Were Pokemon Sword and Shield as bad as we thought?

With Scarlet and Violet right around the corner, it's time to take a critical look at the last games in the Pokemon franchise. Were Pokemon Sword and Shield as bad as everyone said?

#PokemonSwordShield #WolfeyVGC #Pokemon
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[redpandaplush]

I can understand how much these games did from a competitive perspective, but the single player experience was extremely lackluster. Story and exploration especially were really bad for an RPG...

[BringDaTube]

I thought retaliate was just a throw away move, but it has one of the coolest animations I've ever seen in a pokemon game. The range in quality is crazy.

[gaberobison]

The route design wasn’t “fairly linear” it was atrociously so. Even Gen 2 routes felt like there was more to do haha

[TheGamingMalamutt]

So something Wolfey didn't touch on that honestly made me genuinely furious during my first play through of Pokemon Sword was the caves.. or lack of. There's 2 caves in Galar. Both of which are accessible within your first 3 badges. They're both REALLY short caves, with the second one being a dead end because it's just used for an introduction to Kabu. My biggest gripe about this is WHY IN THE NAME OF ARCEUS DID THEY GIVE US THE ESCAPE ROPE AS A KEY ITEM?!?!? What purpose does it serve when initially, the caves are so short the Escape rope isn't needed and any other time if you're lost somewhere like the Glimwood Tangle, YOU COULD JUST CALL A DANG TAXI

[MJyoung]

I love the aesthetic of SwSh. Making pokemon battles feel like a sport was perfect. My biggest problem with it was just how boring and linear it was.

Edit: I feel i should expand on my comment lol. I dont think Linear is bad. Im sure we can all name games that are linear and phenomenal. But i feel if a game chooses to be linear it should offer more than what SwSh gave us. And comparing a game that came out 3 years ago to a game that came out 20 years ago doesnt help your argument lol. Gaming and storytelling has evolved since then and sometimes it feels like Gamefreak knows we're going to buy the games so they cut corners

[BARRACUDA_X]

I personally really enjoyed Sword and Shield. I liked that there was no elite four but instead a tournament to make it seem more immersive and less like a video game and more like your journey in an anime or something

[massimodalessandro]

It's extraordinarily refreshing to see a video that is fairly positive but not toxic, you were clearly not afraid to voice your dislikes and yet you painted a very fair picture of the games while also just explaining what you did like in a way that was very enjoyable and digestible. The lack of hostility is something a lot of modern Pokémon reviews these days lack, so I really enjoyed this video!

[willtankfordank]

The wild area was a great concept executed poorly. having the DLC be basically a giant wild area was a huge improvement

[wuzzup]

My main issue with SwSh os that it was a total of $189 for both games and their dlcs for an experience that feels like we would've payed $80 for just a generation prior

[amiiboguy]

I actually loved the Calyrex story, he felt more like an actual character than just another side quest to catch another legendary

[guydooeinfinity]

5:58
Fun fact: If your defense stat is 0, then physical attacks will only ever do 1 damage to you due to how the damage formula works

[hola-gyte]

dear lord this generation has created such a massive split in the community
in one hand, people really enjoyed this game and liked what it did
on the other hand, people seem to despise it so much that they even tell people that enjoyed this gen to go play the older games instead

[MarkStockley]

I wish they would finally just give a bunch of time towards developing a game. They have the true potential to make Pokemon a mindblowing exprience.

[victino]

One complaint I have with Pokémon Sword and Shield that I don't hear enough people talk about is not being able to save and share battle videos. This was a standard feature with the Vs Recorder in the DS and 3DS games and I miss it.

[ltjgambrose]

One huge bonus to SwSh is that it's on the Switch at all, which means that you can have as many saves as you want if you have multiple profiles.
I'm super glad that I could get both Urshifu, both new Regis and both Calyrex without having to buy a whole second game or delete my playthrough for no reason.

[hazeljoy]

What I'm hearing is that the game was actually a lot better when using the multiplayer features. A lot of the gripes I had with the game seem to only apply more for the single player experience where I didn't have friends or interest in playing online. I'm glad there was a lot more to the game than my negative first view of it. I hope Scarlet/Violet feel like more polished, complete experiences for single players but also continue to expand upon the online features that Sword&Shield excelled at

[codytoeung]

In terms of voice acting, they could just take the Zelda approach and have them grunt. They already give grunts to the Arceus protags so it wouldn’t seem too hard. Probably a lot cheaper to have VAs just grunt for an hour compared to more complex dialogue

[imhopelesslyaddictedtofent]

The pokemon company lied and said they didn’t include the full pokedex because they were focusing on improving the quality of animations and models. Many people were excited about this, and were obviously angry when they found out they were the same models they made in 2012.

[alexterry]

I think the biggest problem about dexit, (also someone who thought it was a good thing to lower the pokedex count) was the fact that they lied about the reason behind it. In gen 6-7 the stated the reason for the poor performance issues was because the textures where to hi-res for the hardware in order for them to be easily ported to the switch when the time came. Then they come out and lied saying that they had to re do pokemon models and textures for gen 8 and that was why we couldn’t have all 900+ pokemon. When it was proven over and over again that they are in-fact the same models from the ds. Lower pokemon count was not the problem, lying about why was.

[FatePokemon]

Crazy how Zarude’s stats aren’t good for doubles but it’s pretty incredible for single’s especially for draft.