Review: Pokemon Sword and Shield

I’m thankfully done with that pokemon game. I just… had to finish it because I started it. There’s something about the problem solving involved with composing a team and then collecting it that I find really compelling and addictive. Actually any game where you have to plan out a custom team, optimize it, personalize it, and then work to get that team, usually gets me. But I’m glad it’s over because it was a waste of time.

Quick review, I guess. The starters in this one were not that compelling. I think it’s really disappointing they don’t come with these hidden abilities. I get all hype for them when I’m researching about the pokemon, but by the time they actually become available, I’m well beyond no longer caring about the game anymore.

This game has almost no post-game content, which is a huge disappointment, and it’s one of the problems with pokemon in general: there’s always a ton of stuff that you don’t get access to until the very end, or after the game is over, and then you have nothing to use it on. You get a legendary pokemon for… literally one fight. There is literally one fight left in the game for you to use it on. Just, what’s the point?

Far too much stuff is randomized. Want to get good stats, good nature, etc etc? Be prepared to reload 10,000 times. I’m not invested enough to put in the work, but I’m also too OCD to not be bothered by having an imperfect pokemon. Overall I did like it. I like the art style, and the gyms. I thought the rival was interesting enough. Not my favorite game ever, but for a way to blow a couple days, it was fine.

For a while I thought I totally picked the wrong version, because before I got the game I was thinking I was going to use the unicorn Ponyta, but when I got it, it turned out to suck, so I thought jeez, I gave up Hydreigon and… Jangmo-o? Hyangmo-o? Whatever it’s called, for this? But then trading for a Deino and a… whatever-mo, took like ten minutes, and I didn’t end up using either one anyway.

You can’t get any good TRs (a pointless new one-time-use TM) until after you beat the game, and there’s zero content left, because they all cost watts and you get abysmally few watts until post-game (you get roughly 4x as much in post-game). So I had imagined Cinderace having Zen Headbutt, Inteleon having Ice Beam and Shadow Ball, etc., but that didn’t happen.

I guess I’m just not sure about it. I feel like I binge watched an old Saturday morning cartoon and, I don’t know, I guess it was alright. It kept my attention. For most of the game I used Cinderace (ended up being my go-to mon for everything even though my starter was Sobble — I trade Sobbles I bred for the other starters). Anyway, most of the game I used Cinderace, Inteleon, Obstagoon, Toxtricity, Noivern & Rapidash. I really liked Obstagoon but he started to plateau toward the end

Ended up at the end with Cinderace, Inteleon, Toxtricity, Tyranitar, Dragapult and a Gyarados I was training to replace Inteleon, but he didn’t get there by the time the game ran out of content.

I’m left feeling kind of hollow because I would totally play the game a little more to finalize my team, but all that would be is literally biking around the wild area level grinding on random mons. So I guess that’s the final feeling the game left me with. Just kind of like… “Eh. Guess I’m done?”

I don’t know how to score that feeling. It’s like a two and a half star feeling.