Game Review (2025 August)

Prologue

Pokémon Sword and Shield were released in 2019, when a temporary special Pokémon Centre opened in British London just before the release. I went to Westfield London for a total of 3 times (videos available on my channel), played the demo there, but only started to play Pokémon Sword (as "PMSw" afterwards) in the middle of 2022.

Low compassion and low motivation, till this day I still treat PMSw as only an okay game and nothing more, of course that is after including all the DLC contents. Before the DLCs, pretty much below average in so many aspects. Thanks to the successful installation of Yuzu, my Pokémon journey did not stop at Gen 7. After finishing Eevee, I finally travelled to Galar, a region based on the UK.

Contents

The most eye-catching revolutionary feature - open world system, turned out to be a huge disappointment. Some players like me are never fans of open world games, while others really like them. Personally, I think open world and Pokémon are a mismatch. It does bring something new and fresh to Pokémon, while losing a lot of old and traditional features like egg hatching as an example. As someone who used to call himself a Pokémon Breeder with some interest in PvE battles, making egg hatching less and less important was a disaster move to me.

PMSw does have a storyline like usual, while some players argue that the Pokémon Company spent a longer time constructing the story. However, as an atypical RPG series, I never think story is a big part of Pokémon, with so many other aspects being more important. Additionally, I think the story of PMSw is bland and boring, as I have almost forgot everything. A few characters do have some nice designs, while most are mid. The music also sees a deterioration in its quality, comparing to the older Pokémon games.

The postgame contents were almost nonexistent before the DLCs. The Battle Tower in PWSw is pretty much a joke, way too easy to call that a battle system! As a solo player, there is really little I can do after completing the whole storyline. The Curry minigame is silly but filling the Curry Dex is a really good feature for time wasting. And filling Pokédex as much as I could is one of the remaining activities, not that bad, same old feeling.

After the release of DLCs, more Singleplayer contents were added. The Restricted Sparring though requires some team buildings, is still nowhere near a real challenge for players like me. Oh, the Alolan Digletts quest? Without any guides, that is not an easy one for sure! A pretty Pokémon minigame, aha?!

The only challenge related to Pokémon battles in PMSw to me, is the Dynamax Adventure. However, it is only a tough challenge for solo players like me and definitely tough in a wrong way. Obviously this mode was designed for playing with friends or partners, where everything would be much easier with more controls towards the battles. However, the NPCs in this mode, or basically the whole PWSw are built with extremely silly AI - they are even bad with the very basics!

• Playing against them in the Battle Tower or the Restricted Sparring, piece of cake.

• Grouping with them in the Dynamax Adventure against imbalanced lengendaries, pain.

Challenging with a team of strong Pokémons is not enough, as the whole plan can be ruined by some shocking moves from the "helpful" NPCs. In short, catching all the lengendaries in the Dynamax Adventure with NPCs is a huge challenge. That said, nowhere near a good one, as it mostly tests your luck and patience.

Epilogue

As the game market was changing, the Pokémon series with a long history needed some new bloods to catch up. As usual, evolutions leave some outdated features behind and embrace new ideas. If the new ideas are not convincing and some old but good ones are still abandoned, obviously the games will only become worse.

I would say there appeared to be a big jump suddenly in Gen 8 and followed by Gen 9. Regardless of whether you like the most recent Pokémon games, they do look pretty different from their predecessors. PMSw is not that bad, but it did open up the door wide to a worse era. As someone who prefers the traditional Pokémon features, I do not like most of the new changes. That said, Gen 8 was my last generation and I have decided not to play after Gen 8.