Pokemon Sword & Shield

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Gameplay & Misc

  • I think I was a bigger fan of exp share being an item rather than an always-on thing, it reduces the player’s choices. It’s probably for the best, because it encourages the player to catch a lot of Pokemon and experiment, but that’s never been how I played the game

  • It feels like the game doesn’t even start until you get to the Wild Zone, but that place is pretty cool, just a big open area with a wide variety of pokemon, and max raids to do

  • It definitely feels like this game gives you too many convenient heals, especially early on. There’s not much challenge to begin with, but in SWSH you never really need to do more than like 6 or so battles without healing.

  • There’s a kind of weird anachronistic quality to a lot of the game’s sound effects. They sound like they want to be the same SFX as the old gameboy games, while also being new and modern. It makes them sound kind of weird and janky, like they don’t mesh with the game’s modern feel.

  • It feels like there’s always this weird difficulty level in pokemon where, you’re just 1-shotting everything that exists, and once you get to that point, there’s nothing in the single player game that offers any difficulty. It gets kind of old after a while, beating up boastful trainers without taking a single hit. I don’t want to have to fight other trainers online in order to find any difficulty where the game’s mechanics actually matter

  • Man the soundtrack is just endless slappers though

  • It’s a bit silly having all these events leading up to this epic faceoff against the legendary pokemon, it has its own unique battle theme, and then it immediately ends when you throw a master ball. In that way, Eternatus worked way better, because at least you had to win a dynamax battle


Narrative & Structure

  • The intro structure of this game is a little indulgent. The actual tutorialization bits where they let you play the game work pretty well, but it take a bit too long to get into it imo

  • It’s pretty weird fighting a trainer who has 6 pokeballs on their model, and only uses 2 in battle

  • It feels weird that it takes 6 hours before you even get to the first gym, compared to Gen 1 where it’s like, 30 minutes

  • The pacing of this game is so weird. Toward the end of the gyms, you clear them so fast. 

  • This game is so linear, and honestly feels kind of empty. You kind of just go down a route, hit a gym, then go down another route to another gym. Earlier gens felt way more dynamic, there were more interesting places you had to clear, and it felt like a journey. I don’t feel like I’m earning badges or going on an earnest adventure in SWSH


UI/UX

  • It feels like all of the scenes and intros and such are just a little bit longer than I’d like. Cutscenes in particular just feel like their pacing is a little bit off, and it makes them a bit hard to bare

  • It feels so awkward having the party menu pop up every time an enemy is knocked out in a trainer battle, because you associate this with battle end (whereas in previous games, you just see the exp gauge on screen on the battle UI)

  • I’m not really a fan of the UI showing you “effective” / “not effective” on the attack tile. I want to work that out for myself instead of just clicking the button I’m told to click. I’d rather they show me what type the enemy pokemon is, and even if they don’t give me a type strengths dictionary or something, at least I can work it out from that info

  • I appreciate things like Fly and Escape Rope being much easier to use, because limited uses and HM slaves were lame, but it definitely feels like something was lost (especially in the case of Fly)

  • I appreciate it showing a little prompt every time you get a new item, to stop you from needing to say “Ok, I found a Stardust… What IS Stardust?”

  • Why on earth does Dynamax maintain the PP of your Pokemon’s moves? You get a full heal, you get ENTIRELY NEW ABILITIES, but if you were out of PP, good luck

  • Having enemies on the map is a huge boon for Pokemon, where discovering new types of pokemon is a big focus of the game. It makes the task a lot less grindy, and lets you opt into interesting experiences instead of hunting until they appear

  • Having the “!” battles that appear in the tall grass is a really nice compromise between enemies on the map, without sacrificing the feeling of mystery previous games gave you whenever you walked through the grass

  • Not a fan of the UI transitions that happen between a lot of the menus, they make navigating around a bit of a pain when every screen takes like 2-3 seconds to appear

  • I wish I could press + or something to exit the menu automatically when I’m 2-3 layers deep, without it, it takes like 10 seconds to get out of the menu sometimes

  • It seems like every pokemon that evolves will learn a new move when they evolve, and I really like how that adds a little bit of oomph to the evolution

  • It’s really awkward having everything about Zacian / Zamazenta change when you go into battle. If you’re looking at the pokemon summary outside of battle, you aren’t looking at their real stats, moves, or even type.