An Overly Long and Critical Review of Pokemon Sword and Shield

It's truly no wonder Pikachu is the face of game freak, they both will always refuse to evolve

I think the most frustrating thing about this game is how every criticism is written off with a "these games are for children", as though so many of these expectations - a non-linear map, less constant cutscenes, less constant explanations of mechanics you can learn by playing - aren't present in the older titles we fell in love with - get this - AS CHILDREN. Kids did not get so miraculously stupid in the last decade that the only way a game can be enjoyable is if it's played for them. There's absolutely no excuse for these games not to be at least as well-designed as they were a few years ago. Something needs to change.

"A delayed game will eventually be good but a rushed game is forever bad" - Miyamoto. Where was Miyamoto??

It is absurd to me, that, in a game whose gimmick is "look how big we can make Pokemon on the console now" that they still do not scale the Pokemon properly. This is because they wanted to copy and paste the camera coding straight from the DS games where all the Pokemon we the same size, so they wouldn't have to make new camera distances for each Pokemon, and just used the same ones for all of them. I also do not see the point of making these games 3D, if they don't even want to animate the Pokemon properly or scale them. The whole novelty of being in 3D for these games is being able to bring Pokemon to life in a 3D environment, but they're so lifeless that it feels cheap. Pokemon company literally makes billions of dollars annually, from merch sales alone. That fact that they refuse to put any of that money into the development of their games to make a better product is really telling. These games are nothing more than ads for their merch anymore. The games themselves have no passion put into them are are just half baked and lazy. I grew up with Pokemon, but it has absolutely failed to grow up along side me. I want a better RPG. Something more engaging than walking into a gym and facerolling the entire building by spamming one singular move. And with towns that have personality. These games feel uninspired and half baked. Pokemon can and should do better.

We don't need yearly Pokemon games and here's why.

The Best part about this game is that it's Pokemon! The worst part about this game is that it's pokemon... ~ Alpharad 2019

The great Plateau in botw has more content then the wild area.

Remember when Pokemon BW had all-new, really cool sound effects that actually matched the feel of the region? Remember the hidden areas where you could find rare abilities that rewarded you for exploring? Remember how BW added more new Pokemon than the original game that started it all, all of which, old and new alike, were fully animated sprites, while sacrificing none of the quality, even pushing story focus a bit more with legitimately decent characters, really cool environments, and some of the best music of the entire franchise?

Nah, Rose's speech at the start isn't the part that should make you want voice acting, Piers "singing" before his battle should, you know, the part where not only does no noise come out of his mouth, but they didn't even give him lyrics in text, he's just dancing around and moving his mouth.

Welp, that might be Arlo’s last review copy provided by Nintendo.

Breath of the Wild: Everything is fun! Go have fun! Pokémon Sword/Shield: You have fun when we allow it.

You can unlock new wild areas. Just pay 30 dollars to Nintendo.

This is the opposite of what the Luigi's Mansion one will be

“Haven’t played since black and white so I haven’t gotten a full Pokémon experience in 8 years” Everyone who’s been playing Pokémon for past 8 years: yeah buddy, same here

"Pokemon has never had voice acting" At least on the D freaking S they incorporated singing into the music, so it sounded way better and more natural (like Roxie singing in her gym in B2W2)

Pokémon Sword’s isn’t great. Here’s how I would have created it: MAIN STORY: You start in southern Galar in the town of Postwick. You are told to head to the Pokémon Lab to meet Professor Magnolia and revive your starter. You are given your starter by Sonia instead. She doesn’t really like being the unofficial professor. She likes battling, but she’s told constantly that she is bad at it. Hop wants to be like Leon, he admires him greatly. He challenges you to a battle. He congratulates you after you win, and you catch a train to Wyndon. (Wyndon is now in southern Galar, due to it now being much more like London) It’s the largest city in the game and home to the Pokémon Leauge’s HQ. Here you meet Rose. Who promptly invites you to have lunch with him at one of the city’s many restaurants. (There are three restaurants and a luxury hotel in Wyndon that you can use.) He encourages you to join the gym challenge. You accept his invitation. You receive an endorsement from him. He tells you that you need eight badges to qualify for the Champion Cup. There are twelve gyms in galar. (You can do all twelve, but the final four will be HARD) Rose tells you can do the gyms in any order. Rose then gives you your Rotom phone with the Pokédex and map already I instaled on it. He then wishes you good luck on your gym challenge and leaves. You meet Hop who has been endorsed by Leon. You are now free to explore Wyndon and the towns surrounding it. (Some gyms are based on types while others, based on mechanics, this is to spice things up) You will meet Marnie and Bede. Bede will state that he has been endorsed by the Chairman and hints that he is his adopted son. You also say that you are endorsed by Rose. Desperate to prove that he is a better trainer than you, he battles you. (He was sheltered all his life and arrogantly believes that he is better than his fellow challengers) Bede shrugs off his loss and calls it bad luck. He refuses to admit that he lost. You meet Marnie who challenges you to a battle to train her Pokémon. She is shocked that she lost. She wonders why she lost. Marnie than continues train her team alone. You return to Wyndon where Hop Challenges you to your second battle. He wonders if he is strong enough to continue with his adventure you reassure him that he is and you head north. (There are towns that have little to no importance in the main story. However seaside allow you to travel between seaside towns via boat. This is important in the post game) Your train is delayed in a town with a gym. It’s run down and has seen better days. Marnie tells you that this is her home town. She battles you before telling you that living here is not easy. You beat the gym leader. Before you can leave, Leon congratulates you and Hop on the progress you’ve made. You head north and eventually end up in the galar equivalent of Edinburgh. Rose calls you and tells you to meet him in the city. You meet him where he tells you that he is surprised that you passed every gym on your first try, and he tells you that you are the talk of Galar.( The game ignores it when you loose, even to Leon, so we might as well indulge in your “win” streak :D)Bede interrupts your conversation to tell him of his achievements. Rose is impressed l, but continues talking to you. Bede, annoyed storms out. Rose tells you that you are going to be a great trainer when you complete the gym challenge and that you should compete in the champion’s cup. Who knows? Maybe you’ll beat Leon? After you leave Bede challenges you to a battle. He is starting to wonder if he is not as good as he thinks he is. You beat another gym before Marnie starts to provide you with more details of her upbringing and why she’s a lone wolf. At the end she calls you her rival and that that’s the first time she’s called anyone that. She is starting to realize that going solo isn’t always the best move. You complete another two gyms when Bede tells you that he and you should battle to practice for the champion’s cup. You head to Wyndon ready for what awaits you. You spend the last few days before the championship with Hop and Sonia. He is nervous he wants to prove himself and become someone as strong as Leon. The day before the tournament, Sonia wants to tell you that she was once a Pokémon Trainer. She was skilled enough to battle Leon. She lost, badly. She tells you to be careful. You start the championship by battling Bede. (Complete with remix of his theme) After That you battle Marnie, and finally, Hop. This match is big. Hop wants to prove himself and you want to challenge Leon. Hop looses and takes extremely personally. You challenge Leon. He is confident that he will beat you. You win shocking both Leon and Rose. The post game now starts. You begin it with a normal day. Everything is great. Hop visits to congratulate you. You have done it! You are now champion! Except... (Behind the scenes Rose is confused. Why didn’t Leon crush you? It was set up so that the match of the century would still end with his prized champion victorious. Why? It was clockwork? He needs to something about it) POST GAME You enter a tournament. Something is not right. It’s almost as if it’s... rigged. (Hint)You win and ask Rose (You still trust him) He states that’s it’s just as it’s always been. You head home, you decide to talk to Sonia and ask about what really happened during the championship match. She states that all of her Pokémon went down one by one. She also remembers that Leon wasn’t really concentrating during the battle. People assumed that she was a weak Pokémon trainer and she was forced to retire. Even Magnolia thought she was weak. She however has gotten into being the professor. You are beginning to question the motives of Rose. You trust him. He endorsed you. You head to Wyndon again and meet... Looker! He was assigned to investigate the corruption is Galar’s Pokémon League. He decides to let you help with his investigation. You meet him in his current office. (This is the post game story: investigating the Pokémon Leauge) He wants you to participate in another tournament. He is trying to determine how if they are trying to rig the tournament against you. You participate in the tournament. Looker determines that there was something shady about the tournament. He decides to investigate further. You are his partner now. He is suspicious of the league. He wonders why the league might be rigging matches. Rose calls you. He wants to discuss possible sponsors. Looker says he will investigate further. After the meeting Looker says that he found a possible lead, a match between Sonia and Leon. The match was so ridiculously one-sided that it couldn’t have been due to a sheer difference in skill. Sonia was a good trainer up until the. ,but this match completely ruined her career. She could have been great. You and Looker eventually realize the scope of it. Rose chose Leon because he was loyal. He wanted Leon to stay as the champion forever. He wanted to try and force a “Match of the Century” by putting his adopted son into prestigious trainer schools. He never developed a good relationship with his adopted son and Bede was desperate for his attention. Bede was supposed to challenge Leon and loose, but then you came along. He knew you had talent and if he could get you to trust him than everything would go smoothly. His plan backfired and now he had a champion who would not function as his puppet. You confront Leon and Rose. Hop is with you as well as Sonia.. You fight one last battle with Rose. (This is the final battle of the post game so he’s going to be over leveled) Hop feels betrayed so he cuts all ties with Leon. He wanted to like the unbeatable Leon, but he was a fraud. You were also betrayed by Rose. You were just a pawn to him. Both Leon and Rose are arrested and the post game ends. BONUS CONTENT You are now able to catch a ferry to the galar equivalent of Northern Ireland. It features a city (Belfast) with the Battle Castle, Battle Buffet Style Restaurant,and a MASSIVE Wild Area outside. This will feature green rolling hills, and the ruins of castles, houses and other medieval structures, dynamic weather, and lots of raid dens and Pokémon. (STORY WORKS BEST IF PAIRED WITH VOICE ACTING AND HALF DECENT ANIMATIONS) Thank you for reading this entire thing! (If you did). Game Freak is inclined to sit back and rush out a Pokémon game every year for the holiday season. As a result, the games are not very fun to play. I would have loved it if the game was like this. However sword is a shallow bland experience from the highest grossing media franchise. There is no excuse for it’s lack of content or quality. Other franchises like Mario or The Legend Of Zelda take their time to leave their games in the oven most of time. Pokémon has always been the same experience which is fine if you are playing it for the first time, but you’ll eventually get tired of it. My thumbs hurt...

Keep in mind that black and white 2 had vocals in two instances, Roxies gym had her singing as you completed the battles, Colress had a countdown in his battle theme. They clearly experimented using voices in themes, they could have eventually moved to voice acting. It's not like we dont have an anime studio worth of voice actors for pokemon.

I feel bad for Arlo, he no doubt loves getting free copies to review games from Nintendo. Companies often stop giving review copies to YouTubers for negatively reviewing their products, and there is nothing you can do about it, their games their choice. I really appreciate Arlo here giving his honest opinion despite the facts and keeping his integrity in check.

Did you know that in Red/Blue you can beat Lt. Surge as the 7th gym leader (with no glitches)? Not many do, nearly everybody beats him 3rd. Why do I mention this? Because if Game Freak are concerned that if they don't make things linear, people will beat everything out of order and that will defeat their level balancing, then they shouldn't be. Gen 1 guides the player through a rough order to beat the gyms (Koga/Sabrina is the only ambiguous part) and 90% of players will comply out of choice, which is why most won't know you can leave beating Lt. Surge for so long. But it's nice to have that sense of freedom that you're doing these things because you want to, rather than because you're being forced. For the other 10% of people - they're probably the type of people who like to experiment with their freedom, and they'll understand the risks they're taking when they do that. They want to enjoy crafting their adventure their own way, and why don't you let them? It also greatly improves replayability, I bet if 100 people who played RBY read this comment, at least one person would feel compelled to go through the game again and try to beat the gyms in a weird order (I recommend Brock, Misty, Koga, Blaine, Sabrina, Erika, Surge, Giovanni as a ridiculous but possible route). It's a fun thing to try and do.

Probably my best experience with laziness is in the fairy gym where you fight against two trainers that are EXACTLY the same, like, Botw had MULTIPLE different npc models for the Yiga clan and all the different races in general. Imagine going into Hateno Village and all the people there had either model A or B depending on their gender