Pokemon Sword & Shield Decent But Only Because It’s Impossible To Completely Fuck Up A Mainline Pokemon Game
If you followed the pre-launch fiasco that was Pokemon Sword and Shield, you probably noticed the barrage of angry nerds. Because I love seeing nerds suffer, the game already had points with me before it even came out.
The main reason fans are mad was the exclusion of the National Dex. For those unaware, that basically means the game wouldn’t have every single Pokemon from the previous games. I personally didn’t really give a fuck, and I probably could have, because this includes not having my favorite Pokemon, Crobat.
As of right now, including Pokemon Sword and Shield, there are 889 Pokemon in the Pokemon series.
889.
Sword and Shield will probably add a few more through DLC.
And people are mad about not having every single one when I personally think they should permanently remove a few Pokemon from the entire series. Such as dumbass Sawk and Throh, clear ripoffs of Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee from the original Pokemon. Or the Pokemon that’s literally Tauros but with an afro. Or this piece of shit.
But I digress. There’s nothing wrong with being critical of video game companies as a consumer, but a lot of times gamers do it for weird and embarrassing reasons. Great example: the embarrassing GamerGate controversy. And this reason is also embarrassing!
Let me reiterate what I just said: It’s perfectly fine to be upset with video game companies. It’s perfectly fine to be disappointed in this new Pokemon game. There’s a TON of reasons to be. But to make the main reason the fact all 889 Pokemon aren’t in the game is WEIRD. Go play one of the older games and move on!
Let’s talk about some of my gripes while playing this game.
1. While this game has the most potential size-wise since it’s finally on a console, it may be the emptiest Pokemon game yet
Yes. That’s right. For the first time, Pokemon is on a console, but this game barely has anywhere to go. The fun things about the previous games such as exploring caves, surfing around and finding islands and shit, Hunting legendary Pokemon and what not. That’s…gone.
This is actually my main gripe with the game. It felt incomplete. Like the previous games, I expected a long journey where you bond with your virtual super-powered animal friends along the way and feel like someone or something finally loves you as a distraction from the depression and pain of dealing with planet Earth and its impending death, but what I got was a really short journey from gym to gym with just about no plot at all. Not that I ever expect plot from Pokemon games, but this one was really lacking.
While playing alongside some of my old Pokemon friends, one of our pals was behind us. We had all 8 badges, he had about 5. So we made a joke that was like “hah, you’ll catch up in about an hour in this game, since it’s so short.”
Except that wasn’t a joke. He got all 3 badges in that much time. The game felt like “Go to town. Fight gym. Go through short route to town. Repeat.” and it was that. Hardly any of the NPCs had anything remotely interesting to say, all of the battles with trainers — including gym leaders — were really short and easy, the puzzles end right before they get interesting, and your rival, Hop, is just another boring and weak rival like any other post-Pokemon Crystal rival.
There’s so much that could be plot-wise in Pokemon. What are the politics like? What kind of crime goes on? What’s the policing like? Very simple questions with no real answers. Could make an already-interesting world REALLY interesting.
2. Too easy
I understand Pokemon is a family game meant to be fun for all ages, but this game was just too easy. I tried to avoid making my Pokemon team too strong for the sake of having a challenge at each gym, but even with me actively trying to do that, I could have just about pressed A on the same move over and over again.
The game gives experience points for just about everything including playing fetch with your Pokemon and eating curry, which is fine, but it doesn’t adjust the strength of the enemy Pokemon with any of this in mind.
Over-leveling isn’t the only problem though, the AI is sometimes dumb as hell. Hop should know not to attack my ghost Pokemon with a normal move when he’s battling me and we’re almost at the end of our journey. Should switching be that much of a sin?
I think at the very least, gym leaders and rivals should have smarter AI and gym battles should have some set rules, like only use x amount of Pokemon and no items being allowed. This would make the gym battles more memorable and interesting, and something you might have to actually have to come up with a strategy for.
3. As expected with a Nintendo game, the online is bad
It’s 2019.
And if I want to battle my friend, I shouldn’t have to both put some weird code in and also tell him to put it in too for us to battle or trade. But that’s not my only complaint. It also didn’t work after we finally got connected. A server error. We tried two more times and gave up.
He’s right there on my Switch friends list. Why is this so hard?
I don’t need to go further on this. It’s that simple.
There are some positives
Don’t get me wrong, despite my gripes, I don’t think this game is bad. For example, the plot picks up near the end of the game and actually made me just a little bit interested. While lack of exploration is an issue, it was cool to see the Pokemon on the ground as you travel instead of randomly encountering them like previous games.
The way they revamped the Pokemon league where you have to register and for it at the beginning and battle all of the challengers in the end instead of the Elite 4 was a step in the right direction. The wild area being a somewhat chaotic location where you can face Pokemon way stronger than yours and actually have to be a little careful while exploring was a little interesting.
But it wasn’t enough to make me feel like I was finally playing a console Pokemon game.
The problem is, Pokemon’s formula and familiarity makes it hard for Game Freak and Nintendo to fuck up. If you give a random guy the intellectual rights and programmers to make a new Pokemon game, it would probably still be decent, honestly.
But there’s so much more potential and like many of the previous generations, this game didn’t even try to tap into it. We could have finally had a Pokemon game with an engaging plot. We could have finally had a game that made the battles memorable again.
But Game Freak chose the safe and easy way out.
I’ll keep doing online Pokemon raids with my pals and probably challenge the post-game Battle Tower until I’m bored, but color me unsurprisingly underwhelmed with yet another new mainline Pokemon game.
