Is Pokemon Sword and Shield BETTER Than Scarlet & Violet? (DLC INCLUDED!)

I prefer the open world more but SwSh felt more traditional. Ultimately, I'd prefer a Legends Arceus gameplay but with the open world.

I may be a hater but I shouldn't have to spend around $100 just to get a decent "complete" pokemon package. Especially when they should have the money to hire more employees to make at minimum the glitches disappear for a majority of players.

I love SwSh. I had a lot of fun with the game and with the dlc as well. I love the vibrant colors, the story is interesting, the gym challenge feels like a huge and important sport event that everyone watches and looks forward to (the gym challenge even has a really cool anual inauguration ceremony where you meet all the gym leaders beforehand) the atmosphere is great (even the npcs stsrt noticing your achievements during the game and the gym challengers also have their own pseudo mini stories if you paid attention) dynamax/gmax is easily the most visually impressive game mechanic of any pokemon game and the music during the gym and rival battles is awesome and really gets you hyped. Sure, you can use terastalization against random npcs but the presentation for the battles that actually matter in SwSh is far better than in Scarlet and Violet. Also, contrary to what you said, Dynamax and Gmax are both equally strong and useful. The only difference with gmax is the cool form change and the special gmax move but those aren't ridiculously OP moves or anything like that. You can perfectly use either dynamax or gmax during battle. None of them is particularly stronger than the other, they're equally useful. I don't even know where you come up with that (wrong) idea of gmax being significantly stronger than dynamax . And when it comes to soundtrack, both of them have great musical themes but I honestly prefer the ones in SwSh. The pokemon designs are really cool and the human character design is amazing and you get a lot of lore about the story of the region in basically every town and city (they all have some kind of connection to the legend of Galar with the exemption of Spikemuth for being the town that doesn't relate to dynamax/gmax and Balloonlea due to its hidden fairy town theme). Not to mention that even the gym trainers that fight you before the gym leaders have a way better design (that fits their gyms) in SwSh. You get to know the gym leaders outside their own gym and the league cards were also an amazing way to get to know even more about them and about the region itself. And you even get to see the most early game characters getting spotlight later on as well. During the main game, you don't get any meaningful interaction in Scarlet and Violet unless you're near a gym, a team star base or a titan. And, honestly, the ones you do have can get pretty repetitive. The gym leaders in SwSh are by far more charming than the ones in Scarlet and Violet in my opinion. And Leon is easily the most fleshed out champion of any pokemon game. We know everything about his story: his gym challenge, his friends, rivals, family, his habits, who trained him, how he got his starter, how he became the champion and even his new goals after losing the title of champion. The lore of the region is incredibly interesting and fleshed out in many ways when you actually pay attention to it. That's a difference that SwSh has with Scarlet and Violet. SwSh doesn't spoon feed you the answers. But you can definitely get them if you connect the dots. Scarlet and Violet expects you to wait until the very end of the game to throw you all the lore of the region in the face in the last part of the game. Not to mention that Sword and Shield allows itself to be more funny than Scarlet and Violet too. And the dlc story was a lot of fun. It had a cool chinese aesthetic to it with pretty fun characters. Your rival literally cheats during your battle and Mustard has two sides to him (the super chill old man with a pretty wife and a cool ex-champion that is pretty strong literally fights you with a legendary that fits his theme and you even get a secret boss fight with Honey, and she has a pretty cool theme. Not to mention that the upgrades for the dojo are far more easy to get than in Scarlet and Violet. Peony is full of charisma, the side quests involve going to the other parts of the region to catch pretty cool looking legendaries and the lore behind calyrex (if you actually pay attention) is really interesting because he literally fought against Eternatus. And while not technically about the games themselves, I prefer Twilight wings so much more over Paldean wings. Because it's pretty much a sequel to the entire story and features all the characters we met instead of three randos that had nothing to do with the story.

I give it to scarlet and violet mainly because of the story overall. But DLC wise, I was more disappointed with scarlet and violet. The DLC for sword and shield had nothing to do with the main story so there was no pressure really. Just extra content and new pokémon so it was just fun. Hidden treasure of area zero ties in to the main story so it meant more in my opinion, and it just didn't deliver the way it should have. I was pretty disappointed with the indigo disk lol either way I like them both.

One thing I like about sword and shield more than scarlet and violet is the Y-Comm system is much quicker and better to use than Poke portal. Best example is being able to invite/join friends alongside randoms. In Scarlet and violet, it's one or the other.

There were more frequent Raid-Den events in SW/SH, a Battle Tower, Legendary Shiny-Hunting in the DLC, a way to breed pokemon that took half the time it does in S/V, community hosted Shiny Raid-Dens, etc. I like shiny-hunting in S/V, and Tera-Raids can be challenging. That's about it, I really hope the next generation is more like gen VIII because I spent a lot more time in SW/SH than I ever will in S/V.

It actually started with Black and White 1 and 2 everyone hated Gen 5 and now it's in the top 5 for everyone White was the first Pokemon games I played so it's good to see that everyone thinks it's amazing now

When it comes to the DLC for gen 9 I think the main thing missing is some type of replay factor/minigame to bring us coming back. (Examples: Dynamax Adventures in Sword/Shield DLC or Ultra Wormholes In USUM.) Both let us shiny hunt legendaries / other random Pokemon and were overall enjoyable in general. Now that I shiny hunted the starters and found every shiny locked legendary In the Indigo Disk... Well thats it. Gen 9 is technically "done" until that event on the 11th. (Which seems to add 1-2 hours of gameplay max) And now ironically I'm just going back to Sword and Shield Crown Tundra DLC (Dynamax Adventures) and Legends Arceus (More fun Shiny Alpha hunts / completionist content) Even for people who don't LOVE dynamax adventures/Ultra wormholes at least it gave us some way to shiny hunt legendary Pokemon at the time. But removing shiny hunting legends in general, AND not having some type of DLC/post game gimmick.. It's really going to hurt the longevity of these games. This means were probably gonna get a rushed gen 10 (whenever it comes out) and more rushed remakes in 2024.. I think overall Scarlet & Violet win this one, but as for replayability Sword and Shield edges it just because of the DLC features

Bro, ik no one is going to mention this but that Sonic Unleashed background music is blissful. I always told people that game’s OST is amazing

The atmosphere in Pokemon Battle Revolution was ahead of its time.

SwSh is infinitely better than SV. The only reason you'd prefer to play SV over SwSh at this point is for easy shinies with the DLCs or playing wifi competitive. I'm currently playing sword because Scarlet and the DLCs are literal garbage and i dont care about wifi battling. I'd rather master the battle tower, complete the dex of GOOD pokemon, and maybe rarely shiny hunt. SV is a total failure.

Very amazing video, I can feel the effort put into it and it wouldn't surprise me if this video will somehow blow up. Keep up the good work mate. I have shield and scarlet but i bought them like 2 days ago from ebay for 30€ each, I mainly played Scarlet cuz I like a open world. I will buy the scarlet dlc and probably then only buy gen10 if it does what scarlet does but better.

I'm still mostly interested in the art of the Pok'emon battle. And the fact that some game features lock you into keeping all monsters at the same level during the duration of the battle, no matter how high you level them up. Until I see something like that. I don't really know for sure. So far, it seems like only Sword and Shield have that feature.

You can tell what Pokémon the gym leaders are gonna terastalize and that is the one that isn’t their type specialty

I personally like the pokemon design in Sword/Shield over Scarlet/Violet (which is a point that I think should have been brought up) since it fits with the region quite well, but I do agree with all of the other points.

Sword/Shield felt more complete without the dlc and the dlc truly felt optional. Scarlet/ violet felt their stories needed the dlc and paired with the main dialogue for the story, they told more on the whole which can be a positive or negative depending on how you look at it.

I need to see more of the Scarlet & Violets Inigo disk DLC first.

Sword/Shield has Dynamax Adventure in the DLC with non shiny-locked legends and good odds. So that is always a reason to go back to those games.

I’m gonna have to lean towards Sword and Shield on this one. I definitely enjoyed the story of SwSh a lot more as it felt more like a story, rather than various Tidbits that feel like kind of a hassle to find. The SwSh characters were also way better and were fleshed out a lot more, while in SV, the only characters we really get to know are Arven, Penny and Nemona, who were decent, but fell into many common tropes. I also believe the Gym Challenge was much better in SwSh (including titans and star raids into gym battles) as they felt like a driving force within the region rather than something that’s just there. The Gym Leaders in Galar felt like star athletes, which was awesome to me, while the Gyms in SV really didn’t feel like they carried much weight within the region. I can’t say I don’t like the legends better in SwSh too, as in SwSh, Zamazenta and Zacian were very well designed and fit very well into the region, which I can’t say for Koraidon and Miraidon, which is to a certain extent understandable, as they are from different times and are supposed to be foreign, they didn’t really have much lore nor did they have the best designs. I also believe the SwSh had much better DLCs. One of my biggest gripes of SV is how incomplete it was and how it relied on the DLCs to finish the game, rather than truly finishing it on its own. My other gripe and perhaps one of my bigger ones, is that the DLCs also felt like they had very little to do with the actually game. I mean, we spent the DLC of a Spain based game in Japan and America, which really doesn’t make much sense to me, given that there was an area next to the Paldea region (I believe it was the area based on Barcelona but I’m not sure) that they didn’t use and would have been perfect for the DLC. It really felt very random to go from a Spanish region, to 2 completely seperate regions, which may factor into why I felt that Ogerpon didn’t fit into SV very well. I also can’t help but dislike how little the DLC has to do with area zero, with a very small portion of the American part of the DLC actually being set in it. It felt as if it was something slotted in at the end to tie loose ends. I mean, Terapogos has very little to do with the rest of the indigo disk other than what we did in AZ. I feel like Fan Specualtion for the DLC was super interesting, and showed pretty obvious paths they could have taken, and really would have made more sense for them to take, such as the theories about Geeta, and Briar and such that never were expanded on. I also felt that Terapogos was very underwhelming, especially compared to our last to gimmick embodiments in Eternatus and Necrozma, who were both, like Terapogos, sleep for the majority of the story, but still managed to make an impact Terapogos just didn’t have. On the other hand we have the SwSh DLCs which were literally the opposite, taking place in areas that made sense, expanding on a completed story, making the Expansion pass seem like an Expansion rather than the rest of the story we weren’t give in the actually game, and included more interesting characters, Pokemon and legendaries that were awesome. Finally, I also believe that SwSh was more replayable (this may have been a personal thing though, as I managed to replay SwSh 8 times, while I can’t bring myself to replay SV even once), as I felt that sword and shield offered more interesting game play than SV did.

I need to add that part 2 of the dlc starts right sfter you just pass the prologue of the part 1 dlc, I don't know if it's a bug but I was able to go right after part 1 prolouge was finished