An Overly Long and Critical Review of Pokemon Sword and Shield

It's truly no wonder Pikachu is the face of game freak, they both will always refuse to evolve

We don't need yearly Pokemon games and here's why.

"A delayed game will eventually be good but a rushed game is forever bad" - Miyamoto. Where was Miyamoto??

Remember when Pokemon BW had all-new, really cool sound effects that actually matched the feel of the region? Remember the hidden areas where you could find rare abilities that rewarded you for exploring? Remember how BW added more new Pokemon than the original game that started it all, all of which, old and new alike, were fully animated sprites, while sacrificing none of the quality, even pushing story focus a bit more with legitimately decent characters, really cool environments, and some of the best music of the entire franchise?

Welp, that might be Arlo’s last review copy provided by Nintendo.

Nah, Rose's speech at the start isn't the part that should make you want voice acting, Piers "singing" before his battle should, you know, the part where not only does no noise come out of his mouth, but they didn't even give him lyrics in text, he's just dancing around and moving his mouth.

The great Plateau in botw has more content then the wild area.

It is absurd to me, that, in a game whose gimmick is "look how big we can make Pokemon on the console now" that they still do not scale the Pokemon properly. This is because they wanted to copy and paste the camera coding straight from the DS games where all the Pokemon we the same size, so they wouldn't have to make new camera distances for each Pokemon, and just used the same ones for all of them. I also do not see the point of making these games 3D, if they don't even want to animate the Pokemon properly or scale them. The whole novelty of being in 3D for these games is being able to bring Pokemon to life in a 3D environment, but they're so lifeless that it feels cheap. Pokemon company literally makes billions of dollars annually, from merch sales alone. That fact that they refuse to put any of that money into the development of their games to make a better product is really telling. These games are nothing more than ads for their merch anymore. The games themselves have no passion put into them are are just half baked and lazy. I grew up with Pokemon, but it has absolutely failed to grow up along side me. I want a better RPG. Something more engaging than walking into a gym and facerolling the entire building by spamming one singular move. And with towns that have personality. These games feel uninspired and half baked. Pokemon can and should do better.

I think the most frustrating thing about this game is how every criticism is written off with a "these games are for children", as though so many of these expectations - a non-linear map, less constant cutscenes, less constant explanations of mechanics you can learn by playing - aren't present in the older titles we fell in love with - get this - AS CHILDREN. Kids did not get so miraculously stupid in the last decade that the only way a game can be enjoyable is if it's played for them. There's absolutely no excuse for these games not to be at least as well-designed as they were a few years ago. Something needs to change.

Keep in mind that black and white 2 had vocals in two instances, Roxies gym had her singing as you completed the battles, Colress had a countdown in his battle theme. They clearly experimented using voices in themes, they could have eventually moved to voice acting. It's not like we dont have an anime studio worth of voice actors for pokemon.

You can unlock new wild areas. Just pay 30 dollars to Nintendo.

Breath of the Wild: Everything is fun! Go have fun! Pokémon Sword/Shield: You have fun when we allow it.

This is the opposite of what the Luigi's Mansion one will be

These games need a longer development time

Did you know that in Red/Blue you can beat Lt. Surge as the 7th gym leader (with no glitches)? Not many do, nearly everybody beats him 3rd. Why do I mention this? Because if Game Freak are concerned that if they don't make things linear, people will beat everything out of order and that will defeat their level balancing, then they shouldn't be. Gen 1 guides the player through a rough order to beat the gyms (Koga/Sabrina is the only ambiguous part) and 90% of players will comply out of choice, which is why most won't know you can leave beating Lt. Surge for so long. But it's nice to have that sense of freedom that you're doing these things because you want to, rather than because you're being forced. For the other 10% of people - they're probably the type of people who like to experiment with their freedom, and they'll understand the risks they're taking when they do that. They want to enjoy crafting their adventure their own way, and why don't you let them? It also greatly improves replayability, I bet if 100 people who played RBY read this comment, at least one person would feel compelled to go through the game again and try to beat the gyms in a weird order (I recommend Brock, Misty, Koga, Blaine, Sabrina, Erika, Surge, Giovanni as a ridiculous but possible route). It's a fun thing to try and do.

"Pokemon has never had voice acting" At least on the D freaking S they incorporated singing into the music, so it sounded way better and more natural (like Roxie singing in her gym in B2W2)

Another gripe I have about the Rose opening scene is he’s telling a crowd of people, who live in a world full of Pokemon, all about Pokémon like they’ve never seen them before. That’d be like if the commissioner of the NFL came out at the super bowl and explained the football rules to the people in the stadium.

Milo: Hey! I’m the grass type gym leader. See that gym over there, that’s where I’ll see you! takes two steps forward after the conversation Hop: HEY! THAT’S A GRASS TYPE GYM, THE GYM LEADER IS MILO, DID YOU KNOW THAT?

Probably my best experience with laziness is in the fairy gym where you fight against two trainers that are EXACTLY the same, like, Botw had MULTIPLE different npc models for the Yiga clan and all the different races in general. Imagine going into Hateno Village and all the people there had either model A or B depending on their gender

I only disagree with one thing in this video: Sword and Shield do not look better than Let’s Go. Let’s Go is the perfect blend between cartoony and Sugimori’s art. Sword and Shield are just ugly.