Before I actually start talking about the game and my experiences with Pokemon Sword, I do want to set the stage for the actual review and what is going to be covered. Obviously it’s going to be a review of Pokemon Sword (and theoretically Shield too) but there will also be a heavy emphasis on Pokemon Home, the Sword and Shield Expansion Pass, and even Pokemon Go.

I also feel like I should talk a bit about my overall experience with the Pokemon games up until this time. Yes, the Pokemon game series is one of my two most favorite of all-time, probably tied for number one with Persona, but I also have a love hate relationship with the games, especially the newer ones.

You see, I grew up playing the original Game Boy and Advanced games, putting more than a thousand hours into Gold and Ruby alone. Then the DS games came out and I thought those were even better. But then the DS died and I thought that Pokemon started losing many of the different things that made it awesome.

In fact, it was a long time since I last reviewed a Pokemon game here on Vizzed. My last Pokemon review was of Sun way back in January 2017. That was nearly four years ago, and I gave it a 98 because for the first time in a couple years, Pokemon really felt like something new with all the drastic changes that they were making.

Then I completely skipped over Ultra Sun/Moon and the Let’s Go games because while I did like them and had so much fun playing them, I never felt like there was enough to talk about. But now is the first time in a long time where I feel like Pokemon really has something to actually talk about.

WELCOME TO THE GALAR REGION

I was kind of disappointed when the Let’s Go games were released for two reasons. While it was really awesome to see such a cool new concept being added to the game, it was the second time that Red and Blue had been remade, so I didn’t feel all that impressed. I was also really hoping that we would get a brand new entry. So, I played Let’s Go Eevee but my heart wasn’t really there.

Then Pokemon Sword and Shield were getting ready to come out, and I was super excited, even with all their controversies. I bought the game weeks before it came out and had it pre-installed ready for release day. I remember being super excited the day I was finally able to play and putting in like 25 hours during the first week.

GRAPHICS: 9/10

The look of Pokemon Sword is 100% the best that it’s ever been but at the same time, it’s not entirely great for those who have already been playing the Pokemon games for years. The graphical capabilities of the Switch are obviously much better than the DS and 3DS, and it looks so good.

But on the other hand, I remember playing all the old games, especially the DS ones like Diamond and HeartGold, and the way those games looked was something special. The overworld was full of detail and so much color, and it has a really special type of charm that made the games look really good and they were simply fun to look at.

But everything about Sword and Shield is bigger. There’s a lot more detail and it looks much better but when it comes to that charm that the older games had, Sword and Shield just doesn’t seem to have it.

Other than the charm, there’s nothing bad about the graphics. When you first start up the game you get the beautiful cutscene inside of Motostoke Stadium. It’s so good with a good amount of detail and color. All of the character designs are really well made too and the actual Pokemon themselves, both in and out of battles are the best that they’ve ever been.

Overall, the games still look as good as ever and my overall grade for the graphics of Pokemon Sword is going to be a 9 out of 10.

SOUND: 8/10

Normally, the music of a Pokemon game is on of its strongest aspects. It’s not a Pokemon game if it doesn’t have great Pokemon music right? Well I’m having pretty mixed feelings when it comes to the music of Pokemon Sword and Shield, I’m not that big of a fan at all.

Look at every generation, they all had at least one great track, many of which had multiple great ones. Though I do think that the music has already slowly started dying as the newer games came out, mostly starting with generation 4.

In Diamond and Pearl, I really liked the theme for Arceus, I thought it was really cool. Then once Black and White came out, I fell in love with the new feel of the music. I really enjoyed both the wild Pokemon theme as well as the theme for Cobalion and Co.

There weren’t any songs that I really fell in love with when it comes to X and Y but to be fair, I don’t really remember that much about the soundtrack for those games. Then came Sun and Moon and I really liked the theme for Solgaelo.

Then Sword and Shield came out and I wasn’t really impressed. For the first 20 or so hours of me playing Sword, there weren’t any songs that I fell in love with, most of the music just felt bad to me when compared to the music of the previous games.

For me at least, the music for Sword and Shield was easily the worst of the entire series. I think it’s safe to assume that if you did a 1v1 contest between generation 8 music and any of the generations, Sword and Shield would lose every time.

In fact, that's exactly what I did on Twitter. I did a poll where I put generation 8 up against generations 1, 2, and 4. It's obviously not perfect though because I could only put 4 choices. Cause it's Twitter and Twitter's poll game is weak.

After just 7 minutes, 9 people chose Generation 1 while just 1 person chose Generation 8. The people have spoken, the music for Generation 8 is the absolute worst. I do feel like have to make this clear though, the music by itself is good. It just doesn't even come close to any of the other Pokemon games.

Out of the entire soundtrack, there was only one song that I really enjoyed and it wasn't even a Pokemon song honestly. It was the Battle Tower theme, you know, the one created by none other than Toby Fox. For me, this was the song that offered the most excitement and was the most iconic throughout the entire game.

But I also had a couple issues with the song. First of all, I'm pretty sure that a large chunk of my love for the song stems from the fact that it's Toby Fox. I feel like if it wasn't made by Toby Fox or I didn't know who he was, I probably would have skipped over this song and not have enjoyed it as much. It's also not a Pokemon song at all. It doesn't fit with the Pokemon mood and isn't really as iconic as the old themes, plus it's mostly inspired by Fox's older stuff.

On the other hand, the regular sounds of the game are on par with what you would expect from a Pokemon game. You know, you have the cries of more than 400 Pokemon, you have amount of battle sounds, and a bunch of other game sounds here and there that work well. When you look at the overall sound aspect with both sounds and music, it’s pretty average and I’ll have to give it an 8 out of 10.

ADDICTIVENESS: 10/10

For years, Pokemon has been one of the most fun and addicting game series out there. Who doesn’t love catching, training, battling, and beating everyone? There’s just so much to do in Pokemon that you might not even have to replay the game because it will take you forever to get through the game in its entirety in the first place.

When I’m looking up games to buy for the Switch, I always check the website howlongtobeat because it lets you see on average how long it takes to beat a game. I do this for every game because if I’m going to buy the game, I want to make sure that I’m getting enough content for the price or else I feel like the game would be a waste.

For example, it would take a lot for me to buy What Remains of Edith Finch. I know, people are probably going to hate me for that because it’s apparently an amazing game, but it’s also incredibly short. According to HLTB, someone going through everything the game has to offer at a leisure pace would take them under 6 hours.

People on the site say that the main part of the story only takes like 2 hours. I’d rather not pay $10 for a game that I could potentially beat in one short session. At that ratio of 2 hours for every $10, a $60 game would last like 10 to 15 hours. That’s just not something that would really appeal to me unless the price dropped to like $3, which I know isn’t happening

But then you have games like Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate. The game costs $40 digitally but at times has been on sale for $20 to $30 in stores and digitally. Even $40 is a great deal for the amount of content you get in such a big game like that because the main story runs on average around 75 hours and according to the website, a completionism could spend anywhere from 400 to 600 hours. Even at $40 that’s like 10 cents or less per hour.

The Pokemon games are part of the latter and can usually take hundreds of hours to beat. Sword and Shield are a little shorter than the older games but can still pack a punch in terms of hours. According to the website, the main story can take anywhere from 20 to 40 hours, which isn’t bad. Those who complete everything could spend well 100 hours on the game. But if you really focus on catching and training every Pokemon, and becoming the absolute strongest, you can spend many more hours on the game.

But what makes Pokemon so much fun? Everything. One of the things that I like doing the most and I think is the most fun is breeding a ton of Pokemon until you can get one with the perfect stats or until you get one that is shiny. I’ll go into detail on shiny Pokemon later on but right now I’ll talk about the thing that I like most of all. It’s just so addicting. You will put two Pokemon into the Day Care and after a couple minutes you have 5 eggs.

What do you do next? You run or bike around the Wild Area and after a couple more minutes, all 5 of those eggs have hatched. But guess what? You’re disappointed because none of them are shiny. Your normal thought would probably be to give up, right? Wrong. You will most likely try again with 5 more eggs. You won’t just try one more time, you’ll try 10 more times and now you have 50 copies of the same Pokemon, none of which are shiny. Then, you keep on trying until you get that shiny, even if it takes 10 hours and 300 eggs.

Maybe you won’t even be that lucky, after all the base odds of getting a shiny Pokemon when breeding is a whopping 1 in 4096. If you don’t have a foreign Pokemon to boost shiny odds and you have extremely bad luck, you could end up with 4000 copies of the same Pokemon after 100 hours before you get that shiny.

But once you start, there will be nothing stopping you until you get the shiny, it’s that addicting. No matter how unlucky you are or how many hours it takes, you’re going to keep trying, it’s like Flappy Bird. It’s just too addicting and you can’t stop.

Beyond hunting for those elusive shiny Pokemon, just the amount of Pokemon in the game also offered so much time and replayability. The base game, before the Expansion Pass was released offered 400 Pokemon. I’ll get into the pass and the number of Pokemon later on, but 400 Pokemon is still a lot and offers so much.

You will spend so many hours getting to the end of the game and you most likely won’t even have seen all 400 Pokemon by the time you’re 50 hours in. Once you’re done with the game, you’re going to go back to every route you’ve ever visited in the hopes of finding all those Pokemon that you’ve missed in the pass. Plus if you want to obtain all 400 Pokemon you would have to spend so much time training all those Pokemon in order to evolve them.

This isn’t even including the massive amount of trades that you’re going to end up doing. Plus, once you do actually collect all 400 Pokemon, there’s going to be a reason to keep looking for Pokemon. You actually have an excuse to collect all the Pokemon because you have them all, you get the Shiny Charm which boosts your chances at getting a shiny Pokemon even more.

Another big aspect of the games addictiveness are the online features. I already mentioned that you’re going to spend a lot of time trading, and that’s the truth. You’ll be doing Wonder Trades and regular trades all the time, and I’ll get more into that later on. You can also do a ton of battles against other real players, it’s not just about battling NPC’s and gym leaders.

You’re going to be battling your friends and all sorts of random online players to really see who’s the best, or just for fun too. One of the coolest things about online Pokemon battling is that there’s also ranked battles and official tournaments.

Who knows, maybe you beat the game within a month of it coming out, but you love the thrill of winning real life Pokemon tournaments. If this is you, you will constantly be coming back to the game to make your Pokemon stronger and you’ll be logging in every time there’s a competition.

If you get the Expansion Pass, the game will begin to offer even more stuff to do. Roughly 10 hours of content plus another 200 Pokemon from previous games that will be returning. That’s 200 more Pokemon to find and catch, and even more opportunities for breeding Pokemon to get specific shinies. I’ll talk more about the pass later on, but it’s an easy way to get even more out of the game.

There are two other aspects of the game that really boost the games level of addiction, they are collecting League Cards and completing Poke Jobs. You thought just collecting all 400+ Pokemon was going to take a lot out of you but now also collecting cards adds a whole other level of fun to the game.

You can create your own League Card and you’re able to customize it in tons of different ways. Then whenever you battle another player, they will get your card to collect. Here’s how it works. Many NPC’s throughout the game has their own League Card. But whenever you encounter another player online, you get a copy of their card. So if you do a lot of battling, you will be able to collect a ton of different League Cards, including some rare ones that can make your card collection impressive.

Poke Jobs are also really cool. You just have to go to a Pokemon Center and you can send your Pokemon off on an adventure of their own to do a variety of different tasks and when they return you get a variety of rewards. Each job has different requirements and can take a long time to complete, but if you like the rewards they offer, then you’ll find yourself coming back again and again to complete them.

There’s a bunch of stuff pertaining to addictiveness that I’m going to discuss later on because of how in depth they are, but there’s also a handful of things that I won’t even mention at all because of how much stuff there is to do in the game. It’s going to be a while for you to discover everything that there is to do and even longer until you get bored of the game. Overall, my grade for addictiveness is going to be a perfect 10 out of 10.

STORY: 9/10

Personally I’m really enjoying the story because of how much is going on. It’s basically the same as every other Pokemon game at the core. You know, catch and battle all the Pokemon, collect gym badges and become the champion, beat the “evil” team, find out about legendaries, etc.

Pokemon Sword takes things a little bit further by adding mechanics like Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing. There’s a whole story revolving around Dynamaxing Pokemon and the gameplay and mechanics add a whole other level to the game.

There’s also a lot of cool stuff going on in the Galar region revolving its characters such as Chairman Rose, Piers and Marnie, and Bede. Speaking of characters, the dynamic between you, Hop, and Leon is pretty cool IMO. Your friend is the brother of the champion, which I think is a great to tell a good story and I think it’s the best thing I’ve seen story wise since Pokemon Emerald with the players dad being the gym leader.

The reason I feel this is great when it comes to the story is because it really allows for so much emotion. You know, Hop wants to be like his brother, when he loses, he begins to feel like he’s making Leon look weak. I think it’s a really good dynamic.

There’s also a lot of stuff to do later on in the game, once you are the champion. You don’t even really begin the legendary Pokemon stuff until then and its a really cool plot line IMO. Story wise, I would definitely say that Sword and Shield are one of the best in the series. The story even gets better as the game goes on with the Expansion Pass.

The storyline has so much detail and lots of things going on, and at times it can get incredibly dark, which isn’t something that I see too often in the games. The story actually excited me at times and was a thrill at other times, in a way that I haven’t really experienced outside of Pokemon R/S/E and B/W.

Overall I think Sword has a great story and my grade for this aspect is going to be a solid 9 out of 10.

DEPTH: 9/10

There is just so much depth to be found in the game. A large chunk of what the game has to offer has already been explained a couple sections ago, and even more stuff will be explained later on but there’s still quite a bit to talk about.

The number of Pokemon might be small, with 400 in the base game and around 600 once the Expansion Pass was introduced, but that’s still a lot. If you plan on catching every Pokemon in the game, you better put aside a serious amount of time. Heck, just seeing all the Pokemon is going to take a while.

The Galar region itself is huge and has a giant variety of different places to explore. You have mountains, lakes, forests, caves, the ocean, and so much more to venture out to.

The fact that there’s a train you can ride between different cities and towns kind of proves how thick the region is. Plus stuck right in the middle of the region is the Wild Area. I’m going to go into the Wild Area later too, but I just wanted to say that it’s huge.

When I first got the game last year, I remember reading an article that said the entire Wild Area was about as big as two Breath of the Wild regions, which only means its going to take a long time to explore.

Just beating all the gyms and becoming the champion is going to take a lot out of you and even after that’s done, there’s still a whole lot more to do like the storyline revolving around the legendary Pokemon and the Battle Tower. Once you did all that you can add even more for $30 by getting the Expansion Pass. The extra areas that you can explore by means of the pass are big too, in addition to the extra Pokemon that you can catch and the extra story stuff.

Overall, you can easily speed run Pokemon Sword in like under 20 hours if you know what you’re doing but if you take your time and fully play the game, you will be entertained for hundreds of hours. My overall grade for Depth is going to be a 9 out of 10.

However, the fun doesn’t stop there. There’s a lot of extra stuff that the game has to talk about that I want to fully dive into. These aspects, like customization, the Wild Area, and Pokemon Home add so much more to the game and will offer a couple bonus points here and there.

CUSTOMIZATION:

Pokemon Sword has an insane amount of options when it comes to Customization, definitely more than any of the other Pokemon games. All you have to do is take a visit to Motostoke to see the vast collection of items and ways to customize your game. First off, you have a uniform store that will sell you a collection of nearly a dozen uniforms.

You also have the Boutique, which is a giant department store of clothing, the kind you expect to see walking around in the rich Manhattan neighborhoods. The Boutique sells so many different prices of clothing for you to customize your character with. When it comes to both clothing items and accessories the Motostoke Boutique sells 21 different pieces of Men’s items and 23 different pieces of Female ones. Many of these items also come in a handful of colors.

The different types of items that you can buy in the Boutique includes shirts, jackets, pants, socks, shoes, bags, hats, glasses, and gloves. The Boutique also sells other items later on and can be found in Wedgehurst, Hammerlocke, Circhester, and Wyndon, so you never have to travel too far to work on your look. Plus some Boutiques will sell items that can only be found in that location

Motostoke also features a Stylist, which can be found in all places that have a Boutique. The Stylist will allow you to change the way you actually look. You can choose between around 10 different hairstyles and more than a dozen different hair colors. At the Stylist you can also use makeup.

When it comes to clothing, there’s still a ton of other ways to get new looks. For example, there are additional clothing options that you can buy in the Stadium shops. You will also get different pics of clothing and accessories for doing different tasks such as defeating gym leaders, entering in the Battle Tower, special events, and more.

Lastly, while you are riding your bike, you can visit the Watt Trader in the Wild Area and he will let you change the clothing that you wear while riding the bike. Your outfit will change to match the first Pokemon in your party which means there are 19 different outfits to choose from based on type.

THE WILD AREA

My favorite aspect of Pokemon Sword is easily the Wild Area, for a number of reasons.

First of all, the Wild Area is a technical marvel if you think about it. The world is full of so many open-world games and so many full 3D games, while the main games in the Pokemon series didn’t have any. The old Pokemon games were strictly played through a top down view and set paths. Then we got better and better with the 3D aspect but the paths and areas were still very limited, even in Sword and Shield.

Then Pokemon introduced the Wild Area to us, which added so much to the game in terms of graphics and visual advancement by giving us a giant open area to explore with the ability to move freely and have free camera controls. The region of each Pokemon game is huge but adding an open-world area of this size makes the Galar region seem so much bigger.

Secondly, the amount of Pokemon that you can find, battle, and catch in the Wild Area adds a whole other level to Sword and Shield gameplay. In any Pokemon game, grinding is a huge part of it, but grinding is almost always the same. Whenever you are in a patch of grass grinding, you’re always limited to just a couple Pokemon that can be found. This obviously goes for catching too.

The ecosystem in the Wild Area is full of so many Pokemon. Each area of the Wild Area has a couple different Pokemon to find and there are so many areas. Not only that, but the Pokemon you find will also change based on time of day, season, and weather. If you are in the Wild Area to grind, you’re never going to have a hard time finding Pokemon to battle and depending on where you are, you can battle some strong ones as well.

If you’re looking to catch Pokemon too, there’s never a shortage of new Pokemon for you to go after. This doesn’t even include all of the dens, which we will talk about in the next section.

Thirdly, you have Pokemon Dens scattered throughout the Wild Area. These are areas where very strong, unique, and rare Pokemon can be found and battled, called Raids. One thing that I really like about doing Raids is that you get so many cool items, even if you don’t end up catching the Pokemon. Depending on the level of the Raid, you get a bunch of stuff for beating or catching the Pokemon.

Some of the items that you can acquire include Berries, Rare Candies, Dynamax Candies, EXP Candies, and even moves and some valuable items. Just like Rare Candies increase the Pokemon level, Dynamax Candies increase their Dynamax Level. Out of all the items you can receive from Raids, EXP Candies are my favorite. In the past, the only way to level up a Pokemon outside of battle was with Rare Candies.

Now you can use different sizes of EXP Candies to give your Pokemon different amounts of EXP. If you do lots of Raids and rack up lots of EXP Candies, you can use them all to give any Pokemon a massive boost to their level. It’s a great way to level up your Pokemon at an even faster rate without having to do any extra battles.

Another really cool aspect about Raids is the fact that you can’t do them by yourself. Whenever you enter a Raid, you’re teamed up with three other trainers. If you’re connected to the internet, the other three will be real players but if you’re offline, all three will be computer controller. They will all do their part to take down the Raid Pokemon and help you win your glory.

Fourthly, Raids aren’t the only way to collect items in the Wild Area. Wherever you are in the Wild Area, you will see something sparkling on the ground, meaning that there is something to be picked up. It’s not a rare occurrence either, Throughout the entire Wild Area, there has to be more than 100 different spots where items spawn. You can pick up an item and you won’t even be able to make it ten steps before you spot another.

Another great thing about finding items in the Wild Area is that they respawn fairly quickly. By the time you traveled the entire Wild Area, picking up everything, some of the items might have already started spawning back in. This means you have unlimited access to tons of items, and by extension, tons of money too because you can sell these items. It’s literally unlimited resources, the Wild Area is a money making machine.

There’s a large variety of items that you can find scattered throughout the Wild Area. Sure, you’re probably going to find a ton of low end items like Poke Balls and food, but you will also be able to find a bunch of rare and valuable items as well. Eventually you will start running into items such as Max Revives, Pearls, and Rare Candies.

Every now and then, I would put aside like 30 to 60 minutes to run around the Wild Area, collecting every item that I could collect. By the time I was done, I would have enough items to sell for like 100,000 Poke Dollars and enough items to keep that would last me a while.

Lastly, you also have the online experience that revolves around the Wild Area, which is also really cool. If you are connected to the internet, you will see a bunch of other players who are also online in the Wild Area. You won’t be able to actually talk with them but if you interact with them, you will get a random item. I really think that this is a nice touch, being able to see everyone.

You can also set up camp, which allows you to cook and play with your Pokemon and other players can come into your campsite and play with all the Pokemon in your camp. It would be really cool if it was possible to battle those trainers you see while in the Wild Area, but that might be a bit too ambitious and the Wild Area is great enough as it is.

Cooking however, is a great feature to take advantage of while you’re in the Wild Area. While going on your adventure you will find a ton of different ingredients as well as more than 20 berries which can be used to cook different types of curry. In total, there are at least 150 different types of curry to unlock and cook, based on the ingredients you use.

Based on how well you cook the curry, there are 5 classes that change what each Pokemon gets out of the meal. For example, the Koffing class is terrible but the Pokemon’s HP will be restored a little, and they will become a little friendlier towards you while also gaining a small amount of EXP.

On the other hand, if you get the best meal possible, the Charizard class, the Pokemon will gain a ton of EXP and become much friendlier towards you. In addition, all their HP and PP will be healed and any conditions will be healed as well. This is why you should focus on cooking, especially if you can do it with an online friend in the Wild Area because those freshly cooked meals will really help you and your Pokemon in the long run.

All these things are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Wild Area because there’s really so much more to do. When you look into Pokemon Dens you collect Watts. You can spend Watts on things like Poke Balls, moves, Wishing Pieces, and even bike upgrades. There is the Rotom Rally, which is a race to get from one side of the Wild Area to another with a couple rewards for completing it in time.

There’s even a Day Care in the Wild Area and the fact that it’s in such a huge open area makes it great for Pokemon breeding but I’ll get more into that later on. There’s also a bunch of NPC’s that you can meet. You’ll find some NPC’s that are looking to sell you one special item for a small amount of Watts.

These are usually items that can get you a lot of money when you sell them in PokeMarts so I would recommend buying them. There’s also a Pokemon Breeder that you can battle over and over so it’s an easy way to get free EXP and money.

There’s simply too much to do in the Wild Area. I remember when I first unlocked it, I probably spent a good 10 hours total battling and catching Pokemon and messing with Dens and items before I even bothered heading into Motostoke because of how much fun I was having. If the Wild Area deserved its own grade, it would easily get a 12 out of 10 if that was possible.

POKEMON HOME

For me, the biggest aspect of Pokemon Sword when it comes to Depth is its comparability with other games, Pokemon Home and Go. IMO, Pokemon Home is easily one of the greatest addition to the Pokemon franchise ever made because of it’s ability to transfer Pokemon from files or other games.

Plus it helps that Pokemon Home is really cheap, I think it was like $5 for a 3 month subscription, which is really good. You don’t even need to pay, if you just have the free service you’re allowed to hold up to 30 Pokemon.

Pokemon Home works in multiple ways, you can transfer Pokemon from the old DS games through the use of Pokemon Bank. You can store them all in Pokemon Home and transfer a selection of them into Sword and Shield or Let’s Go Eevee and Pikachu if you have those instead.

You can also directly use Home to transfer Pokemon in between different Pokemon games on the Switch or between save files in the same game technically. What do I mean by this? You can technically play through Sword as much as you want and if you felt like it, you could start the game over again.

But before you do, you can transfer all of your Pokemon from your game into Home and then after you start your new game, you can transfer all those Pokemon into your new save file. This would be an easy way to get the starters right away if you don’t feel like trading or playing through a lot. You can pick a starter, play until you unlock the ability to transfer to Home, then start over and pick a new starter.

If you are using Pokemon Home like this or you want to transfer Pokemon between SWSH and Let’s Go, then you don’t need Pokemon Bank since that’s only for the DS games. Plus if you’re only transferring and storing a few Pokemon at a time, then you won’t even need to bother with getting a paid subscription, so it’s win-win.

However, if you are a big Pokemon fan like I am, then you might find yourself requiring both, and if you have a ton of Pokemon, then the costs are really worth it.

I’ve been playing Pokemon my whole life, when Home first came out I had around 5 different games that I put like 50 or more hours into that I wanted to get Pokemon off of. The cool thing is that the day Home came out, Pokemon had a deal where for the first 30 days, Pokemon Bank would also be free, so unlimited trading of Pokemon off of DS games for free. I paid for 3 months of Home and went to work.

I basically traded 6 years worth of Pokemon to Home, took 2 days to get like 500 Pokemon into Home. This included a handful of shinies and every legendary that I ever caught or traded for, including a couple shiny legendaries. At the time I thought that was going to be super cool, being able to transfer all my shiny legendaries and other legendaries and play with them in Sword.

But then I got a little too power hungry. Around the time that Home came out, there were waves of closings at Gamestops, with many used games on sale for around 70-80% off. I started buying a bunch of games that I wanted and a bunch that I didn’t want but thought would be cool because of the value.

This included a bunch of older Pokemon games for $5-10 each. At the time, I thought it was an amazing deal just to have Pokemon games and maybe even to collect or flip. But then I had an idea, I realized that this was going to be a gold mine of Pokemon because these were used copies and the save files might have a bunch of Pokemon on them.

I got to work on like 10 games, mostly copies of Omega Ruby and X, and 3 of those games had more than 200 Pokemon each for me to transfer. By the end of it all, I had added another 1000 or so Pokemon into my Home, including even more legendaries and shinies.

Before you say anything, no, I didn’t plan on using any of the legendaries or OP Pokemon that I got this way to battle or cheat or anything like that. I mostly wanted to complete my Pokedex, get specific Pokemon that I really wanted, and get bulk Pokemon for trading away and helping other people with their Pokedex’s.

The thing that I did had some drawbacks though. Obviously if I want to constantly use and transfer all the Pokemon that I just got, I would need to keep my paid subscription active. If my subscription expires and I don’t pay for more time, I would lose 99% of all the Pokemon that I transferred and I would only have access to one box of 30 Pokemon. But it’s a good thing that if I activate my subscription again later, all my Pokemon would be back.

The other downside is the fact that not all Pokemon are even acquirable in Sword and Shield in the first place. That’s changing with the Expansion Pack but when both Home and Sword came out, the only Pokemon that were available to transfer into Sword were the ones that were native to the region to begin with. This means that so many of the older Pokemon and many of the legendaries were stuck in Home, with nowhere to go.

For me, my favorite part of Home is actually the mobile app. The Switch version of the game, where you can transfer Pokemon to and from games is cool and all but I think the mobile app is where the real fun is.

The Pokemon Home mobile app allows you to do so much stuff, including some stuff that you can’t do in the Switch version, such as trading. One of the things you can do in the mobile app is that you have access to so much info. You can look at the National Pokedex and you can look up info on every move and ability, which is something I think is really cool.

You can also check out all your Pokemon, check your battle records, collect points that can be redeemed in the Switch version of the app, and collect mystery gifts. These are all really cool features that are merged into one place, but the real draw of the Pokemon Home mobile app is trading. Trading in the mobile app is a lot like trading in the games but has more features and can be done from your phone.

The two main ways to trade are with the Wonder Box and with the GTS. If you are using the Wonder Box, you can leave up to 3 Pokemon and when someone else also chooses to use the Wonder Box, you two will swap Pokemon. It’s just basic wonder trading but with Pokemon Home, you can trade wherever you are with your phone and you can wonder trade multiple Pokemon at the same time.

Plus, wonder trading is always so much fun because you never know what you’re going to get. Sure you could always get a trash Pokemon, maybe a level 1 Zigzagoon or a level 100 Magikarp. But you could also get starters that you need, good strong Pokemon, legendaries, Shiny Pokemon, or something that you really need.

A couple days before I started writing this review, I added 10 Pokemon to the Wonder Box in the hopes of getting something cool. I don’t remember what I traded away but when I checked today, they were all gone and replaced with some new friends. Some of the better Pokemon that I received included Zorua, Ralts, Charmeleon. Eevee, and Slowpoke.

A day or two before I started writing this review, I saw someone tweet out an image of a Wonder Trade because they couldn’t believe what they got. They received a shiny Eevee that was holding a Master Ball. It’s very unlikely that you will ever get something that good, but the possibilities of what you can get from Wonder Trading is literally endless.

Using the Wonder Box is also a great idea if you focus on breeding. Maybe you want to get a shiny Charmander or you want a Ralts with perfect stats. By the time you get lucky and hatch the one that you want, you will probably have a hundred copies of the Pokemon you hatched before.

These spare Pokemon are perfect for wonder trading away. This is even better if you have a paid subscription because if you pay, you get the ability to wonder trade up to 10 Pokemon at the same time, instead of 3. This is a great way to save time or to get a ton of cool Pokemon at once.

Wonder Trading is easily my most favorite way to trade Pokemon, but mostly early on in the game. When you first start the game and unlock Wonder Trading, it’s easy to trade away the weak Pokemon that you just caught and it will be easy for you to get Pokemon that you don’t have yet or Pokemon that are really strong. That way you will start your game with a strong or rare team.

But if you’ve already been playing for a while and have a ton of Pokemon that are all strong, then the odds that you get a Pokemon you need or an even stronger Pokemon will be pretty low.

While I was playing and working on the review, I spent some time with Wonder Trading. I deposited 5 Eevees, 3 Charmanders, and 2 Pinsirs. The next day, all the trades were completed and I received 2 Charmanders, A Goldeen, a Snorlax, a Dreepy, a Slowpoke, a Pawniard, a Honedge, a Bulbusaur, and a Grubbin.

The other big way to trade in the mobile app is with the use of the GTS, which is an easy to get specific Pokemon that you want. You can either deposit Pokemon that you want to trade or search for Pokemon that you really want.

If you search for Pokemon, you just type the one you want and filter stuff such as Gender and Level. Then a list of Pokemon will appear that can be traded and what Pokemon the other player is looking for. If you have the Pokemon they want, you can accept and the trade will be done instantly.

This is a really cool feature, especially if you’re looking for shines or legendaries. There were plenty of times where I would search for a Pokemon I wanted, and then I would scroll down until I found a shiny. I would look at what Pokemon they wanted, then I would look for that Pokemon and get the one they wanted. Then I would trade that for the shiny that I wanted. It was a lot of work but worth it in the end.

The only problem with the GTS is that it isn’t possible to deposit a Pokemon and look at offers, which I thought would have been really cool. If you want to trade away a specific Pokemon, the only two options are to put it up in the Wonder Box and get a random Pokemon, or request a specific Pokemon and hope that someone accepts it.

But what if you could just deposit a Pokemon and let people submit Pokemon to trade for it? That way an hour or so after you deposit your Pokemon, you have like 10 options and can choose which Pokemon you accept for the one that you deposited. This would give you more control in what Pokemon you get back and puts less stress on the other player by allowing them to offer anything.

I’ve been one of the biggest fans of Pokemon Home since it was released, I always take advantage of its features whenever I can to have the best possible experience. In fact, while writing this review I did a ton of work in the mobile app. Because I spent so much time writing this review and playing the game for the review, I’ve been getting into the mood to play again.

I never got too far into the game, I only put down like 6o hours total into the game itself, and I felt a big push to get back into the game. But one of the things is that I felt too strong because of all the Pokemon that I raised in the game and all the ones that I already brought in from the older ones.

I kind of wanted to start from scratch with some of my special Pokemon, one example is my Shiny Gardevoir. I got it from one of my 3DS games but I was in the mood to do some training, so I went to the mobile app, opened up GTS, and started searching for a brand new shiny Ralts to trade for.

I found a couple that fit all the conditions that I was looking for but the person wanted a Yveltal. I didn’t have any that could be traded so instead, I deposited of my own Pokemon into the GTS and said that I was looking for Yveltal. 4 hours later I got a notification saying that all of the Pokemon were traded.

I got excited but at the same time, I got the notification a few minutes before Pokemon Home went down for the big Crown Tundra update. The next day, I logged in to collect my 3 Yveltals and then I went back into the GTS to trade one of them for a shiny level 1 Ralts. Now I’ll be able to continue the game but also train one of my favorite Pokemon from scratch.

Those are the two big ways to trade in the mobile app of Pokemon Home but there are two other smaller ways to trade. First of all you can do a Room Trade. In Room Trades, you can create a room or join a random one. You then submit the Pokemon that you want to trade and other players in the room do the same.

You get to see what Pokemon each player is offering but then it’s randomized so every person in the room gets a random Pokemon from one of the other players. It’s kind of like secret Santa but more random and you get to see what’s going to be given before it is.

The fourth and final way to trade in the mobile app is a simple Friend Trade. That’s right, you can add friends in the mobile app. At any time, you can initiate a trade with one of your friends. I remember when my friend first got Pokemon Shield and Home, we did a little bit of trading right at the start so that I could help him out a bit.

The last great thing about Pokemon Home is its compatibility with Pokemon Go. This hasn’t actually been implemented into Home yet but it has already been confirmed that it will be by the end of the year and I think this is an amazing feature. I’m not a big fan of Pokemon Go. When it first came out, I played for like 2 months. Then I stopped for like a year, played for a month, and haven’t played again since then.

Even though I played for like 3 months total in the last 4 years, I still racked up around 200 Pokemon, including some really rare and strong ones. Once this feature is finally implemented, I’ll be able to trade all these Pokemon that I caught years ago into Home and then again into Sword.

This will result in a huge boost to my Pokemon collection in Sword but I can only imagine how much this will help those who played Pokemon Go religiously for the last 4 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a ton of players who have caught thousands of Pokemon in Go over the years.

Once it’s implemented, those players will have a treasure trove of Pokemon to transfer into Home and Sword/Shield, instantly boosting their Pokedex and strength. Home isn’t exactly a part of Sword and Shield but the two apps affect all the Switch games so much and add so much functionality and a plethora of features making Pokemon Sword so much better as a result.

EXPANSION PASS

Every time there’s a new Pokemon game, there’s usually one move that’s pretty bold, very unique, and game changing. In Generation 6, Mega Evolutions were added and that was a pretty big move at the time. Then in Generation 7, the entire landscape of Pokemon was changed by removing gyms and changing the formula a lot.

Then Generation 8 came along and Pokemon made what could be their biggest and most bold move ever, they added an Expansion Pass. This replaces the traditional pattern of releasing two games and then one or two sequels later on. Every 6 of the first 7 Generations featured a sequel game, Generations 5 and 7 had two sequels each.

How did the sequels work? Well you would first pay full price for the original game and beat it. Then, a year or two later, you would pay the same full price for the sequel. You would play through the exact same game for a second time and get a little bit of extra content. The Sword and Shield Expansion Pass eliminates the sequel formula by just adding DLC to the one pair of Pokemon games.

I personally think that this is a great idea, in every aspect, whether it’s gameplay wise or money wise. By having all the extra content as DLC, you are no longer required to play the same game a second time to experience the extra content. The price of the Expansion Pass is also half of what a new game would cost, so it’s a huge savings right there as well.

But I’ve seen so many people complaining about the Expansion Pass ever since it was first revealed, months before it was even released in the first place. People argued that if they had the extra content, and that the game wasn’t technically complete, that Pokemon should have just released the original game with the DLC content right from the start.

I’ve also seen people complain about the price and the fact that the game with all the bonus content would cost a whole $90. But again, I would argue that it’s a lot cheaper than paying $60 for the game and then another $60 for the sequel. Then I saw even more people complain about the lack of Pokemon in the base game and the fact that you need the Expansion Pass to get more Pokemon.

My friend Red, you know him as I AM RED here, bought Pokemon Shield a couple months ago but he was also one of those people who argued about the price of the Expansion Pass. He had nothing against the Pass itself but also couldn’t bring himself to pay the $30 for the Pass, especially when he first got the game and very little was known about the Pass.

To be fair, that was also a good point that was made by people when the Expansion Pass was first announced. People could start purchasing the Pass on January 9th, 2020, but the first part of the Expansion Pass, Isle of Armor wasn’t released until June. Pokemon was basically hoping that people would fork up $30 for DLC five months before the first part would be released, with very little information on what the DLC even came with. That was a lot to ask for.

But what does the Expansion Pass actually come with and is it worth it? The first part was Isle of Armor which was released in June and the second part is called Crown Tundra which came out recently near the end of October.

ISLE OF ARMOR

The first part of the Sword and Shield Expansion Pass is Isle of Armor, was released on June 17th and offered a decent amount of new features and extra story stuff, though not a lot. Once you have the Expansion Pass, you are given the Armor Pass which allows you to head to the island from Wedgehurst Station. You then begin a storyline that introduces a new rival and the Master Dojo, which will end up offering some extra story stuff.

In addition to the new area to explore and the extra story stuff, the main draw of Isle of Armor is the ton of new and returning Pokemon that are added to the game as a result of the Pass. A ton of Pokemon from previous games are brought back such as Slopoke, Chansey, Fletchling, Shinx, Abra, Tentacool, Tangela, Zorua, Magnemite, and many more. In total more than 100 old Pokemon made their return in this part of the pass.

In addition to old Pokemon returning, Isle of Armor introduced three new legendary Pokemon which include Kubfu, Urshifu, and Zarude. Urshifu is unique because it’s a legendary Pokemon but also has multiple forms. Isle of Armor also introduced new Gigantamax forms, including Venusaur, Blastoise, Rillaboom, Cinderace, and Inteleon.

The rest of the things that are introduced in Isle of Armor are really small features. More than a dozen new moves were added and a machine that turns items into other items was also added. That’s pretty much it when it comes to the first part of the Expansion Pass. At its core, it’s just some extra story stuff and Pokemon, and then a few minor tweaks and additions.

It’s pretty weak actually. It was a weak first entry into the Expansion Pass but thankfully, a couple months later Crown Tundra was released and it really made up for what Isle of Armor lacked.

CROWN TUNDRA

Personally, I believe that Crown Tundra is easily the best part of the Expansion Pass, even though it just came out the day that I started writing this and hadn’t had a chance to check out until a bit later on. A couple days before it was released, all the stuff that will be available in the 2nd part of the pass was unveiled and I think it’s just amazing. I even think that Crown Tundra might even be much better than Isle of Armor.

Crown Tundra has so much to offer from new Pokemon and regions to a new story addition and gameplay. For starters, Crown Tundra offers a whole new area to explore that has a ton to offer. There’s the story aspect of the pass, which sees you hunting down another legendary Pokemon.

While Isle of Armor added Kubfu and Urshifu, Crown Tundra went on to add a new legendary Pokemon called Calryx. In addition to this new legendary, Pokemon went on to bring back some fan favorites. That’s right, you can hunt down the Kanto trio as well. Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres can all be encountered in Crown Tundra before fleeing to the rest of the Galar region. After you encounter them, you’re free to hunt them down and catch them elsewhere, similar to how you catch Suicune, Entei, and Raikou in Johto.

Plus, it isn’t just legendary Pokemon that Crown Tundra brings back, but there’s a ton of normal Pokemon as well that were added to Sword and Shield through the Expansion Pass. Some of the Pokemon making a return in Crown Tundra include Zubat, Dratini, Absol, and even a couple more legendaries.

In addition to the new and returning Pokemon and the new storyline stuff, Crown Tundra still has a ton of other new stuff to offer. One of the other cool additions is called the Galarian Star Tournament. This is probably my favorite addition but also the thing that I’m slightly disappointed by.

The Galarian Star Tournament allows you to go back and battle many of the trainers, gym leaders, and even Leon himself. The kicker is that it’s a double battle system and you get to choose who your partner is, which can lead to a number of different strategies and endless outcomes. I think it’s a really cool addition to be able to battle alongside people like Leon and Hop and being able to get rematches against whoever you want whenever you want is really cool.

But I think Pokemon also missed a really good opportunity by limiting the tournament to just people from Galar. They really missed a chance to bring back some opponents from previous games because that would have been really cool and the whole full stadiums watching battles vibe would have fit with some sort of a world championship type tournament. Plus it would have been really cool to be able to battle old opponents in a main Pokemon game.

Crown Tundra also has a really cool feature revolving around Pokemon Dens and Max Raids. You’ll be able to actually explore the inside of dens with other players, and it’s very different than your normal Raid in the Wild Area. In the Wild Area, a Raid is just you and three other players or NPC’s battling against one super strong Pokemon and then you either catch It or beat it but this is very different.

In these dens, there are multiple paths for you to choose from and you get to journey deep into the den battling all sorts of Raids and you will even be able to find other legendaries from previous games, which add an extra level of flair to the adventure in Crown Tundra.


CONCLUSION

After seeing what both parts of the Expansion Pass have to offer, it’s a no brainer that I like Crown Tundra a lot more than Isle of Armor. For me, Isle of Armor just didn’t seem to have a lot to offer and was pretty short as well, but Crown Tundra more than made up for it.

Personally, I really think that the entire Expansion Pass as a whole is more than worth it and adds so much to the game. I get where people are coming from though. I understand those who say things like if they could have added all these Pokemon in, that they could have done it from the start. But at the same time, I can’t deny the fact that the Expansion Pass is well worth the $30.

I have to bring up the price point again that I made earlier to drive home my thoughts. It’s $30 for an Expansion Pass that in total adds so much content and a handful of Pokemon. If Sword and Shield followed the traditional sequel pattern, we would have paid $60 for the game and then $60 again to play the game from scratch and get a little bit of extra content. That’s what normal sequels are like.

But because of the Expansion pass, you’re just paying $90 for the base game and all the extra content, and I would argue that the amount of extra content that you get with this Expansion Pass is more than what you would have gotten with a standard sequel. Plus Gamestop lets you use certificates to pay for the Expansion Pass, so if you plan on getting it, I would recommend going to Gamestop.

Normally you can never use gift cards to buy other gift cards or digital content, this goes for Gamestop and many other stores, but they made an exception for the Expansion Pass. As a result, I used a free rewards certificate and only had to pay $15 out of pocket for the Expansion Pass, so it was an even better deal for me.

If you buy the Expansion Pass, you also get a couple cool goodies. First of all, you get two special uniforms, one Pikachu and one Eevee, which I think are cool bonuses. According to the Expansion Pass website, you’re also supposed to get 100 Poke Balls as an additional purchase bonus. But when I paid for my copy of the Expansion Pass less than a month ago, I never received any code for the 100 Poke Balls, so this isn’t something that I can confirm.

Overall, I think that the Expansion Pass is an amazing feature, especially for that price. I’ll obviously have to give it its own separate grade because it is its own separate purchase though. By itself, I think that the Sword and Shield Expansion Pass easily deserves an 8 out of 10. I think it would have been much better if Isle of Armor was a bit longer. When you add what the Expansion Pass adds to the actual game, I’d have to give a +1 extra credit point towards Depth.

SHINY POKEMON

Pokemon X and Y made it much easier to catch or breed a shiny Pokemon by cutting the encounter odds to 1 in 4096. If you have the Shiny Charm, those odds are then boosted all the way up to 1365. You get the Shiny Charm by catching all 400 Pokemon in the Galar Pokedex, which isn't really an easy feat. The odds of encountering a shiny Pokemon while battling also changed based on how many times you've encountered that specific Pokemon.

For example, if you've battled Pikachu more than 500 times, whenever you encounter another Pikachu, the odds that it's a shiny are then boosted all the way up to 1 in 682. This is further boosted up to 1 in 512 with the Shiny Charm. So if you've already put a ton of time into the game, it's very possible that you will encounter a ton of shiny Pokemon in the wild.

However, if you really want shiny Pokemon, especially closer to the start of the game, battling isn't the best way to go. The best way to obtain Pokemon in Sword and Shield is by breeding. When you're breeding Pokemon, the odds are normally maxed out at 1 in 4096. This does not changed like it does with battling Pokemon, but you will get a huge boost by breeding specific Pokemon.

All you have to do is breed 2 Pokemon from different regions. The best example of this would be to breed an English Pokemon and a Japanese Ditto. The base odds will skyrocket to 1 in 682, which is the same as if you battled more than 500 of the same Pokemon. Like the battling rate, this is also boosted to 1 in 512 if you have the Shiny Charm.

Getting a Ditto in the first place might be pretty hard, let alone getting a Japanese Ditto, but it's more than worth it because the alternate is battling the same Pokemon more than 500 times just to get the same encounter odds. Breeding is also really good because there's a Day Care inside of the Wild Area, which means there's plenty of room for you to bike around and use up steps. It's also a lot easier to casually rack up large amounts of steps by doing Raids and gathering items.

I have very bad luck when it comes to breeding shiny Pokemon or finding them in the wild but Red is a pro at it. When he first got the game only a couple months ago, he put his heart and soul into breeding. It took him nearly a week of non stop playing to get his first shiny in Shield. After hatching more than 300 Eevee eggs, he got his first shiny.

All that hatching helped him get a ton of other Pokemon too because each Eevee that he didn't keep he sent to Wonder Trade. By doing this, he went on to add nearly 100 new Pokemon, including a legendary. After that, he has since gotten two more shiny Pokemon from breeding, Dewpiper and Growlithe.

If you are one of those people who can’t get enough of Shiny Pokemon then Sword is the perfect game for you because of how easy it is to catch and breed them. Plus if you really want to take the easy route, then you can just use Pokemon Home and try to trade for a shiny Pokemon or two, there’s always a ton of shinies on the market looking for a new home.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE GAME?!?!?!?!

It can’t be all good things right? I’ve mentioned so many good things about the game and gave away so many extra points to the point where it would probably seem as if I would give game an overall grade of 11 or higher out of 10. But no game is perfect, every game has some flaws or something that just doesn’t add up in the game’s atmosphere.

Pokemon Sword is no exception. Sword had some great Pros including the Wild Area, Pokemon Home, and the Expansion Pass. For me, those Pros served as little bits and pieces of extra credit towards the depth section. But here are a couple things that I didn’t like about the game that cost the game some points here and there. There are quite a few things that I didn’t like about the game actually.

DIFFICULTY

The first major thing that I really disliked about the game is the difficulty. Normally the difficulty of a game doesn’t really have an affect on the overall game because difficulty is incredibly subjective. Some people are going to like really hard games and some people don’t really want a challenge.

But in the case of Pokemon Sword, I just think that the game is too easy. With every new game, the developers kept on finding ways to make the games much easier. While this is great for people who are new to Pokemon, so that people can like it and really get into the series. But for long time fans, there’s a clear decrease in difficulty every couple of years.

I remember the good old days of Pokemon. Back then, if you wanted to train a weak Pokemon, you had to start a battle with that weak Pokemon and then switch to your main one. This was time consuming and pretty risky too because it basically resulted in a free hit by the opposing Pokemon each time.

I remember having to spend hours in specific patches of grass battling against hundreds of wild Pokemon just to strengthen my favorite Pokemon by a couple levels each. Then the EXP Share made it a little easier to gain EXP while also allowing for a little more strategy.

But then acquiring the EXP Share became easier and easier. Now all you gotta do is add Oprah because every Pokemon gets a ton of EXP with each battle and there’s very little effort actually required to level up. Plus this doesn’t even include the massive amounts of EXP and levels that you can gain from using the different types of candies such as the EXP Candies that you get from Raids.

Earlier in this review, I did say that I liked the EXP Candies, and that’s true. I think they are really fun to collect and use, especially since you can pick and choose where they go. But just because I like them doesn’t take away from the fact that it makes the game so much easier.

As I was thinking of what to say for the difficulty section, I thought back to something that happened recently as well as some old stories from the past. A couple weeks ago I started a nuzlocke with Red. We were each playing Pokemon Emerald and we were going to compare and see how far each of us got at the end of every week.

After just one week I was much further than him and he was surprised. It was because I had a secret weapon up my sleeve in the form of Zigzagoon. This was a trick that I did a lot back in the day when I used to play Pokemon Emerald as a kid. What I did made the game easier and allowed me to progress quicker and get what I want faster.

The trick involves Zigzagoon and its Pickup ability. Most people probably know about Pickup but don’t know about how amazing the ability is. In Emerald, I would just walk around with a Zigzagoon in my party and after like 300 or so steps, the Zigzagoon would pick up a random item.

Pickup lets you get a wide range of items based on both chance and the Pokemon level. A eat Pokemon with Pickup can get items like Potions, Revives, and Great Balls, with a small chance at getting items like Ultra Balls, Nuggets, and better healing items. If the Zigzagoon is stronger, there are more items to pickup and a better chance at getting good items like Rare Candies, Proteins, PP/HP Up, Elixir, moves, and more.

You can run around in a circle for a little while and end up with a ton of items that can make your Pokemon stronger or items that you can sell for a ton of money right at the start of the game. When I used to play Emerald all those years ago, I would get my starter and catch 5 Zigzagoons. Then I would just spend hours running around the early routes, battling and letting them pick stuff up. Every two minutes I would get 5 items and as a result, just an hour or so into the game, I already had a nice advantage.

Why did I tell you this story? Because back then during the third generation, this was a trick that made the game easy. If you put the time into walking around, this made getting money and OP items really easy. But if you compare it to the difficulty levels of Pokemon Sword, Emerald is put to shame. That’s how easy Pokemon has become, Pokemon Sword is easier than using a trick that made Pokemon Emerald super easy.

Look, there’s no doubt that the game is fun. Pokemon Sword is still a ton of fun but even though it has all these cool new features and stuff, it’s so easy that you get through the game and all the extra stuff in a short amount of time. I remember being able to pay $40 for a Pokemon game and spend 200 or more hours having fun.

You would expect the newer games to be much longer because of all the new stuff added over the years but because it’s easier and faster now, I end up spending the same amount of time or less playing. I’m going to have to subtract a point here.

# OF POKEMON

I’ve already mentioned this a couple times earlier in this review, but for lots of people, the number of Pokemon present in Sword and Shield has been a huge letdown, even now, a year after the games release. Pokemon games are obviously known for letting you catch all the Pokemon, I mean, that’s kind of their thing am I right? Plus every game in the series has had a ton of Pokemon for you to go after.

Heck, look at Pokemon Sun and Moon, which were the previous generation before Sword and Shield. When those two game were released, the national Pokédex was increased to boast just over 800 different Pokemon and yes, before you ask, it was possible to get them all. This was done by catching, trading, and other events.

But for some strange reason, Sword and Shield were unable to come anywhere near 800 Pokemon, even while adding new Pokemon to the mix. Game Freak said oh no, this game has way too many things going on and the game won’t be able to handle it if we put too many Pokemon in it. So sacrifices have had to be made, and those playing the game were the ones who were hurt the most.

Even though nearly 100 new Pokemon were designed for the 8th generation, the complete Pokedex boasted only 400 Pokemon. That means that roughly 500 Pokemon from the first 7 Generations didn’t make the cut. Game Freak did promise that many Pokemon would return with the Expansion Pass, but that didn’t really help when the game first released because the returning Pokemon were more than 6 months away.

When the games were first released, so many people were pissed at the roster. In fact, Reds girlfriend is one of the biggest Pokemon fans out there, but before the games were released, she was debating whether or not she should get it at all because there was no Bulbusaur. In the end, she got the game, but she was sad for the longest.

The Expansion Pass didn’t even help all that much because in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t really add back all that many Pokemon. Each of the two parts of the pass featured roughly 100 returning Pokemon. That sounds like a lot but that still meant that around one third of all Pokemon are missing from the game.

Hopefully this is something that Game Freak and Nintendo can work on in the future. Who knows, maybe there will be another Expansion Pass next year where we will get to see even more Pokemon make their return but for now we’re still stuck with a small sample size of only 600 Pokemon which is still the lowest its been since Generation 4. I’m going to have to subtract another point.

CONCLUSION:

Overall, Pokemon Sword, and to a similar extent Shield, is a mixed bag but with a lot more great features than bad features. For me, I feel like the game would have been a lot better had the developers not tried so hard to make the game feel like something completely new. They did this same technique with Pokemon Sun and Moon and it worked because it made the games better as Pokemon games.

But I didn’t really see that effect here in Pokemon Sword and Shield. When it comes to the graphics, the game looks as good as ever, much better than it could have ever looked on the 3DS, with beautiful laminations and scenery. But at the same time, at least for me, some of the charm wasn’t there anymore and I didn’t get the same feeling looking at Sword than I did looking at games like HeartGold and SoulSilver.

I felt the same way about the music. There were fewer songs that really felt like Pokemon music and again, it’s great to try new things, but some of the flair that made me like each of the previous games just wasn’t there in the music.

But when you look past your expectations of what you want a Pokemon to look and sound like, the gameplay and mechanics of Sword really shines and makes the game stand out against some of the other big Switch games and even against some of the other Pokemon games. Pokemon Sword simply has so much to offer.

Pokemon started off as a game about catching and training all the Pokemon, becoming the champion, and battling the evil team. But it’s evolved to become so much more over the years and Sword added even more. There’s so many new features and so many ways to interact with both the Pokemon world and other players.

The game shines in so many ways and it’s definitely worth the price, even though $60 still isn’t really what we’re used to for a Pokemon game. For years we’ve been used to Pokemon games being $40 and then the Switch came along and Pokemon games shot up to $60 and guess what? They’re still so worth it.

It’s even more worth it if you pay the full $90 for the game and Expansion Pass because if you’re the kind of person who loves Pokemon and knows that you will play, it’s going to get you an easy couple hundred hours.

I think that Pokemon Sword is one of the better games that you can get on the Switch and I’m excited to see what comes next in the series so here and my overall grades.

GRAPHICS: 9
SOUND: 8
ADDICTIVENESS: 10
STORY: 9
DEPTH: 9
PROS: +4
CONS: -2

DIFFICULTY: 1
OVERALL: 9.4/10

This was by far the longest it's ever taken me to write a review. A couple days of planning, 3 days of replaying, and then 4 almost full days of writing. This beat out my SAO review by more than 1000 words and a day so I'm proud of that too but I planned on this being my 200th review but I got sick and wasn't able to write the reviews that came before this.