a title on the switch and the first true mainline Pokemon title to grace consoles the expectations are sky-high many children dreamed of this game to come to fruition many years ago but if I learned anything from recent beloved franchises it's that reality is often disappointing Pokemon is sadly no exception they failed miserably to meet those expectations there are signs of being rushed present everywhere from the infamous Mouse cursors to the entirety of the wild area it's clear that Game Freak were pressed for time which is odd considering they only had to work with half of all Pokemon this time around a majority of the assets for said Pokemon being reused for past installments with all that being said Pokemon Sora and shields are bad games overall [Music] whoo that was quite the mouthful this is my first in-depth review of this nature so I would appreciate any and all feedback what would you rate the game make sure to leave your thoughts down below in the comment section if you liked what you saw consider leaving a thumbs up and if you want to see more make sure to subscribe I wanted to quickly mention that I launched a patreon I know we're all going through some hard times right now there's no obligation if you're willing and able to go the extra mile with additional support I would be beyond grateful I hope you're all doing well and staying safe thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: DistantKingdom

Views: 526,260

Rating: 4.851759 out of 5

Keywords: pokemon, pokemon sword, pokemon shield, pokemon sword and shield, review, guide, detailed review, in-depth review, critical review, sword review, shield review, criticism, gamefreak, gamefreaklied, pokemon animations, high quality animations, isle of armor, crown tundra, dlc packs, bringbacknationaldex, distantkingdom, jerm, game review

Id: KfyWfIpx484

Length: 73min 15sec (4395 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Yamo2]

Yes waste of time

[u/Triggered657]

INB4 he uses the Calyrex spinning in place animation from the Crown Tundra teaser as the intro for “‘Quality Animations’: Part 2”.

[u/Brody_M_the_birdy]

THE EVIL ONE! Why? The video is him saying SWSH is one of the worst games of all time isn’t it?

[u/DanTheMeh]

Oh shit his alt account will be here defending him soon

[u/Stormrycon]

no because I value my sanity

[u/DragonGamerZ913]

Why would I waste an hour of my life on that?

[u/R0b0tGie405]

I don't believe many of the things he said are of good faith. Look at how bias towards BBND he is on Twitter, I don't think that someone that was shitting on the game months up to and after launch would give a very fair critique to the very thing they were shitting on.

[u/seabaz02]

Nope. DistantKingdom is just not worth my energy anymore. Imma just watch him dig himself deeper and deeper into irrelevance.

[u/WeeklyIntroduction42]

1 hour of cancerous content