Review #723: Pokemon Sword

 Gotta catch'em all. Some of them, anyways.

 Ever since Pokemon became a thing, people have wondered just how a proper home-console Pokemon would be(The Gamecube games didn't count, for whatever reason). The wait is over, Pokemon Sword and Shield are here. Turns out it'd be exactly what it has always been. Every single time I wrote about a new Pokemon game in this blog I've echoed a particular thought: No Pokemon game can be better than the previous one, because they always take away features but add new ones, their excuse being wanting to make each game feel different, which is hilarious considering Pokemon might be one of the franchises that refuses to change the most, yet instead of accumulating incremental additions, it feels like for every step forward a new entry takes, we lose something that was really good.

 If the game deserves praise for something, is that it seems like they learned from Sun and Moon. The plot in those games was incredibly overbearing, holding your hand every step of the way and trying to restrict you as much as it could so that you'd go wherever the game wanted you to go, exploration be damned. There's still a big focus on story with these new games, but it gives you more freedom, want to explore your surroundings before heading for the gym? Go for it! There are roadblocks preventing you from leaving town before beating the gym, but it doesn't feel like the game doesn't want to let go of your hand and force you to go wherever it wants to take you. These games' theme is sports, the Pokemon champion is a celebrity and Gyms are different leagues. Whenever you tackle a Gym you go into a soccer-like field, surrounded by a huge crowd, to battle and what not. Well, after solving a puzzle, since each Gym has a gimmick you must clear before being allowed to challenge the Gym leader.

 There's a surprising, and welcome, emphasis in character progression. Taking a page from X and Y, you get three different rivals that compete against you, and you watch them develop alongside your own little adventure. Hop is your best friend, and the champion's little brother, so he feels like he needs to prove that he can defeat his brother, or at least, not 'make him look bad'. Bede is the mandatory meanie of the game, constantly mocking and belittling the player, but he gets his own character arc. Then there's Marnie, a mysterious girl that seems to have ties to this game's required enemy team, Team Yell. Team Yell is, quite probably, the most useless and less interesting enemy Team in the franchise. After you finish the game, there's a short epilogue surrounding a couple of dumb clowns, so while the adversaries are lame, at least you get closure on Hop, Bede and Marnie's stories, as well as getting to team up with the Gym Leaders. And you get the game's legendary mascot to boot!

 That said, this game's post-game is rather lacking. For starters, I beat the game in about 23 hours, but I'm sure it can be done quicker if you spend less time on the Wild Area. The epilogue takes about 3 more hours to complete. Afterwards, you can take on the Championship("elite 4") again, but... it has changed. A lot. There's no Elite 4 this time, instead, you get to fight in a 3-round 'tournament' which features random opponents, from generic challengers, to your rivals to even Gym Leaders. You get completely healed after each match, which is only fair, but it lacks the gravitas that the Elite 4 had. At least the game acknowledges you as the champion, NPCs on the street will call you Champ, and when competing in tournaments you'll get your due respect. You also unlock the Challenge Tower, if you're into that. As an aside, I know I've been part of 'THERE ARE TOO MANY LEGENDARIES!", but this game has a pathetic 3 Legendary Pokemon for you to capture, one is caught during the story, the game's mascot is caught during the epilogue and, lastly, the third one, Type-Null from Sun/Moon, is given to you when you enter the battle tower. Other games in the series, like HeartGold/SoulSilver and OmegaRuby/AlphaSaphire would let you capture a whole slew of legendaries from previous games, which added more content to the games and felt rewarding. Not here it isn't. There aren't even roaming legendary Pokemon, which makes the Master Ball pretty much a glorified Pokeball skin. since there's nothing worthwhile to use it on.

 Much has been said about the game's graphics, but let's get down to brass tacks: On a technical level, the graphics are relatively poor, with muddy textures and the trademark lazy animations it's always been known for. But, but on an artistic level, it's quite pretty. Even the smallest towns in the game are pretty to behold, because they went for very interesting designs and a lot of color, the developers weren't shying away from using every single color known to man. The Pokemon themselves look quite vibrant, a stark contrast from how they looked in X and Y. The elephant in the room is that while there are almost 100 new creatures, you can only get up to a 400 different mons in the game. I understand the outcry, but I don't really care. Almost every new Pokemon design is pretty good, which is something I can't say for previous generations, it seemed like most Pokemon designs were getting blander and blander, but the new mons are pretty dope. The 400 monsters available are a decent bunch too, there's a nice mix of old and new. Look, I play Digimon and it seems like every game has a different roster, so I'm used to this. We've got almost 900 different monsters now, that would mean an obscene amount of time to work on the game. A few moves, like Hidden Power, got axed, but we have a few new moves in their stead. It'll be interesting to see if and how Unown returns since his main and only gimmick got the boot!

 That said, Gamefreak used 'making new animations and models' as their excuse for halving the monster roster. That's a flat-out lie. There are tons of reused animations in the game, even for trainers. Pokemon models haven been proven to be the exact same from previous games, heck, the Pokemon Company said that X and Y's models were made taking into account the possibility of taking them into the HD world. But the worst part about it is that some animations are as lazy as they've always been. A bite is just a 'mon lurching forward against the opponent while generic 2-D teeth sprites bite onto the enemy. Double kick is still just moving the character model up and down on the Y-axis. A lot of animations are either garbage or lazy, none of their excuses are valid. They should've just sticked to 'it would've been a lot of work importing every single monster, and trying to balance them between each other".

 As for the game itself... it's Pokemon, very little changes between game and game. Turn-based battles, elemental/type advantages and disadvantages, six-pokemon party, 4 moves per Pokemon, run on tall grass in order to find Pokemon to battle and capture and fight against other trainers and their own party of Pokemon. A few noteworthy things to mention is that Exp. Share is turned on by default and can't be turned off, which... I actually think is a good thing. People claim it makes the game too easy, and maybe it does, but having to grind with each Pokemon was boring, or the whole "Put a weak pokemon in battle and swap for another one to win the fight" was kinda lame, wasn't it? Maybe it should be a toggle so that puritans can waste their time if they want. That said, while I'll admit I was overlevelled for most of the game, probably because I spent so much time in the Wild Area, the game's Champion gave me a run for my money. He actually defeated me the first time around, and almost murdered me on my second attempt. It's been a while since I actually lost in a Pokemon game, but the champion is quite a challenge, with good type coverage and strong monsters.

 An interesting new change is that there are no random battle now! Pokemon still appear in tall grass, but now you can see them. And they will chase you. And it's scary. Honestly, you're a 10 year old kid running away from a buff Machoke who wants to eat your guts. It's awesome. There are a few 'surprise' monsters that only show up as ruffling grass, but you can avoid them if you want. There's a single problem with this new approach, and that's that the bike is too fast, so using the bike on tall grass will inevitably have you triggering fights you don't want to fight. A weird new change, is that every part of the game except the Wild Area has lost the day-night cycle until you beat the game. It's weird, because supposedly it's done for story purposes, but I don't remember a single instance in which it mattered for the plot whether it was day or night.

 Do you know what's the worst part about the new customization features? It's that I'm pretty sure X and Y did it best. It didn't feel like there were may clothing options in this game, and there are only four different clothing shops in the entire game. FOUR! As per usual, us 'boy' gender players get the short end of the stick, with less clothes and hairstyles. Pokejobs are a thing now, you can now, on any Pokemon Center, send your Pokemon away on 'jobs' to earn experience. Useful when you want to level up other mons as you do your own stuff with your favorite party. The move-relearner is now available on every single Pokemon Center, which is also pretty neat. You know what isn't neat? There's not touchscreen support at all. What a missed opportunity! Going through menus or battles with the touchscreen was a pretty neat alternative in the handheld games when I was feeling lazy, shame it didn't make it to this new game. The HUD will still tell you if your moves are effective or not against any Pokemon that you've already fought before, pretty nice to see that this feature didn't get removed, since there's no way I can keep track of every mon's typing past the first four generations of monsters!

 Pokemon-amie is gone, and I can't say it's a huge loss. In it's stead we've got camping, which you can do on pretty much any route. While camping you can play with your pokemon, you've got a couple of toys with you, or cook curry for you and your party, by partaking in a simple minigame and using some berries. There's a Currydex that you can fill out by trying different berry combinations if you so like it. Regardless, it's time to mention the game's dumbest design choice. Remember how everyone celebrated in unison when TMs became non-expendable? Remember? Well, for whatever reason Game Freak thought that a few TMs would now become TRs, which are one-time use only........... You can get them by fighting raids or spending an in-game currency called Watts. Doesn't make the change any less stupid. Why? I've come to understand the give-and-take Game Freak does with features and gimmicks, but to actually take a step-back from one of the most welcome changes in the franchise? What. Where. They. Thinking? An NPC even tries to make this change sound less dumb by saying how 'retro' it is. Screw you, GameFreak. This is dumb, if I want to play around with different monsters,  I shouldn't have to also keep in mind that I might run out of Ice Beams. Players should be given freedom to try out different movesets and builds, and not restrict them with this silliness.

 There's one new feature, or rather two, I haven't talked about yet: Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing. This is something that can only be done in very specific zones, such as Pokemon Gyms/Stadiums and in Raid Battles inside the Wild Area. Basically, it's just like Mega Evolution, but it only lasts 3 turns, can only be done by a single member of your party, and instead of making your Pokemon cooler, it makes it larger. Like, giant kind of larger. It also changes their moveset into Dynamaxed attacks that change depending on the type. For instance, all fire attacks you have turn into the same Dynamax attack, although with different attack power. Of course, this means that Mega Evolutions and Z attacks are completely gone, which isn't surprising at all considering how much Game Freak loves to ax features. Gigantamaxing is a special form of Dynamaxing that changes how a Pokemon looks, think of a Dynamaxed Mega Evolution, and grants them access to exclusive G-Max attacks. Remember how Pokemon X and Y had nearly 800 monsters but only 25 Mega Evolutions? Now we have a total of 900 monsters, only 400 in the game, and yet, only 26 different Gigantamax forms. Where are all these new models, GameFreak? Where are the new animations, since Dynamaxed there are only 18 different Dynamax attack animations? Gigantamaxing is so dumb since there are such few monsters that get them. Regardless, I learned to like Dynamaxing, because having giant Pokemon looked so silly that I just couldn't help but enjoy the feature. I'd rather have Mega Evolutions, though.

 I've gone on and on about this 'Wild Area' thing, so what is it? Remember the Safari Zone? It's a teeny tiny bit like that. Basically, a large part of this new Galar Region is made out of a Wild Area, in which Pokemon, weak and strong, roam about freely. This is also where you can partake in Raid battles. By touching any beam of light you find in here you can fight against a Dynamaxed monster, and you do in a 4-man party. If you play online you can fight with friends, play offline and you'll fight with NPCs. Defeating a monster lets you capture it, and you may even find Gigantamax Pokemon like this. It seems like there's an actual catch rate on this battles, so you may actually fail, but I always captured everything I fought. It seems playing offline actually gives you higher odds at succeeding.

 The Wild Area is actually pretty neat, because you get granted access to this zone pretty early in the game, earlier than even your first badge actually, and there's a lot of variety of monsters you can capture. Which means that this early in the game you can start toying around with your future final party. I mean, this early in the game I found myself a Jangmo-o, a pseudo-legendary Dragon Pokemon, the kind of Pokemon you usually find very late in the game, while in a Raid. Later in the game I found out that it wasn't just 'any' Jangmo-o, it was one that could even Gigantamax! This Wild Area part of the game grants players a lot more options with Pokemon a lot earlier than any other game in the franchise, and that's fantastic.

 What's not so great is how capturing works now. You can only capture Pokemon up to a certain level. It doesn't matter if your Pokemon have a higher level than the one you're battling, if you don't have enough badges you just can't capture them. This is incredibly dumb. I understand not wanting players to cheese the game by lucking-out and capturing a level 60 Pokemon and then overpowering everything the game throws at them.... but Pokemon is an EASY game. There's no challenge, there's no reason to prevent the player from even capturing a Pokemon they just found. A better alternative would've been making captured, high-level Pokemon refusing to listen to the player during fights instead of flat-out preventing you from throwing a Pokeball in the first place! Modern Pokemon has never been about the challenge, this is but a mild annoyance. You'll come across a bunch of interesting Pokemon, which of course are weaker than your party because you've been doing such a diligent job in capturing every new thing you came across, and yet the game won't let you capture them anyways because, hey, you can only capture up to level 25 if you've got less than two badges. Lame.

 That said, on the whole, I liked the Wild Area. You can also come across 'mons like Steelix and Gengar, y'know, the ones with the silly 'need to be traded' requirements for evolving. But, hey, they are Steelix and Gengar, your party may be on their early 20s and they are probably on their 50s, so hope you are carrying a Pokemon Doll and can get away from them if they catch you!

 Look, Pokemon Sword and Shield are not as great as they could've been, but don't lose hope over reddit leaks. I found the leaks, I read them and I thought that the game was gonna be subpar. It isn't. As with any other Pokemon game, some changes are good, some are bad. I think this game had a few more misses than hits, when compared to other recent releases, but there are worse ways you can pass time than another good Pokemon game.
 7.5 out of 10