Pokemon Sword and Shield Review (Nintendo Switch)
Tessa’s Verdict: Two Stars
Pokemon, Nintendo and Game Freak’s classic franchise is in its 8th generation and, frankly, Pokemon Sword and Shield are both a bit underwhelming. Before you decide to shell out for either version, take a look at the overall ranking and my ratings of Sword and Shield’s major elements by category. I chose to analyze the game based on the categories below:
1. The world (Galar Region):
I was so excited for a free-roaming 3D Pokemon experience and was pretty hopeful when I saw the promotional videos showcasing some of the new areas.
While Sword and Shield have some large areas (mainly the different sections of a zone called the Wild Area), the game is largely linear with an uninspired world map to match. I’ll start with the positive part first. The Wild Area is very big and feels epic to explore. In addition to tall grass encounters, Pokemon visibly walk around the areas now and some are even rare high level spawns. It really gives a fresh feel to an otherwise stale game.
Outside of the Wild Area, the game is very linear and most of the towns are small. The game tries to make the player cross over and double back through towns and areas in an attempt to make you think the world map isn’t boring, but it is, and the designers should be embarrassed. There are some cool town and area concepts, like a forest with glowing mushrooms and a city of snow with some old ruins at the center.
I feel the Galar Region is overall lackluster with some small gems mixed in, and for that reason I give it 2.5/5 stars.
2. The new Pokemon:
Pokemon designs in new generations are pretty hit or miss, and this time was no exception. Getting the designs of the starter pokemon and their evolutions right is critical, but all three were poorly done this time around.
Beyond the starters, I was very surprised that the majority of the other pokemon are interesting and appealing, with one exception. The new dragon type pokemon are mostly ugly and bizarre. I understand when a franchise has persisted for as long as Pokemon, it gets increasingly difficult to come up with new designs. Still, I’m confused by how many of the new Pokemon are interesting, but the starters and dragons were designed like trash.
Of the pokemon who have temporary Giantmax evolutions (Sword and Shield’s new gimmick) the designs are also a mixed bag. For example, Giantmaxed Grimmsnarl (a unique dark and fairy type) is the dark overlord pokemon the franchise deserves, while Duraludon (the new steel and dragon pokemon) just gains a skyscraper as a face and looks silly.
The main legendary pokemon are what you would expect: two new powerful dogs as we’ve seen before, but the real welcome surprise was Eternus, a legendary dragon and poison type that is designed like a badass bone dragon.
Overall, I give the new pokemon in Sword and Shield 3.5/5 stars.
3. How well does the game incorporate all the Pokemon?:
The unprecedented step was taken with Sword and Shield to exclude many pokemon from previous generations. After some backlash, Nintendo and Game Freak have decided to add some of the excluded pokemon back into the games with subsequent updates and dlc.
Some of the old pokemon will only be available to catch natively in the new dlc areas you would need to pay for. This is a very lazy approach and essentially gives them an opportunity to hold the old pokemon you like hostage so they can convince you to buy the new dlc.
On a different note, remember the Pokebank cloud storage for your old pokemon? You now need that program, plus the new Pokemon Home program on the Switch in order to transfer your previous gen Pokemon into Sword and Shield. For putting the player through this unnecessary level of game dev laziness and money grubbing, I give the overall score on all the pokemon 1/5 stars.
4. New Mechanics and Battling:
Giantmax/Dynamaxing is the new gimmick for Pokemon Sword and Shield. If you have played the past two generations of Pokemon, you’re already familiar with mega evolutions and Z moves. Giantmax/Dynamaxing is essentially a moderate combination of the two with a 3 turn duration.
Unlike mega evolution, maxing your pokemon only increases its hp stat, but doesn’t require you to waste your hold item slot with a mega orb. Maxing is also different from Z moves because it enables the use of multiple Max Moves that can be used more than once, but doesn’t require you to waste your hold item on a Z crystal. However, while a pokemon is maxed, some hold items stop working, which just makes things more confusing. Landing status effects, especially sleep, on a maxed pokemon can severely curb its viability and raises some balance issues with the whole maxing thing.
I’m not sure why every new generation of Pokemon needs an entirely new gimmick. I think it would keep things fresh and add more consistency to battling to just release a whole new class of mega evolutions with each new Pokemon generation. I personally liked the sense of balance mega evolutions brought to the game more than maxing your pokemon, but I can see how large pokemon sizes and being able to use max moves more than once would appeal to children.
While the game has some other new mechanics, like Poke Jobs (the ability to send your pokemon in the box out on special assignments for exp and rewards) and the new way tall grass encounters work (the grass is not full of random encounters anymore, but instead you have to walk into shaking spots that pop up in order to battle), the major new mechanic is max raid battling.
To engage in a max raid battle, you click on a pokemon den (appearing as a circular rock enclosure in the Wild Area) and choose 1 pokemon you would like to battle with. The game will then find other players over the internet to battle alongside, or just fill in the empty ally slots with computer players. You then enter a battlefield with 3 allies and a Giantmaxed/Dynamaxed pokemon as your opponent.
Max raid battles have different difficultly tiers and some new battle mechanics specific to it. If you and your allies faint a total of 4 times (collectively), the battle is lost. If 10 turns go by without the opponent being defeated, the max raid battle also ends in failure. In a level 2 or higher max raid battle, the maxed pokemon opponent will sometimes have a shield protecting it. Each bar of the shield will absorb 1 damaging attack from your team (multi-hit moves still only take down 1 bar). It is also possible for the opponent to put up its protective barrier more than once a fight. Your team has a restriction that only 1 person on the team can max their pokemon. So, once someone maxes, no one else on your team can (the opportunity to max a pokemon is based on the order in which players joined the lobby, but I’ll try to avoid the nitty-gritty details). When the maxed opponent reaches 0 hp, it isn’t technically fainted like in a normal battle and, instead, the game gives you a chance to catch the pokemon.
The main benefits to max raid battles are rare (and sometimes exclusive) pokemon, rare items, pokemon with (some) perfect hidden stats (IVs), and rare technical records (TRs). TRs are basically how TMs used to be in the older generations. After one use on a pokemon, TR’s break and cannot be used again unless another is obtained.
Overall I give the new mechanics introduced in Sword and Shield a 2.5/5.
5. Story:
If you’re playing a Pokemon game, story probably isn’t your main focus. I believe many players would love to see a quality pokemon story, but just don’t expect it because there haven’t been many good plots in the past.
I became more hopeful for good Pokemon storylines after the post-game of Alpha Ruby and Omega Sapphire. However, the main story and post-game in Sword and Shield are hot garbage. The plot makes no sense at times (not that it is difficult to understand, but the plot is advanced through events that have little to no explanation and disjointed levels of seriousness).
Some of the characters have interesting designs, but most are bland and have almost no character depth. Your rival, if one can even call him that, just shifts around between varying degrees of excitement and sadness while he struggles with the fact he has no idea how pokemon battles work (Wooloo and Dubwool vs. the world!).
The game’s gang antagonist, Team Yell, is the worst gang of any Pokemon game thus far. Everything about them is terrible. After playing Sword and Shield, I almost long for the days where the only plot was becoming the champion.
The story takes a soccer/football approach to Pokemon which, oddly, was one of the story’s better aspects. The idea of being in an actual league instead of just ten-year-olds running around the world mugging people with their Pokemon was a welcome change for me. The idea of walking into a stadium while the crowd cheers you on also added a level of excitement to the story reminiscent of the Pokemon Colosseum story mode. While wearing a soccer-style uniform just to be able to throw a pokeball at someone was strange, I can see how people might enjoy it.
Because the path to becoming the champion saves the story a bit, I give the overall story rating for Sword and Shield 2/5 stars.
6. Music:
Some Pokemon soundtracks are amazing works of art (Red and Blue, Black and White, and Pokemon Colosseum, for example, had inspired original soundtracks). Even passive music tracks can make playing a game much more enjoyable.
Like most of the game, the soundtrack of Sword and Shield lacks an interesting fire that can keep people immersed. However, there are some notable exceptions. For example, the Gym Leader Battle song was artfully created so that the base song would morph into cheers as the gym leader was maxing their last pokemon, and then the cheers turn into the crowd singing to finish out the fight. Some character specific battle themes also had a bit of flair to them.
I wish I had more positive things to say about the town themes. While some town songs like Circhester and Turffield fit the surroundings, only the Stow-on-side and Hulbury themes seemed to add depth to the environment.
The last sucker punch on this soundtrack was that the champion’s battle theme is very bad and a better song could have added an epic feel to the end of the league challenge.
After playing the game and then listening to the 114 tracks on the OST over again, my overall rating of the soundtrack is 1.5/5 stars.
Conclusion:
The Pokemon franchise is quickly losing its luster in terms of richness and effort, but that doesn’t mean people will stop buying it. It fills a particular market of large name brands that parents can gift their children without having to understand video games. Understandably, this group of game buyers isn’t really in search of quality to begin with.
The overall rating is the number of stars earned divided by the number of categories. Rounding to the nearest star gives Pokemon Sword and Shield an overall ranking of 2 stars. Even if you were to exclude the story and music categories from the overall ranking, Sword and Shield would still only earn a 2.5 star rating from me. If you have limited time to play games, you may want to move on to whatever else you had planned instead of picking up this generation of Pokemon.
Author username: Tessa Vanesla
Photo credit: Nintendo