Pokemon Sword & Shield (+ DLCs)

Over the past year (almost to the day, in fact), I've been going through the Pokemon series, starting in a more scattershot direction before setting back towards a majorly-release order on the Switch entries. I've had the ups, the downs, and a few in-betweens, but it's mostly been a pleasant trip going back to a franchise I've more or less grew up with. I guess it's... fitting? to continue that trend with the release of Gen 8's massive shakeup.

Obligatory Dexit Section, Sorry

Sword & Shield contained several, controversial elements that are still plaguing discussion points to this day. And, really, it's kind of hard to avoid bringing it up within the confides of the "Modern" Pokemon status, despite it pretty much finally noting the writings on the office walls since, ironically, the at-the-time nearly two-decade old Gen 3:

• That generation had its own "Dexit" (portmanteau of PokeDex and Brexit) controversy, to the point its majorly defined by its main and Gamecube spinoff titles acting as ways to transfer Gens 1&2 mons within the same environment, right down to needing an entire utility release to function as a hotspot;
• Gen 4 had to utilize the DS's dual-slot mechanic, as well as the Pal Park facilities located in Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold, and SoulSilver, so that every prior Gens' mons can become available, each one also serving to mitigate the gap between new Pokemons introduced in this very Gen (Tangela wasn't available in Diamond & Pearl, and Regigigas couldn't be activated until you transferred Regirock/Ice/Steel over);
• Gen 5 needed to use DS Download Play so that a majority of Pokemon not available in Black & White 1/2 could be, including Pikachu despite the fact this lovable rodent can be spotted on a Castelia billboard and an NPC has one in BW1; there were two Pokemon here, Zorua and its evolution Zoroark, that had to be activated via a separate(!!!) transfer module for an Event Celebi and Event Shiny Legendary Beasts (Raikou, Entei, and Suicune) to become available, due to everyone tying into the 13th movie;
• Gens 6 and 7, being on an entirely different handheld yet again, utilized both Poke Transporter and Pokemon Bank to transfer those stuck in Gen 5 titles - and later updated to include the Virtual Console rereleases of Gens 1 & 2¹ - making some of those the only way to be obtained (I had to use this myself because I wanted to try out Nidoran♂ in Ultra Sun, which isn't native to Alola), alongside other, game-exclusive functions such as Friend Safari, Mirage Spots, and Ultra Wormholes. This, unfortunately, was never gonna be feasible long-term due to a variety of factors (chiefly, the fact that the 3DS is a discontinued platform), and thus Bank's upcoming foreclosure, and therefore its connecting line to Pokemon Home will be over, was saddening yet unsurprising to me.

Between Gen 8 soon introducing having a grand total of 900 creatures at this point in time, each generation upended the power balancing more than usual, and three entirely different gameplay gimmicks - Mega Evolution, Z-Moves, and SWSH's Dynamax - to try and keep track of for every single Pokemon, It was clearly getting out of hand. It was better to snip the cords and curate as much as possible - what Moves to allow, what Mons should appear in Galar and in each future region's locals moving forward, how to handle Regional Forms - than to risk a maximalization to the point of horrific game balance and homogenization of what's supposed to be brand new experiences. If anything, my problems lie with communication - Junichi Masuda's responses didn't exactly impress everyone, and I feel like it would've been a lot better to emphasize every prior instance I mentioned. Like, do people really want the first Route encounters to be every single first route bird/bug/normal type ever?

The reason I spent the first third of this review talking about a discourse that I ultimately find frivolous at best and obnoxious at worst, is because you genuinely cannot escape it. It's kind of Gen 8's Identity much like Gen 3 was before it. Nearly everyone brings it up as a reason why Game Freak/Nintendo/Scapegoat sucks donkey dick and are evil and lazy and burned down crops. Most people who haven't touched this series, either since very early on or not even once, even know about this debacle because of how news of it spread like wildfire. It was harder to ignore its affect on the series' landscape when discussing it than it is to acknowledge it. Not helping is that the game itself is undermining itself through overambition and undercooked elements, which only served to foment more frustration.

The Suspiciously Breezy Wilderness

One of SWSH's other notable shakeups was the Wild Area, a section in the overworld where you're able to run around a spacious environment and see "symbol" (what Pokemon refers to as overworld) encounters alongside the usual randoms on the grass from every which way. Routes are still a thing, but are severely downplayed and more so served as the connecting line between each town/city for the next Gym, as well as any specific landmarks such as the Glimwood Tangle or the Mines. I can kind of understand the desire of changing the structure up; the series has always been linear, especially since Gen 5's Unova be represented as several straight lines that you're more-or-less guided towards, and Gen 7's Alola dictates a rooted direction the players go to for their adventure.

That said, the resulting combination of Traditional Routes and Freeforming Areas leaves a fair bit to desire - WAs are usually so sequestered from one another that traveling to and from one section of the map becomes tedious, and it doesn't help there's no "big" unlock period like there is when you get the Bike in Kanto or Surf in it and most other games. Kalos, for as much as I'm disappointed by its locale and overall sense of direction, still manages to distinguish itself thanks to having Lumiose City smack dab in the middle, creating a loop where the player needs to revisit it as quasi-milestones as to where they are in the plot. Alongside that, visually it's when the game's presentation is at its most infamous, what with the low-poly poo trees, lack of proper shading/shadowing, each section being small enough that transitioning from one sandstorm to another enveloped in a blizzard is incredibly jarring, and lighting becoming more so a "tone setter" than proper... lighting. Even with Switch 2's Handheld Boost Mode giving the entire game a much-needed facelift, it was unbelievable that certified locations the captivating Ballonlea, history-rich Stow-on-Side and Hammerlocke, and the rambunctious Motostoke and Wyndon exists in the same game with these dry and dour WAs! Kind of wish the game split them in halves - first you go through the routes in a linear fashion, and then the wild areas serve as checkpoints between Motostoke & Hammerlock, and then Hammerlock & Wyndon.

It also results in a conundrum regarding its regional dex. A fair bit of them repeat Kalos' problem of being more uncommon-to-rarer encounters (some of which only being randoms, even!), but what isn't helping is that some of these design takes are very hit-and-miss when it comes to incorporating Britain culture: Obstagoon is supposed to be a mixture of a badger and punk/glam rock aesthetics, yet the dude himself looks more like he's cosplaying the American band KISS or Alice Cooper instead of, say, T. Rex or one of David Bowie's personas; Cufant and Copperajah are great examples of, quoted from Lakespirit, "literally the culture vulture Pokemon" given India and Britain's relationship periods, but then you have Galar-Stunfisk being a literal beartrap in the most unimaginative way possible; I fucking hate Mr. Rime and his tap-dancing ass. Not bothering with chivalry I straight up hate this fucker. Dumbass loser. Hell some of these are just reheated leftovers, like Thievul and Boltund just being Liepard and Manetric respectively. Pretty lame! Still, there's enough here that makes me like the Dex despite finding it my least favorite of the rosters. Sinistea and Polteageist are incredibly simple and low-hanging, but I can't hate on the silly goobers too much, especially when they're fun to use, and Galar-Darmanitan being this weirdly generic Snowman Yeti that can transform into a Raging Firecracker is kind of inspired. Shoutout to my boys Toxtricity, Corviknight, Sirfetch'd, and Snom btw.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, both the Isle Of Armor and, to a lesser extent, Crown Tundra DLCs pretty much addressed most of these issues. WAs are pretty much THE thing are now, and it means a bunch of them now meaningfully connect to one another to make these places feel more like, well, places than cobbled together landmasses. Traversing them feels more fulfilling due to each zone having their own stuff to collect, Pokemon spawns (also doubling up as making sure more Galar natives show up btw!), and objectives within the storylines to complete (even if this ends up being detrimental, more on that later). It also helps that every new Mon - read: wholly original entities, though the reintroduction of several Mons is beneficial to the core experience's teambuilding - added in are all hits. Galarian Slowpoke and its evos are fantastic twists on the Mad Scientist Gone Awry archetype, Kubfu and its two Urshifu forms are now among my all-time favorite Legendaries thanks in large part to how IoA's story utilizes them, and Regieleki is a wonderful freak of nature. Is it weird as hell that we somehow have Regional Forms of Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres despite the Kantonian birds still around? Yes. Is Regidrago and Calyrex some of the dumbest looking Mons of all time? Yes. Does it diminish the overall quality? Not really!

On the note of fixing things...

The Path To A Better Tomorrow Is Rife With Rushed Conclusions

The series has always had a sense of "growing" alongside the playerbase and RPG norms within its storytelling, but SWSH is probably the most involved with this theming since the Gen 4 games. I mean, Galar being a straight line that increasingly becomes more productive and lively with each town in any way, right up to Wyndon being the local hotspot for everything having to do with Pokemon battles, is about as blatant of a storytelling tie as when Sinnoh had you start your Gym battles at a coal-mining town and end it at a place entirely powered by solar panels. You also have rivals Hop, Marnie, and Bede, fulfilling as the "New Generation" side of the coin. When including the DLCs, there's IoA's rival, Klara in Sword / Avery in Shield using their #toxic nature as a mechanism for unfair treatment from their peers², that region's Dojo Master Mustard, aforementioned Legendaries Kubfu and Calyrex, and Goofy Dad Peony to help bolster it since they're trying to connect to the future despite having personalities/mannerisms more rooted in the past.

This being like, the first time the Game titles make the Gym League a full-on tournament spectacular, much like how the anime does it, really helps. The series has always been up-and-down about the difficulty regarding route and regular trainer battles since the Kalos days, but Game Freak have been rectifying that since Gen 7 - a lot of these guys are fun to fight against! Kabu, the Motostoke Leader, is noted as a big hurdle for a lot of ongoing Gym Challengers, and it's mainly because his Challenge is specifically designed to mess with the standard battle/capture routine; every trainer there is actively fucking up your chances of scoring the points necessary to pass, due to Double Battles being mandated here. People will attack, lend a Helping Hand, pretty much do anything to deter you from actually Capturing the Pokemon necessary. The illusion gets kinda shattered since, as the main character, you can actually succeed no problem and not face a punishment from poor scoring, but still, it's a fun twist nonetheless. You can even keep the captured mons too, which means Shield players like me are able to utilize a Vulpix no problem! And shoutout to Dragon Leader Raihan for having his gym challenge be all about Double Battles and Weather Control, as well as Ice Leader Melony for somehow being a threat due to Hail and incorporating a mixture of walls and fast sweepers despite Ice being one of the frailest and most exploitable types in the entire series.

It's just. Man. Despite all of that going for it, this damn line will haunt the narrative forever.

I think Chairman Rose is like, super close to being a really good Pokemon villain. Having a guy whose entire pathos is "philanthropist that's secretly doing backdoor plots to the detriment of mankind" is a cliche yet effective hook, and given all I've said about the character setups, it's fitting. I don't even take umbrage with the "thousand years" plot point like so many others, cause having someone this obsessive about the Future when it's something that's better handled/equipped to the New Generation, something even Leon, the pinnacle of Corporate Sponsorship in this series, recognizes and believes in. It just, comes straight outta nowhere. You get some brief snapshots and foreshadowing to this (one of the lines Sonia talks about is Rose being knee-deep in energy preservation and conservation when you hit a power plant), but it feels like they missed out in connecting the Climax portion to the Falling Action one.

Even before this, the cracks were showing: Bede, being someone who was ruthlessly mistreated until Rose gave him the resources necessary to be Well-Lived, has all the makings of a deep character following the Stow-on-Side Mural Attack, but he completely disappears from the plot once Gym Leader Opal takes him under her wing not too long after. Marnie, despite the game's best efforts to incorporate her and Team Yell's extremely kid-friendly take on Soccer Football Hooliganism as a commentary on Spikemuth being incredibly penurious in Galar's economical/structural position, is a complete non-entity in the majority of the game's story, only serving to have more extra fights and a pretty good theme. Avery/Klara, Peony, and Calyrex have it a little better, thanks to the DLCs smaller nature allowing for more breathing room and therefore more involvement, but even they barely get any resolution, with the IoA Rival getting dropped after their third battle, and Peony/Calyrex having a rushed connection to the grand theme because of how many goddamn Legendaries occupy CT for some reason.

This just leaves Hop, Leon, Mustard, and Kubfu, and given that they absorb all the screentime, they're thankfully pretty good. I see some hate thrown towards Hop, and while admittedly he has one of the worst first impressions for a Rival character in the series, he turns around not too long in the second act - getting his entire worldview shattered after suffering one loss from Bede is pretty effective, and finally goes into the detail of how nepotism and talent gets you pretty much nowhere in competition. This inferiority complex, which is especially potent given the fact this is now a Sporting Event™, festers throughout the entire narrative to boot, and when the next rival battle after showed off his new team, complete with shelving his Wooloo that he's had since he was a child, I had a good laugh - yea, this would be the result of a kid scrambling for a comeback out of pure desperation.

I dunno if I like his resolution being that he instead focuses on being a professor but I kiiiiiinda get it, mainly thanks to how the game treats him as The Second Hero with the opposite Box Legendary being deigned onto him - it's less so that he's just gives up being a trainer outright, and more that he recognizes where and how to utilize what he's best at with his new passion/lease. It's just a little messy in conveyance.

Leon is a champion that, despite only having 3 or 4 personalities at all times, evidently has a habit of putting everyone else in front of him, down to the fact that the only reason you and Hop were only able to do the League was from the badgering of Hop and Sonia's grandma, since he always stubbornly pointed out our "inexperience" as the counterargument. When Rose confronts him about his Darkest Day Preparation Plan, Leon refuses because he cared more about the region and its inhabitants than Rose seemingly ever did. Mustard is immediately brought up as Leon's Trainer and an Old Guard from Galar's initial League rosters, who retired after one of his partners straight up died and he was soon asked if he wanted to win a rigged match, instead deciding to globe trot, buy up a plot of land (Isle of Armor), and start a Dojo there to train a new batch of students... which leads directly into Kubfu who is the manifestation of the kung-fu / wuxia archetypes of training til your muscles explode, being connected to you either ASAP (IoA is actually unlocked right when you finish Motostoke's first visit) and train together, or see various sightlines for inspiration if you're doing post-game. These two are literally interconnected since Mustard is constantly making sure you're always one-step ahead of him, right down to his final match having the other Urshifu form you didn't pick and all of his teams being effective killers, Mienshao and Kommo-o especially. These four are astonishingly well done storytelling-through-mechanics cases, and it's all in a game where half of its main cast gets their arcs dropped at some point in time.

I suppose this last point is like, kind of the perfect encapsulation of my journey through Galar; constantly I was reminded of Gen 4's launch, notorious for having confoundingly sparse and unfinished elements in it. I think after I settled it in more, I was starting to find its groove. Then I lost it again around its endgame. But then the DLCs brought it back up, kinda. Then Leon's whole finale - both in the main game, and in Crown Tundra which serves as SWSH's final epilogue - kinda won me over. Like Red, Cynthia, and Kukui before him, it was kind of awe-inspiring to have Pokemon fight that was like, genuinely kind of grueling. Man was out here having coverage for days even when I was overprepared to hell and back, especially with his Haxorus denying the shit out of my options for clean sweeps. After all of that, when the dust settled and I got the win, he briefly hides his emotion and plays up his bravado for everyone in the stadium. The Future Generation having someone that's worthy of the mantle is more important than a job he textually lost any and all attachment towards.

And like, I dunno man. Despite the fact this is a dumb baby series for dumb babies, I suppose that still kinda means somethin to me as someone nearing the 30s. Even despite the fact a mouse cursor shows up during the end credits lol WHOOPS.

Team:

• Dailor the Rillaboom, LV86
• Gawain the Corviknight, LV86
• Pinchers the (transferred) Crawdaunt, LV86
• Megaton the Urshifu (Single Strike form), LV86
• Shoegaze the Toxtricity, LV87
• Empath the Hatterene, LV86

Backup/Scouting Team:

• Topsters the Hitmontop, LV52
• Jerry the Vanilluxe, LV56
• Aladdin Sane the Obstagoon, LV49
• Scout the Weavile, LV54
• Vishious the Dracovish, LV54
• Penumbra the Polteageist, LV55