Pokemon has captured me ever since I was a little boy. I still look forward to every new release, and it will never fully leave me. I mean, my username is quite literally a Pokemon, and the best one at that.

One of my biggest dreams growing up was to have a fully immersive and 3D Pokemon Game, with so much exploration potential. When Pokemon made the jump to the 3DS that should have been it, but the limitations of that system made the following games, X/Y and Sun/Moon some of my least favorites to date. It was essentially the same thing as all the entries before, with now 8 directions you can travel in instead of 4! I also felt like the writing took a big step backwards when compared to the genius of the Gen 5 games.

To my delight, two generations would be all that I would have to endure on the 3DS system. A new generation of consoles brought a new Nintendo console with it as well. Enter the Nintendo Switch. The first crossover between a handheld and a traditional console, the Nintendo Switch was an innovative idea that I found intriguing. Still, I did not immediately purchase the console. Mainly because I was broke, but also because there was something I was waiting for: Pokemon.

Finally in 2019, the time came. A new Pokemon game was on the horizon. On this more powerful and creative console. This must be a recipe for success, right? I was initially very high on Sword and Shield. The names are not included in this statement, of course. I thought it couldn’t get worse after X and Y, or Sun and Moon, but the corny names for the titles just keep on coming, huh. Still, what little footage we saw looked exciting, and I actually really liked several of the Pokemon they chose to reveal to us prior to the launch of the game. Rolycoly became an instant hit with me, and I would go on to swear on everything that I would use one on my team. Aside from the Pokemon I thought the game looked great from a graphical perspective. Certainly miles ahead of the pixilated messes that were the 3DS games. Long story short, I bought a Switch and pre-ordered Pokemon Shield. I don’t actually remember why I chose Shield over Sword, but I think I enjoyed Zamazenta more than Zacian based purely on box art and one small animation we got.

We had some family emergency earlier in that month, and it wasn’t easy trying to go back to normal afterwards. When my Switch and my game finally arrived I was therefore delighted. I was up on a discord call with a few others as I was setting up my Switch. The game came right after, and I was ready to go. For the next few weeks, Pokemon was all I could think about. I threw my entire being at this game. Now let’s see what I thought of it

Graphics

Starting off with the Graphics category. Pokemon Shield (and by extension Pokemon Sword) are the first games that get to make use of the power of the Nintendo Switch. I’m aware that as of recently it has become apparent that the original Switch is lacking in many areas, but at the time we were comparing it to a literal 3DS. As a result, the jump in Graphics was immediately noticeable. The colors were vibrant and alive, the game wasn’t pixilated, and it felt smooth to look at.

One of the early joys I experienced playing Pokemon Shield was discovering the new Pokemon in the Galar Region. In previous generations, especially Generation 7 (Sun & Moon), Nintendo decided to reveal practically every single Pokemon to us over the course of many months. This led to some exciting times awaiting the next video on the official channel and sharing the hype with friends, but by the time the game came around the novelty of the new Pokemon was kind of lost to me. Sword and Shield were different. There was still a selection of Pokemon revealed before launch, of course, but they were limited and usually only reserved for the first stage in the evolution line, such as Wooloo or Rolycoly (my hero). I remember feeling very impressed with a lot of the early options in the game. The models looked a lot cleaner than they did on the 3DS, which was my main comparison, and I felt like the designs of the Pokemon made their personalities jump out. Every time I encountered a new friend I had never seen or heard of before, I had to make it mine. There were some later Pokemon I initially wasn’t high on, but upon revisiting I think the Galar Dex had above average to well designed Pokemon for the majority of its Pokedex.

The region itself looked great. I’m not talking about anything ‘to do’ when I say this, I just mean visually. The routes felt like they really tried to recreate some British landmarks and areas. Lots of details to the layout and the background. The vibrant coloring certainly helped with this. What really stood out to me though, were the cities. I think of all the things I can graphically compliment Pokemon Sword and Shield on, the City designs have to be pretty far up there. A lot of the cities were memorable to me (by look, not by name). They had different vibes, but it somehow just worked. I liked the industrial feel in Motostoke a lot, and certain other areas like Glimwood Tangle + Ballonlea felt magical and beautiful.

Safe to say the graphics were a huge success, right? Well…. That’s where I might have to disagree. You see, one of the biggest selling points of Pokemon Sword and Shield was the jump they wanted to make in terms of exploration and becoming more ‘open world’. Referring back to my childhood dream, this was brilliant news. Except their implementation of this vision was rather… lacking. The Wild Area was what they called it. A huge mass of No Man’s Zone in the middle of the region, with no towns or trainers and a whole ecosystem of wild Pokemon to discover. What made it wild? Encountering some level 50 Pokemon and passing out after you obtain your first badge. In theory this sounds like a fun addition to the game. If only they put even an iota of effort into making it look nice. The wild area is, and I do not exaggerate, perhaps the single ugliest thing I have come across in all of Pokemon. A lot of the ‘zones’ are bland grassfields, the color palette that I praised earlier for being vibrant became washed out, and we haven’t even gone over the trees. Oh god, the trees! They spawn in about 2 pixels before you run into them, and they look like they got ripped straight off the GameCube console. That was like 15 years earlier, by the way.

Overall I still think the graphics improved, but when your big selling point looks so hideous, I can’t be overly excited about it.

Sound

Pokemon Sword and Shield does have some fantastic tracks. The city music in particular I remember being very fond of. When I first arrived in Motostoke, I literally stood still for about 15 minutes taking in the atmosphere and that killer sound track. Other tracks that get a lot of deserved love are the rival and Gym Leader tracks. The gym one in particular is probably the most iconic of the Galar region, as every fan was glad to see the gym system reintroduced. Battling in a stadium meant the song had to match the visual, and they delivered with a metal piece of perfection. I don’t love the cheer singing part at some point, but other than that it does get me going.

Addictiveness

Pokemon Sword and Shield are incredibly addicting when you start them. I think every new Pokemon game has that effect on people, with the exception of Sun and Moon due to the long intro and handhelding throughout. I did want to get to the next part all the time, mainly to experience the region and discover new Pokemon. I definitely lost some sleep during this time period by staying up as long as I could playing Pokemon. It certainly took me back to my childhood days whenever a new release came out and I’d become obsessed.

I do think the addictiveness falls off a cliff as the story starts to take over more and more. More on that later (too many mores there, my bad!). The post game is also one of the most boring out there. There’s very little to do other than the Battle Tower, and that got stale quickly. And I’ll be honest, I tried to delve a bit into shinyhunting and all, but gave up after a week and never touched the game since. So something must have gone wrong somewhere on the addictiveness front, at least for me.

Story

This is one of, if not the weakest story Pokemon has put out in all 9 generations so far. I’ll start this category like that. It starts out innocently enough, we have to get someone’s seal of approval to start our journey to challenge the Pokemon Gym Challenge and then become Champion. Thankfully the annoying neighbor boy we put up with happens to be the younger brother of the literal Champion of the region, so we leech off him some more to get his brother’s autograph or whatever proves he supports us.

Throughout the game we are met with an ensemble of characters, including 2 rivals in the already mentioned Hop and some rude jerk named Bede a little into the story. Both Hop and his brother, champion Leon, are simple minded and just want to battle everyone and everything. They would battle a tree if they could. It makes their characters less enjoyable for me, but to each their own.

As the conflict of the story starts happening, I kept wondering to myself “Why is this even happening”. The motivations of many of the characters are very questionable and make little sense. It reminds me of the classic Archie wanting to drown everyone (including himself) for some reason. Doesn’t make any sense. Impatience might be the secret theme of Pokemon Sword and Shield, because none of the scary bad stuff would have happened if some characters didn’t just take a chill pill and rationally think about the situation.

Depth

Pokemon Sword and Shield initially was rather void of depth. You beat the story, the Post game story, and do a quest or two. That’s it, the rest is up to you! You can choose to Shinyhunt using a system that is literally broken (encountering a Pokemon X amount of times is supposed to raise your shiny odds, it doesn’t). Or you can choose the stale Battle Tower! Not to mention the single worst online feature they have ever released. For all the crap I talked about the 3DS, those games, especially Gen 6, had the best online features I had ever seen. Even finding your friends is a challenge in Sword and Shield!

How did they fix this lack of Depth? Paid DLC content. Not just one, but two of them. I don’t want to waste too many words on why this is terrible, it speaks for itself. I will not buy a 30 dollar DLC for a few extra hours of gameplay and some legendaries to catch. If I’m paying upwards of 60 dollars for a game, I demand to have everything the game has to offer in my product. It’s getting ridiculous.

Difficulty

Pokemon Sword and Shield are among the easiest in the franchise. A forced EXP. Share on all your Pokemon guarantees it. You will never be underleveled, save maybe for the Champion Leon fight, and none of the gym leaders pose too much of a threat. The game throws too much at you to make it remotely challenging.

I genuinely never struggled. The one and only time I lost a battle was in the second or third City in the game. You could enter this café and fight some person working there, and they had level 40 something Pokemon. Got my ass kicked by that random NPC, good job buddy.

The Battle Tower was also easier than most other Battle Towers in Pokemon. Dynamax is such a broken mechanic, especially in Single Battles, that it allows you to steamroll even bad matchups.

Gameplay

Speaking of which, Dynamax is my least favorite 'gimmick ever introduced. It is essentially what Z-moves were, beefed up attacks based on their type, except you get 3 of them in a row plus your HP gets doubled, making you almost unkillable. What a balanced design choice!

Overall

Pokemon Sword and Shield were really fun when I started playing, due to a nice looking region and new Pokemon to discover, but the excitement for the games fell off due to the poor story and lack of content, including a terrible online feature. The wild area has to be the biggest disappointment in Pokemon, and the whole thing was basically one giant Beta test for the next installments in the franchise, Scarlet and Violet (hurray for normal names again!). Not even to mention the paid DLC that they introduced with these games. Upon replaying through Galar recently my opinion of it has gone up a bit, but it is still far from my favorite Pokemon Game