Pokemon Sword & Shield

[Maf]

I finally started this today and oooooohhhh I love this game you guys. I’ve played maybe 2-3 hours or so and have just reached route 4. I went in to the Wild Area which is their open space for catching and battling Pokemon.
 

I, hmm, I don’t hate it. But it’s also kind of dull. It’s literally just a big open area with nothing to do in it except watch Pokemon spawn out of the grass. You can catch some of them, although some are level 30 and 50 so your options are faint or run. It’s a bit annoying because to escape battles you need to use a Poketoy item which are consumable, but you don’t always know you’re about to encounter a Pokemon too strong for you so I burnt all of my items really quickly and then got knocked out a couple times. It doesn’t cost anything but some money when you get knocked out, but feels a bit unfair. 
 

Also just for the first area there were no new Pokemon, only old ones. But they did have some cool ones like Tyrogue and Xatu. But I only use new Pokemon on my first play throughs of new games. 
 

Speaking of which, of the ones I’ve seen I quite like so far. I’ve barely caught any because I only want 3 for now so I can’t tell how good they are, but design wise I like, if not love, the small handful that I’ve seen. Some screens below. 
 

My guy. I named him Armer, because, y’know, Shield version

 

 

My current team

 

Where I’m at right now. I still feel like this game is behind in terms of graphics and whatnot but if you zoom out it looks quite nice, and very different to other Pokemon games

 

 

 

 

[Maf]

Yikes. So I’ve been making this game hard on myself by using weak Pokemon, not let them evolve, and not really considering team synergy and I have paid the price. This game has been really challenging lol. And the next boss I have to fight is a Fire type gym leader and I don’t have anything for that. 
 

Check out that bug Pokemon! ? I literally just got it. And yes that other Pokemon is a splash of milk. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried training a splash of milk or sent a splash of milk in to battle. But it is very tough. 
 

Spoiler

 

[mmmark]

I’m three hours in. I just got to mokototototo something. I think it might be the most bored I’ve been by a game all year?

 

The first hour or so is hand holdy and so slow. So much text. The battles take forever. I turned off the battling animation but it hardly made any difference. I thought it’d skip more than it does.
 

IDK, 3 hours is nothing, I just can’t imagine there being a time when I look forward to battling or exploring if things don’t pick up dramatically. 

[mmmark]

Well that was weird. I went to bed, decided to play some ‘mon before sleeping and the game picked up almost immediately after I’d turned it off. As soon as you register in as a trainer it’s much more rewarding and enjoyable to play. 

 

 

 

my card number (idk what it’s for)

Spoiler

 

 

[Maf]

Shit, well I somehow managed to defeat the Fire Gym leader. Despite using revives, super potions and heavily relying on Reflect and Light Screen, I got real lucky and basically hated one of his Pokemon to death, but his last Pokemon blew back my entire team. Even when I Dynamaxed one of them he made it faint in 2 hits. 
 

That was a super cool and hard fought battle. Well done team!

[spatular]

I’ve never played a Pokemon game before, played quite a lot of this now, still not really sure what to make of it. I like the collecting and some of the Pokemon. I’ve got a pikachu and a fire tortoise which I think are pretty cool.

 

the difficulty is all over the place for me, probably depending on if I have or accidentally use the right Pokemon for the situation. It’s probably really easy for people who know what they’re doing. It was really easy at the start but then the 4th gym was really hard - I didn’t know what mon to use. But the 5th one I’ve just done was pretty easy. I’ve looked at charts a few times for strengths/weaknesses but probably should look at them more. The only slightly comparable thing I’ve played is persona where there are a lot less types/elements whatever so it’s easier to work it out yourself.

 

i mean I don’t hate it or I wouldn’t have played so much. If I was a competent Pokemon trainer I’d have probably already completed it already, but I guess I’m only about half way.

 

any tips for catching Pokemon? I’ve been trying to get them into yellow health then just throwing poke balls at them, sometimes they just don’t want to be captured and stored in a tiny ball for the rest of their lives. It seems like using a higher level monster helps with catching stuff?

[Maf]

You just lower their health and throw Pokeballs at them. You can help by using different types of balls or also inflicting a status effect like like sleep, paralyse, burn or poison. Although the last two continually lower the Pokemon’s HP so the first two are better options

[spatular]

Cheers!

[Maf]

I finally got past route 6 and to the desert town where if I’m right the gym leader is going to use fairy type Pokemon. Another typing disadvantage for me. I only have one Pokemon who should fair all right against them, but I don’t like the Pokemon at all and will be off the team as soon as I find a...new backbone for the team who will save me every single time as this Pokemon has done of late.

 

And yes I had to Google how to evolve Milcery. It makes me feel bad but even when I got the correct item I would never have figured it out. 
 

Team 

Spoiler

 

[Maf]

So the gym leader wasn’t fairy type at all, which actually ended up making way for an unlikely, clutch hero! 
 

Spoiler

 

That won me the battle which was really cool.

 

I’m having mixed feelings about the game overall. On the one hand I really like this game because I’ve been playing Pokemon forever and am predisposed to liking these games. Just the fact it does the simple things it does keeps me entertained. But on the other hand the game feels both hyper featherweight and too quickly paced. The time between towns and boss fights is Sonic fast, the world is too simplistically designed, I’m actually liking the characters for what they are but you don’t get much of them or the overall story, there’s no difficulty to the dungeons - at all. They are extremely short and straight forward. And there’s just a overall lacking feeling of substance. Some of that is to do with the challenge (despite me making it artificially difficult), but also the feeling of what is there is just very weak and has been done better before. 
 

That’s not to say the game goes without merit. I like a lot of the new Pokemon, the forest area and town I’m in are probably the most eye catching locations Pokemon has ever had, the Wild Area is a neat idea if also kind of a wasted opportunity, and like I said I just like these games so I’m having fun for sure. 
 

But as of right now for me it is probably in the lower end of my Pokemon games ranking. Not including remakes/direct sequels my list probably is this

 

= Gold/Silver

= Red/Blue

X/Y

Diamond/Pearl

Sun/Moon

Sword/Shield

Black/White

Ruby/Sapphire

 

I think it’s also subject to change because of how new this game is and how the second half could go.

 

[Maf]

Think I’ve found the ugliest Pokemon of all time. What a disaster this thing is.

 

[DANGERMAN]

you put wheels on that, it'd look like a particular Shin Megami demon

[Maryokutai]

The Pokédex description sounds like Darwin's worst nightmare, no wonder it's a fossile Pokémon.

[Maf]

So, light spoilers in regards to fossils, I guess 

 

Spoiler

The fossil Pokemon in this game are all Frankenstein’d together. To get the fossil Pokemon in this game you need 2 separate fossils from 2 separate creatures and an NPC mashes them together and you end up with catastrophes. That was just the one I ended up with. I thought there were only 2 but according to the internet there are 4 fossil Pokemon in this game that can be made out of a combination of 4 fossil types. So essentially you are taking 2 different tops of creatures and mashing them together with 2 different bottoms of creatures and these are the results. It’s messed up this time around. Y’know, even further messed up then it usually is when you revive species that died out 1000’s of years ago

 

[Maf]

Finally managed to get all 8 gym badges with maybe the worst team there ever was. I really like them but most of them are next to useless lol. That last gym in particular was some bullshit. But I cheesed it. 

 

Spoiler

 

[Maf]

Finally managed to beat the game 

 

 

Closer look at the team

 

Spoiler

Man, so for the first time probably since R/S/E I actually lost the final champion battle and had to retry. This was for 3 reasons - My team is very weak, the opponents team is very strong, and I just had the absolute worst luck first time around as well. I could of ended it at any time in the first fight but I was trying to get the final hit with Grookey but the opponents Pokemon was just too fast and killed me in one hit every time because he never. Fucking. Misses. 
 

I swear the guy has super Pokemon.

 

Anyway. Game done. Meh. There are a small handful of things this game does differently, nothing radical at all just some kind of admirable changes here and there, that I really, really like. But I’m sure a lot of these results Game Freak stumbled in to ass backwards because there’s so much in this game they waste that when the game gets big stuff wrong and small stuff right I can’t help but feel it was accidental. No spoilers but the way they use football stadiums as gym battles, the way they mix up the “Elite 4” process at the end, and the way they handle story moments*, these are really cool changes. But even then they should take the idea further and make it more interesting. 

*The story is trash but there are a few times they handle things like rivals and league battles in cool ways they should of done forever ago, but it’s good to see they got there eventually. 
 

I don’t really have much more meaningful to add that I haven’t already talked about. At this point I kind of keep coming back to the fact that this game is just a wasted opportunity. I don’t think it’s bad, I like the game. But if you are not super into Pokemon then I think a lot of people will come away not liking it and you probably shouldn’t like it. 
 

I’m not going to act like making this game was easy, but the fact that Let’s Go had two years worth of development work and some of it is being shared with this game I would expect a lot more out of it in terms of technical and content. Then there are the creative decision where I think all of the new, big ideas are either not thought or fleshed out properly. In all ways it feels like Game Freak really struggled. The irony to this game having a whole football motif and theme to the league battles is the game itself is like a missed penalty. It was just sitting there. But I guess it was not as simple as it looked. 
 

For me it is a highly middling 6/10 

 

But, one bright spark, this theme song is fucking awesome and great to battle too.

 

 

[spatular]

Just finished this, I quite enjoyed it, had to replay the last fight, had a vague idea which Pokemon to use when the second time and so it went a lot better.

 

My team was:

Spoiler

Rillaboom, corviknight, drednaw, pikachu, torkoal, hatterene

 

I didn’t go around the wild area or use other pokemon that much so I might play a bit more, and try and catch a few more. think I got about 115, not sure if that’s total or unique. So did become the very best, but failed to catch them all.

[OCH]

9 hours ago, spatular said:

So did become the very best, but failed to catch them all.

 

Don't worry, I'm pretty sure Ash failed at both those things...

[Maf]

What

 

 

[spatular]

^ that not a normal Pokemon thing then? I thought it was pretty cool.

 

theres More story stuff to do after the credits, which I just did, got a bit lucky with the last 2 fights. Then after that you unlock 

Spoiler

Some battle stadium/tower thing where apparently you battle really strong Pokemon trainers, in a massive departure from the rest of the game.

 

I haven’t tried it. Got about 155 Pokemon now, and think I’m calling it quits there.